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Philosophy exam (Week 7,8,9,10,11 (9 (The problem of other minds (Does the…
Philosophy exam
Week 7,8,9,10,11
9
The problem of other minds
Does the person next to you have a mind?
The argument by analogy with my own case
‘I conclude that other human beings have feelings like me, because, first, they have bodies like me, which I know, in my own case, to be the antecedent conditions of feelings; and because, secondly, they exhibit the acts, and other outward signs, which in my own case, I know by experience to be caused by feelings.’
John Stuart Mill
Problems with the argument by analogy:
Inductive generalisation from one case is weak.
No possibility of independent checks.
It would leave the existence of other minds only probable.
Other solutions
The best explanation
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Featured philosophers: John Stuart Mill
10
Materialist theories of the Mind
The mind is not distinct from the physical
Materialist Theories:
theory 1: analytical behaviorism
Definition: The view that the mind is analytically reducible to behaviour.
theory 2: The Mind-Brain Identity Theory (Reductive Materialism)
Objection to Mind-Brain identity theory theory 3: Eliminative Materialism
Arguments against:
Talk about the brain doesn’t mean the same as talk about the mind
This argument is really a version of the argument from irreducibility.
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Identity Theory commits a Category Mistake
Argument from Introspection
Epistemological Argument
Arguments for:
Identity theorists, like other materialists, point to the purely physical origins, and physical constitution of each individual human being; and to the strictly material evolutionary origins of the species.
Support is also found in the neural dependence of all known mental phenomena, which is precisely what one should expect if the identity theory were true. Of course, systematic neural dependence is also a consequence of property dualism, but here the identity theorist will appeal to considerations of simplicity. Why admit two radically different classes of properties and operations if the explanatory job can be done by one?
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Definition:
The central claim of the identity theory is that the mind is the brain, and that mental states and processes are brain states and processes. As philosophers have it, each mental state or process is numerically identical with (i.e. is literally one and the same thing as) a state or process within the brain.
What this means is that facts about the mind are reducible to physical facts about the brain.
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Theories against dualism
Featured philosophers:
8
Dualism and the mind/body problem
The conceivability argument:
The problem of interaction
Neural dependence
Evolutionary history
Difficulties for the idea of disembodied consciousness
Featured philosophers: Descartes
11
The Personal Identity Problem
What is the personal identity problem
The problem of personal identity centres around the question of what makes you the same person now that you were, say, ten years ago. You look very different and can even be said to be made of completely different stuff now to then. You also think differently, have different likes, dislikes, wants and desires, yet we still wish to say that you are the same person now as you were then. Why do we want to say this and what is it about you that is supposed to be the same if all the things mentioned above are different. We will explore two types of solution, those which look to psychological continuity and those which emphasise physical continuity.
Two sorts of identity
Qualitative identity
Has the same qualities.
But there are still two things.
Numerical identity:
Very different qualities
But just one person.
Criteria of personal identity over time
The body
The body criterion
Possibly the most natural view to take.
But it faces the problem that over time my body may replace the matter of which it is composed.
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Memory
Problems for the memory theory
The problem of forgetting.
The circularity objection (Butler)
I use memory to recognise which experiences are mine. But this doesn’t mean that it is memory that makes them mine.
Past experiences are not mine because I remember them, rather I remember them because they are mine.
Personal identity persists over time because you retain memories of yourself at different points, and each of these memories are connected to ones before it
The brain
Character or personality
The soul
The soul
Cartesian or ‘substance’ dualism:
I am a thinking thing or substance.
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Featured philosophers:
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Ontological argument
Criticisms: existence is not a predicate (kant)
you cannot describe something into existence
You can’t build bridges from the conceptual to the real.
Unicorns have one horn’ is analytic.
So, if there are unicorns, they have one horn.
‘God exists’ is analytic.
So, if God exists, he exists.
Anselm's argument in Chapter 2 can be summarized as follows:
It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that God is a being than which none greater can be imagined (that is, the greatest possible being that can be imagined).
God exists as an idea in the mind.
A being that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is, other things being equal, greater than a being that exists only as an idea in the mind.
Thus, if God exists only as an idea in the mind, then we can imagine something that is greater than God (that is, a greatest possible being that does exist).
But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God (for it is a contradiction to suppose that we can imagine a being greater than the greatest possible being that can be imagined.)
Therefore, God exists.
In Chapter 3, Anselm presented a further argument in the same vein:
By definition, God is a being than which none greater can be imagined.
A being that necessarily exists in reality is greater than a being that does not necessarily exist.
Thus, by definition, if God exists as an idea in the mind but does not necessarily exist in reality, then we can imagine something that is greater than God.
But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God.
Thus, if God exists in the mind as an idea, then God necessarily exists in reality.
God exists in the mind as an idea.
Therefore, God necessarily exists in reality.[22]
Featured philosophers: Anselm
Week 13,14,15,16,17
15
Anarchism and justifying the state
Featured philosophers:
Anarchism
Core ideas
Autonomy of the individual
‘Each man should be wise enough to govern himself.’
Opposition to the state
‘To be governed is to be ... noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorised, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.’
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William Godwin (1756 –1836)
Key thinker
William Godwin (1756-1836)
Humans as a blank slate
They are rational and so perfectible
The ‘principle of private judgement’
A rational society will one day come about
Revolutionaries
Nihilist anarchists:
Max Stirner (1806-1856)
Sergei Nechaev (1847-1882)
Anarcho-communists
Mikhail Bakunin 1814-1876
Pieter Kropotkin
Bakunin
“They [the Marxists] maintain that only a dictatorship—their dictatorship, of course—can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up.”
The origins of liberalism: Athens
Citizens protected by the law.
Self-determination.
Universal human nature.
“I am a citizen of the world.”
Diogenes of Synope (c.404-323 BCE)
Humanism: the celebration of the individual.
Louis XIV (1638-1715) ‘The Sun King’
Absolute rule from 1643-1715
His position justified by the doctrine of the ‘divine right of kings’
16th & 17th century: The rise of the merchant class
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Classical Liberalism
Human nature is rational but self-interested.
Humans are naturally free and equal.
A mechanistic view of the state.
The sole purpose of government is to defend universal human rights.
16
Mill and the Harm Principle
The harm principle
‘The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient justification.’
Problems for the Harm Principle
Can ‘harm’ be defined in terms of self- and other-regarding actions?
Damage to interests, rather than mere offence (i.e. assault and theft, but not religious worship or poor personal hygiene)
But can we distinguish harm from damaging interests? (e.g. competition for jobs or markets)
On Liberty, p.30
A limit to the harm principle
It does not cover those without sufficiently advanced faculties, e.g. children, ‘barbarians’, the mentally ill.
Why liberty will improve society
The free development of individuality is one of the leading essentials of well being.
On Liberty, p.185
The individual is best placed to decide what will make them happy.
Autonomy is the route to a fully rounded personality.
Experiments in living advance social progress.
Some difficulties for individual liberty
The general happiness might be better served by suppression of liberty.
It offends against public morality, undermines social cohesion.
It offends against principles of distributive justice.
It ignores the inequities in civil society.
Featured philosophers:
Joel Feinberg and the ‘offence principle’
Preventing, or reducing harm to others is one ‘good reason’ in support of penal legislation.
Another ‘good reason’ for state coercion is ‘the offence principle.’
“It is always a good reason in support of a proposed criminal prohibition that it is probably necessary to prevent serious offense to persons other than the actor and would probably be an effective means to that end if enacted.”
Feinberg 1985
14
The Social Contract
the key to saving the world from chaos or the state of nature
Hobbes believed that morals was not deeply real, morals cannot be found through reason or divine scriptures. Furthermore, he believed that morals is not natural or primitive.
Instead Hobbes proposed that any time you get a group of:
Free, Self-Interested and rational individuals,
morality will just emerge.
This is because free, rational and self interested people realise that there are more benefits to be found in cooperating than in not cooperating.
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Featured philosophers: Hobbes,
Is the state justified?
What is it that makes us obliged to obey the laws of the state?
What answer might a liberal philosopher give?
possible answers:
We are better off with the state.
Consent. Authority is only justified if it is voluntarily consented to.
The social contract explains how the individual can consent to submit him or herself to state power.
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17
The Relationship between Law and Morality
Legal Positivism
What is a law?
One answer:
The command of the sovereign
Conventional rules
Dependent on social facts
Legal Positivism
The existence of law is a factual question, not a moral one.
So legal rules are legitimate because they are enacted by a legitimate authority according to certain procedures and accepted by society.
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Featured philosophers:
Jeremy Bentham
John Austin
H.L.A. Hart
Natural law
Lex iniusta non est lex’
St Augustine
Positive law must conform to natural or divine law.
If it doesn’t it is not really a law at all.
So we have no duty to obey such a law.
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13
Moral Egoism, Hobbes and The State of Nature
The state of nature
A hypothetical time, with no rules to govern our behavior
Hobbes described life there as solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.
Given the fact that the state of nature is bad for everyone, Hobbes reckons it is rational for everyone to want to escape it. Since the only escape consists in following rules which require co-operation between people – a kind of social contract – it is rational for us to agree to follow such rules so long as we can rely on others to do so too.
Hobbes’s theory is saying that morality is purely conventional: that there is no such thing as right and wrong independently of what is agreed by people living in civil society.
John Locke's state of nature
The state of nature is not a war of all against all.
Rather, it is a “conjugal society” which are moral
So there exist certain ‘natural’ rights, to life, liberty and property.
However, the state threatens to descend into war, so...
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau
There are no natural rights.
The state of nature was one of peace and plenty.
The state is the source of human misery.
The social contract is a procedure to decide what rules would free and equal agents be prepared to impose upon themselves in order to promote the general will.
Moral egoism
Is a normative view on morals which states that it is morally right to do things which benefit our self-interests or ones-self.
Featured philosophers: Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Locke
Week 18,19,20,21,22
20
Consequentialism
Deontological and Consequentialist theories in ethics
Deontology
A duty or rights based approach. Deontological theories focus on the action itself, rather than the effects.
Consequentialism (teleology)
Based on the consequences. Consequentialists calculate the good and bad effects of an action, rather than considering the action itself.
Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory.
It is also a hedonistic theory.
What is hedonism?
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Featured philosophers:
21
Deontological ethics and natural law
Deontological ethics
Kant’s moral theory on a post-it note
Right and wrong are to be worked out for ourselves through the use of reason alone.
Moral judgements are objective.
A moral action is one which proceeds from the proper motive: a recognition of duty.
Rational agency
Hypothetical imperatives - These are contingent on a desire.
f you want a cup of tea you should boil the water.
If you want to make a good bomb you should use TNT.
You should get your pawns out early in chess.
(Hidden if and hidden desire!)
Categorical imperatives
not based on desire, no ifs... You should help your elderly grandma.
Any non-rational motive, (such as an emotion or feeling of compassion) is not a moral motive.
Duties are unconditional demands (categorical imperatives) on our behaviour. In contrast, conditional demands (or hypothetical imperatives) depend on our having certain ends in mind.
Duties are determined by the attempt to universalise the maxim underlying an action.
If it can be universalised without contradiction then it is a moral motive and so a duty.
The ultimate duty is always to act in accordance with the Categorical Imperative, i.e. to always act in accordance with a maxim that you will everyone to act by.
A second version of the Categorical Imperative states that we should always treat others as ends-in-themselves and never as means to our ends.
The categorical imperative
Always act in ways in which you would want everyone to act (also known as the principle of universalisability).
Always treat others as ends-in-themselves and never as means to our ends (also known as the principle of humanity).
Some problems with Kantian ethics
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Natural Law
Aristotle (384-322)
Morality is universal, but its truths are discoverable by investigating this world.
Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274)
So what are they?
Aquinas believes we can discover the natural laws governing our conduct by reflecting on the basic human goods. These goods are those ends which it is rational for us to seek, given our nature as human beings.
If he is right you should be able to come up with the same goods as he does.
Aquinas’s natural goods
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God created humans with a specific nature and function.
So we have certain natural goods to which we aspire.
Reason can determine what these natural goods are.
Featured philosophers:
19
Mill and the right to free speech
Why is free speech important?
To get at the truth.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
‘If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.’
Mill’s argument for free speech
No view is immune from error.
So the minority view may be true or false.
If it is true, then allowing it to be compete for our attention should lead to us accepting it.
If it is false, than allowing it to compete for our attention should strengthen our justification for our true beliefs.
So either way views should be allowed to compete in the ‘free market of ideas’.
Mill’s arguments for free speech
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On Liberty, p.142
‘However true [a belief] may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.’
‘We go to sleep at [the] post as soon as there is no enemy in the field’
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On Liberty, p.161
To make democracy work.
To signify the importance of human dignity.
Limitations on free speech
Can you think of any reasons why we might want to restrict freedom of expression?
Harm
E.g. incitement to commit crimes
Problem
But how are we to judge when restrictions can be placed on what people are allowed to say?
John Stuart Mill thinks he has an answer.
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Featured philosophers:
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
22
realism and relativism
Questions in meta-ethics
Are there moral facts?
What do moral concepts refer to? (e.g. ‘virtue’, ‘evil’)
Does moral language make statements about reality?
Can moral terms (e.g. ‘good’) be defined in natural terms?
Featured philosophers:
Absolutism: the view that moral values and rules do not vary according to situation, cultural circumstance or historical epoch. So what is right is fixed regardless of the context.
The universality of moral judgements argument
P1 We often condemn other cultures for their immoral practices.
P2 But if morality is about whatever a culture thinks is right and wrong, it would make no sense to condemn them.
C So morality cannot be about whatever a culture thinks is right and wrong; it must be absolute.
The naturalistic fallacy
G.E. Moore’s Open Question Argument
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Can you define ‘yellow’?
Moore thinks it is not possible. Why?
Because it is ‘simple’; it is not reducible to anything else.
Moore argues that ‘good’ cannot be defined for similar reasons.
Relativism: the view that moral values and rules vary according to situation, cultural circumstance or historical epoch. So what is right in one culture or situation need not be in another.
The relativity argument
P1 We can observe that different societies have different moral values (e.g. over suicide, infanticide, or slavery).
C. The best explanation is that moral values are socially constructed.
What response can be made to this?
We can observe that different societies have different opinions about other facts, e.g. cosmology, and maths.
But this doesn’t mean there are no objective facts about cosmology.
Is this a good response?
Perhaps not:
We know how to resolve disputes in maths and cosmology, but not in ethics. But ethical disagreements often seem intractable
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An argument for relativism: no empirical evidence of moral values
David Hume 1711-1776
Take any action allowed to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. ..The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it …
It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my little finger.
If we are not describing reality when we make moral judgements, then what are we doing?
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Naturalism
Naturalism is the view that moral judgements concern natural properties.
So when we talk of ‘good’ we are really talking about a feature of the natural world.
In other words, moral terms (good, evil, right, wrong, ought, ought not, duty, etc.) can be reduced to naturalistic terms.
E.g. utilitarianism and natural law ethics.
A naturalist theory: Utilitarianism
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation in Warnock (1985) p.33
So Bentham argues from psychological hedonism to ethical hedonism.
He argues that it is because human beings do behave this way, as a matter of fact, that they ought to behave this way.
Hume is saying it is a fallacy to try to establish moral claims on the basis of factual claims alone.
We cannot validly infer how things ought to be from premises which tell us only how things are.
Or simply: you can’t derive an ought from an is.
You can’t derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ (Hume’s law)
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4: The Design Argument
The design argument
'Fine-tuning' design argument:
P1. If any of a number of fundamental physical constants had been just ever so slightly different, life would have been impossible in the universe.
C1. Hence the universe appears to have been fine-tuned for life.
P2. The best explanation of this appearance is that the universe was fine-tuned by God
C. Therefore, God exists.
Aquinas 5th way:
Things that lack intelligence, such as living organisms, have an end (a purpose).
Things that lack intelligence cannot move towards their end unless they are directed by someone with knowledge and intelligence.
For example, an arrow does not direct itself towards its target, but needs an archer to direct it.
(Conclusion) Therefore (by analogy) there must be some intelligent being which directs all unintelligent natural things towards their end. This being we call God.
Featured philosophers: Paley,Swinburne
Swinburne's design argument:
P1. The universe obeys laws of nature which science can formulate.
P2. But while science explains phenomena in terms of scientific laws, it cannot explain why these laws exist in the first place
P3. Explanation is either scientific or personal (that is, in terms of the purposes of an intelligent being).
C1. Hence the order of the universe can only be explained in terms of the purposes of an intelligent being.
P4. Other things being equal, the simplest explanation is the best explanation.
P5. The simplest explanation in terms of intelligent design is one that postulates a single agent of infinite power, knowledge, and freedom, i.e. God.
C2. Thus God is the best explanation of the universe’s order.
Other explanation: multiverse
Criticisms of the design argument:
1) we have no experience of 'world-making', We can’t move from experience confined to this world, to claims about the origin of the whole world.
Does not prove the existence of a perfect god, group of angels could have been responsible.
Weak analogy, better to compare it to a vegetable or animal, So we can conclude that the cause of the world is something similar or analogous to generation or vegetation
Kant:
Doesn't prove a perfect god
it would prove at best the existence of a ‘worldly architect’.
Week 1,2,3,4,5
3: Perception
Indirect realism
Three elements in perception:
perceiver
sense data and
thing perceived (physical object)
Primary and secondary qualities
Locke’s definition
Secondary qualities are “such qualities which in truth are nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities.”
Criticsms
1) Scepticism about the nature of the external world
How do we really know what the world is like?
The veil of perception
2) Scepticism about the existence of the external world.
The trap of solipsism
Defences against these criticisms
Defences:
Russell
the external world is the best hypothesis
locke
the lack of choice over our experiences
the coherence of various sense
Berkeley's idealism
Berkeley's solution to the two problems of indirect realism
Lack of choice of what we sense
Coherence with multple sense's
Featured philosophers: Berkeley & Locke
2
Descartes' Method of Doubt and the cogito
Method of doubt:
Descartes’ project is to eliminate error from his system of beliefs, and establish certain and enduring knowledge.
To do this he will destroy all his previous opinions by rejecting any that have the slightest grounds for doubt.
He won’t go through each belief individually, but will destroy the ‘principles’ or most basic beliefs, so that the rest will collapse of their own accord.
Whatever beliefs survive this method must be indubitable, and so can be the foundations on which to build human knowledge anew free from error.
Descartes’s three waves of doubt
1 The senses
2 Dreaming
3 The evil demon
How does Descartes end the scepticism?
Cogito ergo sum.
Although I can doubt the existence of my body, I cannot doubt the existence of my self.
So I must be a substance.
The essence of this substance is thinking.
I can exist independently of material things such as my body.
Featured philosophers: Descartes
1
The Problems of Philosophy, ch. 1 Bertrand Russell
The Meditations, Meditation 1, Rene Descartes
Naive realism/Direct realism
What you see is what you get
Definition:
And objects retain these properties when unperceived.
Our senses detect properties of these objects (colours, shapes, etc.) which exist in the world.
We immediately perceive mind-independent objects.
There are two elements in perception: the perceiver and thing perceived.
Criticisms:
Perceptual variation
Examples:
Russell's table
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The argument from illusion
Hallucinations
The time lag argument
Defending direct realism
Featured philosophers: Russell
5: The cosmological argument
Cosmological argument
There must be a first mover, causer, necessary being because infinite regress is impossible
Library analogy
Criticisms:
Quantum physics also suggests not all events have causes. If so, the big bang could be an uncaused event.
Premise of causality is not a priori
Objections to the argument from contingency
Only propositions are necessary, like all bachelors are unmmarried.
But we can deny the existence of God without contradiction, so it is not necessary that he exists.
Existential propositions are a posteriori.
Who caused the first cause?
Defenders say the reductio ad absurdum shows there must be one exception to the rule.
Hume
However, if there’s one exception, why not another.
Couldn’t the universe be the exception?
Alternatively, why doesn’t God need a further explanation?
Russell says the argument commits the fallacy of composition.
Just because every event in the universe has a cause, doesn’t mean that the universe as a whole must have a cause.
Science suggests that the universe had a beginning: Entropy (the 2nd law of thermodynamics)
Einstein’s theory of general relativity
Featured philosophers: Aquinas
Exam Details
Two-hour examination. Two short answer questions on term 1 material and two short answer questions on term 2 material. Plus one critical essay question on term 2.