Aristotle

• Teleology- the study of order and purpose

• Aristotle advocates for an empirical viewpoint

• Empiricism- truth and knowledge can be acquired through sense observation

  • Thinks all human being are born as tabula rasa which means blank slate

    • We are born with no knowledge and we acquire it through experience

• Aristotle and Plato have different ideas about the purpose of philosophy

  • Aristotle focused on everything in the world such as meteorology, animal/marine life, politics, and metaphysics

• The papers of Aristotle have been long gone and currently only have access to lecture notes or notes that students took

• Aristotle believed that the universe is a combination of substances

  • Substance is the matter and form

    • Primary substance is the primary core of something

  • Accidents are called secondary substances

Textbook Politics

• Human Nature = rational and political animal

  • Equality of Substance

    • Inequality

      • Form, matter

  • Someone who has a stronger body is better built for rule

  • Slaves are still capable of virtue because they are still human

  • Since humans have rationality we are different from other animals

• Genus of something is the classification or general type of something

  • Animal = rational

  • genus = species

• He believes that substances don’t evolve into something else but they can cease to exist

• Extendable means it occupies space

• Nutritive/Vegetative Soul

  • Nutrition

  • Growth

  • Reproduction

• Sensible/Animal Soul

  • Sense perception

  • locomotion

  • Desires/sensations

  • nutrition/growth/reproduction

• Rational Soul

  • Thought/rationality

  • Humor/risibility

  • Judgement of value/morality

Epicurus

• Comes up with the idea of atoms

  • Originally from Greek

    • Called “uncuttables”

• There is some component of reality where you cannot keep breaking down pieces

• There could never be nothing, everything comes from something

• Either you’re made of atoms or empty space, no in between

  • Aristotle did not believe in this

    • Didn’t think atoms were a real thing

• The universe is eternal and boundless

• Atoms just are

  • They were always there

• Atoms move continuously forever

• Death = cessation of sensation

• Ataraxia = tranquility/absence of struggle

• Hedonism = the object of all action is pleasure/delight/enjoyment

• Pleasure:

  • Moving: short term

  • Static: long term

  • Physical: immediate and present to us

  • Mental: memory, thought, lofty

• Desire:

  • Natural and Necessary

  • Natural and Unnecessary

  • Vain and Empty

Stoicism

• Natural Law

  • Universal reason or Logos

• Material Monism

  • Active principle: Logos

  • Passive principle: Matter

• Living according to how the Logos has ordered us

  • Not us a sense of command but living according to nature

• When you wish for things to be different thats when you become miserable

  • Leads to people being evil

  • You must accept the way things actually are

• Some Stoics thought that the universe was perfectly ordered

• Pantheism: is the belief that the universe and nature are divine and that everything is interconnected. It is the idea that God or a higher power is immanent in all things and that there is no separate, personal deity

• Eternal Recurrence: is a concept in philosophy that suggests that the universe and all events within it have occurred and will continue to occur in an infinite cycle

• Human being

  • Material rational soul and material body

• Thought that the soul would develop at the age of seven

  • Not considered a human before than

• Natural Law

  • To want to reproduce to keep species going

  • Being a good person

  • Not hurting others

• External object is sense perception

• sense perception —> impressions —> assent —> cognitive impression —> knowledge

Descartes

• Rene Descartes was born in 1596 and died 1650

• He was eleven when he went into university

  • It was an accelerated program during his time

• He got a degree in law but then served in the army

• He was originally a Catholic and when he joined the army he became interested in math and geometry

• Meditations took him approximately 10 years to write

• Deductive Reasoning- necessary reasoning and it is when something follows the other

  • Example: All men are mortal, Socrates is a man , Socrates is mortal

• 1. Accept as true only what is known so clearly and distinctly as to be beyond doubt

• 2. Resolve problems into the simplest parts possible

• 3. Move from simple to complex

• 4. Thoroughly review and check one’s work

• Descartes tries to find a piece of knowledge we can know for certain

• Descartes starts by saying anything known by the sense is subject to doubt since you cannot know for sure

• I Doubt

  • Sensory foundations is doubtful

  • I cannot clearly differentiate between dreaming and waking experiences

  • Maybe the idea of God that I have is incorrect

    • Deceptive God Hypothesis (Descartes doesn’t think God is like that)

      • He thinks that God made us to have false thoughts

      • God intervenes so I produce false thoughts

• All knowledge that can be moved can be changed

• No matter what doubts we have the knowledge will be true

  • You don’t have to have it proven, you just know it with certainty

• First Principle

  • “I exist” is the knowledge that is known and could never be untrue

    • Self-consciousness: awareness of one’s self leads us to know that we exist

    • No matter what we exist because even if God is deceiving us we are still existing and because we doubt we are existence

• What am I

  • Descartes doesn’t know fully what he is

  • By going through old thoughts about what I am, you can maybe find that knowledge

  • Rational animal?

    • Aristotle’s idea that Descartes rejects

    • He says it is too complex and you can figure that out through the “I Doubt”

  • Body and soul

    • He brings in the Stoic version of soul where it fills us

    • They share properties to work with each other

    • His idea of body is exclusive from that of the soul

      • Bodies do not think (goes back to “I Doubt”)

  • He believes that he is a thinking thing

    • Another way of saying mind

      • Distinct reality from the body

    • We are thinking things if we think about my self

• Descartes rejects a lot of Aristotle’s works and ideas

• The imagination is not trustworthy because it is caused by sensory

  • You are unable to figure out you exist through imagination

    • “I doubt”

• Essence: Thought

  • Moral/Variable Properties:

    • Understand

    • Doubt

    • Affirm

    • Deny

    • Will

    • Retuse

    • Magine

    • Sense

• Wax Example:

  • Before-

    • Sweet

    • Flowery scent

    • Yellow, size, shape

    • Hard, cold, easily handled

    • Makes a sound

  • After-

    • Not sweet

    • No scent

    • Clear, different shape

    • Soft, hot, cannot be handled

    • Emits no sound

• General Truth of Material Essence:

  • Invariable Property/Essence

    • Extension/Volume

  • Variable/Modal:

    • Size, shape, duration, location

• General Truths of Minds:

  • Invariable Property/Essence

    • Thought

  • Variable/Modal:

    • Understanding, doubting, affirming, denying, willing, refusing, imagining, sensing

Mind-Brain Type Identity Theory

• Reductionist

  • Reduced mental properties into a more universal physical property

    • Mind is a physical property

• Sensation Statements

  • “I am in pain”

  • When you are feeling an emotion

  • Idea 1: you can think about an experience

    • Relates to Brain-Process Statements

• Brain-Process Statements

  • C-fibres are sending signals

  • Idea 2: have a more scientific idea of your body

    • Relates to sensation statements

• Sensation statements are about something

  • Are sensation statements about real things?

    • “I desire a fish taco”

      • Fish taco is real, but desire is a problematic word

      • Desire may not be what you are actually feeling at the moment

• All of the things we are feeling around us, we have to figure out where they are located

  • Location problem

Eliminative Materialism

• We can only find truth of the mind in neuroscience

• Premis 1: folk/common sense psychology is a theory of the mind

• Premis 2: folk psychology is false

  • We must eliminate folk psychology in favor of a better theory

Alan Turing

• Can describe computers as brains

  • brain is defined by its function to compute

  • Computation = symbol manipulation

    • Algorithms

• Function describes a brain

• Give the machine the right program and it behaves like a brain which is why it can be described as a brain

• He is functionalist

• Programs are a reflection on our mental activity

• He thinks that machines can eventually come up with stuff on their own

• Computers imitate humans

John Searle

• He is a biological naturalists

• Minds are limited the the brain (the organ)

• Chinese Roam Argument

• Semantial conent/mental content

• Computers are defined by their syntactint content

On Free Choice of the Will

• Where in lies freedom? this is the main question that Augustine is trying to answer

  • We are determined

    • Compatibilism

  • We are free and responsible for our actions

    • Compatibilism

    • Incompatibilism

• Freedom is not really clear cut and has many variables

• Compatibilists have soft determinism and they are inspired by the Stoics

  • We are determined by external factors

  • We are free and responsible given that certain conditions are met with our actions

    • Not face or coercion

    • I chose the act

• Incompatibilists are hard determinists

  • We are totally determined

  • We are not free or responsible

    • We are apart of a long series of cause and effect

    • Everything is driven by impulse and cause and effect

• Libertarianism is a branch of incompatibilism

  • We are not totally determines

  • We are free and responsible

    • No force or coercion

    • I chose the act

    • The will is determ

    • ined by nothing but itself

      • Contra-Causal Free Will

Augustine

• Very traditional view on freewill

• Comobation of Plato, Aristotle, and Stoics

• Nobody had virtue since everyone messes up and no one is perfect

• Deliberation

  • Our deliberation is the ranking of our priorities

    • Highest goods

    • Intermediate goods

    • Base goods

  • We sometimes mess up the rankings of these goods

    • “We mistake one good out of ignorance and that is how evil is made” - Plato which inspired Augustine

• The universe because God made it is good

• We will always choose the wrong thing because of original sin and concupiscence and grace

• Augustine is a soft determinist

  • How can we know what is bad if we don’t have knowledge of what is good

• The only way to properly execute will is through grace because good can only we done through God and grace comes about through God

  • St. Paul inspired this teaching

Meditation 4 Descartes

• Judgment is intellect and will

• Meditation 3 is about resolving deceptive God hypothesis

  • God exists and is not a deception because he is a supremely perfect being so he cannot decept

    • Conclusion

      • We can trust our thoughts and we can have a clear and distinct idea from something

• Meditation 4 talks about errors in thoughts

• Intellect: faculty of cognition or representation

  • Finite

  • Passively perceives ideas

• Will: actively affirms or denies what is

  • Infinite

  • Represented in the intellect

• The will extends beyond the limits of the intellect

  • When I do not have a clear and distinct idea and affirm it

  • When I do have a clear and distinct ideal and deny it

• The will is totally free

• God is not responsible for any problems that occur in the process of intellect and will

• The will is the individual and they choose difference between right and wrong

• The human is in between nothingness and infinite substance (God)

• The will is where we are most like God because it is limitless

• It is not the will’s job to understand or to know that belongs to the intellect

Thomas Hobbes

• He is an empiricist

  • All knowledge comes from the senses

    • Knowledge from experience

    • Sense perception is key

• An absurdity is something that can never possibly happen and it it is an obviously false statement

• An error is a misjudgement that could possibly be true

• Thoughts have to parallel reality

• Immaterial Substances are absurdities because they contradict each other

  • Substances are physical and have material so it cannot be immaterial

• He is a materialist

• Endeavor is the intention of the animal towards an object or situation

• Appetites and desires arise form endeavors

  • Appetite: the endeavor/movement towards something

    • The love comes from appetites

      • Good comes from love

  • Aversion: the endeavor/movement away from something

    • Hate comes from aversions

      • Evil comes from hate

• What is good and bad is subjective and depends on the individual

  • That is his idea on morality

• Subjectivism

  • Desire

  • Egoism

• A deliberation allows us to choose something or avoid it

  • The act of coming to a conclusion

Rousseau

• State of nature

  • Peaceful and content state

  • Passions are driving forces behind animal life and us

    • Based on compassion

  • amour de soi-mene

    • love of the self

  • pleasure/pain principle

    • Go towards pleasure and away from pain

  • Perfectibility and self improvement

  • Frequency

    • Anarchic freedom

    • personal freedom

      • No employer

• We are like animals

• We have a linear perspective on the world and we have no concept of time or death

• All beings are compassionate by nature

  • Motherhood is an example

• Self consciousness

  • Treat one’s self as an object of thought

  • language

    • Selves become symbolized in words

    • Allows us to analyze

  • Time consciousness

    • past, present, and future

  • amour propre

    • jealousy basically

  • Civilization

• Personally freedom because dependent on the law

• Pessimism

  • Philosophical view that there is no such thing as progress and no matter what we do there are always fundamental problems

John Locke

• Born 1632 and died 1704

• Many of his ideas are implemented in the constitution and declaration

• He argues that divine rule is not reliable/real

• He says it comes from consent from citizens

• Classical Liberalism

  • Rooted in state of nature

    • His idea of this is different than Hobbes and Rosseau

  • Natural Law

    • Purposes to things and the principles of natures tie to those things

• The government to him is a big judiciary body

• You hand over your obligations to another body

• Freedom

  • Will to do whatever you want but not license

    • Certain limitations due to natural law

    • If you start doing things against your nature you go into a state of war

• Equality

• Rule by consent is key

• Limited government

  • Separation of powers/checks and balances

• Toleration

  • Because of natural law you don’t have the right over someone else’s life, happiness, property if they have a different opinion

    • Goes against voice of reason

• Right to revolution

• Natural Law

  • Inclination to pressure one’s life

  • Reproduction

  • Avoid harm

  • Search for the truth

  • Sociability

  • Benign and reasonable behavior

David Hume

• Emotions, motives, necessity, and liberty

• Inductive reasoning = probabilistic reasoning

  • Logic and it is used very commonly

  • Common sense

• Truth and certainty is not equal

  • Something may be the case but what is the reasoning behind it

    • Sun will rise tomorrow, but we cannot be certain that it will

• Uniformity of Nature Principle

  • Events now and in the future replicate those from the past

  • Things that occur in other places will occur in our present time

• Deductive arguments are reliable

• Deductive reasoning

  • What we do in math, geometric proofs, any type of syllogistic problems

Hinduism

• Brahman

  • Used in titles of religious roles and people

  • Source of one of the principle gods

    • One called the Brahmin (creator god)

  • refers to concept of overall god

  • The Absolute

    • absolute reality

  • All of their gods are manifestations of one god

  • god in hinduism is not a person it refers to all things and beyond all things

  • their concept of god is pantheistic

  • Via negativa/negative way

    • “Brahman is not …..”

    • Non-physical

    • Ineffable

    • Uncircumscribed

  • We are Brahman, we are divine

• Maya

  • physical, empirical, and illusory world

  • we are embodied

  • we find ourselves in a condition of suffering

  • what it means to be an embodied human is suffering

  • the individual is driven by desire and aversion and is never satisfied

    • strive away from the goal of enlightenment

      • not similar to Hobbes because Hinduism says its bad and not ideal whereas Hobbes says its indifferent

• Atman

  • the divine self

    • we are the absolute/the brahman

    • goes under Brahman

  • this is what they refer to when they talk about the soul

• Jiva

  • empirical/embodied self

    • goes under maya

  • refers to everyday consciousness

  • where desires and aversions take place

  • our soul is reborn into a new body and a new life

• Nation of Reincarnation or Samsara

  • samsara means reincarnation

  • cycle of life, death, and rebirth

• Moksha

  • almost like salvation

  • it is when we break out of samsara and occurs when we stop all desires

    • when we reach enlightenment

• Ananda

  • ecstatic joy

  • ways to refer to divine experiences

  • experiences of ones true self

    • achieved by detachment

  • going onto the right path of moksha

• Dharma

  • ethical responsibility

  • obligations

  • based upon roles in our lives

    • i am a swimmer, a daughter, a friend, a student

      • therefore, i must live up to those expectations that are apart of my condition in life

        • this relates to the ideas of the stoics

• Karma

  • a cause and effect principle

  • they have effects cosmically

  • it will affect what will happen to you in your next life

    • depends how close or far you are to salvation

  • affects reincarnation

  • if you have good karma you are living up to your Dharma

• Yoga

  • paths to salvation

  • choose which forms of yoga you practice

  • depends on Dharma

  • four traditional ones:

    • Bhakti, Karma, Raja, Ginana

      • Bhakti: practice of devotion to god, acts of piety and reverence

      • Karma: prescription of good works, charitable things

      • Raja: meditation and physic control and about stillness and control over one’s body and mind

      • Ginana: philosophical inquiry and speculation, studying of texts and scriptures

  • by practicing the yogas you are trying to reduce the selfish desires and will lead you to anada of the atman

Buddhism

• A break away from classical hindu tradition

• Shatara Gautama is the founder of buddhism

  • He lived a life of luxury and Hedonism

  • Anything he wanted was a desire that was fulfilled

  • He has 4 sights where he sees people dying, disease, old age, and poverty

  • He realizes nature is impermanent and indifferent these four things are unavoidable

  • Ascetism

    • denying yourself in extreme manners to achieve tranquility

• Eightfold Path

  • Avoid hedonism and ascetism and you find a in between

• 4 Noble Truths

  • Life is suffering

    • Birth is attended with pain, death is painful, everything is painful and pain is the separation of happiness

    • dukkha is the other word for it

  • The cause of suffering is desire

    • 5 Aggregates

      • Material form of the body

      • Senses

      • Perceptions

      • Mental formations (judgements, ideas)

      • Consciousness

  • The destruction of suffering

  • The Eightfold Path

    • Nirvana

• The not-self or at-atman

• You want to sacrifice individual desires

Existentialists

• Sarte

  • They think life is meaningless

  • There is no god or anything guiding us

  • We exist but we have to gain essence

  • there is radical freedom

  • man is freedom

    • essence is being able to act and take hold of our actions

  • Denies causality

• Camus

  • absurdity of existence

    • Cold indifference and silence of the universe

  • humans are always trying to gain something but nothing will ever be out there because the universe does not care about us