John Locke
- Refuted idea that we are born with innate knowledge
- would mean all humans universally accept certain principles are since there are no universally accepted principles, this can’t be true
- Tabula Rosa/blank slate
- we gain knowledge through experience which creates simple ideas and as these ideas combine, they become more complex and form knowledge
- Sole purpose of the government:
- to support the well-being of everyone
- while some natural rights are surrendered when a gov. is formed, the government has ability to protect rights more effectively than one person alone
- if the gov. no longer supports the well being of everyone, it should be replaced and it is the moral obligation of society to revolt.
George Berkley
Empiricist
Monist
only one kind of substance in the universe
Idealist
believed this one substance was mind/thought instead of matter.
Started the idea of subjective idealism
what is perceived as real/true consists only of ideas in the mind
there is no basis for concluding that external objects exist outside the human mind
David Hume
Empiricist
- Bundle theory
- the self is a bundle of bits and pieces of experiences
- when engaged in introspective thought, there is no thing like the self waiting to be discovered
- self is nothing but a loosely knit connection of perceptions
Aesthetic taste can be in good or not good working order, if the mind is preoccupied when looking at art, the effects of the art have little impact.
Human argues that a persons action are only determined to be moral/immoral based on how they affect others (not the individual)
Monist
Whatever is put in our mind is put there by our sensory experience and that existence is based on our sensory experience
Francis Bacon
- Bacon emphasized observation, experimentation, and interaction and set out to create methods that would rely on physical proof in an effort to explain sciences
- Inductive method
- Novum Organum
- refute Aristotle’s deductive method
- carefully observing nature with systematically accumulating data and attempts to uncover laws/theories in relation to how nature works
Mengzi
Confucian
Humans have an innate sense of right and wrong, believing in the urge to conform to li.
When goodness is not nourished, it decays.
John Searle
Devised a thought experiment known as the Chinese room to show that computers lack intentionality.
Artificial intelligence, he argued machines would never have the ability to think
Said only an organized mind, like that of a human being, is able to perform intentionality.
Rene Descartes
- The act of thinking is proof of individual existence
- thought and reason are the essence of humanity
- humans are capable of reason, and without it, one would simple not be human
- substance dualism (mind + body are separate substances)
- rational mind was in control of the body
-mind and body interact e/o at the pineal gland
rationalist
-doubt all things and accept as knowledge only what could not be doubted
Jeremy Bentham
Introduced utilitarianism
Seeking physical pleasure rather than intellectual satisfaction was more in keeping with human nature.
Principle of utility:
when measuring pleasure and pain, Bentham looks at duration, intensity, certainty vs uncertainty, and nearness vs farness.
quantity over quality
Thomas Hobbes
- Did not believe in dualism or the existence of a soul
- Humans avoid pain and pursue pleasure in an effort to seek our own self-interest
- Only way peace can truly be achieved is by coming together and creating a social contract where a group of people agree to have one ultimate authority over a commonwealth
- absolute monarchy is the best type of gov.
- Hobbes believed that we are selfish by nature and would be in a constant state of conflict and chaos.
- He said the state of nature is “short, nasty, and brutish.”
Joseph Butler
Opposite of Hobbes’ views
Human nature has a measure of self-interest, and this was normal (impulse self-love)
Includes benevolence, the desire to do something good for someone else
Said evil results when people violate their nature by carrying out actions that are excessively self-interested.
Mohandas Ghandi
Satyagraha (holding to the truth)
Tool of philosophy and political action
One of the first modern non-western philosophers to develop a practical theory of political change and social justice based on traditions of his people
Believed philosophy of non-violence was ethically superior to the rule of force
Maintained that it represented the first step in people’s liberating themselves from tyranny.
Socrates
Socratic method
Socrates obtained knowledge through the process of question and answers
Evil by nature?
Socrates maintained that the answer is no. He claimed that human nature is “to know the good is to do the good.”
Martin Heidegger
Being is divided into three different types of substances:
- Entities that do not need other entities
- Reg cogitans (nonmaterial substances)
- Res extensa (material substances)
Best way to understand being is by looking internally and interrogating our own selves.
Concluded, the being is us.
Self-interpretation, therefore, is existence.
Immanuel Kant
- Deontologist
Looked at the type of action and not the consequences.
Theory that there exists a universal law of morality that all individuals should obey.
Kant said that our highest human faculty is the ability to reason.
Dualist
Matter to be external to the mind, matter does not depend on the mind.
Knowledge of outside world is not going to be a true one as its filtered by our biases
Idealist-middleground
knowledge comes from a mix of concepts and experiences
Kongfuzi (Confucius)
Created idea of a meritocracy
The Golden Rule
-states that one should treat others as they would wish to be treated
The notion of yin and yang
-two forces that oppose one another are permanently in conflict, which, in turn, creates endless change and contradiction)
Idea that in order to find the middle ground, one must reconcile opposites
William of Ockham
Ockham’s Razor
In trying to understand something, getting unnecessary information out of the way is the fastest way to the truth/best explanation.
When trying to determine which theory/explanation seems most true in a given situation, the simplest explanation/theory is the best choice.
Niccolo Machiavelli
Wrote ‘The Prince’
Separates politics and ethics
describes how to be a political leader (ruthlessness)
always appear to be religious, merciful, and honest
if lying helps to maintain power, the prince should lie
if cruelty is called for, the prince should use it, but still pretend to be merciful
The ends justify the means
Simone de Beauvoir
Humans are nothing else but what they make of themselves
People create their own morality by the choices they make
Life has no purpose/meaning beyond the goals one sets for himself
There is no God to guide human behaviour
People must take responsibility of making their own choices
Choices must authentic or else you live a life of self-deception
Rationalists
- Rationalism is the view that we can gain knowledge of the world through the use of reason, without relying on sense-perception, which is regarded by rationalists as unreliable.
- Descartes, Plato, Gottfried, Kant.
Empiricists
- View that all knowledge must com ultimately from sensory experience.
- Aristotle, David Hume, John Locke, George Berkeley
Dualism
Dualism attempts to answer the mind-body problem.
According to dualism, the mind and body are two separate things.
While the body is the physical substance that a person is made of, the mind is nonphysical substance that exists apart from the body and includes consciousness.
Substance Dualism
Substance can be broken down into two categories: mental and material.
According to Rene Descartes, the material substance does not have the ability to think and the mental substance has no extension in the physical world.
Monism
Monism is that reality is one unified, all encompassing thing; mind or matter.
Idealism
The only substance that exists is the mental substance (consciousness).
Utilitarianism
Jeremy Bentham & John Stuart Mill
Nothing is ever simply right or wrong on its own.
Morality is always based on the consequences that arise as a result of an action, and never based on the actual action.
Actions should be valued according to their utility, or usefulness, in producing pleasure.
“The greatest good for the greatest number.”
Empiricism
The theory that all knowledge comes from sensory experience.
Our sense obtain the raw information from the world around us, and our perception of this raw information starts a process where we begin to format ideas and beliefs.
The idea that humans are born with an innate knowledge is rejected, and that humans only have knowledge that is a posteriori, meaning “based on experience”
Inductive reasoning = knowledge becomes more complex
John Locke, David Hume, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes
Rationalism
The theory that reason, not the senses, is where knowledge originates.
Rationalists claim that without having principles and categories already in place, humans would not be able to organize or interpret the information provided by the senses.
Therefore, humans must have innate knowledge and then use deductive reasoning.
Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant
Formalism
Idea that the properties that make something art, and determine whether it is good or bad, are formal (meaning they are only capable of being understood through hearing or seeing).
Mimesis
Art represents, mirrors or creates an illusion of reality
Focus on objective properties of works of art
Plato
Must reflect the real world/portray the subject matter realistically
Expressionism
Benedetto Croce, Leo Tolstoy and R.G. Collingwood
Emotional impact of an artwork is the measure of its success
Focuses on emotional qualities of artwork
Plato: Theory of Forms
Reality exists on two specific levels:
- the visible world that is made up sights and sounds
- the intelligible world (world of forms) that gives the visible world its being
concepts like beauty, courage, goodness etc. exist in an entire world of Forms outside of space and time, unaffected by what happens in the visible world
Plato: Allegory of the Cave
compares the prisoners chained inside the cave to people that are unaware of his theory of Forms
People mistake the appearance of what is in front of them as reality and live in ignorance
Freed prisoner represents the philosopher, seeking a greater truth outside the perceived reality
In essence, knowledge is gained through the sense and perception is not knowledge but opinion
it is only through philosophical reasoning that one is able to pursue knowledge
Plato: Epistemology
Rationalist
Things people perceive through the senses change because these things dissolve and wear down.
Knowledge acquired though senses is unreliable because people can never generate more than opinions about things belonging to sensory world
Aristotle: Three Laws
Three rules applied to all valid thoughts:
Law of identity: A is A, this hold true because A has certain characteristics. Everything that exists has its own characteristics true to itself
Law of non contradiction: A can’t be A not not A simultaneously. A statement can never be true and false at the exact same time (contradiction would arise).
Law of the excluded middle: Statement can either be true of false; no middle ground. Something has to be either true or false
Aristotle: Logic
Logic was a tool used to attain knowledge and was therefore the very first step in the learning process
logic enables us to discover errors and establish truths
Introduced the idea of syllogism
Empiricist
Aristotle: Ethics
The purpose of ethics is to discover the purpose of life
Happiness is the ultimate and final good, and that people pursue good things in order to achieve happiness
Way to attain happiness is through virtue
-ultimate type of happiness is living a life of intellectual
Francis Bacon: Idols
Idols of the tribe: false notions that come from human nature that are common to everyone
Idols of the cave result from an individual’s tastes and prejudices.
Idols of the marketplace: come from men’s association with others, and chiefly through words and language.
Idols of the theatre come from various philosophies These idols are built up in the fields of theology, philosophy, and science, and, because they are defended by learned groups, are accepted without question by the masses.
Syllogism
A type of reasoning where a conclusion can be deduced based on a series of specific premises or assumptions
made of three propositions: the first two are premises, the last is the conclusion
premises can be universal (all, no, etc.) or particular (some) and can be affirmative or negative
Begging the question
a circular argument in which the conclusion was included in the premise
statement or claim is assumed to be true without evidence other than the statement or claim itself
When one begs the question, the initial assumption of a statement is treated as already proven without any logic to show why the statement is true in the first place.
False causality
the argument that one event or action caused another when the two are not reasonably related.
Decomposition
asserting that what holds true for a class as a whole holds true for each member of the class.
Strawman
Misrepresentation of another person’s argument.
This misrepresentation is usually a weaker argument, which is easier to knock down.
Attack on the motive
Argument attacks the credibility of a person/groups on the grounds that the person/group has biases or motives that are perceived as he real reasons for their views, then the argument is attacking these biases and motives.
Improper appeal to authority
Saying that because an authority thinks something, it must therefore be true.
When a person provides an opinion on a matter on which s/he has no expertise.
Slippery slope
It attacks an action/policy because the action/policy would trigger a chain of events that would lead to a clearly undesirable result.
Bandwagon argument
Appeal to what is accepted by many, if most, people.
Appeal to society normals regarding acceptable behaviour.
Attack on the person
Ad hominem
Attacking the arguer and not his/her argument, shifting the focus from the arguer’s reasons to the arguer’s personality.
Egoism vs. Altruism
Egoism:
- Act in ways that promote our own interests
- Thomas Hobbes said humans were aggressive, greedy, competitive, an anti-social in an effort to satisfy own personal desires.
- Self-interest is a human being’s true nature
Altruism:
- Unselfish concern for others
- Joseph Butler
Inductive argument
An argument that draws general conclusions from specific observations.
An argument in which the conclusion is probably true, given that the premises are true.
Weak (bad support for its conclusion) or strong (probably support for its conclusion)
Deductive argument
Goes from the big picture to the little picture.
Process of drawing a specific conclusion from a general statement or premise.
Either valid (logically entailed) or invalid (offered as valid, but conclusion turns out to not be logically entailed)
Categorical syllogism
Step One: Use a circle to represent each category.
Step Two: Represent any universal statements (all or no) by shading the sections of the diagram they rule out.
Step Three: Represent any particular statement (some or refer to a specific person, place, or thing) by placing a check mark in the sections that are ruled in.
Step Four: Read the result (valid or invalid).
Idealism
reality based on mind or ideas.
George Berkeley was a major contributor to idealism.
He denied the existence of material things and said that what we view as material objects are just bundle of ideas placed in our heads by God.
Manifestations of our mind rather than material things; independent of our mind.
All reality is the creation of the mind, and this reality can have no existence unless a mind is aware of it.
Materialism
Says reality consists of matter.
Materialism define matter as particles in motion and forces that travel.
Materialists often belief that consciousness, the mind, intelligence, and self are just complex material phenomenon that can be fully explained in terms of matter.
Every part of reality is controlling of matter.
Thomas Hobbes, Paul and Patricia Churchland are major contributors of materialism.
Ontological argument for existence of God
Argues that God must exist because God is perfect and existence is a feature of perfection
His argument does not rely on any form of empirical observation, evidence or data.
It is an priori argument, relying entirely on the logic of concepts and reasoning (does not use the senses)
Viewed God as being perfect in power, knowledge, and goodness and therefore in existence
Defenders of this argument include:
- Rene Descartes
- Gottfried Leibniz
- Norman Malcom
- Kurt Godel
- Chales Hartshorne
Criticisms:
- The definition tells people that they have a concept of God just like they would have a concept of any animate object.
- Anselm states that God is the one thing that exists both as a concept in the human mind and as a reality outside the mind.
- For example, you might easily conceive of a world without your favourite food, but if you accept Anselm’s definition of God, then you cannot believe in a world without him.
- Overload objection
Cosmological argument for existence of God
This argument starts by stating whatever exists from something else.
Nothing is the source of its own existence; not is self-creating.
An argument that says that a supreme being must exist because the chain of causes must have a beginning and this beginning was a supreme being
Criticisms:
Say that the argument only proves that there is a beginning to the chain of causes and effects; it does not prove that beginning is a supreme being.
Stephen Hawking — “Who created God?”
Argument of design for the existence of God
Argue the orderliness of the universe suggests that an all powerful being is responsible for creating this order
Order that characterizes the universe could not have come from nowhere or nothing or could it have emerged spontaneously
Criticisms:
-This ‘order’ could have just been created by an evil demon, a computer or something of the sort
-The apparent ‘orderliness’ of the universe is deceiving
Epistemology
Kongfuzi:
- “Real knowledge is to know the extent go one’s ignorance.”
- Emphasized the concrete and the practical.
- Acquiring knowledge is a life-long process.
Plato (Empiricist)
- Plato believed that the things people perceive through the senses are subject to change because these things disintegrate, dissolve and wear down.
- Knowledge acquired through the senses is unreliable because people can never generate more than opinions about things belonging to the sensory world.
Aristotle (Empiricist)
- Knowledge comes from experience — evidence acquired through the senses.
- Did not accept Plato’s notion of innate ideas, said that reason came into play only after people experience things through their senses.
Rene Descartes (Rationalist)
- Proposed to doubt all things and accept as knowledge only what could not be doubted.
- The one thing Descartes finds to be absolutely certain in the midst of radical doubt is that thinking exists, that he as a thinking thing exists.
Immanuel Kant (Middleground, Idealist)
- All knowledge is a mixture of what is given in sense experience and what is contributed b the mind.
- For Kant there is:
- unity of consciousness
How much control should government have in our lives? (ESSAY)
The government should only interfere with the liberties of its citizens if those activities pose a threat to that citizen or others.
John Stuart Mill:
- Each individual has the right to act as s/he desires so long as the actions do not harm others
- Defended free speech - good for human progress to share ideas and allow judgement on what is true or false
- Utilitarian who believed in the greatest happiness for the greatest number
- Strong supporter of female rights
-In representing society’s interests, Government is directly responsible for setting the parameters within which society operates and then defending those limits. Those parameters, when set well, will reflect what is better for most people, with the intention that they are best for everyone. The focus of that effort done right, is providing what people need, rather than ever what they want.
John Locke:
- With the social contract, power remains with the people and people retain the right to remove the government.
- If controversy exists, the people must be heard.
- The government derives power from the people only.
- No control over education
- Education seems much more important. The vast majority of people base their political views on a completely fallacious understanding of history and current events they learned in school. These misunderstandings make political progress on a wide scale virtually impossible.
- Human beings are endowed with the wonderful ability to think, to reason, to make decisions for themselves. They must work within the constraints set by genetics and environment, but can pick from innumerable remaining possible choices. For instance, without the aid of technology, I am genetically incapable of flying or of burrowing very far into the earth. But I can choose whether to run, jog, skip, walk, crawl, or crabwalk to get around.
- Political leaders are self-serving and thus would produce disastrous outcomes if government had more power in the lives of its citizens
- More power equals more money, influence, unlimited favours,
- Many examples throughout history have shown that the imbalance of power between people and its government have been disastrous – not one example where this model has been successful.
- Allows the state to design and control all available choices for us which discourages us from thinking independently and courageously, which fundamentally undermines our freedom of speech and liberty.