Exam 2 Study Guide

Aesthetics

• Questions of aesthetics

  • What is beauty?

  • How do we know what is beauty?

  • How/can we create the beautiful?

  • Is the beautiful true?

  • Is the beautiful good?

  • Is the beautiful real?

• What are at least two of the questions we asked when doing aesthetics? What is beauty? Is the beautiful true, good, and/or real?

• When was the term aesthetics coined? In the Modern or Post-Enlightenment era

Beauty, Truth, and Goodness

• Based on class discussion, how, if at all, does beauty relate to morality (i.e., goodness)? Ancients and Christians seen beauty and morality as interwinded. When something is beautiful, it was created by good, and therefore it will have a moral purpose

• Alexandar Baumgarten (1714-1762) coined the term aesthetics

  • The purpose of art is to produce beauty

  • The focus will shift to art away from beauty

  • Beauty is

    • Best found in nature

    • Art is an imitation of nature

The study of beauty and aesthetics over time

• Ancients

  • Which of these was an example from class of how mathematics, order, balance, and unity is highlighted in the ancient perception of beauty? Architecture from Greece and India

  • Beauty for the ancients was connected to the divine realm True

  • Greek philosophy was oriented towards eudaimonia

    • Beauty was ordered to the good

    • The ultimate good pointed toward the divine

    • Beauty has an objective component

    • Connected to mathematics and therefore order, unity, and balance

• Plato

  • Thinks things like beauty, good, and justice have ideal, eternal forms

  • These are divine

  • Beauty exists in the realm of the Gods, imperfectly replicated in the material realm

  • Sharp divide between the material and immaterial realm

  • Truth, beauty, and goodness go together

  • Not a fan of the artists and poets

• Augustine (354-430)

  • Virtues

  • God is the final end - virtues

• Aquinas (1225-1274)

  • Which of these terms best describe Aquinas’s view about God being a humanity’s final end? Beatitude

  • God is the final end - beatitude (friendship with God)

• Moderns

  • In the modern era the focus on beauty shifted from art to beauty False

  • Hume

    • Did not like the idea that beauty was the result of unexamined custom

    • He though there would be correct and incorrect judgements about what is beautiful

  • Kant

    • Beauty evoke love without desire

    • Beauty is entirely disinterested

      • Beauty is non-intrumental (good regardless of its usefulness)

    • Nature is beautiful because it looks like art, but all art is artificial because it is just a representation

  • Schopenhauer

    • Art is not beautiful because it imitates nature

    • Art attempts to give us a picture of a universal rather than a particular

Beauty, objectivity, and subjectivity

• Which trend about beauty did the professor highlight when thinking about shifts from ancient perspectives to modern? From objective to subjective

• Ancients and Medieval Christians largely saw beauty as objective

  • It derived front the divine realm

• Moderns emphasize the role of the subject beholding the object in the role of beauty

Aesthetics and apologetics

Pointers to faith

• An observation or experience that demand explanation and is made intelligible by God can be called a Pointers to faith

Taylor’s Holy Longing

• Taylor in “A Holy Longing” states that “ugliness makes…” Our souls sick

Arguments

• A sequence of statements that includes a conclusion and others that support the conclusion is a(n) argument

• Logic is a discipline used to differentiate good arguments from bad

  • Inductive and deductive are different forms of logic

• Argument - a sequence of statements

• Statements

  • Statements - claims that can either be forms of logic

• Valid and invalid

  • If an argument is valid, it must be a good argument False

  • A valid argument can have all of the following except for True premises and a false conclusion

  • Valid arguments - if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true

    • True premises, true conclusion

    • Example

      • Premise: all biologists are scientists

      • Premise: John is not a scientists

      • Conclusion: John is not a biologist

  • Valid arguments can have

    • False premises, false conclusion

    • Example:

      • Premise: all humans are plants

      • Premise: John is a human

      • Conclusion: John is a plant

  • Valid arguments can have

    • False premises, true conclusion

    • Example

      • Premise: all dogs are humans

      • Premise: John is a dog

      • Conclusion: John is a human

  • But deductive valid arguments cannot have

    • True premises and a false conclusion

• Premises and conclusions

  • Conclusions - lasting claim in a sequence in the conclusion

  • Premise - statements in support of the conclusion

  • A statement within an argument that supports the conclusion is called a(n) premise

• Hypothetical/conditional statements

  • Conditional statement - argument patters that are deductive, contains if-then statements

  • An argument pattern that contains an if-then statement is known as a(n) conditional statement

• Antecedent and consequent

  • Antecedent - the first statement in a conditional premise (the “if” part)

  • Consequent - the second part (“then” part)

Syllogisms

• A syllogism is an inductive argument made up of four premises and a conclusion False

• Syllogism - deductive argument made up of three statements, two premises and a conclusion

Common argument forms (i.e. Modus Ponens, Modus Tollens, etc.)

• Modus Pones - common form

  • If P then Q

  • P

  • Therefore, Q

  • Example

    • If the job is worth doing, then it’s worth doing well

    • The job is worth doing

    • Therefore, it’s worth doing well

  • The following argument is commonly referred to was what?

    1. If P then Q

    2. P

    3. Therefore, Q

    Modus Ponens

• Modus Tollens - common forms

  • If P then Q

  • Not P

  • Therefore, Q

  • Prodive an argument that takes the form of a Modus Tollens

    • If it’s raining, the park is closed

    • The park is closed

    • Therefore, it’s not raining

• Disjunctive syllogism - common forms

  • Either P or Q

  • Not P

  • Therefore, Q

  • Example:

    • Either Ralph walked the dog, or he stayed home

    • He didn’t walk the dog

    • Therefore, he stayed home

• Hypothetical syllogism - common form

  • If P then Q

  • If Q then R

  • Therefore, if P then R

  • Example

    • If the ball drops, the lever turns to the right

    • If the lever turns to the right, the engine will stop

    • Therefore, if the ball drops, the engine will stop

• Denying the Antecedent - invalid form

  • If P then Q

  • Not P

  • Therefore, not Q (this is not a valid argument)

  • Example

    • If Einstein invented the steam engine, then he’s a great scientists

    • Einstein did not invent the steam engine

    • Therefore, Einstein is not a great scientist

• Affirming the consequent - invalid form

  • If P then Q

  • Q

  • Therefore, P (this is not a valid argument

  • Example

    • If Springfield is the capital of Missouri, then it is in Missouri

    • Springfield is in Missouri

    • Therefore, Springfield is the capital of Missouri

  • The following argument take which commons form

    1. If the park is open, then it is not raining

    2. It is not raining

    3. Therefore, the park is open

    Affirming the consequent

The limits of Logic

• Does logic have limits? How do you know? Yes, logic has limits. Arguments that are valid can be bad arguments; it can be circular giving us no answers. Arguments can also be non-demonstrative (not valid), but are good arguments. Logic has limits and cannot always give good answers to valid arguments and can have good arguments for not valid arguments

• Arguments that are valid can be bad arguments

  • They might be circular

    • God exists

    • Therefore, God exists

• Premises must be believable independent of the conclusion

  • God knows when you will die

  • Therefore, God exists

• Provided a premise that requires believing the conclusion is begging the questions

  • In other words, an argument that demand that you first ask another, different question is not question begging

• You can have arguments that are non-demostrative (not valid) but are still good arguments

  • For instance, strong inductive arguments are good arguments even though they are not deductively valid

    • The sun rises every morning, therefore the sum will rise tomorrow

  • Inferences to the best explanation are an example of good non-demonstrative arguments

    • When you begin with a group of settled facts and reason backwards to a theory that best explains them

The god of philosophers

• The god of the philosophers normally includes the characteristic of being all-powerful (omnipotent) True

The ontological argument

• What does the following definition describe: anything that has a reason for existence inside itself Independent being

• Which of the following arguments is based upon the phrase, “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” The Ontological Argument

• Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109)

  1. God is the greatest conceivable being

  2. God has all possible perfections

  3. Existence is a perfection

  4. God has the property of existence

  5. Therefore, God exists

Critiques of the ontological argument

• The greatest conceivable island

• Premises one and two are simply statin the definition of the GCB

  • This is an a priori argument

• Premise three and four

  • Aquinas think this is like saying God’s existence is self evident

  • Gaunilo’s objection - you can’t move from an idea of something to it’s reality

Anselm and theology

• Anselm though that reason was sought To make faith more understandable

• According to the lectures, Anselm thought be provided an air tight argument for God’s existence that would be helpful in convincing atheists False

• Anselm was a theologian, the first of the scholastic theologians

  • Theology is “faith seeking understanding” or rather he says, “I believe in order that I may understand”

    • We don’t believe only to experience but also to understand

• Anselm’s goal was not to discover reasons to believe but the reasons for what we already believe

Cosmological Argument

• What is the name of the following argument:

  1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause

  2. The universe began to exist

  3. Therefore, the universe has a cause

  The Cosmological Argument

• This is a valid deductive argument

  1. Whatever beings to exist has a cause

  2. The universe began to exist

  3. Therefore, the universe has a cause

Critiques of the cosmological argument

• Between Ansel, Aquinas, and Clarke, which of their arguments discussed in class do you find the best? Explain your answer I like Anselm’s argument the best. I liked his argument to prove reasons to believe in God from reasons that we already have. He tried basing his argument on proof rather than creating belief.

• David Hume objects to premise two

  • He argues you can have reasons for all the individual items in a system without needing an explanation for the whole

• Hume’s principle - “once you have explained the properties of each element in a totality, you have explained that features of the totality as well”

Thomas Aquinas

• Aquinas’s arguments about God’s existence are a priori False

• How many ways does Thomas Aquinas prove God? Five

• Aquinas though that knowledge of God should be made available in the most obvious way, namely his effects

• Aquinas’s Five Ways (or five things in the world that prove “what everyone understand to be God”)

  • The reality of motion, efficient causes, contingent beings, morality, and design

Aquinas and theology

• The professor says that Anselm and Aquinas are more interested in metaphysics and/or theology than epistemology when making their arguments about God. What does he mean by this statement?

Reductio Ad Absurdum

• Clarke’s argument takes the form of a reductio ad absurdum

  1. A

  2. If A, then B

  3. If A, then not B

  4. Therefore, not A

1. Suppose there is nothing but an infinite causal regress of dependent beings, or an ICRDB for short

2. There must be some explanation of the existence of the entire ICRDB

3. That explanation can’t exist outside of the ICRDB

4. Nor can that explanation exist inside of the ICRDB

5. So, the ICRSB exists without any explanation at all

6. This contradicts the second premise

7. Therefore, the supposition in premise 1 must be false

Samuel Clarke

• Samuel Clarke attempts to improve on Aquinas's argument by doing which of the following: Double asserting a single premise

• Samuel Clarke (1675-1729) leaves open the possibility for an infinite regress and reworks the argument accordingly

Infinite Regress

• Aquinas state, “this cannot go on the infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and consequently, no other mover, seeing that subsequent movers only inasmuch as they are moved by the first mover”

• In other worlds, Aquinas rules out the possibility of an infinite regress

First cause/mover

Dependent and independent beings

• Dependent being - anything whose reason for existence is outside itself

• Independent being - anything that has a reason for existence inside itself

Argument from design

• Seeds of this argument an be seen in Aquinas’s fifth way which points to all things being ordered to a valuable end

• The argument runs that the apparent complexity in nature shows there must be a sentient, intelligent designer

William Paley

• William Paley (1743-1805)

• You are hiking in the woods and stumble upon a watch, What is the best explanation for that watch?

• The watchmaker analogy

The watchmaker analogy

• Like the watch, “the universe…shares marks of intelligence - complexity, order, and purpose - and it is reasonable to think that the universe is the product of intelligent design

  1. The natural world shows considerable complexity and apparent design

  2. The only possible explanation of this complexity and apparent design in the natural world is that the natural world was produces by an intelligent sentient designer

  3. Therefor, there must be an intelligent, sentient designer responsible for the complexity and apparent design in the natural world

Fine-tuning

• Argument for fine-tuning is

  1. The existence of a fine-tuned universe is not surprising under theism

  2. The existence of a fine-tuned universe is enormously surprising under naturalism

  3. Therefore, by the likelihood principle, the existence of a fine-tuned universe strongly supports theism over naturalism

Critiques of the argument from design

• Premise one is generally accepted

  • Some complain that this like having only one opening (through) for water and air is evidence of poor design

• Premise two meets more objections

  • From our friend David Hume…

    • We cannot infer a single designer..design by committee?

    • Does the designer need to be the first cause?

  • If the argument for design works in tandem with the cosmological argument, the it provides evidence of a personal and intelligent cause, rather than proof of the first cause (for that you can refer to the cosmological argument)

Evolution and the argument from design

• Objection based on evolution through natural selection

Argument from morality

• What is the name of the following argument for the existence of God:

  1. If God does not exist, there are no objective moral properties

  2. Objective moral properties exist

  3. Therefore, God exist

  The Argument from Morality

• For the argument from morality to succeed, you must prove that objective moral properties exist True

New and Old Atheists

• What is, according to the professor, is the biggest difference between the old atheists and the new atheists? Old atheists believe there is no morality. God is morality, and if He does not exist, then morality does not exists. New atheists do not want to deny moral standards. They try to find other ways to identify moral standards in the world.

Nietzsche

• Critique of ethics

• According the the lecture, Nietzsche thinks that morality allows you to have nice boxes that you can check off to help you feel better about yourself. What phrase does Nietzsche use to convey this? Not box checking

Pascal’s wager

• Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

  • Has a transformative mystical experience that brings him to faith and his works tries to wrestle out the defense of this faith

• Rationality and proving God

  • In the face of having to make a decision and being unable to know for certain, the rational thing to do is to bet on God existing

• Fideism

  • Fideism - the reliance upon faith rather than reason in matters of philosophy and religion

    • Truth of certain kinds can only be attainted by “foregoing rational inquiry and relying souly on faith”

• Rational choice/decision theory/calculating expected utility

  • Decision theory based upon expected utility

• Objections

  1. If you don’t believe in God, but you think it is rational to bet of God’s existence, how can you force yourself to believe that God exists?

  2. Can you become a believer for purely self-interested reasons?

  3. Does this prove any particular religion or just the irrationality of atheism and agnosticism?

  4. What is the God that exists is perverse and punishes those that are religious rather than rewards them?

The problem of evil and responses

• Stump’s response/theological points

  • Why is it significant, according to the professor, that Eleanore Stump uses three theological points in her responses to the problem of evil? The first point shows that humanity has sinned. Second, evil has entered the world. Third, there is a consequence for evil. Having three points gives the whole argument and a reason for the argument.

  • Which of the following are not one of the three main points discussed in the lecture made by Stump? The privation theory of evil

• Logical and evidential

  • Which of the following is not one of the four points that David Hume argues is logically inconsistent? God is perfectly evil

  • What is the problem with answering that question at the center of Plato’s Euthyphro by saying that God says things are good because they are good? Not it means goodness and morality are arbitrary

• Theodicies

  • Responses to the problem of evil are often called Theodicies