Midterm Flashcards Preview

• Socrates spoke of a daimonion signal that came to him.
• Daimonion= divine

• He dreamt that he saw a beautiful woman in white robes.
  • She, quoting the Illiad, said “To the pleasant land of Phthia on the third day thou shalt come”
• While Crito expresses puzzlement at this dream, the meaning, to Socrates, is quite clear: he will not die for another three days
• He is to be executed the day after the expedition returns, the boat cannot possibly return until at least tomorrow.

1. it is unjust to hasten your death

2. he's abandoning his sons, leaving them without a father

3. people will think that his friends are cowards

• If we blindly accept the majority opinion on matters of justice, we are likely to do great damage to our spiritual/mental/moral well-being.
• If we accept the wise or knowledgeable person’s opinion, we are likely to live a just and honorable life.
• Therefore we shouldn’t pay attention to the opinion of the majority, but only those who are wise and knowledgeable.

• explains why it would be unjust for him to leave his cell
• Since the laws break as one entity, if you break one, you break all of them- causing Socrates great harm if he does escape
• Says that the citizen is bound to the laws like a child is bound to a parent, and that going against the Laws would be like striking a parent.
• Rather than escaping, Socrates should try to persuade the Laws to let him go- and the Laws present the citizen’s duty to them in the form of a social contract
  • By choosing to live in Athens, a citizen is to abide by the Laws- socrates especially because he has happily lived there for seventy years
• If he were to escape, he would validate the contract, and become an outlaw who would not be welcomed in any other civilized state for the rest of his life
  • And when he dies, he would be harshly judged by the underworld

• where two individuals, acting in their own self-interest, pursue a course of action that does not result in the ideal outcome.
• typical prisoner's dilemma is set up in such a way that both parties choose to protect themselves at the expense of the other participant

• The laws claim to have played a large role in the shaping of Socrates, and remind him of how important their relationship is
  • His parents were married and gave birth to him
  • Provided his upbringing and education
  • Ensured that he received adequate training in music and gymnastics
• The Laws suggest to Socrates that their relationship is similar to that of a father with his son or a master with his slave
  • The son or slave has no right to retaliate and is punished for wrongdoings
  • And should certainly not destroy his father or master to try and protect himself
• The Laws also suggest that one's ties to one's country are even stronger than one's ties to one's family, and so it is even more important to respect the judgments of the Laws.
  • Just as one should be willing to suffer and die for one's country in battle rather than flee to save oneself, one should also be willing to suffer and die according to the Laws rather than to destroy them by trying to save oneself.

• To return evil for evil may be in harmony with the morality of the many, but as he has indicated before, public opinion when not supported by good reasons is never a safe guide to follow.
• if he goes forth returning evil for evil, and injury for injury, breaking the covenants and agreements he has made, the citizens of the state, including his own friends, will despise him and look upon him as an enemy who has done his best to destroy them.
• All of this, Socrates tells Crito, is the voice that he seems to hear murmuring in his ears and that prevents him from hearing anything else.
• Socrates asks that he be allowed to follow the imitations of God

• axioms
  • “self-evident”
  • cannot be false, are absolutely certain
• theorems
  • follow from axioms
  • follow by pure logic, inherit certainty

• Used to discover the foundations of knowledge
• For any proposition, consider if there is any way to put it in some doubt
• The method is applied to classes of beliefs
  • (ex. beliefs formed by perception, or memory, or etc.)
• An indubitable proposition is one that passes
• Descartes’s test: it cannot be put into doubt
• A posteriori beliefs
• Dreaming, hallucination and illusion give reasons for putting such beliefs into doubt

• perceptual illusion
  • Testimony of the senses with respect to any judgement about the external world may turn out to be mistaken
  • Things are always just as they seem at first glance; we should never wholly trust in the truth of what we perceive
•  The Dream Problem
  • More systematic method for doubting the legitimacy of all sensory perception
  • “Since the most realistic dreams are internally indistinguishable from waking experience, it is possible that everything I now ‘perceive’ to be part of the physical world outside me is nothing more than a fabrication of my own imagination”
  • It is possible to doubt that any physical thing really exists, that there is an external world at all
• A Deceiving God
  • “What if (as religion teaches) there is an omnipotent god, but that deity devotes its full attention to deceiving me?”
  • Descartes says that whenever he begins to/has believed something, the deceiver could change the world to render his belief false
  • With this, it seems possible to doubt the truth of absolutely anything I might come to believe.
  • Descartes offered two alternative versions of the hypothetical doubt for the benefit of those who might take offense at even a counter-factual suggestion of impiety.

• I Am, I Exist
  • Descartes claimed that one thing emerges as true even under the strict conditions imposed by the otherwise universal doubt: "I am, I exist" is necessarily true whenever the thought occurs to me. (Med. II) This truth neither derives from sensory information nor depends upon the reality of an external world, and I would have to exist even if I were systematically deceived. For even an omnipotent god could not cause it to be true, at one and the same time, both that I am deceived and that I do not exist. If I am deceived, then at least I am.
  • Skepticism is thereby defeated, according to Descartes.
    • No matter how many skeptical challenges are raised there is at least one fragment of genuine human knowledge: my perfect certainty of my own existence
• I Am a Thinking Thing
  • “If I know that I am, I must also know what I am”
    • an understanding of my true nature must be contained implicitly in the content of my awareness.
  • “What I really am is a mind or soul.”
    • So completely am I identified with my conscious awareness, Descartes claimed, that if I were to stop thinking altogether, it would follow that I no longer existed at all.
  • At this point, nothing else about human nature can be determined with such perfect certainty.

•  cogito= cogito ergo sum= “I think, therefore I am”
  • Possibly the most famous single line in all of philosophy
  • In it, the Meditator finds his first grip on certainty after the radical skepticism he posited in the First Meditation.
• The cogito presents a picture of the world and of knowledge in which the mind is something that can know itself better than it can know anything else.
• In this conception, the mind ceases to be something that helps us know about the world and becomes something inside which we are locked.

• Descartes argued that sensory appearances actually provide no reliable knowledge of the external world.
• If I hold a piece of beeswax while approaching the fire, all of the qualities it presents to my senses change dramatically while the wax itself remains.
• It follows that the impressions of sense are unreliable guides even to the nature of bodies

• the mediator first considers what he can know about the piece of wax by means of the senses
  • its taste, smell, color, shape, size, hardness, etc.
• The Meditator then asks what happens when the piece of wax is put near a fire and melts.
  • All of these sensible qualities change, but the same piece of wax still remains.
  • Our knowledge that the solid piece of wax and the melted piece of wax are the same cannot come through the senses since all of its sensible properties have changed.
• The Meditator considers what he can know about the piece of wax, and concludes that he can know only that it is extended, flexible, and changeable.
• He does not come to know this through the senses, and realizes that it is impossible that he comes to know the wax by means of the imagination
  • the wax can change into an infinite number of different shapes and he cannot run through all these shapes in his imagination.
• Instead, he concludes, he knows the wax by means of the intellect alone.
  • His mental perception of it can either be imperfect and confused or it can be clear and distinct

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• his empirical method at work
• he begins to look inward and observe his own mental processes, and then brings about three important distinctions
  • 1. the distinction between ideas and impressions
    • he identifies the full importance of this distinction
    • empirical mindset says that all knowledge comes from experience
    • for hume, this would suggest that all knowledge comes from impressions, so ideas are set up as secondary to impressions
  • 2. the distinction between simple and complex impressions or ideas
    • a simple impression might see the color red, while a complex impression might see the totality of what I see right now
    • complex ideas and impressions are compounded out of the simple ones
  • 3. the three principles of association
    •  resemblance, continuity in time or place, cause and effect
    • these three laws of association might be seen as equivalent to Newton's three laws of motion
    • hoped to have described fully the dynamics of the mind
• with the first two distinctions, he created a hierarchy of mental phenomena
  • because the complex is compounded out of simple and ideas are derived from impressions- everything in our mind is based ultimately upon simple impressions.
• a complex idea is compounded out of several simple ideas, which are derived from several corresponding simple impressions. he suggests that a term can only have meaning if it can be connected to an idea- that can then be associated with simple impressions.
  • implying that every term must be connected with some idea

• impressions:
  • lively and vivid perceptions
    • ex. color red and feeling angry
  • clearly defined, we are not likely to fall into error with respect to them
  • since all ideas are derived from impressions, a term that is not connected to any impression is meaningless
• ideas -
  • drawn from memory, or the imagination, and are thus, less lively and livid -
  • what arise when we reflect upon our impressions •
    • ex. the memory of seeing the color red or a thought about anger
  • faint, obscure, easily confounded with other ideas all ideas are linked to other ideas imagination
  • consists merely of a complex of ideas
    • ex. if we imagine a gold mountain, compounding the idea of gold with our idea of a mountain

=impressions

• *imagination is limited to those ideas of which we had impressions
  • ex. a blind man is unable to imagine colors, a deaf man to imagine sounds, or a mild-mannered man to imagine cruelty*

• simple: derived from simple impressions
• complex: all complex ideas are compounded out of simple ideas

1. all complex ideas are compounded out of simple ideas, which are in turn derived from simple impressions -

• ex. our idea of God as supremely good and intelligent comes from taking our simple ideas of human goodness and intelligence and augmenting them without limit.

2. our imagination is limited to those ideas of which we have had impressions.

• ex. a blind man is unable to imagine colors, a deaf man to imagine sounds, or a mild-mannered man to imagine cruelty.

• one objection to his distinction
• I can imagine certain colors without ever having perceived them.
  • Ex. if I have seen several shades of blue, I might be able to imagine some other shade of blue that falls between them.
• Though he has no answer to this objection, he remarks that the counter-example is so singular that is does not upset his general maxim.

• resemblance
  • where a picture of a tree might make us think of the tree
• contiguity in time or place
  • where mention of one apartment might lead us to discuss others
•  cause and effect
  • where the thought of a wound makes us think of the pain that follows from it
• admits that he has no reason for laying out only these three principles except that he cannot think of any others that would be needed.
  • For instance, association by means of contrast or contrariety can be seen as a combination of resemblance and causation

• There are two different paths of knowledge: reasons and sensation,
  • philosophers can be extinguished according to how much weight they give to each source of knowledge. That distinction is the difference between empiricism and rationalism-and how much can be known just by pure reason.
• Empiricism
  • Believe that all substantive knowledge (all knowledge beyond math and logic) can be known only a posteriori (through experience)
  • “basically means observed, experienced”
  • Believe in tabula rosa/”blank slate”- that we are not born with knowledge of matters of fact.
  • That knowledge must be acquired through experiences
  • Hume is empiricist
• Rationalism
  • Contrast of empiricists
  • Believe that there is some substantive knowledge (knowledge beyond math and logic) that can be known a priori, by pure reason
  • They do NOT think that all knowledge can be known a priori
  • Plato and Decartes were rationalists

• corresponds with distinctions of a priori and a posteriori
• two different kinds of knowledge
• “all the objects of human reason or inquiry may naturally be divided into these two kinds”
• relations of ideas
  • a priori; can be known as “necessary truths” and “certainty”*
    • necessary truths: something that is not only true but it can also be false (ex. truths of arithmetic)
  • science, algebra, and arithmetic
  • mathematical truths are roi
  • ex. Pythagorean theorem
    • propositions of this kind are discoverable by pure reason/pure thought. You don’t need experiences, or impressions
• matters of fact
  • contrasts with relations of ideas
  • most knowledges are matters of fact
  • a posteriori
    • contingent, rather than necessary
    • improbable, rather than certain
  • ex. the sun will rise in the east tomorrow
    • had to have impressions/experiences to know that
    • there’s a 99.9% chance that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow but it is not absolutely certain

• a priori: also called “pure reason”
  • prior to things
  • Hume’s a priori terminology: that we don’t need any impressions
  • Main examples of a priori knowledge: math and logic
• a posteriori
  • Contrasting term for a priori
  • Posterior: after time
  • What can be known only after that experience/through that experience
  • Hume thinks that there isn’t much that can be known a priori, that the bulk of what we know is posteriori (through experience, derived through impressions)

• contingent
  • contingent truth: a true proposition that could have been false
  • most things are contingent truth, as opposed to necessary
  • that we even exist is a contingent truth; “the probability that you exist is incredibly small- millions of sperm racing to the egg, 1/1000000 chance that your sperm reaches the egg”
• necessary

• he argues that causal relations cannot be known a priori
  • main point: basically is saying that you need to have observations to have a justified belief about what is going to happen
  • example:
    • billiards: if you’ve never seen two objects collide, what do you think will happen when the que ball hits another ball
    • adam: man is created, not a boy. Has a developed adult brain, so it can reason. He’s in a garden, and has NO prior knowledge, but knows that if he were to walk into the water, he would submerge and die of suffocation
• causation is merely a constant conjunction
  • constant conjunction= “together/combined”
  • causal relations have many patterns?
  • Ex. two people who attended review session had the two highest grades on the exam
    • The same attribute that causes them to have diligence could also cause them to attend the review session

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• very famous puzzle
• causal relations are patterns that have been observed, but hume says, “even once we have studied a pattern of regularity, theres really no reason to think that those patterns of regularity will continue to hold in the future”

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• free will
  • the ability to choose, think, and act voluntarily
  • for many philosophers- to believe in free will is to believe that human beings can be the authors of their own actions, and to reject the idea that human actions are determined by external conditions or fate
• determinism
  • believes that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes
  • is usually understood to preclude free will because it entails that humans cannot act otherwise than they do
  • theory holds that the universe is utterly rational because complete knowledge of any given situation assures that unerring knowledge of its future is also possible

• incompatibilism: free will and determinism cannot exist
• compatibilism: they can live together and they can coexist

arises when people dispute over words having different meanings

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• testimony: someone saying that something happened
• sense perception:

• If someone has poor character
  • ex. is a known liar
• If they have an ulterior motive/ “interest in what they affirm”
  • ex. there’s something in it for them- they can benefit from spreading certain information
• Manner of delivery
  • ex. if they seem deceptive
• If there is an opposing testimony/ “derive from human testimony*”
  • ex. contrary testimonies undermine one another- stammering, no eye contact, comes on too strong, too hard to sell their story, denies something too much
• minority opinion/”number of witnesses”
  • if something is really uncommon, and there are many more people that say otherwise- that cannot just be a coincidence
• unlikelihood of the event being testified too actually happened in the first place
• union of all of these circumstances

He believes that testimony just introduces another factor in which info can be distorted/changed

• a miracle must be a violation of the laws of nature
• Hume thinks that miracles are possible
  • In the end, he is going to think that every actual report of a miracle is probably false, but he thinks that it is possible?

• we do not have reason to actually accept reasoning for testimony
• gives four specific reasons why he does not believe miracles
• 1. there have not been enough reliable witnesses
• 2. the number of and the character of the witness
• 3. people want to spread wondrous news, regardless of its truth
  • claims that most miracles are reported by ignorant and barbarous nations, and are not reported in modern, scientific times (pg. 80)
  • people are primitive, gullible, and superstitious
• 4. miracles of the different religions mutually undermine one another
  • different religions contradict one another-cannot all be true

• says if there were actually a large amount of people claiming that something happened, then there would be reason to believe that it did
  • Not just a handful of people
• pg. 88

• First, Descartes thought that the Scholastics’ method was prone to doubt given their reliance on sensation as the source for all knowledge.
• Second, he wanted to replace their final causal model of scientific explanation with the more modern, mechanistic model.Attempted to address the issue via his method of doubt
  • Consider any belief false that falls prey to even the slightest doubt

• Core of foundationalism:
  • There are beliefs whose justification is basic
  • all non-basic beliefs ultimately derive their justification from at least one of the existing basic beliefs.

•  Descartes was the first to ask how we can claim to know with certainty anything about the world around us
• The idea is not that these doubts are probable, but that their possibility can never be entirely ruled out. And if we can never be certain, how can we claim to know anything?
• Skepticism attempts to provide a certain foundation for our knowledge and understanding of the world.