Lecture PHI 2010

Lecture Notes

 Socratic questioning

o Leads to

 aporia: a term from ancient philosophy denoting a problem that’s difficult to solve

because of some contradiction in the object itself or the concept of it.

 Trial: how are you preparing for your defense? I've been preparing my entire life, never

doing anything wrong…

 Even if you told me to stop I wouldn’t. Why what I give up seeking what is good for fear

of something I don’t know anything about like death?

 Do not value your life nor anything else more than goodness.

 The unexamined life is not worth living.

 Guilty, must choose punishment, proposes free meals, sentenced to death.

 Crito, escape plan.

 No one expects you to go through with this

 Give me an argument, let’s reason it out together. I’m willing to be persuaded.

 Think about your friends! Does the athlete or fighter value everyone’s opinion in the

stands, or just some?

 If accusers are harming themselves by doing something wrong and stupid, why am I

going to harm myself also by doing something wrong?

 Never return a wrong for a wrong

 Laws of Athens allowed me to be born, get an education, citizenship

 I could’ve left at anytime, never left but for the Spartan war. Social contract.
 I must either persuade the laws that they’re wrong, or obey the laws.

 This whole time I’ve been telling my students that they should obey the laws. Now run

away? If I leave I really will be corrupting them and the jury will have been right to

condemn me.

 Don’t let them murder you Socrates. If it pleases the gods so be it.

 “My accusers can’t hurt me, they can only kill me.”

 . The only person that can hurt you is you by doing something wrong.

 Metaphysics: Branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and fundamental

properties of being

o Idealism, dualism, neutralism, materialism

 Epistemology: Branch of philosophy concerned primarily with sources, nature, limits,

possibility of, and criteria of knowledge.

o Logic: The study of correct inference

 Modus Ponens

 Modus Tolens

 Argument: a reason for accepting a position.

 2 methods of knowledge we’ll be dealing with

o Deductive: Rationalism.

 A priori principle: a proposition whose truth we do not need to know

through sensory experience and that no conceivable experience could

serve to refute

 modus ponens, modus tollens, iron-clad airtight validity, but provides no

new info. You already knew all the data. All bachelors are unmarried.
 o Inductive:

 Empiricism: The philosophy that knowledge originates in sense

experience.

 a posteriori: probably true. Rocks on mars are red and jagged. Scientists

and racists.

Rationalism Empiricism
There are Innate Ideas There are no innate ideas
The Senses are a poor, unreliable means to The senses are a reliable, indeed the only
knowledge means to knowledge.
The most reliable means to gain knowledge A priori reasoning is fine as far as it goes, but
and truth is via a priori reason and it is very limited as to what is can provide us
introspection in the way of knowledge. The most reliable
way to useful knowledge is through
observation and experience.

Deductive reasoning Inductive reasoning

Representative Philosophers: Representative Philosophers:

 (Parmenides?)  (Heraclitus?)
 Plato  Aristotle
 Augustine  Aquinas
 Anselm  Locke
 Descartes  Berkley
 Spinoza  Hume
 Leibnitz

Knowledge

 What is knowledge? How do you know when you know something? Belief, True,

Justified. Good reasons. But what are good reasons?

 Jeep

 Plato discusses this in the Theaetetus.

Truth

 Pontius Pilate John 18:38 ti estin alitheia; quid est veritas? What is truth?

 Principle of noncontradiction: The principle that a proposition and its contrary cannot

both be true and one or the other must be true

o The walking dead was great. Did you see it? How should I know? I didn’t see it.

 Correspondence: the cat is on the mat [C] is true if and only if [C].

 Coherence [C] is true is [C] coheres to all my other beliefs. criminal cases

 Pragmatic [C] is true if it solves problems, end of an inquiry, or “survives all objections.”

–Rorty

 Pragmatic theory of truth: A theory of justification according to which (roughly) a belief

may be accepted as true if it works.

 Performative yay [C]! to emphasize or agree with [C]

 Deflationary: ‘It is the case that [C] is true’ means [C]. Agesilaos and the Naked Persians

 Some sentences are true, false both [sets], neither [liar paradox]

 Study fallacies!

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Pre-Socratics

 Greek gods v Judeo-Christian god.

 Nature v god’s whim.

 Iliad: Aphrodite injured v human injured. Gods are not going to help.

 Persephone kidnapped v earth on axis. Good story.

Pre-Socratics
 Philosophers that lived before Socrates

 Thales-water, students didn’t agree with him

o First scientist as well as first philosopher

o Laughing Thracian woman: Understand the heavens but not what’s under your

feet. Falls into a hole.

 Anaximander- apeiron unlimited, infinite, boundless, also evolution fish

 Anaximenes- air, limitless, rich, never gives out

 If properly used, senses are a route to knowledge

 Xenophanes- god is an abstract and impersonal force; philosopher’s god

o Customs of religion are groundless

o If cows and horses could draw their gods

 Anaxagoras- nous (material not spiritual) Mind organizes matter, but did not create

matter. All elements were together then thought arranged them.

 Nous: A Greek word variously translated as “thinking,” “mind,” “spirit,” or “intellect”

 Empedocles- 4 elements,

o love and strife, 2 forces of nature

o yes I'm a god

o throws self in volcano

 Pythagoras: number, bites a snake

 Pythagoreans: Pre-Socratic philosophers whose doctrine- a combination of mathematics

and philosophy- gave birth to the concept in metaphysics that fundamental reality is

eternal, unchanging, and accessible only to reason

 o Metempsychosis: transmigration of the soul; soul is immortal and undergoes

eternal incarnations; eternal recurrence

 Parmenides/Zeno- Being is eternal p cannot be not-p, unmoving where p is cannot be not-

p, one: if there is anything else, then it would not be being.if it is then it is, cannot not be.

What is different from being must be non-being, and non-being isn’t.

o You cannot recognize that which is not (for that is not to be done), nor could you

mention it

o What can be said and be thought of must be; for it can be, and nothing cannot

o You cant think about nor inquire of the non-existent

o Rationalist; doesn’t trust senses

 Motion, generation, and change is impossible.

 Try to think of nothing you can’t. You’re thinking of an absence.

 Being: From fundamental substance of reality to fundamental feature.

 Rationalism v empiricism. If something changes it becomes something else, and reality

changes. Therefore reality becomes something else.

 To look around at the world like Milesians, Thales, etc. is a waste of time. You have to

use reason.

 Zeno of Elea

o Zeno’s Paradox: Achilles and the tortoise and

o Track runner

 Leucippus and Democritus: by convention hot, by convention cold, in reality: only atoms

and the void.

 Atomism: The ancient Greek philosophy that holds that all things are composed of

simple, indivisible minute particles.

 Why can’t their atoms be what we call atoms? Our atoms can and are split.

 Determinism: The doctrine that a person could not have acted otherwise than as she or he

did act. More broadly, that future states of a system are necessitated by earlier states; that

what happened could not have not happened.

 Heraclitus: the obscure

o energy is the essence of matter.

o Gives up throne to seek wisdom.

o panta rhei: everything flows. The world is in perpetual flux. Things depend on

this for their continuity and identity.

o Quantum mechanics, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, Schrodinger’s cat, post-

modernism. Probability. Read his fragments.

o A greater doom wins a greater share

o Of those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow. But

what stays the same the people or the river?

o Problem of personal identity. Ship of Theseus.

o Of this account/word/reaon (Logos) which holds forever men prove

uncomprehending. So what does forever go with?

o What is the Logos? Is it a cosmic law? The world as it presents itself

o Much learning (polymathy) does not teach understanding. (Or it’d have taught

Pythagoras.)
 o Gods become men, men gods. They live each other’s death, and die each other’s

life

o The path up and the path down is the same.

o The bow is alive only when it kills::The name of the bow is life but its work is

death

o Through contention all things come to be; the most beautiful harmony

o The world is an everchanging fire. New and scientific god identical with cosmic

fire. Energy?

o Wisdom alone is whole and it is both willing and unwilling to be called Zeus.

o Eyes and ears are poor informers to the barbarian mind.

o The untrained mind shivers at everything it hears.

 Process philosophy; later: Alfred North Whitehead. There are no substances, only energy,

which is itself only relationships. So the only things that exist are relationships, nothing

has an unchanging essence which endure through time. Time itself seems to be only the

changing of these relationships. ALL IS FLUX. -Heraclitus

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Plato

 Plato, student of Socrates

 Universal: That which is denoted by a general word that applies to more than a single

thing

 Metaphysics: Dualism

 Best of Parmenides and Pythagoras combined with best of Heraclitus

 2 realms: realm of Being, more real! Hierarchy of forms. Highest form is the form of the

Good. You can have knowledge of this. Realm of becoming, less real, no true knowledge,

but opinion.

 Really about the adjectives; equal, courageous, just, self-controlled, etc. but Plato’s not

entirely consistent on this.

 Myth of the cave: from the darkness into the light.

 Conversion and ascent. Turn around and climb up.

 Form: In Plato’s (and later, Aristotle’s) philosophy; that which is denoted by a general

word (such as ‘good’) that applies to more than a single thing.

 Forms are the real things (Being) , everything else is “rolling from one form to the next

(becoming)

 form of courage example teacher, Spartans, my rescuing everyone to go to ale house.

 Epistemology: Xenophon and Meno

 What’s good in life? Meno thinks power and money are good, but also thinks only if

honorable. Contradiction. So good things seem to be good only if you have knowledge of

how to use them.

 So virtue (human excellence) is knowledge

 Socrates stuns you “like a stingray.” But one who stings “himself too.”

 Meno want Socrates to tell him the answer, instead of trying to see it for himself. That’s

how you know he’s a bad guy.

 Good things are good only if you have knowledge of how to use them, indifferent in

themselves.

 So virtue is knowledge
  Meno on justice: helping friends, hurting enemies. but justice is good. What is good

benefits. So justice benefits. But harming people doesn’t benefit them. Therefore hurting

them is not good. And hurting them is not just.

 Meno’s Paradox:

o How do I know what virtue is if I don’t know what virtue is? How do I look up a

word if I don’t know how to spell it?

1. For all objects of inquiry (x)

You either know what x is or you do not

2. If you do, inquiry is impossible

o Because you can’t inquire into what you already know

3. If you do not, inquiry is impossible

o Because inquiry cannot begin due to lack of information

o Because inquiry cannot conclude since you won’t recognize when the

correct definition is reached

4. Therefore inquiry into the definition of anything is impossible

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 Knowledge from another life. How? You remember it! Meno’s slave example.

 The boy at first is wrong, but he realizes he’s wrong and is improved.

 But if virtue is knowledge then why can’t it be taught? Pericles, Themistocles kids

 So maybe virtue isn’t knowledge?

 Or maybe right opinion works too.

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Sophists- the dark side

 Sophists- “wise men”- professional teachers (for pay unlike Socrates)

 Sophists: Ancient Greek rhetoricians who taught debating skills for a fee

o Plato was profoundly hostile to because P thought truth and reality were

objective. Sophists denied this so they are “enemies” to phi, and unconcerned

with the truth

 Knowledge for P. must be firm, unchanging, and requires objects that are

themselves eternal and unchanging. For P. the flux of phenomena is not

the end of the story as for the S.

o Educated the (rich) masses- career-oriented

o Persuasive speaking- make the weaker argument the stronger (alternative facts?)

o Antilogic- opposing one logos to another logos. Plato thinks this is dangerous

o Long speeches

o Seminars (like a pyramid scheme)

o Writings haven’t survived perhaps because written for living men

 Protagoras-

 Man is the measure of all things

o Relativism

o Importance of the human mind over the whole area of philosophy

o No area is immune from reasoned argument

 Nothing has any absolute value (Nihilism)

 Nihilism: The rejection of all values and beliefs

 Of the gods… many obstacles to knowledge- unclarity of the subject and the shortness of

human life.

 Madness not to be unjust, but to admit to being unjust

 Nomos v phusis- custom v nature

 Callicles-

 Influenced Nietzsche

 All about power

 Praises immorality

 Most Fundamental distinction is about strong v weak, real man v slavish man, the justice

of nature v the justice of the weak that keeps the strong in check, phusis v nomos, “Rome

v Judaea” (Nietzsche), it is right for the strong to rule over the weak, lions v sheep, above

shame.

 Socrates’s response to Callicles: if superior=stronger then when the stronger gang up on

the weaker that is just by nature, because now the weaker are stronger than the strong.

Callicles: more intelligent, more courageous ought to rule. But in a democracy the

stronger are ruled by the weaker (and Callicles works for the democracy). C: no adult

should study philosophy.

 What matters to Callicles is one’s own pleasure but he’s inconsistent because he finds

raping babies despicable.

 Sophists who endorse pleasure will not endorse cowardice- dropping shield and running

when Spartans appear.

 Wants to overcome others. But shouldn’t one be able to rule overcome oneself? Like

Socrates. In reality, Callicles is a servant to the democracy (sheep) whereas Socrates is

the lion.

 Gorgias- Darth Vader of sophists

 Meno’s teacher

 Encomium of Helen-Sympathy for the devil

o She couldn’t help it, the logos persuaded her

o Post-truth (like our modern world?)

 Words express concepts which apply to things: wordsconceptsthings

 Speech meaningless

 3 parts of a logos

o Principle or nature of the thing

o What we understand it to be

o What we say it to be

 But correspondence is necessary for truth and knowledge but there's no

correspondence.

 On non-being- nothing exists, can’t be known, can’t be communicated

o Separates being, thinking, saying

 Thoughts are not objects, if so all thoughts would be true

 So objects can’t be known

 Accounts (logoi) are neither objects, nor thoughts

 Accounts can never be reality. Every account involves falsification

 Protagoras v Gorgias
 o P- All things are true

o G- we ought not to say of anything that it is (because it also is not)

 Get what you want

 There's not even illusion, because illusion implies a reality

 Nihilist- this is a man who’s watched the entire philosophical world fall apart

 Anti-Socrates; Melancholy (like Socrates) because he's found no moral order in this life

 Rhetoric v Socratic dialectic: injustice/deception v justice/truth, mythos v logos

 Meno v Xenophon

 Nihilistic argument is always going to be there. In a nihilistic argument speech itself

becomes meaningless, because speech is fundamentally political and social. Nihilism

isn’t refuted, it is silenced. For Socrates and philosophy, logos is superior to mythos,

dialectic is superior to rhetoric. But isn’t Socrates the best of the sophists?

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Aristotle
(348-322 B.C.)

 Plato's greatest student and critic.

 Credited with being a “practical man of earth.” (Largely due to his metaphysics)
 A biologist, physicist- Championed Observation as a means to knowledge (Contra Plato-
this makes him an Empiricist)
 Tutor to Alexander the Great (Got him into some political trouble in Athens after the
death of Alexander)
 Split off from Academy after Plato dies
 Alexander liked Diogenes more
 Third Man argument
o Aristotle’s argument against Plato’s Theory of Forms (but Plato already touched
on this in his “Parmenides”)
 o What ties particulars like circular things with the Form circularity? Some further
Form? Well what ties this further Form with the first Form? Yet another Form?
 Form and matter. Matter is given shape by form. A house has the form (or essence, must
know purpose and structure) of house and the matter is (what its made out of) wood/brick
etc. When teleportation ramps up, itll be easy to send the matter, but will I show up in my
own form, or will I be 180lbs of Leonidas soup? Because a human is form (human) and
matter (flesh/blood/bone CHON) So Aristotle still believes there are forms, but they are
not disembodied like Plato’s forms. They can only exist independently of matter in the
mind of the artist.
 Substance (ousia) sub-stance; to stand underneath; the thing beneath the qualities
o If a thing is, then what is it?
o Aristotle gives “substance 2 meanings
 Refers first of all to the individual, particular thing
o This quality of uniqueness he calls “this-thereness” (tode ti)
o Ex. Humans given proper names, marks them out as singular

 Secondly refers to what a thing is in common with other things. In

English, this is known as the things essence, or that by virtue of which it is
the sort of thing it is.
o Each thing has an essence or definition, which it often
shares with other like things.
o Ex. We share the essence of human beings or “rational
animals”

 Human beings are rational animals (and social animals)

 The soul:
o Psyche: the form of the body and that which prevents humans from falling apart
 Psyche provides the purposes and ultimate end that humans pursue
 Potentiality v actuality
o Aristotle way of dealing with the problem of change
 To be a specific thing is to have a set potential that is more or less realized at any given
time and is in a continuous process of actualization
 This forming process constitutes a thing’s being and allows it to become a whole
individual.
o An acorn is potentially an oak tree. It is actually an oak tree when it becomes an
oak tree.
o French speaker: I'm potentially a French speaker, but not an actual French
speaker. My cat Schopenhauer is not a French speaker neither actually or
potentially. You French speakers in here are potential French speakers right now.
You are actual French speakers when you’re actually speaking French.
o Papito pulls out student’s chair; special ed. Stop, he’s potentially an adult

 Doctrine of the Four Causes:

 Aristotelian Doctrine which holds that to truly know what a thing is, one must know four
things about it. That is, to explain what a thing is as it is and behaves as it does one must
know four things about it:
 1. Material Cause: (What's it made of?)
 2. Efficient Cause: (Who or what brought generated it.)
 3. Formal Cause: (To what species and genus does it belong?)
 4. Final Cause: (What is it supposed to do?)
 Doctrine of the 4 causes material, efficient, formal, final. To know something is to know
its cause.
o Material- whats it made out of?
o Formal- something of a certain kind. Forms don’t tell us of the changing world.
They are not separate from objects but embodied. The things are more real than
the forms, unlike Plato.
o Efficient. The artist, the impact of the hammer, my parents.
o Final/telos. What are you trying to bring about? Last thing in time but the first
thing in conception.
Story by Kenton Harris
 Imagine a thousand years from now someone is digging around in his backyard and
comes across a curious object that he can see is very old, but he does not know what it is.
And he wants to find out. So he takes it to his chemist friend. “What is this?” he asks.
And his chemist friend replies, “Why I can tell you what it is: it is steel with some iron
and chrome. There is also a bit of rubber here.”
 Despite the fact that what the chemist has said is true, our discoverer is not satisfied.
“Yes, that’s fine, he says to himself, but what is it?” So he takes it so another friend of
his, this time an Economic Historian. “What is it?” he asks. “Oh my, that’s an artifact,
that is.” she says. “It was designed by Franz Wagner. It was produced in Underwood
factories in New York sometime in the very early 1900s.”
 Ok, so now this guy knows how it came to be and who made it, but still, “What is it?”
He sees a third friend, an archeologist this time. “Yes I’m certain I can help you. I know
precisely what it is. It is an Underwood number 5. It is very similar to the Densmore, but
differs from that kind in that it is a 4-bank frontstrike version. It differs from the
Daugherty in that it was less likely to have its keys jam. Well now our discoverer
understands the object’s type, that is, he can recognize another one of the same type when
he sees it and he can distinguish it from things of a different type. He knows that class of
things it belongs to in that he knows its form, but there is a sense in which he still does
not know what the thing is.
 Finally he takes it to an expert on Religion and Culture from the early 20th Century. “I
understand your difficulty,” she says. “You know what it is made of (Material Cause)
and how it came to be (Efficient Cause) and the class of things it belongs to (Formal
Cause), but what you what to know is ‘What is it supposed to do; what’s it for?’ (Final
Cause). Well I can help you there. This was called a Typewriter. This was a machine by
which people in the early 20th Century communicated with their gods. They would sit in
front of it all day and use the keyboard to type messages of praise or petitions for help to
the deities.“
 Now another friend is walking by and overhears this and says, “What? Don’t be
ridiculous! That was not the telos[3] of this thing. The telos of this machine was to make
 music. It was a percussive instrument and people would use it to play all sorts of
complicated rhythms throughout the day, Note the little bell on the side.”

 Well. if our discoverer believed either one of these stories he would be wrong, of course,
and there is a sense in which he would still not know what this thing is. He would still
not know what the telos of a typewriter was and thus his knowledge of the typewriter
would consequently be incomplete, this despite the fact that he knew the material cause,
the efficient cause, and the formal cause. He would still not know the final cause of the
object. And of course, eh still could not tell a good one from a bad one Thus knowing
what a things is for, what it’s supposed to do, to what end it is directed, is part of any
adequate understanding of what a thing is.
Teleological explanation: An explanation of a thing in terms of its ends, goals, purposes, or
functions
Telos- purpose, end, or goal. What is the telos of a heart? To pump blood. At the VA, doc tells
me my blood pressure is too high. Normal for me. No, that’s not what a heart is supposed to
do. How do you know if something is a good cassette player? It plays my misfits tape. So
how do I know if someone is a good human? They do what a human being is supposed to do.

Disagrees with Plato on the following:

1. There is no real relationship between the 'Forms' (which Aristotle did hold to be eternal
and unchanging) and particular things because Forms only exist as instantiated in
particulars. By contrast Plato had argued that Forms exist independently of their
particular instantiations.

2. This Visible World, our world which we encounter through our senses and reflect on with
our minds, was reality, By contrast Plato had argued that reality was divided into two
realms, the invisible realm being “more real” than the world of sense.

3. Believed that more concrete individual things, particular humans for instance, are more
real than abstract items like the species Homo sapiens since there could not be a form of
human if there were not humans for it to belong to (unlike Plato, who believes the more
abstract is more real).

Agrees with Plato on the following:

1. Some Realities were not subject to change (Forms, God, heavenly objects, and biological
species) and therefore fixed, (eternal) knowledge of these was indeed possible.
 2. Evolution was not true.

3. There was a Hierarchy of reality or “degrees of existence.” (but unlike Plato's, i.e. upside
down).

4. Knowledge (to be worthy of the title “knowledge”) must be of Timeless and Universal
truths and concerned with what things have in common.

5. Forms are real, objective and eternal so no evolution for Aristotle, thanks. however,
Aristotle argues that they cannot exist separately from the particular substances whose
forms they are.

What a being “Is”/ What “Being” is.

There are several senses in which a thing can be said to 'be' That is, there are several correct
answers to the question “What is that?”

1. 'being,' means 'what a thing is'

You might see me walking down the hall, point and ask “what is it?” Were someone to respond,
“That’s a human being.” he or she would have answered correctly. But that would not be the
ONLY correct answer since that is not the only thing that I “be.” One might also correctly
respond, that’s an MDC professor.

2. a quality or a quantity of a thing- (e.g. ‘being’ good or bad, red, many)

The primary sense of "to be" is to be a substance.

e.g. To Be a human

The secondary sense of “to be” to is be an instance of a quality or quantities.

e.g. To Be a Tall (secondary) human.
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Lecture on Hellenistic Philosophy

 Genealogy of phi: Socratesplatoaristotle. phi never got this good again. Didn’t agree

with teachers unlike religion. Thales/Anaximander, plato/Aristotle.

 Plato influenced Christianity, particularly in the concept of the soul.

 Concept of the soul problematic if tripartite. (which part is immortal?) Paul much

learning doth make thou mad. Christ has been killed and freed! Why would Christ return

to the body?

 Soul violates the laws of physics. Makes the world too hot.

 But the mind is going away too: hobbes, churchlands.

 Leucippus/Democritus/atomismEpicurusEpicureans/Lucretius

Epicureans: believed that personal pleasure is the highest good but advocated renouncing

momentary pleasures in favor of more lasting ones.

 Hedonism: The pursuit of pleasure

 Atomists, materialists. Led to their ethics: pain is the only evil, pleasure is the

only good. But simple pleasures (wisdom) Goal (telos) is ataraxia, freedom from

disturbance.

 Ataraxia: The goal of unperturbedness and tranquility of mind that is considered

the highest good by some ancient philosophers (Epicureans, Skeptics).

 Stay away from politics, unlike the Stoics

 simple pleasures (wisdom).

 Empiricists- senses are the criterion of truth- the pathway to knowledge and experience

 Irrational to fear death because death is only the lack of perception, therefore you cannot

experience it

 “For there is nothing fearful in life for one who has grasped that there is nothing fearful

in the absence of life. Thus he is a fool who says he fears death not because it will be

painful when present but because it is painful when it is still to come. For that which

while present causes no distress causes unnecessary pain when merely anticipated. So
 death, the most frightening of bad things, is nothing to us; since when we exist, death is

not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist. But the many sometimes

flee death as the greatest of bad things and sometimes choose it as a relief from the bad

things in life. But the wise man neither rejects life nor fears death.”

 Lucretius: So when is death bad for us? Now? But it’s not here and can’t harm us.

When we die? We will not exist to sense it.

 Lucretius: free will, not determinism

 Libertarian: someone who believes in free will

 Sometimes atoms “swerve” or else all atoms would just fall straight down.

 Indeterminism: the philosophical doctrine that future states of a system are not

determined by earlier states.

 like quantum randomness. But how does free will necessarily follow from

randomness. If nothing caused it, then your will didn’t either.

AntisthenesDiogenesCynics

 Cynicism: A school of philosophy founded around the 5th century BCE; these

philosophers sought to lead lives of total simplicity and naturalness by rejecting all

comforts and conveniences of society.

 Alexander the Great liked him more than Aristotle.

 Is there anything I can do for you? Get out of my sunlight.

 The only thing that has value is virtue

 Virtue is necessary and sufficient for happiness.

 But if that’s true then the sage (wise person) can be happy on the rack.
 Gives lecture on virtue then masturbates. Not only do you not know what’s good, you

don’t know what’s bad. Like a perfectly natural human act

 Why do we eat publicly and have sex privately?

 To own nothing is the beginning of happiness

 Threw cup away

 You can’t improve yourself by sacrificing/ any more than you can improve your grammar

 Follow nature not customs. Phusis not nomos.

 In a rich man’s house there is no place to spit except in his face

 Askesis: gives us our word “ascetic,” embracing marble statues in winter, talking to

myself on train

 Want to be a cynic? Carry this fish. Our friendship ended over a fish.

 With a lamp in broad daylight. Looking for an anthropos.

 Ethics is only philosophy that matters, not metaphysics or epistemology.

 Ethics: The branch of philosophy that considers the nature, criteria, sources, logic, and

validity of moral value judgments.

 Ive seen platos cups and tables but not his cupness and tableness.

 What is a man? A featherless biped. Throws a chicken. I brought Plato a man.

 Plato, if you washed lettuce you wouldn’t have to work for the king.

 Cosmopolitanism: “I am a citizen of the world.”

 Manes runs away and refuses to live like a Cynic. Slave can live without master.

Shameful if master cannot live without slave

 Taken as a slave by pirates. “I can rule men.”

 The Stoics: Greek and Roman philosophers who emphasized the serene or untroubled life

as the highest good for a human being and argued that this is best reached through

acceptance of the natural order of things

 Like cynics, indifferent to externals. If it can be used for evil then it can’t be good. Only

virtue cannot be used for evil. Virtue is the only good.

 Like the cynics, follow nature.

 But reputation, wealth etc are truly indifferent, not bad.

 Everything has a cause we might just not know the causes of things. So no reason to feel

irrational emotions.

 Pantheism: the world is a divine, rational organism: Zeus. Universe is rational, and

whole: monism, unlike platos dualism.

 Materialists: God is the active principle in the world, matter is the passive principle, but

they are the same thing. To exist it must be a body, lekta or propositions, subsist on

bodies.

 Natural law

 If there is a place governed by a common law, then it is a city. But the universe is

governed by a common law. Therefore the universe is a city.

 Pantheism implies we are parts of a whole. Important part because we, like Zeus, are

rational.

 Which, combined with our sociability, leads us to our moral obligations to all other

rational beings, regardless of nationality or social status.

 Oikeiosis: what is appropriate to oneself; an animal has self-preservation the object of its

first impulse. The first thing appropriate to it is its own constitution. However, as humans
 become rational adults they learn that what is appropriate to them is their rationality, not

their animal parts. So to be a happy human, follow nature: be wise, just, brave, self-

controlled; the cardinal virtues. This leads to apatheia and eudaimonia.

 So we belong in this world. Naturalistic metaphysics unlike Plato’s immortality of the

soul.

 And that means we can know things. Nature helps us. We get impressions, which a

rational animal, at least, can test. If it is a cognitive impression, then we can know the

truth.

 This is called the criterion of truth=cognitive impression, graspable presentation.

Presentations eventually give us proleps(e)is (preconceptions)

 There are no dispositional beliefs. There are disposition to believe.

 Just like there is no knowledge as a form, only instances of knowledge.

 And only the sage has those because it must come from a firm disposition, not like most

of our beliefs that are changeable by impressions.

 Which is why a sage can be happy on the rack, because you cannot get him to falsely

believe that pain is an evil.

 Conceptualism: the theory that universals are concepts and exist only in the mind.

 Stoics on emotions: an emotion is an assent to a false impression that something bad or

good is present or in prospect. Because the only thing good is virtue, and bad, vice.

1. Epictetus: “Acquired”

A. From Greek slave to Roman philosopher.

a. Leg smashed early in life by a cruel master.

i. “Only the educated are free.”

 ii. Shave off your beard. If I'm a philosopher then I will not. Then we’ll kill

you. did I ever say I cant be killed. Its your job to kill me it’s mine to die

without believing that death and torture are evils.

iii. I must die. Must I die complaining about it?

 Excerpts from the Encheiridion

Ch. 1. We are responsible for some things while there are others for which we cannot be held

responsible. The former include our judgment, our impulse, our desire, aversion and our mental

faculties in general; the latter include the body, material possessions, our reputation, status-

anything not in our power to control. The former are naturally free, unconstrained and

unimpeded, while the latter are frail, inferior, subject to restraint- and none of our affair.

Ch. 3 In the case of particular things…, remind yourself of what they are. ‘I am fond of a piece

of china.’ When it breaks, then you won’t be as disconcerted. When giving your wife or child a

kiss, repeat to yourself, ‘I am kissing a mortal.’

Ch. 5 It is not events that disturb people, it is their judgments concerning them.

Ch. 6 What quality belongs to you? The intelligent use of impressions.

Ch. 8 Don’t hope that events will turn out the way you want, welcome events in whichever way

they happen: this is the path to peace.

Ch. 11 Under no circumstances ever say ‘I have lost something,’ only ‘I have returned it.’

Ch. 14 You are a fool to want your children, wife or friends to be immortal; it calls for powers

beyond you, and gifts not yours to either own or give.

Ch. 21 Keep the prospect of death, exile and all such apparent tragedies before you every day-

especially death- and you will never have an abject thought, or desire anything to excess.

Ch. 30 [Y]ou are hurt the moment you believe yourself to be.
Ch.51 Abide by what seems best as if it were an inviolable law. When faced with anything

painful or pleasurable, anything bringing glory or disrepute, realize that the crisis is now, that the

Olympics have started, and waiting is no longer an option; that the chance for progress, to keep

or lose, turns on the events of a single day.

Ch.52 Lead me, Zeus, lead me, Destiny,

To the goal I was long ago assigned

And I will follow without hesitation. Even should I resist,

In a spirit of perversity, I will have to follow nonetheless.

[Fate guides the willing, but drags the unwilling.]

______________________________________________________________________________

______

Skeptics:

 “skeptikos=inquirer”

 Skeptic: one who suspends judgment on the possibility of knowledge

Pyrrho

 Epoche: withholding assent/judgment

 lived to be 90

 soldier in Alexander’s army, contact with Asian philosophers in India

 Pyrrhonists attempted to suspend judgment on all knowledge.

 neither trust sense-impressions or reject them, or any type of knowledge

 reason can also not be trusted

 ataraxia- imperturbability stabbing: helping me or hurting me? I can’t know

 stay out of trouble, obey the law, act decently

 Academics: philosophers of the third and second centuries BCEin what had been Plato’s

Academy; they had the reputation of maintaining that all things are inapprehensible.

 Arcesilaus- founder of Middle Academy form Plato’s academy

 Could still claim they were following Socrates’s skepticism

 Not even certain that he was uncertain

 Critical of stoicism, their moral doctrines, materialism

 No sense-impression we receive and no statement we make has any guarantee of validity

 Accuse others of circularity and also are accused of circularity

 Ten tropes: A collection of arguments by the Skeptic against the possibility of knowledge

 Ten tropes book on Hellenistic phi by Inwood.

 Carneades justice and injustice at roman embassy

 Knowledge is impossible. Proof rests on assumptions that must be proved

 Against the stoics, whose rational arguments based on concepts based on human

experience that cannot be verified from outside

 But skeptics were not immoral people, critical of divine law, and typically atheists

 Sextus Empiricus Roman around 200 CE

 But is the belief that knowledge is impossible still a belief? Is it true?

 That belief is a laxative. It poops out beliefs and poops itself out as well.

 Attempted to be pure Pyrrhonist. “Empiricus” because the senses are the closest we can

come to truth and knowledge.

 Attacks stoic logic as hopelessly circular

 Attacks causality using stoic logic

 Attacks stoic concept of divine providence: why are there poisonous snakes?
  Respect for the laws unless there are reasonable grounds to disobey

 In the skeptics’ defense, very little of our experiences seem accurate. Sunrise and sunset

suggest that the sun orbits the earth, the earth seems flat, energy does not seem to be the

same as mass, heat seems like a substance.

 However, for them, geometric theorems are conducive to probability, but still not

absolutely certain.

 Similar to the atomists, Democritus and Leucippus

 Deconstructionists are the skeptics of our age.

 Whereas the stoic telos was to live according to nature, the Pyrrhonist skeptical telos is

“ataraxia”

EXAM________________________________________________________________________

Descartes

 Rationalist

 Mercenary

 Aristotelian, Christianizes philosophy was dominant

 The moon is a giant rock, not a perfect sphere like Aristotle thought

 Heliocentrism was heresy (Galileo) philolaus, Aristarchus

 Mechanistic philosophy- the world was a giant machine, objects do not move themselves,

no telos (final cause)

 Search for a foundation of knowledge

 Foundationalism: The doctrine that a belief qualifies as knowledge only if it logically

follows from propositions that are incorrigible.

 Agrees with Plato that knowledge requires certainty but disagrees that this world, the

physical world, is unknowable, ‘certainty is indubitability’- if it cannot be doubted, it is

certain

 “Method of Doubt”

 Is my car in the parking lot? That dubitable.

 Descartes tries to build on what is indubitable, like ancient Euclidean mathematics, with

axiomata, axioms=self-evident.

 Because syllogisms have dubitable premises.

 Descartes’s 3 steps in his Meditations

 Doubt the senses. Unreliable. Straight things look bent in water, round coins look oval,

sun looks small. Against empiricism. Therefore, senses cant be the foundation of

knowledge

 Doubt the physical world, cars, tables

 I could be dreaming. Dream conjecture.

 Evil demon conjecture: I cant rule out that I am not being deceived by an evil demon.

Any evidence against this would be in the dream. Brain in a vat. Bluetooth rat brain. The

evil demon/genius has the powers of god but is not good. Determined to deceive you.

matrix, inception, platos cave. No physical objects, just evil genius mind, my mind,

dream.

 Doubt math

 2=1 problem, field trip money, could be hypnotized, we make mistakes all the time. What

if 1+1=3 but the evil demon is making me believe that it’s 2? Cant rule it out so it is

unreliable as a foundation of knowledge.

 If I can doubt it, it is false. I can doubt appearances, world, math. But I cannot doubt that

I'm doublting. To be deceived, I must exist. To be certain I must exist. Either way, I must

exist. cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am. Discovered with certainty that he is a

thinking thing. Uses this as a foundation for building back the world

 Cogito ergo sum: the single indubitable truth on which Descartes’s epistemology is

based.

 Criterion for truth= it must be clear and distinct. Clear means manifest to an attentive

mind, awake, not distracted. Distinct means contains only things that are themselves clear

 So his foundation/axiom for knowledge is the cogito ergo sum. It is clear and distinct

because it is self-evident.

 Clear and distinct criterion: Descartes’s criterion of truth, according to which that, and

only that, which is perceived clearly and distinctly as the fact of one’s own existence is

certain.

 Dualism- what exists is either physical or mental. Humans have both a physical

component (body) and a mental component (mind). But it is possible (logically) to exist

without a body, but not possible (logically) to exist without a mind. This means that the

body (inc. brain) and mind are two different things. For instance pain is not in the hand, it

is in the mind. Pain is mental. Doesn’t mean it’s fake. It represents the body.

 Descartes’s wax: wax has properties, taste, shape, hardness, sound, smell. But next to a

fire, wax changes. All the properties change, yet we know it’s the same wax. So we can

grasp the real nature of the wax with our minds, our rational intuition, as a substance

which can change shape.

 Calls to mind the ship of theseus.

 We have appearances, we make a judgment of physical object out there. We perceive the

nature of the wax with our minds.

 Philosophy of mind: for D, the mind is a distinct non-physical entity whose essential

characteristic is thinking. It is possible that I exist without a body (this is clear and

distinct, so true). Its essential characteristic is thought. You are an immaterial mind. D.

thinks you have immediate access to our own minds and immediate and unfailing access

to our mental life which if infallible and incorrigible. (spoiler alert: we don’t believe this

to be true anymore.)

 But physical objects never think- their essential characteristic is ‘extension’ which means

they take up space. Purely mechanical.

 So does my experience accurately represent reality? Remember the evil genius? But if

god exists, he wouldn’t allow us to be deceived, so we can trust appearances because god

is completely moral.

 Let me explain: there are three sources for our ideas; physical objects (dubitable, throw

that one away), ourselves, and innate ideas (clear and distinct). Most of my crazy ideas I

could’ve made up myself- people, dragons, angels, fire…

 But when I think of god I am thinking of a perfect being, an infinite being. For D, I can’t

be the source of my idea of god because the cause of an idea must be as real as the effect

(clear and distinct) effect is infinite, that is, my idea of god, an infinite being. So only an

infinite being could cause that idea because I, a finite being, cannot be the cause of an

infinite being. Therefore it is an innate idea. Who mustve put an idea of an infinite being

in my mind? God. So god must exist and he wouldn’t want to deceive me. Therefore I do

have knowledge of the physical world (innate, a priori, clear and distinct truths: math,
 logic, philosophy. But my info via the senses are obscure and confused, so real

knowledge is achieved by rational intuition. We can, like the stoics, assent or reject

impressions.

 But what about mind/body problem? How does my mind, which is immaterial and takes

up no space, interact with something material that takes up space? The pineal gland!

Solved it!

 Epistemological detour: The attempt to utilize epistemological inquiry to arrive at

metaphysical truths.

______________________________________________________________________________

_____

Hobbes

 Translated Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War

 war of all against all (stasis)

 Materialism: the theory that only physical entities exist and that so-called mental things

are manifestations of an underlying physical reality.

 All things are made of material particles. All change reduces to motion. So all that exists

are bodies in motion. Follows atomists, epicureans, hedonistic psychology. Pleasure is

good, pain is bad. Matter in motion. Man and a fortiori, society. Even thoughts, acts of

will, emotion.

 Behavior of humans is not and can never be determined by reason, but by desires and

aversions. Contra Plato and Aristotle.

 Fire, for example, is good for warmth and bad when it burns. There is no transcendental

justification. No sin. Loose talk causes problems; faith, evil. Remember atoms and the

void?

 No eternal state of happiness, that’s too abstract. Attaining satisfaction is the goal. Just

have more pleasure than pain.

 Basic mental activity: perception, or “sense” from which all other mental phenomena

derive, and perception itself reduces to matter in motion.

 Perception: A modern word for what Hobbes called “sense,” the basic mental activity

from which all other mental phenomena are derived.

 Perception occurs like this: motion in external world causes motion within us. The

motion within, “phantasm”, is experienced by us as external object/s having certain

properties. The properties do not really exist in the objects, that’s just the way the objects

seem to us.

 Motion outside us causes motion within us, which is perception. If the internal motion

remains for a while, then its called imagination or memory. Thinking is a sequence of

these perceptions.

 Perceptions lead to movements of the body which we call decisions. They begin

internally as endeavors toward something (desire) or away from it (aversion).love and

hate, good and bad.

 Deliberation is simply an alternation of desires and aversions and the will is nothing but

the last desire or aversion remaining in a deliberation.

 Every aspect of human psychology is a derivative of perception, and perception itself

reduces to matter in motion. Very contemporary: every mental activity is a brain process

of one sort or another. Stockings test, why did I take my shoes off, catch the helicopter.

 Difficulties: no immaterial god, no free will, no life after death. Everything you believe

about religion and the afterlife rests on this question. And what about consciousness?

What is it that’s doing the perceiving?

 Ethical considerations:

 Attempts at satisfying our desires for more pleasure relative to pain leads to trying to

have power after power that ends only in death. In striving for power we intimidate

others. It’s a vicious cycle in which we are all desperately afraid. We must have security,

our desire for power overcomes fear of violent death. We are all sheep in wolves

clothing. Recognize our state of nature. Without a common power to keep us secure (the

state/leviathan) we are in a state of war. Every man is an enemy to every man. life of man

becomes solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

________________________________________________________________________

Baruch Spinoza

 Rationalist

 Inheritance sister, lying down in front of the synagogue

 Neutralism or:

 Double-aspect theory: The idea that whatever exists is both mental and physical; that the

mental and physical are just different ways of looking at the same things.

 O/ O =Descartes
 pO q = Spinoza

 agrees with Descartes about clear and distinct ideas map the world. Like Descartes, uses

math.

 mind/body problem needs no explanation because Nature/Being/God is mental AND

material. Different attributes for the same Whole. Logically impossible for there to be

two substances. If a substance has a propensity to exist, then everything that exists is that

substance (like Parmenides).

 Monism- God or Nature (like Stoics) one substance exists and has infinite attributes.

Attributes do not interact, parallel, coordinated, but not caused. Mental causes occur in

parallel process as physical causes (psycho-physical parallelism)

 Two of these attributes are the mental, and the material. Similar to Stoic pantheism but

this is panentheism. Everything is in God. Infinite attributes. God is everything, perfect,

rational. So god/world is causally determined. Everything is fated by necessity of the

nature of god.

 But if god is rationally perfect, he can only do what is perfectly rational at all times.

Causal nexus is identical to logical implications. So neither god, nor we, who are a part of

god, have free will. P24 all actions, gods and ours, are causally determined. There's no

free will, no miracles, no original sin. Did this make the synagogue and the church

happy? No. excommunicated, assassination attempt.

 But we can have recognition/understanding of what happens. “Autonomy” of freedom

lies in using reason to understand necessity. P42. Similar to stoic sage apatheia. But

Spinoza rejects sagehood. And believes we can have only relative freedom.
 (misrepresents stoic sage’s apatheia; there is propatheiai/first movements without

judgments)

 Conatus, similar to Stoic pneuma is similar to Hobbes’s will to survive.

 Path to emotional/psychological salvation is empowerment over environment. This

conclusion similar to Stoic acceptance of fate, is antithetical to hobbes. P32 we suffer

emotions (similar to stoic pathe) when our environment controls us.

 Rejects teleology of Judaism/Christianity and incidentally, stoicism where god does

everything with the best intention, because Spinoza is a rationalist (god is logical like

math) unlike Stoics who are empiricists (god is an animal). Math has no teleology there's

no reason 2+2=4. Teleology implies there's something more perfect than god, a stae of

being that even god is trying to become, Spinoza cannot accept this.

 Goal of life for stoics was to live according to nature, for Spinoza is a dispassionate love

of god, not an anthropomorphic or personal god, but nature.

 Einstein said: I believe in Spinoza’s god.

 Goethe said: How respectable it is to find a man who would love god without expecting

god to love him back.

_____________________________________________________________________________

John Locke

 British Empiricist, physician, a Newtonian science of mind “essay concerning human

understanding”

 Tabula rasa blank slate, from Plato, Aristotle? Cleanthes and Chrysippus (configuration

of the mind). Which is why “all men are created equal.”

 Tabula rasa: Locke’s metaphor for the condition of the mind prior to the imprint of

sensory experience

 Representative realist, unlike Aristotle who is a naïve or direct realist

 All ideas are acquired by experience: sensation (my idea of a tree) and reflection (my

mind compares these trees).

 No innate ideas  knowledge is limited to experience

 Simple ideas form complex ideas like atomism: atoms molecule;

reason+willing+body+body of a certain kindhuman beingsociety. simple sensations

and simple reflections combine to form complex ideas, but no innate ideas. So we learn

by association.

 Abstraction (focus on part) ex. Blueness of the sky

 Combination: ideas can be recombined to form new ideas: unicorns

 Still a type of dualism, because we cannot be certain about substances, only about our

experience of the behavior of substances such as mind and matter. To say there are two

substances is to say god cant make thinking matter. So we must say “IDK” and be

humble and admit ignorance.

 Knowledge of Being is beyond the power of the human mind. Knowledge limited to

experience but we can have no knowledge of what underlies experience. We stick a flag.

 Nominalism: The theory that only individual things are real

 We know nominal essences of matter and mind, but not real essences of matter and mind

 We cant know substance but logic tells us that a thing (p) is not just the list of perceivable

qualities. Logic tells us this desk isn’t just the list of perceivable qualities, there must be

something underneath.
 Also I perceive the power: causal abilities

 So the goal isn’t “what is matter?” but instead “what is the behavior of matter?” bound by

experience but correctable by experience. But knowledge is always open to emendation.

Like the tropical man and ice. He can say “never in my experience” but never “not

possible.”

 There are two kinds of qualities: primary and secondary.

 Primary: are both in object p and in the experience; size, volume, mass, solidity, velocity

 Secondary: are in the subject perceiving and don’t resemble anything in object p; color,

taste, sound.

 They don’t put the taste in the peanut butter. That’s just what it tastes like to you.

 Spoiler. There's way more secondary qualities that Locke thought were primary.

Hardness for example, solidity is what it seems like to us, not at the atomic level.

 Object (p): Basketballbitter taste (2ry), Orangeness(2ry), sphericality (1ry),

hardness(1ry), dimpled skin(1ry), size(1ry), weight(1ry)Eye ear nose tongue

fingermindso I believe but do not knowbasketball (p)

 But we also perceive “power”

 Knowledge for Locke is awareness of the agreement or disagreement of ideas with one

another: Internal. Whereas knowledge of things outside of the mind is only probable.

 There's no Knowledge of real essences of something (and no knowledge of

correspondence), only knowledge of nominal essence: we assign names to cover our

experience of things (my box of Hispanics).

 Faulty associations can be a type of madness.

 Tabula rasa but the mind is active, doing work: choosing, judging, comparing.
  Like Descartes, Locke is a dualist[there are mental substances, material substances, one

infinite mental substance=god (although we can have no knowledge of that dualism) but

D. is a rationalist (a priori, innate ideas) and L. is an empiricist (a posteriori, no innate

ideas, mind knows through experience).

 Unlike Descartes, Locke thinks we can have no knowledge of that dualism. I know I have

ideas in my mind. I don’t know if the object p that is causing them has all the same

qualities associated in one object p.

______________________________________________________________________________

______

Berkeley

 Idealism: The doctrine that only what is mental (thought, consciousness, perception)

exists and that so-called physical things are manifestations of mind or thought.

 Idealist (absolute): matter doesn’t exist. It’s a superstition.

 Empiricist

 Materialism: Matter only (Democritus/Leucippus/Epicurus/Hobbes)

 Idealism: Mind only (Berkeley)

 All the same substance (Stoics/Spinoza)

 Both matter and mind (Plato/Locke/Descartes)

 Both Descartes and Locke believe there are mental substance/ideas and matter. So:

1)material events must cause mental events 2)ideas must be able to represent objects

3)ideas must cause brain events, physical events.

 Berkeley is asking: how is there representation? I can’t sit in an idea of a chair, cant buy

something with the idea of money. How can an idea represent a physical object?
 Berkeley: By your own rules of empiricism, Locke, you have no right to posit something

imperceptible. What is this spooky supernatural stuff called “matter”? matter is a

conjecture, an opinion we make when we decide there’s actually something that unifies

our experiences. Matter is not derived from the senses. How do we derive matter from

sense?

 Don’t be silly of course you can’t walk through a wall. It’s just that a wall is only a list of

perceptible qualities.

 An empiricist who is beating the empiricists over the head with their own methodology.

 To be is to be perceived.

 Esse est percipi: Doctrine which is the basis of Berkeley’s philosophy. Only that which is

perceived exists. Berkeley held, however, that the minds that do the perceiving also exist.

 Ockham’s razor says we can do away with “matter.” If I can explain phenomena x with 4

positive entities and you can with 3, we go with 3. Think of the concept of a soul. Lazy

souls that do no work.

 All objects are ideas in minds. Some of these ideas we produce ourselves: thoughts and

dreams. But they are never as clear and distinct as ideas of sense.

 What’s on a penny? Tell me without looking!

 So there must be another mind that places ideas of sensible world in our minds. For the

same reason that things seem to still exist when no one is perceiving them. But who,

Bishop Berkeley? Who is this infinite mind that perceives everything at all times? God.

 Empiricism, so long used by atheists, is now being used to prove God. Tree falls in the

forest with no one around, does it make a sound? Well no it would make sound waves,

but without god, or any mind to perceive it, no trees, no forest, nothing.
 God sustains Beingness of the universe by placing ideas in my mind.

 Berkeley: Newtonian laws of physics cannot explain the why, it only gives predictions,

gives laws. Newton would have agreed. Example: Man in my house. Why are you here? I

sat up, got dressed, let myself in through the window with a sickle and stood here and

then you walked in. But WHY ARE YOU HERE?

 B: belief in matter is the cause of atheism because it argues that we are separated from

objects by these ideas that mediate between us and the physical world. We believe we see

red but the color is not really there in the matter. “So how can we really know what’s out

there?” Atheists say… But if we eliminate matter this skepticism is impossible. We

therefore immediately experience things. This is common sense!

 Materialism leads us to unresolvable arguing about what is the nature of things out there.

 Idealism tells us our experience is true.

 Mindeyebasketball. Berkeley is going to do away with the eye and the basketball

(cross out)

 Reality consists of one infinite mind and a plurality of little minds. Our experiences are

coordinated because god puts ideas in our minds. “I refute him thus!” but god makes

johnsons foot hit the podium at the same time as all hear his foot hit the podium.

 For Berkeley, Aristotle’s direct realism is false and Locke’s representative realism is

false.

 Exposes consistencies in Descartes’s and Locke’s metaphysics although they say no one

these days is a Berkeleyan. But I know one from college.

 Berkeley shows that we don’t experience “things,” we experience mental events; if they

represent something external to the mind that’s an open question.

 One Infinite mind putting ideas in plurality of finite minds.

________________________________________________________________________

David Hume

 empiricist

 Scottish enlightenment, studied Stoics and Skeptics, and died well.

 Great skeptic and atheist.

 Hume’s fork: all knowledge is either 1. A relation of ideas (logic, math, definitions, a

priori, ‘unmarried bachelors’) or 2. Matters of fact (there are bachelors in the world).

 Relations of ideas are true by necessity, and provide no new info; matters of fact are

never certain, never true by necessity.

 Logical positivists in the Vienna Circle would consider this as their doctrine. Also

Wittgenstein: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." ( but that meant

something else for Ludwig Wittgenstein. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. When he was

invited he read poetry while facing the wall.

 “So of anything ask, is it a relation of ideas? No? matter of fact? No? then commit it to

the flames, because it is only sophistry and illusion.”

 But which fork is Hume’s statement on? Oh, we philosophers laugh and laugh!

 So the Logical Positivists cut off the branch they were standing on.

 Causality is constant conjunction, not necessary connection (this means whenever A

occurs, B must occur/A causes B. what we experience in the world is constant

conjunction but we do not perceive necessary connection. This is not scientific. Contra

Locke.
 ‘Things fall because of the laws of gravity.’ But what causes the laws of gravity? ‘Uh,

IDK…’

 Science assumes future will resemble the past. Hume asks: How do we know? Relations

of ideas? No. matters of fact? No. general matters of fact presuppose that the future will

resemble the past. So we can’t use it to prove causality. That would be a circle. So

causality is unknowable. Cause and effect is not known a priori, or a posteriori (so

commit it to the flames, right?) so what warrants our belief in experience? Or in the

future resembling the past? It’s logically possible that the future will not resemble the

past. We cannot use causality to warrant this because causality DEPENDS on experience.

 It’s not that it’s uncertain or just probable, it’s that we have no reason to believe this.

There’s no rational justification to believe that dropped objects will fall. If I pick ten

brown beans from a jar, there’s no reason to believe the 11th one will be brown.

 There's no evidence for forces like gravity to exist. Experience gives us evidence that

things fall, not evidence that things make them fall. Might as well believe in little ghosts

making it happen. This is unscientific!

 Like Locke, mind begins with sensory impressions but we don’t perceive the “power.”

Causation is what the mind assigns to constant conjunction. “Anything could be the cause

of anything.” You see the pitcher wind up, tune out, tune in, 8 people run around. So you

think that the winding up causes 8 people to run around. A rock through the window

could turn into a bouquet of flowers, no reason to believe window will break.

 The future is under no obligation to mimic the past.

 There is constant conjunction (he at least claims that) but we do not see necessary

causation. This is to make a claim not based on experience. Neither the future, nor
 necessity can be experienced. Therefore empiricism must say we have to cease to use

such concepts. This leaves us only with constant conjunction, but no necessary causation.

 Our beliefs in these things are a psychological disposition or habit. It is custom or natural

to believe this. Natural instinct not rational proof that future resembles the past, present.

It is practical. Neither force, Locke’s “power” derives from sense experience. The

conjunctions are so constant we tend to assume that they’re universal.

 Religious cargo cults. John Fromm, marching, fake planes, causes cargo food to drop

from heaven. Funny, but what would Hume say about your religion?

 Locke believed in underlying matter, “atoms.” Hume, like Berkeley, tells us an object is

only the list of perceptible qualities. But Hume applies this to mental substances too:

mind, selves. I am a list of memories, impressions, and ideas of which I am aware. The

self is a bundle or heap of ideas. There’s no mental substance that supports or unifies

these ideas. There’s nothing to reality but impressions, that which we perceive. All that

exists are phenomena. To Descartes cogito: OK, but how do you know YOU are

thinking, rather than just thoughts happening?

 There’s no reason to believe the table exists when I turn my back. Now I believe in it,

turn around, now I don’t.

 But reason and life are tragically at odds. Skepticism leads to almost no rational

justification at all, but Hume says we are not at liberty to cease believing. “Nature is

always too strong for principle.” We still believe in induction by Nature or custom or

habit, but this doesn’t mean it’s rational.

 Implications for Identity: there are only 3 principles the mind uses to associate ideas:

 resemblance (desk on Monday and desk on Wednesday are the same desk)
 spatio-temporal contiguity (I move 3ft, fill all the spaces in between and you assume I'm

still me)

 cause and effect ( you associate me releasing the marker as the cause of the marker

falling)

 implications for determinism v free will

 determinism: suffers from constant conjunction is not necessary causation

 free-will: free-will, for Hume, is merely lack of constraint. Because if my will is

uncaused, then we don’t punish people on a rational basis. If it were just an idea in my

head that caused me to slap one of you, you would just explain to me that I ought not slap

you. But we all assume actions are caused by our characters. In life, people’s behaviors

reflect their characters, think of family and friends. You expect each to act a certain

way.so free will is incoherent with this.

 Implications for miracles: miracles are violations of laws of nature, but laws of nature are

sums of human experience. Religion is irrational.

 Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

 Implications for existence of god. Causality is relation of events INSIDE of nature, but

it’s a false analogy to ask what is the cause of all nature. One cannot reason by facts to

god.

 Argument from design: A proof for the existence of god based on the idea the universe

and its parts give evidence of purpose or design and therefore require a divine designer.

 Argument by analogy: As in an argument for the existence of God: the idea that the word

is alike to a human contrivance and therefore, just as the human contrivance has a creator,

the world must also have a creator.

 you find a pocket watch on the beach and you assume it is made by a designer, not by

randomness. The universe is more complex than the watch. Ergo, the universe has a

designer. But if order justifies a belief in a designer, the world is only partially orderly

(children are born deformed, we choke on our own saliva, stars explode). So the designer

would have to be limited in intelligence and power.

 Problem of evil: Is God willing to prevent evil but unable to do so? Then he is not

omnipotent. Is God able to prevent evil but unwilling to do so? Then he is malevolent (or

at least less than perfectly good). If God is both willing and able to prevent evil then why

is there evil in the world?

 Implications for morality: he psychologizes morality. Seeing someone beaten and

mugged gives us feelings, a goose sees the same thing but has no feelings about it.it is the

constitution of our nature. Morality is a social construction for maximizing utility. Hume

rejects moral realism, but is not skeptical of morality. Morality is just shaped by our

needs and the peculiarity of the human creature. Passion (feelings) must rule, and reason

must follow. This is Darwinian, who probably read Hume. When I hear the growl of a

lion, we don’t stop to reason, we run like hell. Like my non-profit bee rescuing service on

weekends. Reason secures what passion requires.

 But skepticism is not refuted by philosophy, but by practical life. Hume leaves aside his

skepticism to have drinks with his friends, etc. he doesn’t/cannot stop believing in

causation, etc. None of us can. But we have no rational justification for it.

 So there's a sense in which Hume’s skepticism is a joke, but it has a point. Moderate

skepticism has practical value: it shows us the uncertainty of our most BASIC beliefs. he
 eschews dogmatism of any kind: rationalistic philosophy and Christian orthodoxy. Free-

thinker.

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____

Immanuel Kant

 Rationalist

 Shiva figure: creator and destroyer

 Sapere aude dare to know

 Very regular habits (aspbergers?)

 Phenomenal world  Noumenal world

 Math  Metaphysics
 science  ethics
 
 
 Noumenal world is unknowable. To try to do metaphysics is to try to understand

something without using human understanding.

 Noumena: In the philosophy of Kant, things as they are in themselves independent of all

possible experience of them

 Math and science have been so successful because they deal with the phenomenal world,

but metaphysics and ethics deals with the noumenal world. We can know as much as we

want about the phenomenal world, about the way things appear, but we cannot know

about the thing in itself, the ding-an-sich thing in itself.

 Ding-an-sich: a thing as it is independent of any consciousness of it.

 Space is a projection of our own consciousness, it is not a box we look into. Think of the

wineglass. Space makes it possible to experience objects in the world. So with time,
 which allows us to experience, to go through it, or undergo. Ideas and thoughts may be

timeless, but experiences are not.

 Space and time are forms of intuition/sensibility. They are a priori, and we must have

them in order to experience. They are the necessary conditions for experience.

 Like heliocentrism, Kant calls this his Copernican revolution of the mind.

 Copernican revolution in philosophy: A new perspective in epistemology, introduced by

Kant, according to which the objects of experience must conform in certain respects to

our knowledge of them.

 Ancient Greeks thought of heliocentrism before Copernicus, however.(Should’ve been

called the Aristarchus revolution!)

 The human mind a priori imposes categories of the mind onto the world. Contra Locke’s

tabula rasa, WE impose ideas onto the world, NOT the case that the world imposes these

ideas on us.

 I have no idea what I will experience tomorrow, but I know it will be in time and space.

If you glue rose-colored glasses on to my face, I do not know what you will show me

next, but I know it will be rose-colored.

Analytic synthetic
a priori Relation of ideas Kant: space, time
a posteriori XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Matters of fact

 There cant be constant conjunction unless theres time. The necessary a priori conditions

for experience are space and time.

 All knowledge claims have some formal properties: a judgement formed within a

universal categorical framework

 Metaphysical deductions: quantity, quality, modality, relation

 Hume’s fork: all knowledge is either a relation of ideas (analytic a priori) or matters of

fact (synthetic a posteriori). Kant: whatever experience I have, I know it will take place

in time and space.

 There cannot be constant conjunction unless theres time and space. Synthetic a priori.

Space and time necessary for experience.

 Basis of understanding, along with 12 categories that allows our minds to construct a

coherent story. Some are substance, causality, plurality, unity, existence. Imagine seeing

surveillance pictures, and your mind puts together the story of a man burning down a

warehouse. Not merely blotches on a paper.

 But do we all impose this onto the world in our own way? No, says Kant. This is not

idiosyncratic. These are universal. So he opens the door to postmodernism, but he does

not step through that door. Even universal to aliens.

 So we can know the world that we can experience, the phenomenal realm. And all

knowledge arises from experience, but knowledge is not grounded or based upon

experience.

 Time and space are not provided by experience, they must be present for there to be any

experience at all. Time and space are pure intuitions, non-empirical, but not innate ideas

either.

 So we can know something’s form (time and space) which are non-empirical, this is the

phenomenal world, but not its content (the thing as it is in itself, ding-an sich) which is

part of the noumenal realm.

_____________________________________________________________________
Cultural relativism: the theory that what is right and wrong is what your culture believes is right

and wrong.

____________________________________________________________________________

Divine-command

 Divine-command ethics: ethical theory according to which what is morally right and

good is determined by what god commands.

 What is right is what god commands

 Euthyphro by Plato

 “How have you been preparing for your defense?” “I’ve been preparing for my defense

my entire life.”

 Takes place the day of Socrates’s trial

 Socrates charged with impiety and corrupting the youth. Spends his last morning helping

Euthyphro realize that he doesn’t know what piety is.

 Main theme: what is piety or righteousness? What is conduct pleasing to the gods?

 Socrates is looking for the one form of piety

 Euthyphro is surprised to see Socrates, is prosecuting his own father “because it’s pious.”

bringing up his own father on charges of murder on behalf of a murderer who killed a

household servant.

 Socrates: im being tried for impiety. I should become your student.

 S:what is piety? –what im doing now. But that’s an example, not a definition.

 Piety is what the gods love. But zeus fought his own father. Cronus , who castrated his

own father ouranos. Muhammad and jesus cant both be right. Piety to zeus is not piety

piety to cronus, so doing an act like prosecuting father may not be pious. What is
 righteousness in one religion is not what is righteousness for another. Socrates: “show me

a clear sign.”

 Socrates doesn’t believe the stories.

 But Socrates throws Euthyphro a bone here: maybe piety is what all the gods love

–“Yes!” zeus and cronus and Muhammad and jesus cant disagree on everything, after all.

 So is something righteous because god loves it or does god love it because it’s righteous.

 Euthyphro believes god loves it because it’s pious. Unlike Abraham of the bible, who

thinks god loves is pious.

 But if that’s true, then there is something greater than god. There is a standard that even

god needs to be held up to. And if he doesn’t, then god is doing something wrong.

 But if Euthyphro is right, then piety is justice, the part of justice that’s concerned with the

care of the gods.

 But when we are just and care for something, the thing is benefitted and improved. But

do we benefit and improve the gods?

 Euthyphro: no but they like it.”

 So piety is what is pleasing to the gods? Yes! No we already tried that and it doesn’t

work. Youre taking me in circles.

 Euthyphro you must be so sure, because you’re bringing up your own father on charges

of murder on behalf of a murderer who killed a household servant.

 Euthyphro: Socrates I have to go! Wait we were so close.

 Phi is important, this isn’t just idle conversation. euthyphro is acting based on his

convictions of what is righteous, and it’s clear he has no idea what he’s talking about or

doing.
 He could’ve gone the way of Abraham who thought something is righteous because it’s

loved by god. Genesis 22

 God makes a promise to Abraham that his son Isaac will have many children and be the

father of a great nation. But then he tells Abraham to kill Isaac. So at least in the moment

he “breaks” promise.

 Abraham says no problem. Whatever god wants is just. Have Isaac? Ok. Kill Isaac? Ok.

 But could we worship a god who hadn’t stayed Abrahams hand? A god who breaks his

promises at will? I don’t mean should we, but could we? Any day, what god thinks is just

could be wrong the next day. Or do we expect that there are standards that we even hold

god up to?

 Actually somewhere else he says: That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay

the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far

from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? Genesis 18:25

 Numbers 31:17-18: (Moses says) Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has

slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

___________________________________________________________________________

Plato, ethics and tripartite soul

 Highest form is the form of the good. We always seek the good but are mistaken

about what the good is.

 Ethics is grounded in a non-natural source, much like the later Christian ethics would

be.

 Nous reason charioteer come to be associated by galen with the brain

 Thumos spirited horse galenic heart

 Epithumia appetite or passion horse galen belly

 In the republic there is the example of Liantius who saw dead bodies and desired to

see them, but his reason told him that this was a terrible thing to want to see. Became

angry at himself. Analogous to rubbernecking a traffic accident.

 But if the soul is tripartite and physical then how is it immaterial and immortal? Plato

might not have agreed with galen on where these soul parts were, or that they were so

separable.

 Reason charioteer ought to be in charge of the two horses. But chariot is going

nowhere without the pull of the horses.

 Plato is going to compare the tripartite soul to the city-state. There are the

philosopher-kings who ought to be in charge of the spirited part, the guardian, and the

appetitive part, the merchants. This, typical of Plato, is not democratic.

 When nous is in charge you get courage instead of rashness/anger, you get justice

instead of greed, and self-control rather than gluttony.

 So a healthy soul is like this one where nous is in charge, and to be just, courageous,

wise, and self-controlled is to be healthy.

 But how could desire/merchant class accept orders from the ruling part without being

rational? And how could reason want to give orders to the others without having

desire? It seems that the soul is much more unitary than the way plato is often

interpreted. Stoics would take plato’s soul to be a material thing that has parts but acts

as a unit, which is more like our modern conception of the mind. Except they thought,

like Aristotle, that it was in the chest.

  Both the amygdala and pre-frontal cortex, for example, are active in rational people.

Cynics

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_____

Aristotle

 Virtue ethics: Ethical theories that emphasizes character traits rather than particular

actions.

 What kind of person ought I to be? do what a good person does. Be virtuous. Be a good

doctor/soldier/teacher

 For Plato, ethics was grounded in a non-natural source (the form of the good) much like

the later Christian ethics

 Aristotle, like the cynics and stoics, postulates a naturalistic ethical system

 Our good is defined by our natural objective or telos

 So why did you come to class? These are all instrumental ends. What is our goal?

Pleasure? Fatted cows. I have my pleasure machine in my briefcase. Money? No, I can

give you a secret billion that wont do you any good. Honor? Not really. We want to be

honored but not just for anything like going viral, but for our virtue arête excellence

 Happiness Eudaimonia is our intrinsic end. It consists of the rational soul in accordance

with reason (virtue)

 Intrinsic end: something that is desirable for its own sake and not merely as a means to

accomplish something else.

 Happiness is an end in itself. The one thing that I don’t have to ask you why you want it.
 Eudaimonia means closer to like a flourishing life, success. A complete life that for

Aristotle means not being killed in your prime, some wealth, pleasure, greekness,

manness, citizenship, etc. its like a pie. Intrinsic to human nature.

 Eudaimonia (unlike for Cynics/Stoics/Socrates) involves a life dedicated to virtue, but

presupposes having external goods and some luck.

 Eudaimonia involves habits. Virtue involves practice. Like playing the guitar. You want

to be courageous? Practice courageous acts. Practice being a good human.

 After 40 years you become like Slash from Guns and Roses

 Eudaimonia involves pleasure, but this is not an indication as to whether you’re doing

something right.

 And Eudaimonia involves intellectual and moral virtue. Intellectual virtue means to study

nature or cogitate (to think about) something. Moral virtue is the mean between extremes.

 Mean between extremes in a sphere of action or feeling

Fear and confidence

Excess rashness
Excess licentiousness
Ex. Irascibility
Ex. Boastfulness
Mean courage Deficiency cowardice
Pleasure and pain
Mean Temperance Def. insensibility
anger
Mean patience Def. lack of spirit
Self-expression
meanTruthfulness Def. understatement/irony

 Stoics: but what the hell is moderate anger?

 So you need practical wisdom in all virtuous to know what to do. But then ehy do we

need the doctrine of the mean?

 So why be good? To be happy. And moral virtue by itself wont make you happy but it

will keep you from being miserable.

  Man is a political animal, a politikon zoon., an animal who lives in a community. If he

has no need of it or cant, he is either a god or a beast.so the final good is to be happy

which means for a human to be a good citizen. And the point of a state’s laws is to help

people become good citizens (virtuous people), to live the life of a citizen to the fullest.

Contra hobbes.

 Justice is the virtue of the community, the give and take of social life

 Friendship

 1) based on pleasure. Liking each other’s company. Nothing wrong with this, it’s just not

the highest form of pleasure. Once the pleasure ends, so does the friendship.

 2) based on utility. I need a friend to wrestle with me, because it’s impossible to do it

alone. Friends in the army who watch one another’s back. We survive by taking care of

one another. Or like business partners.

 Telea philia. Completed friendship. The highest form of friendship. I want what’s good

for my friend for the sake of my friend, nothing self-regarding.

 A virtuous person needs friends. A friend is another self, an alter ego. Like when things

go well for Eli, I’m happy for him, not because it’s good for me.

 Problem for morality in Aristotle is obligations and perhaps rights of persons beyond our

city-state. Our duties, for Aristotle, ended at the city-walls. In our contemporary world,

this just becomes untenable. The stoic model of the universe as a city does a better job.

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_____

Hellenistic Ethics

Leucippus/Democritus/atomismEpicurusEpicureans/Lucretius
  “Empty is the argument that does not relieve human suffering.” -Epicurus

 Atomists, materialists. Led to their ethics: pain is the only evil, pleasure is the only good.

But simple pleasures (wisdom) Goal (telos) is ataraxia, freedom from disturbance.

Hobbes, Bentham and Mill would develop this concept further.

 Death is nothing. Read p. 274

 Katastematic- (static) pleasures in a certain state, freedom from disturbance,

freedom from suffering

 I don’t realize I have a spine until it hurts. I have a spine?

 I don’t want a massage; I want my back to be left alone.

 Kinetic- (active) pleasures- joy and delight

 Natural pleasures(2 types) and non-natural pleasures(1 type)

 2 types of natural pleasures

 Natural and necessary- those which liberate us from pains i.e.

drinking when thirsty

 Natural and unnecessary- merely provide variations of pleasure but

do not remove the feeling of pain i.e. expensive foods (groundless

opinions of mankind)

 Non-natural pleasures- i.e. crowns and the erections of statues

 Virtues are chosen for the sake of pleasure, not for their own sakes (unlike Stoics)

 Don’t steal, it’ll affect your tranquility.

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Cynics

SocratesAntisthenesDiogenesCynics
 “Against fate I put courage, against custom (nomos), nature (phusis), against passion,

reason.” –Diogenes

 Eudaimonia so called happiness. Virtue is necessary and sufficient.

 Nietzsche said the cynics did more for philosophy than Plato and Aristotle.

 Follow nature.

 I have come to debase the coinage. Show you that your money is counterfeit. Replace

false values with those that enable humans to fulfil their true nature. “the contest that

should be for truth and virtue is for sway and belongings instead.” Give to Caesar

what is caesar’s so to speak.

 Money, health, fame was indifferent to happiness. Look at how rich we are and the

percentage of us that are on antidepressants!

 With a lamp in broad daylight. Looking for an anthropos. Someone following human

nature. All I see here is a crowd.

 Cynic paradox: claimed to be completely free but needed to be in a city around

people for money.

 Implications for Eudaimonia. Happiness on the rack, contrary to Aristotle. “speaking

nonsense whether they know it or not.” But the cynic and stoic does not have to

identify with the pain and feeling. No belief that anything bad is happening.

 Trolley for virtue ethics? It depends on the person. Do you want a Utilitarian doctor

or a virtue ethicist doctor?

_____________________________________________________________________

__

Stoics
 Like the cynics, stoics follow nature. But reputation, wealth etc are truly indifferent,

not bad. So it’s ok to make money, have a solid reputation, get married, have

children. Indifferent and yet natural “oikeiosis.” But mustn’t allow it to affect

happiness one way or another.

 Animal has self-preservation as the object of its impulse.

 What is appropriate to an animal is its own constitution

 Seeks natural state not pleasure

o Ex. Turtle on its back, baby falling trying to stand.

 Moral epistemology:

o Impression/propositional content of impressionassent/withhold assent

o So no moral mistake is worse than any other

 Sage: wise person; thought experiment about someone who always

and only assents to cognitive impressions, including moral

impressions.

 Ex: Socrates, Diogenes, Cato

 Fool, this is the capital.” –Musonius Rufus

 Stoics seem to have considered the problem of moral luck: if we are

judged for actions within our control, why do we judge agents for

factors that are not in their control?

 Ex: drunk driver who hits tree vs. drunk driver who hits crowd

 Which is why the sage can be happy on the rack because he cannot be

made to believe torture and death are evils

  So the Orlando shooter and his victims were all equally bad, making

mistakes in judgment about what is good and bad and what is an

appropriate act (kathekon)

o If assent to false fresh impressionpathos (pathe)

o Don’t bother trying to talk them out of anger or fear. Not listening to reason.

Wait until the pathos is gone then deal with their false belief that nothing bad

is happening (Cleanthes) and that it is not appropriate to have said emotion

(Chrysippus) Or replace a dispreferred pathos with a preferred pathos

(Seneca)

 Seneca, On Providence: Has a conversation as if god were speaking with him

o To you I have given sure and lasting good things, which become greater and

better the more one turns them over and views them on every side: I have granted

to you to scorn danger, to disdain passion. You do not shine outwardly, all your

good qualities are turned inwards; even so does the world neglect what lies

without it, and rejoices in the contemplation of itself. I have placed every good

thing within your own breasts: it is your good fortune not to need any good

fortune. ‘Yet many things befall you which are sad, dreadful, hard to be borne.’

Well, as I have not been able to remove these from your path, I have given your

minds strength to combat all: bear them bravely. In this you can surpass God

himself; He is beyond suffering evil; you are above it. Despise poverty; no man

lives as poor as he was born: despise pain; either it will cease or you will cease:

despise death; it either ends you or takes you elsewhere: despise fortune; I have

given her no weapon that can reach the mind. Above all, I have taken care that no
 one should hold you captive against your will: the way of escape lies open before

you: if you do not choose to fight, you may fly. For this reason, of all those

matters which I have deemed essential for you, I have made nothing easier for

you than to die.

______________________________________________________________________________

Hume

 Value judgments are based on emotion, not reason.

 Emotivism: the theory that moral value judgments are expressions of emotions, attitudes,

and feelings.

 Murder. Man is beaten and killed and robbed. What is in the facts of the case that reveal

that something went wrong? If a frog is looking at this, the frog doesn’t perceive the

moral wrongness. As humans, something in the event triggers feelings of revulsion and

leads us to believe that this is morally wrong.

 Consider Hume’s epistemology with the billiard balls. We don’t perceive causation, our

human nature causes us to believe it. As with murder, our human nature forces us to

believe that this is immoral. This comes not from reason, but from emotion.

 It wouldn’t surprise Hume that we are all similar enough in our genetic constitution that

core concepts of morality show up everywhere.

 In no society is it ok to set our children on fire for the fun of it, or prohibit passing on

knowledge to the younger generation, or permissible to always injure ourselves.

 Actions that are morally praiseworthy create within us feelings of pleasure, actions that

are morally blameworthy create within us feelings of displeasure.

 Benevolence- why does benevolence bring us pleasure? Because we sympathize with

others. It upsets a normal person to see others suffering, and it pleases a normal person to

see others happy. Of course, there are psychopaths.

 So benevolence is maximization of utility. The greatest happiness. Hume on character:

the act that pleases our moral sensibilities is one that reflects a benevolent character on

behalf of the agent. In ancient Greece or Rome, if someone is talking about how good he

is, hes talking about how useful he is to others, to society.

 When we morally praise or blame someone, it’s the person’s character we praise or

blame. His or her actions are an indication of character. Maria’s brother-in-law kills

someone with a bat and goes to prison, whereas if someone else did it it might be

excusable, or even praiseworthy.

 Hume rejects moral realism and morality based on rationality, but our common nature

brings about our moral judgments.

 It is the calm passions, not the violent passions that we ought to use to identify our moral

judgments.

 The stoics had a similar concept in the term oikeiosis.

 “Reason is and ought to be the handmaiden of the passions.”

 When we want to make people more ethical we ought to have them read a novel, not an

ethical treatise. Huck finn, dances with wolves, last of the mohicans, my bondage my

freedom fred douglass.

 This is very Darwinian. In a forest when something growls, you don’t use you’re a priori

knowledge and logic, you run like hell.

  Ideal observer. What would a normal, sensitive, informed person find praiseworthy or

blameworthy? But who is this normal sensitive informed person?

 Return to the trolley thought experiment. We value benevolence, the well-meaning,

kindliness of the agent. Maybe that’s why the experiment of a single act is so difficult.

We want to judge the character of the agent.

 Hume opens the door to utilitarianism. He’s the last of the virtue ethicists.

Kant ethics

 Deontological ethics: Ethical theories according to which what I ought to do is whatever

it is my moral duty to do.

 Parallelism of morality and science

 Like in science, we must overcome our biases and discover whats objective and

universally true. Contra Hume we must rise above our physical and biological being and

separate ourselves from beasts. We can think and legislate for everyone.

 In what sense is Hume’s view morality at all?

 Deontology v utilitarianism

 As long as we are moved by our purposes of nature and desires, then we are acting like

the non-rational beasts who are moved by instincts, desires, passions. We are rational

animals who can use our reason (vernunft) to rise above nature’s laws. This is why

science will never explain free will, because it involves rising above desires/instincts,

nature’s laws altogether, into the noumenal realm from the phenomenal realm.
 Science can’t know the ding-an-sich. As an appearance, the will seems unfree. But the

myself-in-myself is left untouched by science. So we are free to believe in god, free will

immortality. In fact for practical reasons I'm required to believe in these things.

 Autonomy (self-rule) is a necessary condition for morality.

 Ought implies can

 To be free is to be governed by the laws one gives oneself.

 “free will and a will governed by moral laws are one and the same.”

 That freedom exists is proven by the moral law.

 Hypothetical imperative (which traces back to Aristotle). If you would achieve this

specific outcome (q) then you must do that (p). this is invariably grounded in natural

being, conditions of motives and wants as a physical system.

 Moral philosophy need not apply, actions coerced by the forces of nature, actions are

more like reactions: if you want to stay healthy, eat correctly and exercise. All depends

on your desires and consequences. If I want a big mac, I should stand in line. What

should I do? Well, do you want a big mac? If you want to go to heaven, obey the Ten

Commandments and believe in jesus. But how is that moral?

 When we rise above our desires and purposes, by exercising our practical reason

(vernunft). We become universal judges, and act as self legislators.

 So hypothetical imperative states that the action is only good for some purpose

 Categorical imperative declares an action to be objectively necessary in itself without

reference to any purpose or any other end.

 Categorical imperative: Kant’s formulation of a moral law that holds unconditionally; in

its most common formulation, states that you are to act in such a way that you could

desire the principle on which you act to be a universal law.

 Morality begins when reasons and justifications are called for, where precepts and rules

that guide action apply necessarily to all situations, to everyone (universalizable), not

based on contingent facts about the world.

 The categorical imperative is the space/time of morality. It expresses the form of the

moral law, not the content. Everyday objects of experience are the content.

 So who is a moral being? Not children, not the insane, those with intellectual disabilities,

brain injuries, etc.

 Categorical imperative: act in such a way that the maxim of your action would, if you

were able, be instituted as a universal law of nature.

 But not regarding the consequences but regarding rationality, not because “no money in

the bank” or “awful world” (this is where previous editions of book were wrong).

 Promising- ill make a promise without intending to keep it. if that became a universal

law, the concept of promising becomes meaningless. It becomes a contradiction, it goes

against practical reason. Wrong in itself. You both promise and do not promise.

 Suicide- always wrong. Contradiction: out of concern for myself, willing to kill myself.

(stoics had no problem with suicide.)

 Categorical imperative as principle of humanity: never use a rational agent merely as a

means but always as an end. Man is an end unto himself. No lies. Ever! Lies allow the

use of people as instruments, and defeats someone’s moral autonomy. If made into a
 universal law, it becomes irrational for a rational autonomous agent to undermine rational

autonomy.

 So if the Nazis are at the door asking where the jews are? You say nothing!

 Contra utilitarianism, if the life boat only seats five and there are six, who do we throw

out? No one!

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Jeremy Bentham/ John Stuart Mill

 Consequentialism: Ethical theories that evaluate actions by their consequences.

 Ignored Kant

 Utilitarianism- rightness of an action is identical with the happiness it produces as its

consequence, but unlike for the Epicureans, with everyone considered.

 So not just your own happiness you should aim for, but the happiness of everyone

considered. Your happiness is not more important morally than that of others.

 The higher the average happiness, the better: “the greatest happiness for the greatest

number.”

 Bentham: the concept of natural rights is “nonsense on stilts.”

 Bentham means happiness=pleasure

 Bentham: the pain and pleasure an act produces can be evaluated solely with reference to

quantitative criteria. Pushpin is as good as poetry.

 Hedonic calculus
 What you ought to do should be determined by considering the probable consequences of

each possible act with respect to the certainty, intensity, duration, immediacy, and extent

(the number of persons affected) of the pleasure or pain it produces.

 So the archer who attempts to kill the cliffhanger but instead provides a foothold doesn’t

count.

 So why should I seek the general happiness and not give priority to my own? Unlike

Plato’s healthy soul, and the Stoic/Cynic goal of following nature, or Kant’s sense of

duty, Bentham thinks your own happiness coincides with the general happiness.

Fortunately they go together!

 Mill was concerned with providing a philosophical justification for utilitarianism

 Moral principle by its very nature singles out no one for preferential; treatment. Between

one’s happiness and others’, “utilitarianism is required to be as strictly impartial as a

disinterested and benevolent spectator.”

 But contra Bentham, Mill believes that some pleasures are inherently better than other

pleasures. These are to be preferred even over a greater amount of pleasure of an inferior

grade.

 Library vs bowling alley. His mentor Bentham was a champion of the common people.

Did Mill sell out?

 Few are willing to trade places with a pig, no matter how happy it is. “it is better to be a

human being DISsatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates DISsatisfied than a

fool satisfied.”

 Happiness plugs in my bag, but you’ll actually be deceived. Would you take it? why not?

Does happiness entail authenticity?

  So for Mill it’s the quality of the pleasure as well as the quantity that you ought to take

into consideration.

 Which is the better one? Those who have experienced both prefer one, then that is the

most desirable pleasure. So those pleasures preferred by the intellectual will be found to

be superior because they know both.

 Mill seems to recognize another factor in the moral worth of actions: quality, because

even pleasure must be evaluated by quality.

 Bentham seems more consistently utilitarian than Mill. Mill is almost Aristotelian.

 Bentham’s is an act utilitarianism: a form of utilitarianism (subscribed to by Bentham) in

which the rightness of an act is determined by its effect on the general happiness.

 Mill seems sometimes in some places to advocate rule utilitarianism

 Rule-utilitarianism: where we evaluate the moral correctness of an action not with

reference to its impact on the general happiness but rather with respect to the impact of

the general happiness of the rule or principle the action exemplifies.

 “Kant-lite.” Rules that have good consequences.

 Sometimes it seems right to murder, but if society accepted murder as a rule of conduct,

ultimately general happiness would be diminished. So don’t murder!

 Problems: utilitarianism leaves out considerations of justice. West Memphis 3,The ones

who walked away from Omelas, Chrysi Avgi hanging gypsies.

 W.D. Ross: wrong to break a promise is slightly greater good could be produced for

someone else (maybe me!)

____EXAM____________________________________________________________________

______
Hegel

 Absolute Idealism: the early 19th century school of philosophy that maintained that being

is the transcendental unfolding or expression of thought or reason.

 The Absolute: that which is unconditioned and uncaused by anything else; it is frequently

thought of as God, a perfect and solitary, self-caused eternal being that is the source or

essence of all that exists but that is itself beyond the possibility of conceptualization or

definition.

 “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at dusk.”

 Destroys the dividing line between phenomenal realm and noumenal realm. God (the

Absolute) is evolving and human history is a step in god’s consciousness/awareness of

himself.

 Christianity succeeds because the Absolute comes to know itself.

 History came to a close.

 Idealist

 Like his philosophy, ‘You can’t understand anything I’ve written until you understand

everything I’ve written.’

 Spirit- culture, mentality develops over time

 All reality is the expression of thought/reason

 1. History is a developmental process where spirit comes to know itself and realized its

idea

 2. Freedom is the idea of spirit and spirit is reason in and for itself.

 3. Means of realization or coming of reason is the passions of individual as both subject

and object of history, and its form is the state.

 4. The national spirit is a moment in the development of the world spirit and for each

such moment, the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the setting of dusk.

 Hegelian dialectic (the term was used by Plato as the back and forth of the conversation

of philosophy): Thesis+antithesis=synthesis. “This conception of dialectics derives

ultimately from Heraclitus.” So much for Heraclitus...

 Everything finite goes through this process. The only thing that doesn’t is the Absolute

(God).

 Thesis: family (normal, nuclear). Affection, love. Undifferentiated unity. Antithesis:

marketplace. Conflicting interests. Different goals, agendas. Differentiated disunity.

Synthesis: state. Good of the whole. Differentiated unity.

 Between nations thesis and antithesis meet on the battlefield.

 Apex of the Hegelian dialectic:

spirit: thought knowing

itself both as subject
and object
(apex/highest triad)

Nature: independent
idea: self conscious world/external
thought expression of idea/idea
outside itself. Sciences

subjectivity: that which objectivity:that which is

thinks thought of

 Self-conception: awareness of myself can only be accomplished in relation to another

self-consciousness, in being acknowledged by another

 Lord/slave relationship is an unequal relationship that prevents either from self-

conception. In the dialectic, the slave wins by the act of struggle. Recognizes free will by

willingness to brave death. The lord realizes he’s not omnipotent, but now must deal with

the slave on equal footing. In recognizing an equal person, recognizes true self.

Schopenhauer

 “Life is bitter and fatal, yet men cherish it and beget children to suffer the same fate.”

–Heraclitus

 Hated Hegel. Pessimist. Scheduled his classes at the same time as Hegel- and lecture

to an empty room. Mother was a more famous novelist. “Never want to see you again,

get out of my life.” Last editions: “I have changed nothing.”

 Calls to mind platos republic: Cephalus, can you still have sex with a woman? –No

I’m very glad that I’ve been released from a cruel and insane master.

 Satisfaction of desires leads to boredom

 Acting on emotion often has unfortunate and painful consequences

 The Will. All is one. For plato, eros: desire always to be and never not to be. For

hegel, spirit. Mayflies that life for a day, furiously mate, then die.

 But for Schopenhauer it is a pulsing, irrational force that burdens us, gnaws at us,

victimizes us.

 Craving for satisfaction, many of which are not achieved, many of which cause pain.

And their satisfaction leads to boredom.

 Mustn’t even commit suicide, because that’s an act of will.

 Brought Buddhism to Western philosophical thought. Life is suffering.

 Contra Hegel, wants philosophers to get down from philosophical high horse and

look at your life, your desires. Man and friend’s wife talk philosophy, then she

undresses. Isn’t this what its all about?

 Uses Kant’s scheme for an argument for pessimism. The Will is the noumena,

fundamental reality. Phenomena (including we) are manifestations of the Will.

 Our troubles are caused by selfish desire, which is part of nature. Buddha says stop

desiring, but how, if we just are manifestations of the will?

 A release from the Will is ascetic practices and aesthetic experience.

 Very rare to stop the Will: saints and their asceticism. Bertrand Russell has ad

hominem argument about Schopenhauer’s fine dining and affairs, but Schopenhauer

says that proves his point. He’s no saint.

 Argumentum ad hominem: the mistaken idea that you can successfully challenge any

view by criticizing the person whose view it is.

 If not asceticism then aesthetics.

 aesthetic- beauty of sunset, mountain, (like me I can get lost for days). You’re not

thinking how can this advantage me? You contemplate it for its own sake. The pure

will as subject, a self without practical consideration. In contemplating a mountain

you contemplate a universal mountain instead of this particular mountain (with its

flaws) and you become a universal instead of a particular. A universal manifestation

of human intelligence. Standing in the snow, like Socrates, Diogenes, me. You get

closer to Being.
  In the aesthetic, the mind becomes pure and willless. Object transforms into an

instance of the universal, not a particular thing with needs. Agrees with Plato that this

world is not the entirety of reality.

 In contemplating the aesthetic, we see the universal on both sides of the object/subject

relationship.

 Usually, it’s Hobbes’s war of all against all, but in the arts/aesthetics, we just drop it

all and enjoy it for a second. Then we get right back to willing. Got to hike down the

mountain eventually.

 His ethics: it turns out we’re all part representations of one thing- Noumena. I can

understand you because you and I are the same. When I ignorantly do something to

you, I'm doing it to myself. Compassion.

______________________________________________________________________________

_______

Friedrich Nietzsche

 “That which does not kill me makes me stronger.”

 Method: the aphorism (like Heraclitus), the ad hominem (psychologizes the philosopher’s

philosophy)

 Freud: Nietzsche knew more about himself than any man has ever known or any man is

ever likely to know.

 Went crazy, hugs horse.

 Influenced by Heraclitus

 There is no Truth, only interpretations, perspectives. The more perspectives, the better is

the perception. Still not the truth, just many truths. Poetic answer to flower facing the sun
 and a scientific answer to flower facing the sun. Different perspectives of your professor

at his funeral.

 Story: Raw pork at a bbq.

 There is no thing without a perspective of it. There is no ding-an-sich.

 When I was a teacher I would show a map of the solar system. But that’s just a

representation of the solar system from somewhere, at least some arbitrary point in space.

 “God is dead.” No metaphysical foundation to our values and beliefs. Truth is whatever

promotes growth. False is whatever denies growth. Truth is life-affirming.

 Destroys Kant’s noumenal realm (there is no thing-in-itself, you tragic knight) and in

doing so, destroys the phenomenal realm as well.

 Apollonian/Dionysian.

 Appollonian: measure, order, harmony, sculpture, death (Socrates/Plato/Aristotle)

 Dionysian: excess, destruction, creative power, music, life

 Ancient Greeks had both. “How they must have suffered to become so beautiful.”

 Extremely concerned with nihilism- devaluation of values, decadence and emptiness

 Master morality vs slave morality (like Callicles)

Master morality Slave morality

Active
Morality (justice) among equals
Thisworldliness: Achilles and the Greek
heroes. Become a slave? Die first!
Bird of prey morality
Rules from within: hitofude ryuu, bonzai
Good vs bad
Virtues: benevolence, strength, honor. I
don’t lie because I’m not a liar.
Makes rules as an afterthought
Reactive
“Love” one another
Otherworldliness: Necessarily cowardice
in slavery. Christians, Kant, Mill,
socialism, Muslim terrorists
Lamb morality
Rules from without
Good vs evil: don’t be like the strong
Humility, pity, Christian values. I don’t lie
because you thou shalt not bear false
witness.
Follows rules of herd morality
 Life-affirming Life-denying, devaluation of values,
ignorance is bliss, nihilism
“Rome” “Judaea”

 example of Master morality: Achilles. Would you call Achilles good?

 Sophocles’s Ajax

 “I know this: if Achilles were here, and held a contest, awarding his weapons and armor

to the greatest warrior, at the end of the day, they would be mine.” Commits suicide when

arms are awarded to Odysseus the Mind, can’t live in that kind of world

 Slave morality: Vengefulness of the impotent

 Against Kant: “There is too much beer in the German intellect.” Defends Christianity too

much. What are these universal principles that exist? Analogous to categorical

imperative: However I grade you benefits some and not others. Can morality or justice or

Christian love be spread so thin and still be (love)? Can respect?

 Against utilitarianism: “Man does not seek pleasure, only the Englishman does that.” As

far as the greatest good for the greatest number, Nietzsche questions whether such

universal principles can be used as an adequate notion of morality. Leads to the last man,

a couch potato with no aspirations. ‘We have invented happiness’ and blinks.

 Deontology and utilitarianism are the same; they focus on actions.

 Prefers virtue ethics, not rules, universal love (whatever that means), or fear of god, but

by having a virtuous character.

 False dichotomies: selfishness/altruism, pleasure/righteousness. One enjoys being

virtuous for its own sake. To act out of character is so offensive, wouldn’t even think

about it. “Not a liar.”

 You ask yourself, have I lived up to my character?

 Nietzsche prefers an aesthetic view of morality. Do something beautiful. virtuous people

aren’t “good,” they’re beautiful.

 Will to power (Germans saying this kind of thing makes everyone nervous)

 Mach not reich (which is military)

 Borrows concept of will from Schopenhauer, but leaves out the pessimism

 Will to power is the will to be creative, self-esteem, not pleasure.

 “Become who you are.” –Pindar

 Against free will: Who we are is determined by our genes, etc. but our talents must be

realized and chosen between. To escape from nihilism, make yourself your own project.

 “The greatest act of the creator is that creator creates him or herself by a constant release

and shaping of energies.”

 U:bermensch- superman/overman. “man is a bridge between ape and overman.” Cant

strive to be, must be inborn. Thought experiment? Becoming. “man is something that

must be overcome.”

 “God is dead” for morality. Christianity as a pretend religion. We lie, cheat, steal, have

sex, then go to church. Could there be a Christian president? Sees Christianity as cruelty.

“We don’t do that, we are Christians…”

 Admired Jesus’s will to power: “There’s only been one Christian, and he died on the

cross.”

 Christianity has to invent the disease (original sin, your “evil” desires) to sell you the

cure.

 But ask yourself, what are the genealogy of my morals?

  Eternal return. Borrows this from Heraclitus and Stoics. Contrast this with Descartes’s

evil demon conjecture. Demon: you must live this life over again forever. Would you say

yes to all of it? No? then change it!

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