Philosophy 1010 Class 7/25/13

1. Philosophy 1010 Class 7/25/13 Title: Introduction to Philosophy Instructor: Paul Dickey E-mail Address: pdickey2@mccneb.edu Tonight: Return Midterm Exams & …. Discuss Class Final Essay Chapter Three - Reality & Being

2. Next Week: • Chapter Four – Philosophy & God • 1) Read Chapter 4, Sections 4.1 & 4.2 (to p. 240), 4.3, and 4.4 (to p.255) • 2) Write 1-2 paragraph statement of your essay topic with brief summary of the argument you will give in your essay. • Study Blue is both a phone app and a webpage. Use it as either, as you choose. Compose a set of Flash Cards in Study Blue over • Chapters 3 & 4. • http://www.studyblue.com/#folder/7010893

3. Discuss • Class Essay

4. Requirements for Class Essay • You are writing a short 3-5-page essay (computer-printed or typed, double-spaced, 1” margins, Times Romans 12-point font). • The paper must demonstrate your understanding of a topic we discussed -- for example, the mind/body problem. • You will need to identify two philosophers to discuss in your essay in regard to your topic. • Your paper will show specific and detailed understanding of the two points of view on the issue by the two philosophers which raises an apparent conflict. • The student will discuss this conflict and propose in his or her paper an argument to resolve the conflict. In doing this, you will rely on your own independent thinking. • You will need to explicitly identify a narrow sub-topic on the issue that you choose that appropriately allows you to make an interesting claimof your own where the philosophers disagree on the issue.

5. Requirements for Class Essay • You are free to select from a broad availability of sources (but not Wikipedia). If you have a question about the appropriateness of a source you wish to use, please discuss this with instructor before you turn in your essay. • You must use at least three sources, but not more than five (otherwise your research could get unwieldy). • Topic to be selected with instructor approval by next week. By then, you should have a good idea what your general argument will be. • Essay are due when you come to final exam on the last day of class. No essays will be accepted after that time!!! • The essay will be 15% of your course grade. • Any questions?

6. Requirements for Class Essay Choosing a Topic: 1. Hopefully, something we have talked about in class has interested you. For example, when you read Chapter four, perhaps you will be intrigued, by the third “proof” for the existence of God: the Argument from Design. 2. Pick two philosophers who addressed the question, say William Paley and David Hume. 3. Focus your attention on one point where they disagreed. For example, Paley and Hume disagreed about the strength of the watchmaker analogy. 4. Decide what you think about this particular disagreement and make a statement (a claim!) that summarizes your own view on it. For example, a claim might be: Paley based the watchmaker analogy on strong scientific evidence that David Hume did not recognize. Notice that simply saying “Paley was right and Hume was wrong” is not a good claim because it is excessively vague. Now, have fun and let’s hear your argument for that conclusion !!!

7. Requirements for Class Essay • Your essay will be graded as an sum of five scores: • How correctly do you represent the view of the 1st philosopher? NO STRAW MEN ALLOWED! • How correctly do you represent the view of the 2st philosopher? NO STRAW MEN ALLOWED! • Is your claim reasonable and clearly stated? • Do you give a good argument for your claim?, and • Technical areas such as grammar, spelling. Did you follow the specified requirements?, did you provide a bibliography of your sources, etc.

8. Online Philosophy Sources that you • might wish to use in your term paper: • http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/ • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/gpi/philo.htm • http://philosophy.hku.hk/psearch/ • http://www.uni-giessen.de/~gk1415/philosophy.htm • http://plato.stanford.edu/

9. Chapter 3 • Reality and Being • (a Metaphysical Study) • ***

10. Realism • Realism is the view that the real world exists independent of our language, our thoughts, our perceptions, or our beliefs about it. • Our common sense demands of us that we believe in realism. • But how can we know that “our wonderful world is real?” Can we prove it? Or alternately, do we have evidence? Can we provide “reasons to believe” without “begging the question?” • And what does it even mean for our world to be “real?” If someone were to say that the world was NOT real, what would he mean? What we understand that he was saying?

11. What Is Reality? • For now, let us assume we are realists, that is, we believe in realism. So what is the reality we believe in? • Some might argue that reality is what we experience through our senses. • Or would you perhaps argue that reality consists of more than the material world? What about justice, mathematics, liberty, freedom, truth, beauty, space, time, and love? • Is language real? • Is God real? • Or the sub-atomic theoretical entities that physics asserts? Are they real?

12. Metaphysics is the Study of What is Real • The most fundamental question in metaphysics may be: • Is reality purely material or is there reality beyond the material? • We already discussed this question to some degree in terms of the mind/body problem, but now we will begin to look at this issue in a much broader scope. • We have already seen the materialism of Thomas Hobbes, particular in the context of the mind/body problem. Hobbes, however, argued for Materialism in a much broader sense.

13. What is Real? • *** • Disk from “The Examined Life” • Video Series

14. Descartes & The Scientific Revolution In 1636, a Hobbes travels to Italy where he may have met with Galileo. With the influence of Galileo, Hobbes develops his social philosophy on principles of geometry and natural science. Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy", the "father of modern physics", the "father of science", and "the Father of Modern Science“ Galileo proposes that physics should be a “new science” based on methods of observation not just on the methods of reason.

15. Materialism • Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) rejects Cartesian dualism claiming that Descartes Mind/Body problem itself refutes dualism. • Since mind and body cannot interact, they cannot both exist within human nature. • There can only be one realm of human nature and that is the material world. • All human activities, including the mental, can be explained on the paradigm of a machine.

16. Materialism • Hobbes was reductionist in that he believed that one kind of purported reality (the mind) could be understood entirely in terms of another (matter). • New scientific techniques of observation and measurement being used by Galileo, Kepler, and Copernicus were making giant strides in understanding the universe. • The spirit of his century suggested to Hobbes that all reality would be explained in time in terms only of the observable and the measurable. • Hobbes himself was unable to explain any mental processes in terms of the physical. • Perhaps motivating Hobbes’ view was basically his passionate faith in the advancement of science at the time.

17. The Prima Facie (or Self-evident) Case for Materialism • The argument from common sense: • If there are other realities besides the material, can they causally interact with the material world? • If so, how can this interaction happen? If they can not interact, what does it mean to say that such a reality exists? • Please note this may be moredifficult that even the mind/body problem where we do seem to have direct evidence to believe that our own consciousness exists.

18. The Prima Facie (or Self-evident) Case for Materialism • The argument from science: • Science seems to be our most developed and useful organized body of knowledge about the world by focusing on observation and measurement of the physical material world. In the history of science, discussion of any kinds of entities other than material entities largely have been blind alleys. • The history of science is full of examples where entities once thought to be necessary to explain life and man have been replaced by fully causal explanations in terms of chemicals and biological processes. Doesn’t it seem reasonable that this also may be the case with mental states? (4:58)

19. Is There an Alternative to Materialism? Idealism & Plato’s Theory of Forms • The view that reality is primarily composed of ideas or thought rather than a material world is the doctrine known as Idealism. That is, an Idealist would say that a world of material objects containing no thought either could not exist or at the least would not be fully "real." • The earliest formulation of this view is given to us by Plato. • In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the world of shadows is representative of the material world and is not fully real.

20. Plato’s Theory of Forms • What is the problem with which Plato is faced? • How can one live a happy and satisfying life in a contingent, changing world without there being some permanence on which one can rely? • Indeed, how can the world appear to be both permanent and changing all the time. • Plato observed that the world of the mind, the world of ideas, seems relatively unchanging. Justice, for example, does not seem to change from day to day, year to year. • On the other hand, the world of our perceptions change continuously. One rock is small, the next large, the next…?

21. Plato’s Theory of Forms • To resolve this problem, Plato formalized the classic view of idealism in his doctrine of Forms. • In everyday language, a form is how we recognize what something isand unify our knowledge of objects. (e.g How do we say two objects of different size, color, etc. are both cars?) • Permanence comes from the world of forms or ideas with which we have access through reason. • In Plato’s view, all the particular entities we see as material objects are shadows of that reality. Behind each entity is a perfect form or ideal. Ideal forms are eternal and everlasting. Individual beings are imperfect. • e.g. Roundness is an ideal or form existing in a world different from physical basketballs. Individual basketballs participate or copy the form.

22. Plato’s Theory of Forms • Forms are transcendent, that is they do not exist in space and time. That is why they are unchanging. • Forms are pure. They only represent a single character and are the perfect model of that property. • Material objects are a complex conglomeration of copies of multiple forms located in space and time. • Forms are the cause of all that exists in the world. • Forms exist in a hierarchy with the Form of The Good being the highest form. • Forms are the ultimate reality because they are more objective than material things which are subjective and vary in our perception of them.

23. What is the Essence of the Form of the Good? • Forms are the cause of all that exists in the world. Forms exist in a hierarchy with the Form of The Good being the highest form and thus is the first cause of all that exists. • Forms are the ultimate reality because they are more objective than material things which are subjective and vary in our perception of them. • For Socrates and Plato, the question “What is a thing?” is the question what is the essence of the thing? That is, the attempt is to identify what (presumably one) characteristic or property makes that thing what it is.

24. What is the Essence of the Form of the Good? • Further, Plato compares the power of the Good to the power of the sun. The sun illuminates things and makes them visible to the eye. The absolute or perfect Good illuminates the things of the mind (forms) and makes them intelligible. • The Good sheds light on ideas but, the vision of the idea of the Good is, according to Plato, too much for human minds. • When Plato emphasizes The Good as the cause (I.e. an active agent) of essences, structures, and forms, as well as of knowledge, he seems to be invoking the idea of the Good as God. The Good as absolute order makes all intermediate forms or structures possible.

25. Modern Idealism • The founder of modern Idealism is Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753). • Berkeley argued against Hobbes’ Materialism that the conscious mind and its ideas and perceptions are the basic reality. • Berkeley believed that the world we perceive does exist. However that world is not external to and independent of the mind. • The external world is derived from the mind. • However, there is a further reality beyond our own minds. Since we have ordered perceptions of the world which are not controlled by an individual’s mind, they must be produced by God’s divine mind. • (9:00)

26. Pragmatism • The major pragmatist philosophers are Charles S. Pierce (1839-1914) and William James (1842-1910). • To the American Pragmatists, the debate between materialism and idealism had become a pointless philosophical exercise. • They wanted philosophy to “get real” (as we might say today.) • The Pragmatists argued that philosophy loses its way when it loses sight of the social problems of its day. Thus, the Pragmatists focused on issues of practical consequence. For them, asking even what is real in the complete sense is not an abstract matter.

27. Pragmatism • In terms of Metaphysics, James argued against both sense observation and scientific method and reason as the determinants of reality. • Reality is determined by its relation to our “emotional and active life.” In that sense, a man determines his own reality. What is real is what “works” for us. • Pragmatism was refreshing and offered new insights to various disciplines, particularly psychology as a developing science. • Ultimately to most philosophers, pragmatism failed to give a systematic response to the traditional philosophical issues that Materialism and Idealism were struggling with.

28. Logical Positivism • Similar somewhat to the American Pragmatists, the Logical Positivists also viewed the debate between materialism and idealism as a pointless philosophical exercise. • Unlike the Pragmatists however, they identified the problem with the metaphysical debate as a problem in understanding language and meaning. • The Logical Positivists proclaimed that Metaphysics was meaningless and both Materialists and Idealists were making claims that amounted to nonsense. They might be proposing theories that seemed to be different but had no consequences to our understanding of the world. • A.J. Ayer (1910 – 1989) proposed a criterion by which it could be determined what was a meaningful statement to make about reality.

29. The Logical Positivist Criteria of Meaning • Metaphysical statements such as “God exists” or “Man has a mind and body” or ethical statements such as “Lying is wrong” are meaningless for Ayer. • Such statements do not make assertions about the world, but in fact only express emotions and feelings like poetry. • A statement can only be meaningful if it is verifiable by means of shared experience.

30. Anti-Realism • Anti-realism rejects the notion that there is a single reality. Rather, there is multiple realities that are dependent upon how they are described, perceived, or thought about. • Notice that whereas Berkeley emphasized consciousness as the basis of the world, the modern anti-realists focus on the pervasiveness of language. • Is “Realism” a condition of sanity? Can it • be challenged? • How can you even know about “reality” without language? Thus, what sense does it make to say reality exists “beyond” language? • Is reality dependent on our “contextualization” of things. Does this mean “reality” is just whatever you think it is? Is this different than “subjectivity?” Or is it an objective, shareable cultural phenomena?