LESSON 1: FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF PHILOSOPHY

• The “big three” Philosophers are Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
• Athenians settle arguments by $discussion and debate$. People skilled in doing this were called $Sophists$, the first teachers of the West. Their arguments were usually about practical things and not with metaphysical speculations.

Socrates

• Socrates did not write anything, he was not a writer. A lot of his thoughts were only known through Plato’s writing.
• He believed that his mission in life was to seek the highest knowledge and convince others who were willing to seek this knowledge with him.

$The Socratic Method$ – Socrates’ method for discovering what is essential in the world and in people is what is known as the Socratic/dialectic method. This method involves the search for the correct/proper definition of a thing. In this method, Socrates did not lecture, he instead would ask questions and engage the person in a discussion. He would begin by acting as if he did not know anything and would get the other person to clarify their ideas and resolve logical inconsistencies (Price, 2000). The goal is to bring the person closer to the final understanding.

• The aim of the Socratic method is to make people think, seek, and ask again and again.
• His Socratic method allowed him to question people’s beliefs and ideas, exposing their misconceptions and get them to touch their souls. He then realized why he was the wisest. $It was because he was the only one who knew that he did not know.$
• His Socratic method forces people to use their innate reason by reaching inside themselves to their deepest nature. There may be times when this method would not give answers. This may be expected but what is important is the process made the person wiser than before.

“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.”

́the unexamined life is not worth living.’

real understanding comes from within the person.

Plato

$Aristocles$ (428-348 BCE) was born in $Athens to one of Greece’s aristocratic families.$ He was nicknamed Plato because of his physical built which means $‘wide/broad’.$ Plato $left for Athens for 12 years$ after the death of Socrates. When he returned, he established a school known as $‘The Academy$’. Socrates left a strong influence on Plato. Both believed that philosophy is more than analyses but rather is a way of life.

Theory of Forms - Plato explained that Forms refer to what is real. They are not objects that are encountered with the senses but can only be grasped intellectually.

• is derived from the term “ideal”
• it serves as a guide for you to know how to do something “ideally” AKA $Template$

Characteristics:

1. The Forms are ageless and therefore eternal.

2. The Forms are unchanging and therefore permanent.

3. The Forms are unmoving and indivisible.

Plato’s Dualism

1. The $Realm of the Shadows/the Physical Realm$ is composed of changing, ‘sensible’ things which are lesser entities and therefore imperfect and flawed.
2. The $Realm of Forms$ is composed of eternal things that are permanent and perfect. It is the source of all reality and true knowledge.

Plato’s Component of Soul

1. The $Reason$: Rational, A motivation for goodness and truth
2. The $Spirited$: Non-rational, Neutral, Will/Drive towards an action
3. The $Appetites$: Irrational, Desires for pleasures of the body

Reason seeks the true goal of man which is $to see things in their true nature$. Usually, however, $the Spirited and the Appetites want worldly pleasures$ and can influence reason by\nmaking it believe that sensual pleasures are the source of happiness.

Plato’s Theory of Love and Becoming

Plato further illustrated his philosophy of the search for knowledge using the $‘Allegory of the Cave’$ – what $people in the cave see are only shadows of reality which they believe are real things and represent knowledge.$ What $these people fail to realize is that the shadows are not real$.

according to Plato, ‘only the Forms are real.’

Once these people get out of the cave and into the light, what they will see are the $Forms which is what real knowledge is$. In knowing the truth according to Plato, that person must become the truth. The more the person knows, the more he is, and the better he is.

“To know for Plato is to be”.

ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO

• Theologian
• Christianity
• Became a priest and a bishop of hippo

St. Augustine of Hippo initially rejected Christianity for it seemed to him then that Christianity could not provide him answers to questions that interested him. He wanted to know about moral evil and why it existed in people, his personal desire for sensual pleasures, and questions about all the sufferings in the world. After all his internal and worldly personal battles, Augustine became a priest and a bishop of Hippo. His thoughts focused on

Two realms

1. $God as the source of all reality and truth$

   According to him without God as the source of all the truth, man could never understand eternal truths. So God means that those who know most about God will come closest to understanding the true nature of the world.

2. The $sinfulness of man$

   According to St. Augustine, the cause of sin or evil is an act of man’s free will.

The Role of Love Problems arise because of the objects humans choose to love.

1. Love of physical objects leads to the sin of greed.
2. Love for other people is not lasting and excessive love for them is the sin of    jealousy.
3. Love for the self leads to the sin of pride.
4. Love for God is the supreme virtue and only through loving God can man find    real happiness.

RENE DESCARTES

• Known as the ‘Father of Modern Philosophy.”
• Introduced the $cartesian method$

“Is there anything I can know with certainty?”

He wonders about this question most of his life. Even our $senses can be unreliable.$

Cogito Ergo Sum or ‘I think, therefore I am.’

He believes that $to doubt is to think$. What is a thing that thinks? He deduced that a thinker is a thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses and that also imagines and feels. $The cognitive aspect of human nature is his basis for the existence of the self.$

With all the uncertainties of life, Descartes was sure of one thing: That $he exist as a thinking thing.$

The body is like a machine that is controlled by the will and aided by the mind.

In his search for an answer to his question, he had $three dreams$. $These dreams instructed him to construct a system of knowledge using the power of human reason.$

Through math, he discovered that the human mind has two powers:

1. $Intuition$ or the ability to apprehend the direction of certain truths and,
2. $Deduction$ or the power to discover what is known by progressing in an orderly way from what is already known. Truths are arrived at using a step by step process.

JOHN LOCKE

• Locke believed that knowledge results from ideas produced “a posteriori” or by objects that were experienced.
• Since there are no innate ideas for Locke, morals, religious and political values must come from sense experiences.

“Tabula Rasa”

“nothing exists in the mind that was not first in the senses”

“The little and almost insensible impressions on our tender infancies have very important and lasting consequences.” - Motivation, Curiosity, and Play.

There are three laws according to him:

1. Law of opinion – where actions that are $praiseworthy are called virtues$ and those that\n   are not are called vice.
2. Civil Law – where $right actions are enforced by people in authority$ (i.e., courts and    police)
3. Divine Law – $set by God on the actions of man$. This is deemed to be the true law for    human behavior. The divine law is eternally true and the one law that man should always    follow.

He proposed answers to the following questions:

1. What we should do to people who have different religious ideas to us?
   • Human beings are not dependable to evaluate the truth-claims about religion.
2. How should we educate children?
   • We should not be forced to follow a proposed “true religion” through violence
3. Who should rule us?
   • It is better to let people have different beliefs than coercing them to religious uniformity.

David Hume

• After reading the philosophy of Locke, ‘he never again entertained any belief in religion’.
• He became cynical about almost everything except philosophy and general learning.
• he discovered the limitations of the mind and his optimism turned into skepticism.
• Influenced by empiricism
• Bundle Theory

This is the $bundle theory$. Hume’s analysis proceeded this way: the mind receives materials from the senses and calls its perceptions. Two types of perceptions according to Hume:

1. Impression is the immediate sensations of external reality. These are more vivid than    the ideas it produces.
2. Ideas are recollections of these impressions.    These two together make up the content of the human mind. It all begins with impressions.    Without impressions, there will be no formation of ideas. Self is simply “a bundle or collection of    different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a    perpetual flux and movement”. There is no permanent/unchanging self.

Immanuel Kant

• He argued that the mind is not just a passive receiver of sense experience but rather actively participates in knowing the objects it experiences.
• He is most notable for his work on ethics

3 Maxims of Categorical Imperative

1. Universality - “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
2. Treat Human Beings As Ends Rather Than Means - “act that you use humanity, in your own person as well as in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.”
3. Act As If You Live In Kingdom of Ends - “act as if he were through his maxim always a lawmaking member in the universal kingdom of ends.”

“a self must exist” or there could be no memory or knowledge.

Sigmund Freud

• Father of Psychoanalysis
• Emphasized the role of unconscious
• Freud’s psychoanalysis sees man as a product of his past lodged within his   subconscious.

Man is governed by “eros” and “thanatos”

Eros - Sex/Pleasure

Thanatos - Aggression

3 provinces of the mind or Freud’s Structural theory

o Id – The structure that is primarily based on the pleasure principle. It demands immediate satisfaction and is not hindered by societal expectations. o Ego – The structure that is based on the reality principle. This structure mediates between the impulses of the id and the restraints of the superego. o Superego – The last structure to develop and is primarily dependent on learning the difference between right and wrong. The morality of actions is largely dependent on childhood upbringing, particularly on rewards and punishments.

Gilbert Ryle

• Denies the existence of internal, non-physical self
• The self is not an entity you can locate
• Distinguished “knowing that” from “knowing how”

Two Types of Knowledge

Knowing That is considered as empty intellectualism

Knowing How is to make use of the facts acquired

To understand the self is to look at your day-to-day life

PATRICIA AND PAUL CHURCHLAND

• An American philosopher interested in the fields of philosophy of mind, philosophy of science,

cognitive neurobiology, epistemology, and perception.

• Churchland's central argument is that the concepts and theoretical vocabulary that people use to

think about the selves using such terms as belief, desire, fear, sensation, pain, joy actually

misrepresent the reality of minds and selves. He claims that the self is a product of brain activity.

• Neurophilosophy was coined by Patricia Churchland, the modern scientific inquiry looks into the

application of neurology to age-old problems in philosophy. The philosophy of neuroscience is

the study of the philosophy of science, neuroscience, and psychology. It aims to explore the

relevance of neurolinguistics experiments/studies to the philosophy of the mind.

• Patricia Churchland claimed that man's brain is responsible for the identity known as sel. The

biochemical properties of the brain according to this philosophy of neuroscience is really

responsible for man's thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

• Paul Churchland is one of the many philosophers and psychologists that viewed the self from a

materialistic point of view, contending that in the final analysis mental states are identical with,

reducible to, or explainable in terms of physical brain states

• Being an eliminative materialist, he believes that there is a need to develop a new vocabulary

and conceptual framework that is grounded in neuroscience. This new framework will be a more

accurate reflection of the human mind and self.

MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY

• He developed the concept of body-subject and contended that perceptions occur existentially. Thus, the consciousness, the world, and the human body are all interconnected as they mutually perceive the world.
• A French philosopher and phenomenologist.
• According to him, the division between the "mind" and the "body" is a product of confused

  thinking. The self is experienced as a unity in which the mental and physical are seamlessly

  woven together.

• Developed the concept of self-subject and contended that perceptions occur existentially. Thus,

  the consciousness, the world, and the human body are all interconnected as they mutually

  perceive the world.

• Phenomenology provides a direct description of the human experience which serves to guide

  man's conscious actions. He further added that, the world is a field of perception, and human

  consciousness assigns meaning to the world. Thus man cannot separate himself from his

  perceptions of the world