Philosophy Fridays

1. Philosophy Fridays

2. Renee Descartes • Considered the father of modern Philosophy • Rationalism-"any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification.” • the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive

3. Descartes continued… • "Cogito ergo sum” I think therefore I am • Believed in God and defended free will • Stressed the importance of empirical science

4. Plato’s Cave Allegory for how we view life • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69F7GhASOdM&feature=related

5. Plato’s view of the “enlightened” • They would know their previous existence was farce, a shadow of truth, and they would come to understand that their lives had been one of deception. A few would embrace the sun, and the true life and have a far better understanding of “truth.” They would also want to return to the cave to free the others in bondage, and would be puzzled by people still in the cave who would not believe the now “enlightened” truth bearer. Many would refuse to acknowledge any truth beyond their current existence in the cave.

6. Examples of “truth bearers”-philosophers, religious prophets, scientists • We all may acquire and comprehend the world around us as our experience of physical objects, but it would be a mistake to limit ourselves to the conventional thoughts indentured by our stubbornness towards change.

7. “The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” — Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754

8. Jean-Jacques Rousseau Primitivism-belief that those who lived far from cities in what was called the “state of nature” were better off • State of Nature supposedly… • Had less crime • Were happier people • Were more willing to share the fruits of their labor • Rousseau restated the myth of the Garden, blaming government for society’s problems (corruption, greed)

9. Rousseau continued… • Created the archetype of the “noble savage” • “noble savage” is uneducated, but brilliant in the ways of nature, resourceful and able to provide for his family

10. Most famous for expanding upon the idea of the social contract, “Consent of the governed” • Noble savage is a balance between chaos and oppression • morality was not a societal construct, but rather "natural" in the sense of "innate"

11. Transcendentalism • One way to look at the Transcendentalists is to see them as a generation of well educated people who lived in the decades before the American Civil War and the national division that it both reflected and helped to create. • These people, mostly New Englanders, mostly around Boston, were attempting to create a uniquely American body of literature. It was already decades since the Americans had won independence from England. Now, these people believed, it was time for literary independence. And so they deliberately went about creating literature, essays, novels, philosophy, poetry, and other writing that were clearly different from anything from England, France, Germany, or any other European nation.

12. Basic Beliefs • Inherent goodness of both man and nature. • society and its institutions—particularly organized religion and political parties—ultimately corrupted the purity of the individual. • Faith that man is at his best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true community could be formed.

13. Immanuel Kant • Ralph Waldo Emerson gave the German philosopher Immanuel Kant the credit for making "Transcendentalism" a familiar term. • Contrary to Locke's theory, that before any concept could be intellectualized it must first be experienced by the senses, Kant said there were experiences that could be acquired through "intuitions of the mind;" he referred to the "native spontaneity of the human mind."

14. In his essay, "Nature," Emerson explained how every idea has its source in natural phenomena, and that the attentive person can "see" those ideas in nature. Intuition allowed the transcendentalist to disregard external authority and to rely, instead, on direct experience.

15. Ralph Waldo Emerson • Individuality • Freedom • The ability for humankind to realize almost anything • The relationship between the soul and the surrounding world • Emerson's "nature" was more philosophical than naturalistic: "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul."

16. Existentialism • the philosophical and cultural movement which holds that the starting point of philosophical thinking must be the experiences of the individual.  • Moral and scientific thinking together do not suffice to understand human existence

17. Existentialism became popular in the years following WWII and influenced a range of disciplines besides philosophy, including theology, drama, art, literature and psychology. • Existentialists generally regard traditional systematic or academic philosophies, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience.

18. Basic Beliefs of Existentialism • Existence Precedes Essence. • Human life is understandable only in terms of an individual man’s existence, his particular experience of life. A man lives rather than is, and every man’s experience is unique, radically different from everyone else’s and can be understood truly only in terms of his involvement in life or commitment to it. • There is no Platonic ideal of man—there is no universal of human nature of which each man is only one example. Don’t ask “What is mankind?” Ask: “Who am I?” • The existentialist insists that each person is unique. He is an entire universe—the center of infinity.

19. Absurdity: life is absurd and reason is incapable of dealing with the depths of human life • Human reason is relatively weak and imperfect and there are dark places in human life which are “non-reason” and to which reason scarcely penetrates. • Existentialism insists that man must be taken in his wholeness and not in some divided state, that whole man contains not only intellect but also anxiety, guilt, and the will to power—which modify and sometimes overwhelm the reason. • A man seen in this light is fundamentally ambiguous, full of contradictions and tensions which cannot be dissolved simply by taking thought.

20. Alienation or Estrangement • Because of the dissociation of reason from the rest of the psyche, we have SCIENCE, a hallmark of Western civilization. Since the Renaissance we have progressively separated man from concrete earthy existence, and forced him to live at a high level of abstraction. • Man lives in alienation from God, from nature, from other men, from his own true self. • Existentialists worry about the walls of industry and technology which shut us off from nature and from one another. • Crowding of people into cities • Subdivision of labor • Burgeoning of centralized government • Growth of advertising, propaganda and the mass media of entertainment and communication  • These things drive us apart by destroying individuality and making us live on the surface of life, content to deal with things rather than people.

21. Fear, Trembling, and Anxiety • “Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up?” –William Faulkner at his Nobel Prize • Causes of Fear, Trembling, and Anxiety • Lost optimism from the Age of Enlightenment that problems can be solved through reason, science. Nature can be “conquered.” • WW I • Great Depression • WW II and Holocaust • Nuclear threat • Environmental crises • Terrorism • Too many moral choices! We cannot resolve ethical questions by subjecting our moral consciousness to an impersonal deliberative perspective. Ethical questions are essentially first-person.

22. The Encounter with Nothingness • If man is alienated from nature, God, neighbors, and self, what is left? • People who seemingly have “everything” feel empty, uneasy, discontented.  • Nothingness appears in existentialism, as the placeholder of the possibility. The awareness of anything in the world that is not my own existence is an awareness of nothingness, that is, what I, this existence am not and in some cases I could become.

23. Freedom • Existentialists write about the loss of freedom or the threat to it, or the enlargement of the range of human freedoms. • Freedom means human autonomy. Sartre said that we are condemned to freedom. Because there is no God, we must accept individual responsibility for our own becoming. Nothing explicitly implies that in becoming a free individual one becomes a virtuous person. • Freedom is the acceptance of responsibility for choice and a commitment to one’s choice.

24. Fatalism • Fatalism generally refers to several of the following ideas: • Though the word “fatalism” is commonly used to refer to an attitude of resignation in the face of some future event or events which are thought to be inevitable, philosophers usually use the word to refer to the view that we are powerless to do anything other than what we actually do.Included in this is that man has no power to influence the future, or indeed, his own actions. This belief is very similar to predeterminism. • That actions are free, but nevertheless work toward an inevitable end. • That acceptance is appropriate, rather than resistance against inevitability. This belief is very similar to defeatism.

25. While the terms are often used interchangeably, fatalism, determinism, and predeterminism are discrete in emphasizing different aspects of the futility of human will or the foreordination of destiny. However, all these doctrines share common ground. • Determinists generally agree that human actions affect the future but that human action is itself determined by a causal chain of prior events. Their view does not accentuate a "submission" to fate or destiny, whereas fatalists stress an acceptance of future events as inevitable. Determinists believe the future is fixed specifically due to causality; fatalists and predeterminists believe that some or all aspects of the future are inescapable, but not necessarily due to causality. • Fatalism is a looser term than determinism.

26. Both fatalism and predeterminism, by referring to the personal "fate" or to "predetermined events" strongly imply the existence of a someone or something that has done the "predetermining." This is usually interpreted to mean a conscious, omniscient being or force who has personally planned—and therefore knows at all times—the exact succession of every event in the past, present, and future, none of which can be altered.

27. Idle Argument • One famous ancient argument regarding fatalism was the so-called Idle Argument. It argues that if something is fated, then it would be pointless or futile to make any effort to bring it about. The Idle Argument was described by Origen and Cicero and it went like this: • If it is fated for you to recover from this illness, then you will recover whether you call a doctor or not. • Likewise, if you are fated not to recover, you will not do so whether you call a doctor or not. • But either it is fated that you will recover from this illness, or it is fated that you will not recover. • Therefore it is futile to consult a doctor.

28. Epistemology • Philosophy- • (Philo- love of )(sophia-learning) • Episteme/doxa • (reliable knowledge)/(opinion) • Epistemology –study of “valid” (trustworthy) knowing

29. Big questions of philosophy- • What is most significant or real, and can I know this with certainty? • What should I do about what I determine to be real and significant?

30. John Dewey • was an American philosopher, psychologist and education reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology. He was a major representative of progressive education and liberalism. • Although Dewey is known best for his publications concerning education, he also wrote about many other topics, including experience, nature, art, logic democracy, ethics and inquiry.

31. In his advocacy of democracy, Dewey considered two fundamental elements—schools and civil society—as being major topics needing attention and reconstruction to encourage experimental intelligence and plurality. Dewey asserted that complete democracy was to be obtained not just by extending voting rights but also by ensuring that there exists a fully formed public opinion, accomplished by effective communication among citizens, experts, and politicians, with the latter being accountable for the policies they adopt.

32. Dewey’s Circuit of Inquiry • Judgment is more likely to be true if it is based on reflective inquiry

33. Dewey Quotes • Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. • Arriving at one goal is the starting point of another.