Professor: Dr. Michael Strawser
Click here for his website, or click here to email him
Here is the current reading schedule:
09 Jan. 04 Friday = General Intro.
12 Jan. 04 Monday = pp. 1-21 (Bacon, Galileo, Descartes)
14 Jan. 04 Wednesday = Descartes Meditations 1-3
16 Jan. 04 Friday = Descartes Meditations 4-6
Also: hand in the 3 ranked alternatives for Team Teaching (50-word reason for first choice)-
justification for why you are interested in that philosopher or text)
Then we shall be reading the following texts in this order:
Spinoza, The Ethics
Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics Monadology
Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Berkeley, Three Discourses between Hylas and Philonous Principles of Human Knowledge
Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding A Treatise on Human Nature
Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
TESTS:
13 Feb. 04 Friday - non cumulative test
07 Apr. 04 Wednesday - non cumulative test
26 Apr. 04 Monday - OPTIONAL FINAL CUMULATIVE EXAM (replaces lowest test grade)
Practical Reason - Categorical Imperative Ethical actions must be unimpecable
Prolecomena to any future metaphysics
Cogito Ergo Sum = "I think, therefore I am"
Rationalist - certain knowledge can be deduced independant of sense experience
Father of modern philosophy
The existence of God
Mind ----- God ----- The World cogito ? body
Meditations on first philosophy (published in 1641)
| RATIONALISM | EMPIRICISM |
| Rene Descartes | John Locke |
| Bennidict Spinoza | George Berkeley |
| Leibniz | David Hume |
| TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM | |
| Emmanuel Kant | |
All knowledge begins with experience, but not all knowledge can be reduced to experience.
Epistomology = is the study of knowledge
Leibniz wrote "Discourse of Metaphysics" and "Monadology"
| RATIONALISM | EMPIRICISM |
| Philisophical view that all knowledge comes from reason | Philisophical view that all knowledge comes from experience (before experience or not dependent on empirical experience) |
| A Priori, inate truths and principles (based on experience) | A Posteriori truths and principles |
| Deductive System | Inductive Based system |
| Certain Knowledge | Probable knowledge |
| Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz | Locke, Berkeley, Hume |
Ponder this:
Is there life on Mar? Or, has there ever been life on Mars? As of this writing, the answer would
be no. But we do have a Mars rover (named Spirit) currently on Mars exploring its surface. It
could find proof of life or previous life on Mars. That would fundamentaly change our views of
life and humans would no longer be the center of the biological universe. We would no longer be
alone.
Mind ----- God ----- The World cogito ? body | | | | Immaterial Material substance substance
Cartesian Dualism: World split between material + Immaterial. Explain how the mind and body interact if they are two seperate entities.
Spinoza = Monism or one mind and body are one, just different aspects of the same substance.
Leibniz = Monadology, non physical, seperate, complete unit. Do not interact, but assemble together. Each substance is a monad onto itself.
John Locke = Set out to find out where do ideas come from. Locke accepts Cartesian Dualism. Through experience that ideas are written on the mind or the casual theory of perception.
Mind ------------ God ----------- Body | Nature | blank slate Qualities Ideas
Berkeley = Says material substance doesn't exist, just our own mind and the ideas in it.
Hume = Skepticism, agrees with Berkeley's arguments. Provides serious argument against the existance of God. Do you have knowledge of the self? No knowledge about ourselves, God, or external world.
Emmanuel Kant = Agrees we cannot have proof of God itself.
1. Spirit of seriousness
2. Spirit of playfulness
| SCHOLASTICISM | MODERNISM |
| - Systematically static | - Systems flourished |
| - Aristotelianism (dominant Philosophy of the time) | - Independent thinkers outside of schools |
| - Univesity Professors dominated by the Church | - Original treatises "New Truths" |
| - Commentarieson "Old Truths" i.e. Aristotle + the Bible | - Human - Centered |
| - Theocentric (Latin for Scholarship) | - Vernacular (any language) |
Descartes wrote the Discourse on Method (1637) in French. Then he wrote Meditations (1641) in Latin
Syllogism: Deductive reasoning. Start with general observations, then infer from it. i.e.
- All men are mortal.
- Socrates is a man.
- Therefore Socrates is mortal.
Galileo (1564-1642), The Assayer (1623) "Corpuscularianism" (or mechanical philosophy)
- The idea that the world exists in tiny corpulsels in motion. Can be reduced to an explanation of them. The world is matter in motion.
- Motion is the cause of heat, not a quality residing in a particular body.
- Materialism / Reductionism
- Corpulsels= size, shape, place, motion, number however the aspects such as sound, taste, touch, and color do not belong to corpulsels. They are subjective/quantitative.
- Nature is like a book, and the language used to read it is mathematics.
- Education = Question what you have learned and doubt it to be true until you prove it yourself.
- Philosophy = Contains nothing that is doubtful.
- Expresses Doubts = Question authority before acceptance.
- Resolutions = Don't accept anything that can be doubted. Travel and gather experience. Seek for truth withing himself alone, not in nature.
Descartes, Discourse on Method (1637)
How is the Method significant to you?
(Discourse on Method or talking about the Method)
PART III: deals with practical moral rules derived from the method. Note how ethics is subordinated to epistemology.
PART IV: deals with the Metaphysical issues of the existence of God and the human soul.
PART V: Animals do not have language and therefore they do not have intelligence. Humans have a rational soul or mind and are not machines. Humans have souls and animals do not. The mind is infinite.
PART VI: deals with the "same prerequisites for further advances in the study of nature." Here Descartes comes across as a quasi-empiricist and write of the importance of experimentation.
I. Identification of the problems. What can we believe in or trust. What
can be known and what can be doubted.
II. Personal identity. I think, therefore I am.
III. Proof of God's existence.
IV. What's true and false and how people can make errors.
V. 2 properties of essence + existence. Proves Gods existence again.
VI. Distinction between the mind and the body. Proof of Descartes existence of corporeal bodies or
material objects.
"Give me one fixed point and I can move the world" by Archimedes
Descartes is looking for 1 true point and he can move the world.
What can be called into doubt? Why start with doubt? To find out if there is any certain
knowledge.
- Background: Skepticism was on the rise at this time.
- Michel De Montaine (16th Century) was a French skeptic who stressed the limitations of human
knowledge and the uncertainty of Metaphysical systems.
The form of argumentation Descartes uses is called Reductio As Absurdum (meaning
reduction to the absurd)
- Assume the opposite of what you want to prove and derive an absurdity/contradiction.
- Meditations I+II have this structure or argument.
Conclusion: De Omnibus Dabitandum Est (that everything is doubtful)
- Recaps Meditation I
- In order to doubt, I must exist.
"I am thinking, I don't exist."
I exist = contradiction
Additional questions in Meditations II:
- What am I?
- Not a body with face, hands, and feet.
- But a thinking thing, a thinking substance.
- What is a body, and how is it truly known?
- Reflection on a piece of wax (corporeal being)
- Hierarchy of abstraction
- (1) senses + (2) Imagination not clear and distinct. We can't imagine all
the different possibilities of the wax.
- (3) Mental perception/intuition of an extended thing. (p.33)
1. Starting point: Conciousness: ideas in the mind.
2. Question: Where did the idea of God come from?
- God = infinite substance, eternal perfect, immutable, independent, etc...
3. Axioms:
4. Consider: That which is more perfect cannot be the effect of the less perfect. Descartes cannot
be the cause of the idea of God since he is imperfect, which is known by the fact that he doubtts
and can be deceived.
5. Therefore God must exist independent of Descartes as the source of the idea. Allthis means is
that the idea of God is inate.
6. Further, Descartes takes God to be the cause of his existence. Hence God both creates and sustains
his existence.
7. Finally, God cannot be a deceiver because he is perfect.
- How is this demondstration different from Meditation III?
- Here Descartes begins with the concept of God as a perfect being. He proceeds from the content
of this idea (definition) without reference to the imperfect being who posesses it.
- The positive attribute of existence belongs necessarily to the idea of God.
- In a similar way the attribute of "3-sided" belongs to the triangle.
- Descartes criterion of truth is now proven.
- Only what is clearly and distinctly perceived is wholly true.
- Question: Where does error or falsity come frome? (error made in judgement about true or
false)
- Error is understood as a deficiency, a privation of knowledge.
- It cannot come from a perfect God or directly from the main faculties - intellect and will - God
has given me.
- Error arises through the interaction between will and intellect - because the will is more
far-reaching than the intellect and extends itself beyond what can clearly and distinctly be
known.
- Moral: Don't extend the will to what you don't understand. (don't confirm or deny that which
you do not know)
1. Distinction between imagination and understanding.
- Imagination: Mind is directed outwards towards some body.
- Understanding: Mind directed inwards upon itself.
- Chiliagon: 1000 sided figure that cannont be perceived in the mind.
2. Real distinction between mind and body.
- a. Mind: Thinking substance, indivisible and may exist independent from body.
- b. Body: Extended substance, divisible.
3. Presupposition: All attributes perceived or imagined must belong to some substance.
4. Starting Point: Ideas of corporeal objects: presented from without - what is the source of these ideas?
- a. Myself: Descartes dissmisses this idea.
- b. God: God cannot be a deceiver.
- c. Other Creatures: God would not let him be deceived.
- d. Body (extended): Great inclination to believe so.
5. Conclusion: Corporeal objects exist. God is guarantees physical/corporeal world.
6. Relation between Body + Mind:
- Body + Mind are wholly diverse.
- Completely separate.
- How do they interact if they are separat substances?
- Descartes believed that the Pineal Gland was the source of interaction between the Mind + Body.
No way to prove the existence of God so he came up with the diagram below to show why it is better to believe in God than to not believe:
- Both Spinoza + Pascal desliked Descartes.
- Jewish, born in Amsterdam in 1632.
- Rabbinical education.
- God is the immanent cause of the world/nature, not the transitive cause. This was against the
orthodox views and led to his excommunication.
- Excommunicated in 1656 for being unortodoxy.
- Changed his name to the Latin Benedict after he became excommunicated from the Jewish religion.
- 1663: He wrote Descartes' Principles of Philosophy and laid it out in geometrical order.
- Published annonymously in 1677: Thelogico-Political Treatise.
- 1677 Death and posthumously publication of Ethics.
Background: In Descartes' Philosophy, Spinoza attempts to deal with the problems of Descartes philosophy.
Descartes Meditations VI (p.51)br />
"And surely there is no doubt that all that I am taught by nature has some truth to it; for by
"Nature", taken generally, I understand nothing other than God himself or the ordered network
of created things which was instituted by God."
Spinoza - God is Nature, therefore God is corporeal (has a physical body)
"...nature also teaches that I am present to my body not merely in the way a sailor is present in
a ship, but that I am most tightly joined and, so to speak, commingled with it, so much that I and
the body constitute one single thing."
Spinoza argued that Descartes had failed to understand the "first cause and origin of all things" True Nature of the human mind,
and the "True nature of error."
Why was it demonstrated in Geometrical order?
- To be flawless / certain
- To convince others
"indisputable Masterpiece" J. Bennet
"One of the most major and most influential works in philosophy" E. Curley
"All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare" Spinoza
Scholium: (Scholia) Summary
Lemma: Proposition
- Substance (Monism)
- Attributes (Property-Dualism)
- Modes (Pantheism)
Substance: God is the only substance with 2 attributes, Thinking/Thought and
Extension
Conceived through itself
- Only example of substance is God (abstract).
- One unified whole universe is one substance.
Attribute: The intellect perceives of substance as constituting its essence.
- Essence of substance
- Ways of being
- Thought + Extension
- God posses infinite attributes, but we cannot know them.
Mode: Affections of substance and is conceived through something else.
- Modification of the one (Universe) basic substance. (Substance, Attributes, and Modes is
everything that exists)
- God -- Universe -- People, people are parts of the whole, God.
Psycho Phisical Parallelism, see below:
Actively participating in the chain of events - you are free.
Passively participating in the chain of events - you are constrained.
Contingent: That which we do not understand the cause of.
Everything happens of necessity - from God's nature.
Dens Sive Natura (God, or in other words Nature)
God and Nature are synonomous terms
Self-caused, existing, necessarily infinite, indivisible, extended (corporeal), immutable, infinitely powerful, without freedom of will, Immanent cause, as opposed to the Transitive cause.
Spinoza's Determinism: Everything happens as a result of God's standing Nature (i.e. Laws of Nature) and the preceding events - Ad Infinitum.
Prop.#5 = In the universe there cannot be 2 or more substances of the same nature or attribute.
Prop.#11 = God, or substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists.
Prop.#14 = There can be, or conceived, no other substance but God.
Determinism: Propositions 25-33
Appendix on human prejudices: Against the doctrine of final causes.
I. Concerning God: The Metaphysical starting point.
A. Substance:
- Radical break from past philosophy and religion.
- Problem of Modes origin.
B. Determinism:
- Things can't be other than they are.
- God has no free will.
C. Against the Doctrine of the Causes
II. Of the Nature and Origin of the Mind:
A. Philosophy of the Mind:
- Psycho-Physical Parallelism
- Mind-Body Identity Theory.
B. Epistemology:
- Criterion of Truth: Adequacy
- Nature of Falsity
- Three kinds of knowledge
III. On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions
IV. Of Human Bondage on the Strength of Emotions
- A Christian rationalist
- An optimistic and reconciliatory spirit
- Discourse on Metaphysics (1686)
- God
- World
- Substance
- An absolutely perfect being - Creator - Acts in a simple and orderly manner
- "best of all possible worlds"
- "pre-established harmony"
- Explanation of miracles based on distinction between (1) universal, general order and
(2) particular, subordinate order of the world
- A single, unique independent subject of several predicates
- "a notion so complete that it is sufficient to contain and to allow us to deduce from it all
the predicates of the subject to which this notion is attributed"
- Haecceity: individual essence or "thisness"
- Identity of indiscernibles: there can be no two identical substances
- Each created, non-divisible substance expresses the whole universe
- Predicate-in-subject principle
- Concept-containment theory of truth
- Principle of identity: A = A
In order to explain how God's will (and omniscience) and human freewill can be reconciled,
Leibniz distinguishes between...
| Necessary Props | Contingent props |
| Truths of Reasoning | Truths of fact |
| E.g. "A triangle is a three-sided figure." | E.g. "GWL was born in Leipzig on July 1, 1646." |
| Based on principle of contradiction | Based on principle of sufficient reason |
| Absolutely necessary, opposites are impossible | Certain, but contingent, opposites are possible |
- Occasionalism (Malebranche, 1638-1715): on occasions when mind and body should interact
it is divine agency that brings about necessary change
- Leibniz rejects this view, but also denies any interaction between substances and mind/body
- What happens to each substance is a consequence of its notion or concept
- Appearance of interaction is based on pre-established harmony by God
| Grade | Number | People | Percent |
| A | 51-60 | 6 | 32 |
| B | 39-50 | 10 | 53 |
| C | 30-38 | 3 | 15 |
| D | No D's | - | - |
| F | No F's | - | - |
How is Voltaire a transitional figure between rationalism and empiricism?
- 1726-29: Spent in exile in England
- He went to England a poet and came back a philosopher
- Lettres Philosophiques (1734) promoted French philosophers acceptance of the empiricism of
John Locke and Isaac Newton's scientific methods
- Like Locke he preferred no explanation to a speculative one and viewed philosophical
systematizations as both vain and dangerous.
- "May God, if there is one, save my soul, if I have one."
- Christian Wolff (1679-1754), professor at Halle and Margurg, systematized the philosophy of
Leibniz.
- Voltaire was repelled by the lack of experimental verification for the theories of the monads,
the problem of evil, the mind/body problem, and "the best of all possible worlds," which he
called a doctrine of despair under a consoling name.
- Great satire which ridicules philosophical optimism.
- The abstract good of the whole can have no meaning for the suffering individual.
- Call for positive action-work without theorizing-"we must cultivate our garden."
- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
- Purpose: "inquire into the origin and extent of human knowledge, together with grounds of belief,
opinion, and assent."
- Method: plain, historical
- Idein (Greek): to see, form or appearance of a thing
- Locke's answer: ambiguous and vague
- Notion, impression, image, etc.
- Immediate object of the understanding Signs
- Locke: inborn, primary notions stamped on the mind and universally agreed upon by all
mankind
- Was Locke attacking Descartes?
- Historical, traditional answer: Yes
- "The infant may be distracted by bodily stimuli from reflecting on these truths but
nonetheless it has them in itself, and does not acquire them later on; if it were taken out of
the prison of the body, it would find them within itself."
- "Innate ideas proceed from the capacity of thought itself. I never wrote or concluded that the
mind required innate ideas which were in some sort different from its faculty of thinking."
- Positive answer: the whole book
- Negative arguments
1. The Great Argument: General Assent/Universal Consent
What about children and idiots?
- It's unintelligible and contradictory to say that a truth is imprinted on the mind, but the
mind is ignorant of it.
2. Use of Reason Argument
- Through the use of reason innate principles are discovered.
- Locke defines "reason" as the ability to deduce unknown, new truths from known propositions.
So the use of reason doesn't prove innate principles, and to say that a person discovers what he
already knows is contradictory.
- Modification of argument: when children come to the use of reason they come to know and assent
to innate maxims.
- L argues children use reason before they assent.
3. First Hearing Argument
- Assent given as soon as a maxim is proposed, without any teaching.
- Locke: then a multitude of innate principles
- Does proposing them print them clearer on the mind than nature did?
- False supposition is that of no precedent teachi...
- Final riposte: What principles do kids have?
- In innate they'd appear clearer in those least corrupted by education.
a strong defense of the common sensical point of view.
Hylas = Hyle - Matter
Philo = Lover of Mind
Nous = Spirit
Dialogues: "bring men back to common sense"
-What is real knowledge? What do philosophers say is commen sense, and what does the common
man say what is real?
Knowledge = the perception of agreement or disagreement of the ideas.
p. 356 Knowledge is real only so far as there is a conformity between the reality and the real thing.
MIND ------ IDEAS ------ REAL THINGS This view is know as the Representative Realism (Locke). Ideas are meant to represent or conform to real things. Berkeley says that our IDEAS are the REAL THINGS Locke's view: - Simple Ideas = Agree with archetypes in matter. - Complex Ideas = These are archetypes in themselves. i.e. Mathematics - Complex Ideas of Substances = We have no real knowledge of substances because we don't experience them. - Moral truths can be certain. If it is true that murder is wrong, then it will be true in reality that murder is wrong whenever it happens. Berkely rejects Locke's views of REAL THINGS.
Materialism: (view that reality consists of imperceptible material substance) leads to Skepticism.
- Berkeley is in favor of common sense.
Was Berkeley a direct realist?
Principles: "The ideas imprinted on the senses by the author of nature are called real things; and those excited in the imagination...are more properly termed ideas, or images of things which they copy and represent." (sec.33)
- "If by material substance is meant only sensible body, that which is seen and felt, then I am
more certain of matter's existence than you or any other philosopher pretend to be."
(p. 448)
- "We are chained to a body, that is to say, our perceptions are connected with corporeal motions.
...so that this connection of sensations with corporeal motions means no more than a correspondence
in the order of nature between two sets of ideas or things immediately perceivable."
(p. 450)
- "I am not for changing things into ideas, but rather ideas into things, since those immediate
objects of perception, which according to you are only appearances of things, I take to be the
real things themselves." (p. 452)
- "Everything that is seen, felt, heard, or any way perceived by the senses is, on the principles
I embrace, a real being, but not on yours." (p. 460)
- "Look you, Hylas, when I speak of objects as existing in the mind or imprinted on the senses,
I would not be understood in the gross literal sense, as when bodies are said to exist in a place
or a seal to make an impression upon wax. My meaning is only that the mind comprehends or
perceives them and that it is affected from without or by some being distinct from itself."
(p. 455)
- "The powerful cause, therefore, of my ideas is in strict propriety of speech a spirit."
(p. 450)
Problem: Since God is the author of all phenomena in nature, he must be the
author of murder, sacrilege, adultery...
Response: "I have nowhere said that God is the only agent who produces all the
motions in bodies." (p. 448)
Berkeley rejects representative realism
MIND-------Ideas/Real things
Rejects absolute existence of material things or things that exist independent of a mind. This is known as Relative,
Hypothetical existence. i.e. there is no absolute true color.
Berkeley is pragmatic.
Preface
Introduction: Berkeley's introduction attacks Locke's abstract ideas.
Part one Principles:
- Esse Est Prisipi (to be is to be perceived)
- Ideas
- Mind
- Rejection of Material Substance
For Berkeley, source of philosophers problems in Nature and the abuse of Language.
- Doctrine of Abstract Ideas.
- All ideas are Particular Ideas
- General Ideas = Tiangle, animal, chair
- Abstract Ideas
Since all things only exist as particulars, how do we come to general terms?
Locke says that triangle must refer to some abstract notion or ideal of a triangle. Berkeley accepts that this could be a
definition of a triangle only and that there is no abtract idea of a triangle.
Source of the problem = Every word must refer to one precise signification. In truth a word signifies a great many number of
ideas. It's all symantics. (p.466)
Words don't name universal abstract ideas.
Locke says that it is neccessary for communication and Berkeley does not.
Berkeley rejects that abstract ideas are needed for communication
Language communicates ideas in the world.
Language is also used to raise some passion. Aristotle has said it.
Primitive view of language is that words communicate ideas only.
- Esse est aut percipere
- To be is to be perceived or to perceive.
Ideas: real, sensible things (collections of ideas) and images.
Minds: spirits, souls, selves, agents, and substances.
"A spirit is one simple, undivided, active being; as it perceives ideas it is called the
understanding, and as it produces or otherwise operates about them it is called the will."
(sec. 27)
Problems: No ideas of Self, God or Other Minds
- Self-Reflection (sec 22): "look into your own thoughts and try to conceive it possible for a sound, or figure, or motion, or color, to exist without the mind or unperceived."
Sec. 7:
- Def: Sensible qualities = ideas perceived by senses
- Def: to have an idea is to perceive
- Contradiction: sensible qualities exist in an unperceiving thing
Conclusion: No unthinking substratum of ideas
Sec. 16:
"Extension is a mode or accident of matter, and that matter is the substratum that
supports it" -no positive or relative idea of matter or support
Conclusion: Matter has no distinct meaning.
Sec. 18:
A Reductio argument
- Assume matter exists, then how is this known.
- Either by senses (perception-no)
- Or reason (inference-by what reason?)
One of the main points of section one on "Inquiry of Human Understanding" is No necessary conexion between Cause and Effect.
- Foundational Distinction is the "Origin of Ideas". Impressions and Ideas. This foundation
was taken from Locke's views, but Hume makes them more precise.
Impressions: Original sensations and experiences.
Ideas: Less vivid images or copies of impressions.
- For Hume, all ides must be derived from impressions. This is the
Central Proposition of Hume's Empiricism.
- Impressions are immediate sensations.
- Our knowledge can go no farther than the impressions that we have.
Ideas are used in immagination and memory.
- The only way we can know color is through impressions in our minds.
- All ideas from impressions limits knowledge and metaphysical jargon.
- Experiences = There are natural instincts.
- Our knowledge is comprised of observation and instinct.
- Hume agrees with Locke in that there are no innate ideas, but Hume also says that there are
no innate impressions. But he can't explain how we can have A Priori knowledge/impressions.
- Cause and Effect = Experience --- Custom/Habit --- Belief (feeling).
- We cannot know external objects. We sense our sensations only.
- The future is not know through reason or sensation.
- Knowledge from how we think is derived from experience, but it cannot be reduced to experience.
- Category of the mind which translates to all experience.
1. Of Liberty of Necessity: Part I
2. Of Liberty of Necessity: Part II
3. Reason in Animals
4. Miracles: Part I
5. Miracles: Part II
Read for Friday: "A Treatise of Human Nature" (1739)
1. Impressions and Ideas
2. Principles of Association - Resemblanece, contiguity of space and time, and cause and effect
3. Relations of ideas ad matters of fact. = Hume, ideas of quantity and extension. How do we know about facts and things that happen in the world.
Leibniz said truths of reasoning and truths of fact.
4. Hume makes a distinction between probability, proof, and demonstration.
Locke suggested that all matters of facts are mere probable.
Hume thought that it seems very odd to say that it is merely probable that the sun will rise tomorrow.
Proof = is where there has been a uniformed experience of a particular fact. Something that is certain.
Probability = Variable experiences. Will a flu vacinations really prevent you from getting the flu virus. It is probable, but not certain.
5. Necessary Connection = there is no positive impression of a necessary connection between cause and effect, past and future, reality and testimony, and sensations and
external objects. We don't percieve the connector or the link.
Our idea f necessary connection is cutomary and conjunction - inference + belief
Liberty vs. necessity is a problem of language. Locke says the same thing as Hume. They are on the same page in terms of this subject.
The question makes no sense, "is the will free or not?"
- Debate about words, all people really agree.
Necessity = Uniformity/conjunction + inference.
- Properly speaking not quality in agent, but in any intelligent being in considering actions to infer it from preceeding objects. We infere that since it has happened,
it will happen again.
Liberty = A power of acting or not acting according to a determination of the will
Accountability is the central thesis of this section.
- These teaching f necessity and liberty are consistent and essential to morality.
- Without necessity a person's action has no cause and can't be seen as following from his/er character and disposition, so there can be no reward or punishment. i.e., when
an accident happens, there was no malice or intent, it just happened so there is no punishment.
- Without liberty there can be no approval or disapproval. We only morally approve of actions following internal principles, not external force. i.e., being forced to
come to class does not mean that you are a good student for always showing up.
Humans and animals are indowed with certain instincts
- Analogy founds reasonings concerning matters of fact.
- Analogy between men and animals adds more authority to our hypothesis explaining experimental reasoning.
- Animals too learn from experience and their inferences are without arguments and reasoning, but rather based on custom leading to belief.
Reason = Habitually infering this from that based on past experience, this is the extint of human reason and animals reason this same way as well.
"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence."
- Skeptical philosophy = providence and a future state
- Immaterial soul
- Personal Identity
- Miracles are defined as proofs against nature, the violation of the laws of nature. If one were to witness a miracle, their words would go against the all the words
of mankind.
- When conidering any miracle, what is the probablitiy of that miracle?
- Human testimony cannot establish a miracle, which is defined as "a violation of the laws of nature."
- Hume's test for a miracle" testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle if its falsehood would be even more miraculous than the fact it is trying to establish.
All miraculous events lack evidence.
- Four additional weighty points against.
1. There has never been a large group of people with uniform arguments for the miracle. No uniform testimony.
2. It's human nature to want to believe in miracles. We believe because of passion, wonder, and surprise.
3. Miracles are usually believed by barbarous ignorant people/nations.
4. Religions don't agree on miracles.
Two species:
1. Antecedent: extreme and moderate. Comes before, being skeptical even before you know something. Here, he talks about Descartes.
It can help in a moderate sense when one is cautious or suspends disbelief. To perserve impartiality and clarity.
2. Consequent. The skepticism that follows after studying. What we can know from senses and reason. Hume accepts any arguments against
the knowledge of what we can know of the world. Leads to the impossibilty of any knowledge of the external world.
Study senses and reason - Concludes that we cannot know anything.
Two degrees of Skepticism:
1. Pyrrhonism: Extreme. Excessive doubt.
2. Mitigated or Academical Skepticism (Hume's kind)
- comes about when extreme skepticism is in some measure corrected by common sense and reflection.
- Durable and useful.
- Not dogmatical, but modest.
- Limits our inquiries to proper subjects.