Modern Philosophy Lecture Notes PDF

Lecture 1: Introduction (5 September 2024) What is modern philosophy? ▪ Aristotle: all before. Late antiquity: hero worship. Scholastics: improvement/small change. Renaissance: rediscovery. ▪ Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes: radical break, reject this tradition of received wisdom. ▪ Descartes as rad...

Lecture 1: Introduction (5 September 2024) What is modern philosophy? ▪ Aristotle: all before. Late antiquity: hero worship. Scholastics: improvement/small change. Renaissance: rediscovery. ▪ Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes: radical break, reject this tradition of received wisdom. ▪ Descartes as radical: his insistence that he is radically innovative. ▪ Cartesian scepticism: perhaps all we learned is wrong. We need a clean break with the past to grasp the full truth. ▪ First, the waning of religious authority; or rather, of religion as self-evident and unproblematic. Reformation. ▪ Second, more knowledge about foreign cultures → easier to question our own ways of thinking/traditions. Discoveries. ▪ Third, the rise of the new science, crushed Aristotelian knowledge taught in universities. ▪ Fourth, revolt against the conservative nature of the universities. ▪ BUT no break with the past. No unconditioned thinking. But must claim it, identify it, use it to reconstruct knowledge. ▪ A fully self-contained centre of knowledge and justification: all our knowledge must come from ourselves. ▪ This is the main idea of Descartes’ Meditations. It remains with us: ideal of critical thinking. ▪ Result, start within themselves → metaphysical system that gives a complete theory of the universe, utterly certain. ▪ That was the quest of modern philosophy. Lecture 2: Descartes/Meditations 1 and 2 (12 September 2024) Meditation 1 – Doubt and the Doubter/What is Cartesian Doubt? ▪ Descartes is going to give us some sceptical hypothesis (most famous of which is the evil demon). ▪ Evil demon: argument that there could be an evil demon that deceives me totally and everything I seem to perceive, maybe everything I seem to think, and therefore my entire perception of the world, my entire idea of the world could be wrong, leading us to some terrible scepticism (maybe everything I know is wrong, how can I ever find something that is true?). ▪ NOT autobiographical. Fictional POV story of a person meditating for six days to get to the truth, ↑his epistemic situation. ▪ Why Descartes chose the first person? → Sort of Descartes’ instructions [see preface to the reader]. ▪ ‘I’ finds themselves in the situation that they find out that some of the things that they always believed were false, wrong. ▪ If some things were wrong, other things might be wrong as well → raise everything to the ground and begin anew. ▪ What about doubt? No situation of doubt: not the case that HE woke up and maybe everything is false. ▪ HE knows some things are false, now wants to go to the foundations. Remove everything that might be false (prejudices). ▪ First meditation: arguments that generate doubt. Descartes actively try to generate doubt. Why? ▪ Descartes doesn’t want us to become sceptical. Descartes is talking about method of doubt, methodological reason. ▪ To instil doubt in us, distance ourselves from sensation, leave behind our prejudices, start anew. ▪ Doubt NOT bad situation BUT something we need to seek out: methodological starting point to get to the truth. ▪ Thus, Descartes gives us all these arguments which are supposed to show we can really doubt all these sensory things. ▪ Evil demon NOT a new argument for doubt, he already has given his supreme argument for doubt. ▪ Descartes’ supreme argument for doubt, encompassing both the senses and things not the senses: either/or argument: ▪ If God created me, I can doubt everything. God is all powerful, he could make me wrong about everything if he wanted to. ▪ If not created by God but some imperfect cause, then ground for doubt because I must be imperfect too. ▪ Doesn’t matter how you think about origin, always room for doubt. ▪ Thinking about evil genius that deceives me about everything helps me to understand and free myself from prejudices. ▪ Prejudices pull at me out of habit → I need a psychological counterweight, i.e., evil genius. ▪ Passage before the evil demon → talking about long standing opinions, and taking something to be exactly like it is, means I’m right, but if I do the reasonable thing the meditation doesn’t work. ▪ All these arguments for doubt only get me so far, there might some doubt but is reasonable to believe them. ▪ Despite doubt, more reasonable to believe in my normal beliefs even though they might be wrong. ▪ “Seems to me/deceive myself” → I need to do something irrational. ▪ Artificially get myself into an unreasonable state where I doubt the existence of things to start doing serious philosophy. ▪ Prejudices might grab me, stop me from get to the truth. ▪ BUT not worry about the consequences of this, not dangerous because concentrated only on knowledge, not on action. ▪ NOT arguments to prove scepticism, now we need to get out of scepticism. Psychological method to free us from prejudice. ▪ This is a method. He believes there are some fundamental ways we tend to misconstrue/misunderstand the world around us, a lot of them having to do about sensation. Now we need to lose that to be able to rethink everything and get to the truth. ▪ First meditation: entire sequence of arguments to generate doubt in us. Lose all the usual prejudices or usual beliefs. Meditation 1 – Madness and Dreams ▪ Sometimes our senses deceive us. Is that a reason to mistrust our senses in general? “Mark of prudence p.60”. We have reason for doubt. ▪ But why should I doubt senses? → ‘madness argument’. How can I doubt the normal things that my senses tell me? ▪ Brings in madness as an argument that would seem to show that sometimes people are totally mistaken, even about their own body. ▪ Dismiss, “right but they are mad”, madness argument is defective/should be dismissed OR takes madness seriously for a reason for doubt? ▪ If I’m mad, I can’t reason clearly → no argumentation is ever save me from that (argument of a mad man). ▪ Madness: borders of the method of doubt. Needs two presuppositions; (1) I am at least not mad to be able to engage in reasoning. ▪ BUT this interpretation means I can’t prove anything from nothing: e.g. I need to assume my sanity. Limitation of the method of doubt. ▪ OR (2) weird that he introduces madness, a fundamental limit to his own method, and then doesn’t explain that is a fundamental limit. ▪ Not thinking about madness in this way, open question: is it possible to be mad in the sense of drawing wrong conclusions all the time? ▪ Dream argument suggests interpretation that Descartes takes madness seriously and doesn’t dismiss it. ▪ (1) traditional: sceptical idea, maybe we are dreaming. No distinct signs to say asleep or awake, can’t prove it. Bad argument. ▪ If first interpretation is correct, anything can be doubted because might just be a dream → Meditations will never solve his problem. ▪ (2) dreaming/awake irrelevant, sleep to show that sometimes our sensory beliefs not caused by objects that correspond to sensory beliefs. ▪ E.g. dream about horse, normally perceptions caused by horse, so dreaming shows that sensory experience doesn’t have to be true. ▪ By analogy hold possible that when awake my sensory experiences are also not caused by things that are like the things I experience. ▪ Better interpretation: he wants us to distance ourselves from the senses, to cause doubt on idea that senses show us how world is like. ▪ One of main aims in the Meditations: show that knowledge of God/our mind is better/more certain than knowledge about physical objects. ▪ He must cast a lot of doubt on the senses. How I experience the world misleading. Dream argument in second interpretation suggests that. ▪ To be able to get rid of our traditional ways of thinking you really need to drop the prejudice that what we sense is like our sensation. ▪ On first interpretation Descartes is primarily interested in these sceptical conundrums, can I know that I’m awake and try to solve those. ▪ (2), relation b/ perception/object perceived, not get rid of scepticism, BUT explain relation sensory perception/objects of external world. Meditation 2 – The Cogito ▪ Second meditation: Descartes’ proof of his own existence. The ‘I exist’ → first truth we can be certain about it. ▪ After mental emptiness: what am I going to do? How to arrive at any truth? “Archimedes...” Is there anything that none of us can doubt? ▪ One thing certain/unshaken: if he is doubting/being deceived/thinking at all it must be the case that he exists. Thinking I. ▪ We can start reasoning, but Descartes asks an important question: what is this I? I don’t yet understand sufficiently what I am. ▪ The existence of his body has become doubtful. This ‘I’ that I clearly know exists, can’t be the case it is this body. ▪ What about soul? No, soul is something that animate the body. What about sensation? Also under the doubts of first meditation. ▪ What about thinking? Existence of this thinking thing can’t depend on the body. ▪ We distinguish five claims which become stronger and stronger: (1) I think, clearly Descartes gave us an argument for that. Leaps to: ▪ (2) I am a thinking thing (no argument). Thing/substance not a floating substance, old philosophy, every action requires a substance. ▪ (3) thought is a property essential to me, essential = can’t lose it without ceasing to exist, thought is not just that I think, but worth to me. ▪ (4) thought is the only property essential to me, I don’t require a body. ▪ (5) I am essentially a thinking thing and not essentially material, having a body is not essential to myself. ▪ NOT thought only property essential to me BUT thought only property that I know being essential to me, maybe there are others. ▪ From: ‘I think’ TO explosion: zoom in in this idea of thinking: doubts, understands, wills, refuses, etc. ▪ Thinking turns out to be pretty big, includes sensation, a mental experience, conscious experience of something. ▪ Sensation as conscious mental state is part of thinking → entire content of our consciousness. ▪ The mental/mind are thinking, mind is clear to itself. The mind is transparent, it is obvious and clear and indubitable to itself. ▪ NOT just found out that “I think” is indubitable, BUT entire contents of my mind are indubitable, clear, immediately to me. Revolutionary. ▪ Before: sensation thought as something part of the body. Mind/body was eternal/changeable. ▪ Descartes: new mind/body division based on the idea that we look at internal contents of our mind, ideas, because those are certain. Meditation 2 – The Piece of Wax ▪ Title of meditation 2 “concerning the nature of the human mind: that it is better known than the body”. ▪ Objection he previews: reasoning can’t be clear as sensory experience. Piece of wax: answer that objection, nothing is clear about body. ▪ Definitely not through sensation. If there is anything clear about the body is through thinking, the mind. ▪ The piece of wax has changed all its sensible properties, but it is still the same piece of wax. ▪ I thought I grasp idea of wax through senses, but cannot be true: although everything sensory changed, my conception of this object is clearly not in terms of sensory qualities, so the idea, mental grasp of this object, can’t have been given to me by the senses. ▪ But the idea of piece of wax, not a thought that could come from the senses, because everything sensible is irrelevant, they all changed. ▪ All it matters apparently is some conception independent of these properties. ▪ If I grasp wax can be deformed, I can’t grasp that through sensation, because I haven’t seen it deformed in every possible way. ▪ Also something I can’t grasp through imagination for the same reason. But still I know it can be deformed in any way. ▪ Thus I perceive it through the mind alone. It is reason, understanding, thinking, the mind that grasps what the piece of wax essentially is. ▪ To understand external world/what an object really is, I need abstract thought, reasoning. ▪ Distance ourselves from sensation, reason everything through, then we will get to the truth, including truth about sensation. Lecture 3: Descartes/Meditations 3 and 4 (19 September 2024) Meditation 3 – Terms and Concepts ▪ Descartes’ ontology: there are three categories we need to describe the world: substance, attribute and mode/accident. ▪ Hierarchy: substance most fundamental, attribute depends on substance, and modes depend on attributes and therefore also on substances. ▪ Substance fundamentally exists in and of itself, doesn’t depend on anything else for its existence. ▪ Substance is the thing, underlying existence, mode is a certain way of being that kind of thing. ▪ Attribute: essential property of a substance. Substance has an attribute and there are many ways of being the substance (modes). ▪ Substance as matter. Matter has an essential attribute: extension in space. To be matter and to be extension in space is the same thing. ▪ A mode of being matter = way of being extended. E.g. mug is a mode of the substance matter with attribute extension in space. ▪ Mind as substance. Attribute: it thinks/thought. I have particular thoughts, a mode. A thought is a mode. ▪ Question: whether substance and attributes are really different? Substance can exist without attribute, but attribute needs substance. ▪ But can matter exist without extension? They seem to be the same. For Descartes, the hierarchy between substance/mode is very important. ▪ Matter is more fundamental than any mode of matter; mind more fundamental than any particular thought. ▪ How many substances there are for Descartes? Matter, mind and God (infinite substance). ▪ Problem: mind and different thoughts, but how many minds are there? Are there many minds? Descartes doesn’t confront that question. ▪ Levels of reality: formal/intrinsic and objective/representative reality. ▪ Formal reality: reality that someone has by existing. To exist we need some amount of reality. ▪ A substance has more reality than a mode, because a mode is just a way of being that substance. Substances are more real than modes. ▪ Substances have a different level of reality than modes. Formal reality: reality of its ontological category: ▪ A substance has the reality of substance, and mode the reality of mode, which is lower than the reality of substance. ▪ Ideas: kind of thought that represents something. Ideas have content. Objective reality: reality of that which is represented by an idea. ▪ Ideas have a particular formal reality, the reality of a mode. Idea is thought, and thought is a way of being mind, so thought is a mode. ▪ Every idea has the formal reality of a mode. But ideas can be of different things, and some of those things are modes and other substances. ▪ Idea has two kinds of reality: its formal reality (always the reality of a mode) but its objective is the reality of whatever it is the idea of. ▪ An idea of a mode has the objective reality of a mode, an idea of a substance has the objective reality of a substance. ▪ Infinite (God) and finite substances depends for their reality on an infinite substance, which exists in and of itself that created world. Meditation 3 – Proving the Existence of God ▪ Second meditation: I know my own existence, I have immediate knowledge free from all doubt of the contents of my own mind. ▪ BUT I need to get from the contents of my mind/thoughts to something that is not my own mind. Not an idealist. ▪ I want to establish, among other things, the existence of a world of objects around me, get knowledge from it. ▪ Some knowledge: if I look at something, think about it, and it is immediately evident to me, I cannot be deceived about it. ▪ But couldn’t it be the case, that I am being deceived in such a way that when I see things clearly and distinctly they are nevertheless false? ▪ It would be possible, if God exists he can do everything. Then the goal is to prove there is a God and God is no deceiver. ▪ Cartesian circle: if Descartes might be wrong every time he sees something then why couldn’t he be wrong about this proof? ▪ Descartes starts: He thinks about the kind of ideas he has. Some of them might be innate, some might come from outside, some fictitious. ▪ This proof of existence of God will depend crucially on the distinction between different levels of reality (formal vs objective). ▪ He finds in himself an idea of God. As an idea it necessarily has a formal reality of a mode. ▪ But it is an idea of God, which means its objective reality is going to be the reality of substance, of an infinite substance. ▪ Descartes still needs an extra premiss that brings us from having the idea of God to the existence of God. ▪ Extra premiss: principle about causation: any effect can only be caused by something that has as least as much formal reality as the effect. ▪ A mode might be created by another mode but no mode could create a substance, because you can’t just get the reality from anywhere. ▪ Substances can create substances and modes, i.e., substances can have substances and modes as an effect, because substance is more real. ▪ Finite substances couldn’t possibly create God, infinite substance, but infinite substance can create finite substances. ▪ Perfection = levels of reality. What is more real can’t come in existence due to something less real. ▪ An idea doesn’t have to be created by what it is about, but being an idea of a substance it has to be created by a substance. ▪ Idea of a mode might be created by a mode, idea of a finite substance might be created by a finite substance. ▪ BUT idea of infinite substance must be created by an infinite substance. ▪ Descartes now needs to persuade us that we have the idea of God. He needs to say there is more reality in God than in us. ▪ If God is more real than us, it means he is prior in any understanding that we have of the world, I perceive God before I perceive myself. ▪ In meditation 2 he has proved the existence of himself, not of God, so meditations seem to be pointing out that we know better than God. ▪ No, Descartes says, I have been having God in view since the first sentence of the first meditation, even if I didn’t realize it. ▪ To doubt, to be epistemically defective, I have to be able to compare myself with an entity who is epistemically perfect. ▪ Doubt is comparison with some ideal I find myself lacking, and idea of perfection is of course God. ▪ Since meditation 1 I was relying on God. I have the idea of God and God has more reality than I have. How did I get this idea? ▪ Am I God? No. If I really have perfect understanding I wouldn’t be in a state of doubt. Idea of God is always perfect. ▪ And so he concludes that his idea of God could only come from God, only God has the reality needed to create the idea of God. ▪ Things don’t just continue existing on and of themselves. At any moment in time anything must be caused again. ▪ Descartes thinks that everything that continues existing must be created in every single moment. God is necessary to keep the world going. ▪ Already proved the existence of God. But he wants to show that God exists and he is not a deceiver. ▪ If you want to deceive someone, that’s a moral defect, but God is perfect so couldn’t possibly have that kind of motivation to deceive. ▪ If we agree all that, then the third meditation proved God who is not a deceiver, and that will gets us to get from inside our mind to outside. Meditation 4 ▪ M1: doubt everything/no knowledge. M2: proved existence of ourselves/contents of our minds. M3: proved God not deceiver. ▪ If God is good, then faculties he gives to me will be such that if I use them properly I will never be able to make a mistake. ▪ Then how is it possible that we are ever wrong? How is it possible? How can mistakes exist? ▪ Descartes says: I come from God, I can’t be wrong BUT I am a finite substance/lack a lot of things. ▪ I don’t have everything that would belong to a supreme being, not surprising I am imperfect and making mistakes. ▪ BUT just the fact that I’m not something is by itself not an imperfection. Error is something going wrong, not just lacking some knowledge. ▪ Merely pointing out that I am finite/I lack some things, might explain why I don’t know everything, but doesn’t really explain why I err. ▪ So how do I find out how do I ever get into error? ▪ I can’t understand all that God does, what ends he has in mind, if we try to understand the world in terms of goals/ends, we are being rash. ▪ To better understand error, we should understand how I make a judgement. M3: we learn that true and false really only apply to judgements. ▪ A judgement is not merely an idea. It is only when I say this is real or this exists, that I make an error. ▪ Error, truth and falsity are only possibly in judgement, and a judgement is when I take an idea and affirm it or reject it. ▪ Two faculties of the mind involved. Intellect gives us the idea, and the will affirms (yes) or denies (no) or nothing (suspend judgement). ▪ The understanding itself can’t be wrong, it is limited, just gives me ideas, not mistakes. For the mistake I have to look at the will. ▪ But did God give me in some way an imperfect will? ▪ Everything I have, physical strength/mental things like understanding, is clear how my understanding could be greater than what it is. ▪ BUT the will, faculty of saying yes or no, you either have it (say yes or no to things freely) or don’t have it (no free human being). ▪ We are missing nothing in our will, will can’t be imperfect, he goes as far to say our ability to choose is just the same as God’s. ▪ What then is the source of my errors? Deceive = sinning. Will extends further than the intellect. ▪ Things we understand whether false or true, and when we use will within those boundaries we always do right. ▪ Lots of things I don’t understand, yet the will can be applied to those. When I do so I can make false/true judgements, thus error is possible. ▪ And this is sin: misusing the gifts God gave me. Wrong for Descartes is a moral failure, rationally judged when I ought to not have judged. ▪ We can avoid error “which depends solely abstaining from making judgements given matter is not apparent”. ▪ We should not say yes to anything unless we really see it is true. So we can never be wrong. (cf. Stoics) ▪ Descartes believes that if we can completely grasp something, then we immediately know whether it is true or false. ▪ A clear/distinct perception, kind of thought that I can immediately know that is true. Transparent: no lack can be hiding anywhere in it. ▪ So when I have this kind of thought, and only, no wrong is hiding here. This is just really true and that’s why I can affirm it. ▪ These are the means by which God gets into our thought and mind, puts the truth there, and allows us to get all the other truths we need. Lecture 4: New Science (26 September 2024) Science and (Natural) Philosophy ▪ Until the 19th century, what we call science was called ‘natural philosophy’: it was the systematic investigation of nature. ▪ The rise of modern science and the rise of modern philosophy cannot possibly be understood apart from each other. ▪ Modern philosophy arises out of modern science, and modern science arises out of modern philosophy. Aristotelian Natural Philosophy ▪ The central terms: substance and accident; matter and form; potentiality and act. ▪ Form ≠ shape: the shape of the statue is part of its form, but so is being cold and being made of marble. ▪ Potentialities are inherent in form: being an acorn is in part having the potentiality to grow into an oak. ▪ Substantial/essential form = accidents that a substance cannot lose without ceasing to be the substance it is. (cf. accidental form). ▪ Central phenomenon studied by science: motion. Motion ≠ change of place; Motion in general is the change from potentiality to actuality. ▪ Natural motion proceeds from the form of the substance. (vs forced motion). Natural motion is more relevant to the investigation of nature. ▪ Understanding the world involves finding the causes of motions. ▪ Aristotle distinguished four types of cause. Final cause → goal/aim towards which something tends by virtue of its form. ▪ Final causes are the active, animating principles in nature – they are what keeps nature going. ▪ Idea that the universe itself is a constant striving towards a goal. ▪ When we perceive something, our soul in some sense takes on the form of what it is that we perceive. Renaissance Neoplatonism ▪ Aristotelian tradition: not very mathematical. But there was an ancient tradition that thought of the world as mathematical. ▪ This mathematical side of Neoplatonism will play an important role; but it must lose its association with the other side (souls/occult). The Mechanical World ▪ Nothing could be less like this animated/meaningful world than the mechanical world developed by the early modern philosophers. ▪ Descartes distinction matter/mind ≠ Aristotelian distinction matter/form BUT distinction between two kinds of substance. ▪ The material world for Descartes is not to be understood in terms of souls and sympathies. (Descartes NOT an atomist) ▪ Not yet a decisive break with the Aristotelian project: Aristotle believes that all material objects have goals but not conscious states. ▪ Decisive break with the Aristotelian project → Descartes on nature of matter: extended substance, its entire essence, its entire nature. ▪ All that can be predicated of matter: extension and modes of extension (shape/size). Knowing size/shape of a body, knowing all there is. ▪ This means that the entire Aristotelian idea of form is being abandoned. There is no such thing as the form of oak or acorn. ▪ The idea of potentiality is also destroyed, as well as the idea of a final cause, a goal that an object is moving towards because of its nature. ▪ There are no goals in nature, there is nothing that animates the universe. Matter is totally inert; it has no inner principle of change. ▪ The idea of motion is transformed as well. The only form of change that is intelligible in Cartesian physics, is change of place. ▪ Matter can move. It will persist in its movement until something forces it to change its movement. Purely mechanical. ▪ No difference between natural and forced movement. Movement is movement; all subject to the same simple mechanical laws of motion. ▪ If there is only extension, then we must also say that matter is not really blue, or sweet. ▪ The Aristotelian theory of perception, according to which we perceive qualities that are in the objects themselves, must be rejected. ▪ Locke: primary and secondary qualities. Only the former are qualities of matter itself; the latter are how matter affects us. ▪ For Aristotle, the universe was Matter + Form. For 17th century science, it becomes Matter + Motion. ▪ Consequence: impoverished metaphysical picture. Goals are gone; mind is gone; meaning is gone; intrinsic principles of action are gone. ▪ All there is, is moving extension (parsimonious). The New Science and the New Philosophy ▪ The development of this new science was, at the same time, the development of a new metaphysics and a new epistemology. ▪ Big problems: relation between mind/matter? Causal interaction between them? How can the material world be grasped in thought? ▪ God disappears from the philosophical systems: is there a place for values in the universe? Is there a place for meaning in the universe? ▪ Descartes is not an atomist! (he needs infinitely smaller particles). Descartes believes in mass, mass is extension (↑mass → ↑extension). ▪ In Descartes’ model, ether (vortex) surrounds Earth, things fall down not because of the Earth, but because there is ether pushing down. ▪ Old problem: cannot transfer property into other object, get my movement transferred into a chair. Lecture 5: Modern Epistemology (Rationalism/Empiricism) (10 October 2024) Lecture ▪ First, how is it possible that Descartes is the first philosopher to come up with scepticism about the external world? ▪ Second, why did he, and why did later philosophers, take this scepticism seriously? ▪ The first question: the ancient distinction b/ body/reason was the distinction b/ the temporal/changing and the eternal/unchanging. ▪ Descartes uses a new criterion: the dubitable/indubitable. The mind is characterised by privileged access; we cannot doubt its contents. ▪ Am I seeing a table? That can be doubted; but it cannot be doubted that I have a tablelike impression in my consciousness. ▪ Perception moves from the realm of the body to that of the mind; it stops being unproblematically a case of perception. ▪ Between me and the world, there is now the veil of ideas. ▪ The veil of ideas goes hand in hand with Descartes’ attempt to set himself up as a fully self-sufficient centre of knowledge. ▪ The model of subject and object, separated by our ideas. External world scepticism becomes relevant ▪ The central task of philosophy is to get object and subject together again and make knowledge possible. ▪ This must be achieved from the subject’s side. We must find uncontroversial evidence that our ideas accurately reflect an external reality. ▪ But how is this possible? For Descartes, it is finding the idea of God in ourselves that does the trick. ▪ He needs turn idea into an external reality; controversial assumption this idea's existence implies existence of that of which it is the idea. ▪ Descartes denies this for everything else but believes that it must hold for God – and that God can in turn ensure it for everything else. ▪ But nobody was convinced. ▪ The empiricists claim that our concepts and our knowledge is gained purely through sense experience. ▪ Rationalists claim that our concepts and out knowledge are to a significant extent independent of sense experience. ▪ So for the rationalist, there is purely rational knowledge of the world; for the empiricist, there is only empirical knowledge of the world. ▪ Rationalism is the claim that the world makes sense, that is, that the structure of the world is the structure of thought. ▪ On the other hand, empiricism is the claim that the world is primarily sensed, that the structure of the world is the structure of sensation. ▪ To feel the difference, think of this: thoughts have logical connections, sensations do not. Is the world a logical structure? ▪ For Spinoza, the world of objects and the world of God’s thoughts are just the same. ▪ They are merely two ways in which God’s nature expresses itself in different attributes. ▪ This also means that the relation of cause and effect is, for Spinoza, no different from a logical relation. ▪ To know what something is, is to understand its causes and its effects. The distinction between thought and world does not exist. ▪ This is one way of solving the central task of getting subject and object together. And it is the way that is characteristic of rationalism. ▪ God is invoked to close the gap between the subject and the object. ▪ Spinoza is the most radical of the rationalists in his insistence that God closes the gap by being both sides of the gap. ▪ But something like it happens in Descartes, who needs God to ground our epistemological access to the world. ▪ And in Leibniz, who needs God to pre-establish an epistemic harmony between windowless monads. ▪ Of course, this is problematic insofar as proofs of the existence of God might not be the most solid basis of one’s philosophical system. ▪ More problems. If structure of thought = structure of the world… then should it not be the case that everything that can be thought is real? ▪ Leibniz faces this question heads on, and explains to us that God has created the best of all possible worlds. ▪ Here, the ‘universe’ of all possible worlds is what God thinks; our world is what he creates. But there is something unsatisfactory here. ▪ Does it not introduce a distinction between thought and reality? What is the extra being that the world has and God’s thoughts lack? ▪ Here, Spinoza’s answer is again admirably clear: he simply tells is that everything that can be thought is real. ▪ Now it may seem as if we can think many things that are not real. But that is because our thoughts are unclear. ▪ We think we can think things that do not exist, but we cannot actually think them clearly at all. (This too may be hard to swallow.) ▪ Anyway: why God? What is special about God that allows the rationalists to use Him to bridge the gap between subject and object? ▪ His omnipotence/creator status, to be sure; but most importantly, the fact that God has all of his attributes necessarily. ▪ The senses tell us about the contingent; reason tells us about the necessary. ▪ The price for rationalism is that everything must become necessary, and God is the tool for making this happen. ▪ God is the object that determines everything; the object that I can know in advance; and thus the one road to knowledge. ▪ Empiricism: seem simple to state the senses give us knowledge about external world, and thereby bridge the gap between subject/object. ▪ Descartes would object: how do you know that the senses are reliable? It seems the senses could never prove they themselves are reliable! ▪ At least not unless we presuppose that they show us the external world as it is. ▪ The empiricist has only one option open to him: say that in perception we automatically cross the line to the external world. ▪ But, being a modern, he can't take the Aristotelian route – so he has to become an idealist. ▪ This is probably clearest in Berkeley's slogan esse est percipii. ▪ But it is equally the position of Hume's idealism and scepticism about the continued existence of material objects. ▪ Then the only way to bridge the gap to the objects is by identifying the objects with the subjective sensations. ▪ Empiricism, for all its seeming links to science, has a tendency to become a metaphysical idealism. ▪ Understood this way, empiricism is an attempt to answer the central question by collapsing the object into the subject. ▪ And since this subject is merely a series of sense impressions, the world we end up with will be quite incoherent as well (e.g. no causation). ▪ To summarise: empiricism cannot do justice to the object, but has to identify it with sensation. ▪ Rationalism cannot stay with the subject, but has to appeal to something external, God. ▪ Neither solves the central problem set out by Descartes. ▪ Empiricism is surely right to say we know about world through senses. Rationalism is surely right to say our senses alone are not enough. ▪ Kant will attempt a synthesis between empiricism and rationalism. This must involve a new way of thinking about subject and object. VIDEO 5 – A Taste of Kant ▪ A priori is knowledge that can be justified, shown to be true, give sound arguments why should accept it, before any sensory experience. ▪ Knowledge a prior is knowledge that can be justified without calling on any sensory experience. ▪ Example, suppose I say that all animals are animals, true and I don’t need to do any empirical research. ▪ A posteriori means knowledge we can only justify using experience, and so an example is my knowledge is that grass is green. ▪ A priori knowledge is kind of knowledge rationalists are interested in, they think it is basis for our significant knowledge about the world. ▪ Whereas empiricists would say it is knowledge a posteriori is really important, only place we get knowledge from. ▪ Kant uses this distinction, but uses a distinction of his own. Two types of statement, analytic and synthetic statements. ▪ Analytic statement is true or false just because of the meaning of the terms. ▪ If check the meaning of terms what the words in sentence mean you can immediately see with no outside help the statement is true/false. ▪ Suppose you believe that our concept of human is that human is a rational animal. ▪ If someone says all humans are animals (all rational animals are animals). E.g. of an analytical statement, just know meaning of terms. ▪ On other hand, synthetic propositions. Are not analytic, cannot know whether true or false just by knowing how terms relate to each other. ▪ E.g., all humans are capable of both good and evil. ▪ Now we can ask, what about analytic knowledge a prior, analytic knowledge a posterior, synthetic a prior, synthetic a posterior? ▪ Of those 4 categories, 3 are really unproblematic, either because such knowledge exists, or clear such knowledge can’t exist. ▪ Analytic knowledge a prior: know a statement is T just because meaning of words, can we justify that without invoking sense perceptions? ▪ Yes. If I claim all humans are animals, just look at meaning of words, don’t need any sensation. Unproblematic. ▪ Analytic statements known to be true a posteriori, by the same reasoning don’t exist. Analytic statements are never known a posteriori. ▪ Can’t be the case I need to do some experiments, some sensation, to find out that all animals are animals, looking at words is enough. ▪ Synthetic a posterior a type of knowledge where I know something that is not based on the meaning of words by observing the world? ▪ Yes. Grass is green. I can see it. ▪ Most philosophers would say that are precisely these 2 types of knowledge: analytic knowledge a priori and synthetic a posteriori. ▪ Kant says what about synthetic knowledge a priori? There had better be synthetical knowledge a priori, Kant says. ▪ Things we can know by thinking alone but which are not just about the meaning of words, which have real content. But is it possible? ▪ Math shows us that synthetical knowledge a prior is possible. Example. Straight line is the shortest route between two points. ▪ Not a statement about the meaning of words and not the case in math we have to empirically come to conclusion. ▪ In a judgement we link two concepts. Grass, green. Animal, animal. Possibility: they have an internal link, one is contained in the other. ▪ Others not intrinsically link, so we need bring them together. How? They are brought together by the sensory experience of green grass. ▪ But for straight line is the shortest the concepts are not linked and it doesn’t come from experience, so how come? ▪ Kant says there must be a third thing: knowledge of the shape of all our intuitions, pure intuition. Visualize without experience. ▪ The pure intuition of space is independent of any particular experience that I might have, a foundation of all those experiences. ▪ Kant says we also have a pure intuition of time, basic conception of time, earlier and later, we have even without any temporal experience. ▪ Leap: the objects of our knowledge are spatial/temporal. But space/time are features of our mind. W/o our mind there is no space/time. ▪ There are spatial temporal objects because of the specific way that we are constituted, that our mind works. ▪ So you know a priori that all your experience of the world is going to be spatial temporal. ▪ Kant: not only the object is constituted by the subject, but there would be no subject without a coherent world of spatial temporal objects. ▪ Kant: the structure of thought is also the structure of the world, so sensation and thought come together. Lecture 6: Leibniz’s Monadology_______________________ (17 October 2024) VIDEO 1 – Monads (Monadology 1-21) ▪ S1: Definition of monad: simple substance. S3: Monads have no extension or shape and are not divisible. ▪ Substance from Aristotelian/medieval philosophy: something that needs nothing else to exist, or that which has properties. ▪ Leibniz agrees but emphasizes that substance must be a unity. If something is divisible, then it is not really a substance, not a unity. ▪ Thus: world consists of substances, which must be simple, not divisible, and those substances are called monads. ▪ Come to being/cease to being: we think of that in terms of combination/dissolution. BUT not applicable to monads: they are simple. ▪ What would create/destroy a monad? Creation or annihilation. God can create/destroy them from/into nothing, but not natural process. ▪ S4/5/6: Monads cannot end/begin naturally. Monads can only begin/end supernaturally. ▪ Leibniz: usual model of thinking something coming/ceasing to being is based on aggregate of particles and monads don’t fit that model. ▪ Leibniz: usual model causation, cause/effect, also based on this idea of aggregates. E.g. drinking, some particles away, change aggregate. ▪ Monad has no aggregates: can’t be changed. S7: Monads are causally independent. ▪ Monads have to be windowless: nothing can enter/leave them → they are not actually influenced by anything that happens outside them. ▪ If anything happens inside monads, must be by some internal principle of change. ▪ Leibniz is claiming that the most fundamental entities in the world cannot have any effect on each other at all. ▪ S8: Monads must be something more than windowless/indestructible/simple substances. Must have some qualities, and different qualities. ▪ Monads must have other properties otherwise they would all be the same. If they would be the same, things around us couldn’t change. ▪ “Plenum”: universe is all filled/no vacuum. If vacuum: someone could say things change due to having more/less monads in some place. ▪ S9: No two beings are exactly alike → each monad must differ from every other. There cannot be two entities that are the same internally. ▪ S10: Every monad is subject to change and change is continual, there is always something going on. ▪ BUT monads can’t be influenced by anything outside of them, so he concludes. ▪ S11: Internal principle of change → every change must come from an internal principle. ▪ S12: Monads contain a complete specification of changes, besides an internal principle of change. ▪ A monad couldn’t have changed everything all at once, because in every change something must remain the same. ▪ Change needs change but also continuity: monad must have a plurality of properties: some remain the same while others are changing. ▪ What kind properties monads have? S14: Monads have perceptions, almost like all universe has “mind”, everything based on perceptions. ▪ Every monad, only thing that exists, continually has perceptions, but not aware/conscious. (cf. Descartes’ M2: sensation = consciousness). ▪ S15: Definition of appetite: action of the internal principle which brings about change. ▪ Leibniz is suggesting that principle of change in a monad is something like will/appetite, reaching for something which generates change. ▪ S17: Monads are the only source of perceptions. Perceptions and their changes are all there are in monads. ▪ S19: Definition of soul. Reserves notion of soul for monads that have distinct perceptions with sensation, e.g. consciousness, memory. ▪ Bare monads have only perceptions, whereas souls have sensation (perceptions with memory). All the animals and humans. ▪ S21: Every monad always must have perceptions. Distinction conscious/unconscious perceptions is a distinction in terms of content. ▪ Perceptions that are fuzzy are unconscious. If you have only that kind of perception, you are unconscious. Monads only have that kind. ▪ On the other hand perceptions that are clear, distinct, those are the conscious perceptions. ▪ E.g. particle in a stone, in touch with entire universe through forces, but all of this is confused, not clear, so unconscious monad. ▪ If monad in a cat, this body I’m part of, has been built to create clear and distinct perceptions, so I’m conscious: connected to this body. ▪ Trap: talking as if there are causal relations b/ monads, not possible. Must explain how world works if monads cannot influence each. VIDEO 2 – Principles of Reason (Monadology 29-38) ▪ Setup: everything is monads, a lot of them are unconscious, have perceptions but don’t perceive those perceptions. ▪ Some monads = souls (consciousness, e.g. animals). But humans: minds. Monads; some monads are souls, some souls are minds. ▪ S29: men differ from animals by having knowledge of necessary truths through reason. Definition of mind. ▪ Leibniz: I reflect on my own self, get to God that way. (cf. Descartes: considers himself limited because he has idea of an unlimited God). ▪ S30: through their knowledge of necessary truths, minds are led to acts of self-reflection, which provide materials for their reasonings. ▪ Leibniz explains how human reasoning works based on two principles: (1) principle of contradiction and (2) principle of sufficient reason. ▪ Contradictions = logical falsehoods/opposite to tautologies. S33: there are two kinds of truth: those of reasoning, and those of fact. ▪ S35: Necessary/mathematical truths are resolved to definitions, axioms, and postulates. Use of the principle of contradiction. ▪ Contingent truths (truths of fact) are different → that’s where the principle of sufficient reason comes in. ▪ S36: There is a sufficient reason for contingent truths and it is infinite in its detail. ▪ S37: The sufficient reason for any contingent thing must lie outside the series of contingent things. ▪ S38/39/40: the sufficient reason must lie in a necessary substance, God, and there is only one God who contains as much reality as possible. ▪ Leibniz: everything must have a reason, everything that is true must be true for some reason, why this way and not another way. ▪ Sufficient reason: it doesn’t need anything else to explain. Why anything in the universe is the way it is, there must be a sufficient reason. ▪ This reason might be infinitely never ending. But it must end, it is the principle of sufficient reason, nothing can be random, for no reason. ▪ We need something outside this infinite chain of causes that explains and determines that things are going to be exactly the way they are. ▪ It must be something that is not part of this series of contingent events, something necessary, eternal, it must be God. ▪ How does that work? Leibniz: God has a reason to create the universe precisely the way it is. “We live in the best of all possible worlds”. ▪ God could have no reason to have two perfectly aligned things exactly how they are instead of switching them around. ▪ But God must have a reason for everything, therefore can’t there be two things in the universe that are exactly the same. ▪ S47: God produces all other monads. VIDEO 3 – Pre-established Harmony (Monadology 49-58) ▪ But how can the universe be the way it is if monads can’t influence each other? How can things interact if they can’t interact? ▪ S49: A monad is said to act insofar as it has distinct perceptions, and be acted upon insofar as it has confused perceptions. ▪ Linking action to perception and to perfection. Leibniz: if you understand something/have distinct perceptions, then you are acting. ▪ If you have indistinct perceptions/you are passive. ▪ S50: One monad is more perfect than another when what is found in it explains a priori what is found in another. ▪ What is found in me, desire/will of understanding, explains e.g. the pen moves. How can I act upon it if things can’t act upon each other? ▪ S51/52: Monads influence each other only ideally. In monads, actions and passions are mutual. ▪ When God creates the world, he creates monads, but God is creating a coherent set of monads that all together form a world. All fits. ▪ God creates a monad that will have perception of moving a pen → also creates monads that make the pen perceive a movement. ▪ This non-chaos, he calls pre-established harmony, between monads, all fit together/form a world, and God has created them in harmony. ▪ S53: There must be a sufficient reason for God’s choice of universe. He is not doing something random when creates the universe. ▪ S55: God chooses the best possible universe. When God creates the world, he creates the best one. (best ≠ no suffering BUT variety/order) ▪ S56/57: monads are perpetual living mirrors of the universe, each monad mirrors/perceives the universe from its own unique perspective. ▪ We can see a little part of the universe, but I am perceiving everything that happens in the Universe, but just the room is clear to me now. ▪ Why does he need to say this? Gods conceives of all these possible worlds, and every possible world is just a whole set of monads. ▪ But if a monad belongs to a particular universe, then it has to be a monad that is particular to that universe, only exist in that universe. ▪ S60: every monad represents the whole universe. Every monad is consistent only with this entire universe. ▪ If understand one monad, grasp the entire universe. Reason why He created this universe, everything is in everything else. (cf. Anaxagoras) VIDEO 4 – Infinities Inside Infinities (Monadology 65-69) ▪ S65: Matter is infinitely subdivided. Anti-Aristotelian, who says infinity is only potential, things can be divided infinitely but aren’t. ▪ Leibniz: things are divided infinitely right down to the indivisible in monad. ▪ S66: There is a world of created beings in the least part of matter. Everything in the universe expresses, contains everything else. ▪ Leibniz: the universe if like a fractal. Even the smallest part of matter contains a universe and so on until infinity. VIDEO 5 – Mind and Body (Monadology 78-81) ▪ How Leibniz tries to solve Descartes’ mind/body problem. Thinks he solves it because introduced the principle of pre-established harmony. ▪ S78: There is a pre-established harmony between soul and body. Leibniz vs Aristotelian terminology (goals in mind, final causes). ▪ S79: Souls act according to the laws of final causes. Bodies act according to the laws of efficient causes/laws of motion, mechanical. ▪ S80/81: Descartes’ doctrine of causal interaction between body/soul is false. Bodies acts as if there were no souls, souls act as if no bodies. ▪ Matter as a monad with passive perception. God created in such a way that when the matter bump into each other (metaphorically) it does so in harmony with my consciousness: pre-established harmony to solve the mind/body problem. From Lecture: ▪ Every object in the Universe is exerting a force on me. We need to understand other things, everything, to understand all about me. ▪ In order to know anything in the Universe as God knows it, means knowing the entire Universe. Everything acts together. ▪ This is one way of thinking in Leibniz’s monadology. Monads mirror the entire Universe. ▪ S89: God as legislator, moral God tells us how to behave. If I sin, punishment will happen to me. Sometimes not immediately. Lecture 7: The Way of Ideas: Locke/Berkeley/Hume (24 October 2024) VIDEO 1 – Hobbes as an Introduction to Empiricism ▪ British empiricists: Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. ▪ All have in common some version of the claim that our ideas (contents of our mind) are at bottom always empirical, based in sensation. ▪ Hobbes: we can have the idea of a unicorn, even though we have never perceived one. Can be constructed out of parts we have seen. ▪ But not every idea can be so constructed. Or, every idea can be so constructed, and if not, it is not an idea: perhaps a meaningless word ▪ There lies in empiricism the possibility of a radical critique of metaphysics [they may say ‘maybe a lot of it is impossible’]. ▪ Hobbes believes ideas must be traceable to sensation. ▪ Hume: empiricism will attack the notion of causation. Empiricism will turn out to be a road towards scepticism. ▪ After all, is the claim that all ideas are at bottom empirical itself an empirical idea, that could have been shown false? Paradoxical. ▪ BUT the mind of Man does not contain only perceptions, and so Hobbes will have to explain to us the nature of imagination and thought. ▪ Hobbes: imagination is decaying sense [weaker version of the perception]. ▪ Hobbes tells us that Memory is our name for Imagination when it faithfully reproduces something we have sensed. ▪ Thinking consists in having ‘trains of thought’, which can be unguided – when we are daydreaming, merely associating. ▪ Or guided by fear/desire, in which case there is more constancy, and we keep thinking until we get some conclusion [rational reasoning]. VIDEO 2 – Locke on Ideas ▪ Locke on Idea: “whatsoever is the Object of the Understanding when a Man thinks”. ▪ Locke starts his Essay by arguing forcefully against the existence of innate ideas [idea got when we are born before any sensation]. ▪ That we do not know any innate principles [general claim we know to be true before any sensation]. ▪ AND that we have no innate singular ideas. Empiricism means nothing innate (big division vs rationalists). ▪ Argues that there is no universal consent about any principles: young children do not assent to the laws of logic. ▪ Even if there was universal consent, it does not imply knowledge AND could be explained by other causes than just being innate. ▪ Same arguments: no innate singular ideas. Young children don’t have the idea of a horse, no innate idea of God [cf. Descartes]. ▪ Locke and Plato. Plato’s doctrine of anamnesis. Locke’s critique of understanding ‘innate’ as ‘having the capacity to learn’. ▪ Plausibility on Plato’s idea? Plato’s doctrine solves the problem of the relation between experience and concepts [general to specific]. ▪ It is not clear how we will ever get from singular sense experience to the possession of general concepts – problem for empiricists. ▪ What is interesting is the empiricist project of building up all our mental contents from those of empirical sensation. ▪ Locke’s positive account of how the mind works starts with a distinction/source between two types of thinking: sensation and reflection. ▪ All ideas come from either sensation, which is the experience we have when we perceive the world. ▪ Or from reflection, which is the experience we have when we perceive the operations of our own mind. ▪ Problem: could experience teach us that all knowledge comes from experience? Conundrum. ▪ Experience for Locke is both a necessary and sufficient condition for having an idea and knowing the meaning of the associated word. ▪ I have the idea of blue and know what the word “blue” means, if and only if I have experienced blue. ▪ But it also underestimates how much language/thought rely on social conventions/rules. Sellars and the example of Jones in the tie shop. ▪ Simple ideas are not composed of other ideas; we can only acquire them through acquaintance, not through thinking or imagination. ▪ The imagination can combine ideas we have into new, complex ideas (unicorn). Every simple idea must come to us through experience. ▪ Locke’s fourfold typology of origins for simple ideas: o From one sense only: blue, loud, sweet. o From multiple senses: motion, size, shape. o From reflection: thought, will. o From sense and reflection: pleasure, pain, existence, power. ▪ More ideas can be generated by three mental acts. The first is combination, which creates complex ideas. ▪ Juxtaposition, in which we view two ideas at once without combining them into one. ▪ Ideas of relation, e.g. idea “larger than” must be generated by mentally comparing an idea of a smaller and a larger object. VIDEO 3 – Abstract Ideas ▪ Finally: abstraction. E.g. abstract idea of man. ▪ N.B. it doesn’t address the Platonic question: how to know these particular impressions can be used as basis for a process of abstraction? ▪ Doesn’t the Lockean procedure already assume that we have the idea of man? An ability to group things together... ▪ Perhaps Locke believes that all we need is a primitive notion of resemblance: we recognise that men resemble each other. ▪ Now we perform abstraction to generate the idea of this particular resemblance, that they resemble each other in virtue of all being men. ▪ But it is not obvious that this actually solves the problem. ▪ Another puzzle: the ideas of existence/non-existence. I can have an idea of an apple. But can I have an idea of a non-existing apple? ▪ Can we think of these as ideas that we arrive at with abstraction? Locke: they are simple ideas, with which we are immediately acquainted. ▪ But does that make sense? They seem to be general concepts. ▪ Locke’s own example of an idea arrived at through abstraction is also somewhat surprising: whiteness. ▪ But if even that must be arrived at through abstraction, then which ideas are not abstract? How could the empiricist programme ever start? ▪ Berkeley’s attack: triangle. Triangles can be equilateral, isosceles, scalene. What is the abstract idea of a triangle? ▪ Berkeley: it has to be the idea of something that has three angles, three straight sides, but which is not equilateral, isosceles or scalene (!) ▪ Berkeley: no need for abstract ideas. Rather, our word ‘man’ brings to mind some man or another, it doesn’t matter which. ▪ Hume elaborates: a single word gets associated to many ideas. As we think/speak, these associations allow necessary ideas to come about. ▪ “All dogs are brown.” Perhaps the first dog that comes to mind is brown, but in this context I won’t stop there, will associate on. ▪ This account again presupposes our mind can sort things into resemblance classes; associate dogs and only dogs with the term “dog”. ▪ BUT this ability to recognise resemblances/classify experiences, lies at the basis of concept formation; empiricists lack a good story. VIDEO 4 – Primary and Secondary Qualities; Berkeley ▪ Locke: primary/secondary qualities. Primary qualities are inseparable from the body [essence], what a body by itself has and must have. ▪ Ideas of primary qualities resemble the bodies. The primary qualities are solidity, extension, figure, motion and number. ▪ The secondary qualities are merely powers of the body to generate certain sensations in us by virtue of their primary qualities. ▪ They do not resemble the body itself, but are dependent on our specific senses. These are colours, sounds, tastes, smells, and so on. ▪ They are discoverable by a single sense only, unlike the primary qualities [at least two senses]. ▪ Remind: Descartes’ piece of wax [exception: solidity, Locke admits vacuum, but Descartes cannot]. ▪ Essential in the Scientific Rev./mechanical world; leads to an idea that what is most real (objective reality) is what is mind-independent. ▪ But is it a coherent idea within empiricism? Berkeley doesn’t think so. ▪ “Colour exists only in mind, but extension/movement don’t. Try to think object with extension/movement, but no colour. Berkeley: can’t”. ▪ How Locke knows that some qualities belong to the bodies themselves and others only to our perception of them? ▪ And how he can even claim to know such a thing, given his commitment to empiricism? ▪ Weird: empiricist who claims to know that certain things are only in experience, and other things are also outside of experience. ▪ Berkeley: Locke’s claim that primary qualities do and secondary qualities do not resemble the objects, makes no sense. ▪ Berkeley: an idea can only resemble another idea. If the objects are ideas, we expect resemblance of both primary and secondary qualities. ▪ If they are not ideas, resemblance makes no sense. ▪ Berkeley is moving towards what he believes to be a logical consequence of empiricism: the claim that objects just are ideas. ▪ If I claim that a table is more than an idea, I am assigning some property to it that necessarily escapes observation. ▪ But as an empiricist, I don’t even think that that makes any sense! ▪ So a table just is a collection of ideas, and the claim that there are material objects distinct from ideas is a metaphysical mistake. ▪ Esse est percipii (to be is to be perceived, to be is to be a content of the mind). ▪ But if just the collection of ideas that I have of the table, it’s a weirdly disjointed thing unlike what we would normally think a table to be. ▪ This is true even if we add everyone’s ideas of the table. ▪ If we think of the table as the collection of all possible perceptions of it, it has transformed into rather a power to create ideas, ▪ Berkeley makes is to say that the table is a collection of ideas had by God, who after all is always perceiving everything! ▪ Primarily, the table exists as God’s thinking. When I perceive it, I am thinking God’s thoughts. You too are thinking God’s thoughts. ▪ Berkeley: our thoughts are of a coherent material universe. This is a strangely Spinozistic/Leibnizian place for empiricism to end up! ▪ And of course it requires Berkeley to come up with a proof of the existence of God that would fit his empiricism, which is a tough call. Lecture 8: Hume (7 November 2024) VIDEO 1 – Hume’s Enquire, Section II ▪ Basic empiricist idea: all our ideas/contents of our mind come from experience. Hume makes a distinction between ideas and impressions. ▪ “We may divide all the perceptions of the mind into two classes or species, which are distinguished by their different degrees of force and vivacity. The less forcible and lively are commonly denominated Thoughts or Ideas. The other species want a name in our language, and in most others; I suppose, because it was not requisite for any, but philosophical purposes, to rank them under a general term or appellation. Let us, therefore, use a little freedom, and call them Impressions”. Not as Descartes/Locke where all contents of consciousness are ideas. ▪ Hume: the less vivid are ideas, and others with immediate sensation are impressions. This makes it possible for Hume to claim that: ▪ “All our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones”. For Hume, impressions are primary. ▪ That is what we get from sensation, and our ideas are copies of that, fainter and less vivid. ▪ Means: many things we can think that we don’t get from the senses, but at same time, sensation puts a strict limit on what we can think. ▪ Hume: we can think unicorns/things we never seen, as long as we can construct them from data of sensation. We have no other ideas. ▪ Hume: the main way to argue for empiricism is that when we analyse our thoughts/ideas, they turn out to come out from our impressions. ▪ Hume knows no counterexamples: “Those who would assert that this position is not universally true nor without exception, have only one, and that an easy method of refuting it”. How can you refute Hume’s idea that all ideas are copied from impressions? “By producing that idea, which, in their opinion, is not derived from this source. It will then be incumbent on us, if we would maintain our doctrine, to produce the impression, or lively perception, which corresponds to it”. ▪ Hume’s theory: all our thoughts come from impressions. To refute my theory give me a single counterexample, an idea we have that does not come from impressions. He takes the burden of proof on himself. ▪ “All ideas, especially abstract ones, are naturally faint and obscure: the mind has but a slender hold of them: they are apt to be confounded with other resembling ideas; and when we have often employed any term, though without a distinct meaning, we are apt to imagine it has a determinate idea annexed to it”. If we try the experiment of reducing our ideas to impressions, then this is a method of finding out which of our ideas are actually empty and without any meaning. “When we entertain, therefore, any suspicion that a philosophical term is employed without any meaning or idea (as is but too frequent), we need but enquire, from what impression is that supposed idea derived? And if it be impossible to assign any, this will serve to confirm our suspicion”. If you bring forth any idea and it turns out not to be connected to impressions, then it wasn’t really an idea at all, but you were just using an empty word. ▪ Paradoxical: Hume told us to present an idea that is not connected to impressions and I will give up my empiricism, and then he says: ▪ If there is any idea that seems not be connected to any impressions then there is really no idea at all, and we have shown the person using this word is using mere empty language and not really thinking anything. How can Hume say both of these things? ▪ Methodological paradox on the basis of Hume’s system. Hume uses his empiricism to show the meaninglessness and emptiness of metaphysical concepts that he thinks we should do without. VIDEO 2 – Hume’s Enquire, Section IV, Part I ▪ Hume is going to present us some sceptical doubts in Section IV. Title: “Sceptical solution of these doubts”. Stress that it doesn’t say: solution of the sceptical doubt. Unlike Descartes, Hume is not going to reassure us, Hume is going to turn out to be the sceptic. ▪ Hume starts doing: divides all the objects of human reason or enquire into two kinds: relations of idea and matters of fact. ▪ Relations of ideas: relations between ideas, analytic, just meaning of the terms. E.g. circle is round, meaning of circle/round. ▪ Hume: doesn’t think it is very problematic. We maybe just compare ideas in our minds. ▪ Matters of fact: about things that exist in the world. E.g. contingent things, things about reality, knowledge that is a posteriori. ▪ “The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible; because it can never imply a contradiction, and is conceived by the mind with the same facility and distinctness, as if ever so conformable to reality. That the sun will not rise to-morrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction than the affirmation, that it will rise”. ▪ Relations of ideas have to do with contradiction and tautology, we can see immediately that a circle has to be round, is part of the definition. ▪ But we can’t see in the same way that the sun will have to rise tomorrow. We can also conceive, no contradiction, the sun not rising. ▪ Hume: enquire into matters of fact. How can we know anything about that? Hume assumes to be unproblematic matters of fact that relate to present testimony of our senses or the records of our memory. But what is problematic is what is beyond that. Hume wants to know is “nature of that evidence which assures us of any real existence and matter of fact, beyond the present testimony of our senses, or the records of our memory”. E.g. existence of a pen, I can see it, it is the present testimony of my senses. This is unproblematic. ▪ And now I remember having just seen a pen, and Hume also assumes that is unproblematic. ▪ But beliefs/knowledge about things I cannot see/remember seeing; they are outside of my direct experience. How do I know about that? ▪ “All reasonings concerning matter of fact seem to be founded on the relation of Cause and Effect”. Hume: assuming that we are always thinking in terms of causation, when we go from what we experience to anything else, why do we believe there was a roman empire? ▪ Because we have seen certain traces we believe to having been caused by the roman empire. This is true for any reasoning about the past. ▪ We always assume what we saw was caused by past. And future: projecting effects into future, assuming present will cause effect in future. ▪ Hume: every time we believe something about matters of fact that is beyond our direct experience, we think in terms of cause and effect. ▪ How do we get any knowledge of cause/effect? Hume: two sources of knowledge, through a priori reasoning and experience. ▪ A priori reasoning: if you think about cause you can just know without experience what the effect will be, or vice-versa. ▪ Hume: this can never be the case. Any cause and any effect could follow from each other, never a contradiction. By pure thought alone I can never know what will happen. “Every effect is a distinct event from its cause. It could not, therefore, be discovered in the cause, and the first invention or conception of it, a priori, must be entirely arbitrary”. No a priori link from the cause to the effect. ▪ Two sources: a priori and experience. If we know anything at all about cause and effect, that knowledge must have come from experience. VIDEO 3 – Hume’s Enquire, Section IV, Part II ▪ All our knowledge of matters of fact beyond the range of our direct experience comes from reasoning about cause and effect. ▪ Our knowledge of cause and effect must come from experience. How do we get knowledge from experience? ▪ Hume: proposing the problem of induction. It is rational to take things we have experienced as a guide to things we haven’t experienced. ▪ How: in terms of predicting the future. We saw world works in a certain way, so we assume that the future is going to be like the past. ▪ Experience that sun rises every morning, assume as true in the future as in the past. Hume: why? How do we know that? ▪ Hume doesn’t ask how can we be certain? But how can we know this at all? What justification we have to belief this is even probable? ▪ Hume: we cannot. There is no reasonable argument that takes us from our experience to anything beyond our experience. ▪ Hume’s conclusion: “even after we have experience of the operations of cause and effect, our conclusions from that experience are not founded on reasoning, or any process of the understanding”. We make conclusions about future or past, but they are not based on reasoning or any process of the understanding. “Why this experience should be extended to future times, and to other objects, which for aught we know, may be only in appearance similar; this is the main question on which I would insist”. Hume then points out “These two propositions are far from being the same, I have found that such an object has always been attended with such an effect, and I foresee, that other objects, which are, in appearance, similar, will be attended with similar effects” It does not follow from fact fire always hurt that is going to hurt in the future or past or anywhere else I didn’t experience. How can we get from experience to what lies beyond experience? ▪ Hume makes a distinction: “All reasonings may be divided into two kinds, namely, demonstrative reasoning, or that concerning relations of ideas, and moral reasoning, or that concerning matter of fact and existence”. Moral not ethical, but probability, not being totally certain. ▪ Demonstrative reasoning: totally certain, principle of non-contradiction. Moral reasoning: in terms of probabilities, conclusions probable. ▪ Hume: whatever is going on here when we reason about experience, cannot be the first. Because it implies no contradiction that the cause of nature may change: “an object, seemingly like those which we have experienced, may be attended with different or contrary effects”. “If we be, therefore, engaged by arguments to put trust in past experience, and make it the standard of our future judgement, these arguments must be probable only, or such as regard matter of fact and real existence, according to the division above mentioned. But that there is no argument of this kind, must appear, if our explication of that species of reasoning be admitted as solid and satisfactory. We have said that all arguments concerning existence are founded on the relation of cause and effect; that our knowledge of that relation is derived entirely from experience; and that all our experimental conclusions proceed upon the supposition that the future will be conformable to the past. To endeavour, therefore, the proof of this last supposition by probable arguments, or arguments regarding existence, must be evidently going in a circle, and taking that for granted” “or if there be any suspicion that the course of nature may change, and that the past may be no rule for the future, all experience becomes useless, and can give rise to no inference or conclusion. It is impossible, therefore, that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of the past to the future; since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of that resemblance. Let the course of things be allowed hitherto ever so regular; that alone, without some new argument or inference, proves not that, for the future, it will continue so” ▪ Hume: not through demonstrative reasoning, no contradiction future won’t be like the past. So must be probable reasoning ▪ But Hume: all such reasoning is based on relation of cause and effect. If I make some claim about future, it is by taking what I know of cause and effect in my experience and applying it to the future, but now I ask whether this kind of reasoning is okay. Am I allowed to take present experience as a guide to the future? Circle: you can’t provide induction is right through deduction, because there is no contradiction in the idea that induction will fail. But you can’t also prove that induction will work through induction, because proving something through induction presupposes that induction will work. Conclusion: there is no rational argument, not even a probable argument, to get from present experience to things we haven’t experienced. Claim: whenever we make a claim about anything we haven’t directly experienced, these claims are not going to be based on any kind of rational argument or rational thought. Problem of induction. VIDEO 4 – Hume’s Enquire, Section V ▪ No rational argument that could get us from experience to what we haven’t experienced. Radical. Means we cannot learn from experience. ▪ Hume does not defeat scepticism. Explains how human nature works; we don’t use reason here, something else, even if it is not rational. ▪ This path differs from normal path of most philosophers that insist on importance and supremacy of reason. Hume: “fear that this philosophy, while it endeavours to limit our enquiries to common life, should ever undermine the reasonings of common life, and carry its doubts so far as to destroy all action, as well as speculation. Nature will always maintain her rights, and prevail in the end over any abstract reasoning whatsoever. Though we should conclude, for instance, as in the foregoing section, that, in all reasonings from experience, there is a step taken by the mind which is not supported by any argument or process of the understanding; there is no danger that these reasonings, on which almost all knowledge depends, will ever be affected by such a discovery”. ▪ Hume: induction is totally irrational but who cares, because we keep on doing it anyway. Why keeping doing it if it is not rational? ▪ Because Nature will always maintain her rights. Principle Hume points out: custom/habit. “We only point out a principle of human nature, which is universally acknowledged, and which is well known by its effects”. If I have seen something a couple of times, then custom or habit will habituate my mind to expecting the same thing to happen the next time. It’s this habituation that is going to steer all my thinking. ▪ Induction is the way mind works. Cannot prove future will be like past, but mind works in such a way that I’m still going to assume it. ▪ Live as if future is going to be like the past. This is our habitual nature. “Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past.” Custom and not reason that is the guide to human life. “All belief of matter of fact or real existence is derived merely from some object, present to the memory or senses, and a customary conjunction between that and some other object... All these operations are a species of natural instincts, which no reasoning or process of the thought and understanding is able either to produce or to prevent”. Hume insisting on the powerlessness of human reason. Cannot get what we want through reason. ▪ But reason can’t even prevent us from going on with our daily life anyway. Reason is relegated to the standard of something secondary. ▪ “I shall add, for a further confirmation of the foregoing theory, that, as this operation of the mind, by which we infer like effects from like causes, and vice versa, is so essential to the subsistence of all human creatures, it is not probable, that it could be trusted to the fallacious deductions of our reason, which is slow in its operations; appears not, in any degree, during the first years of infancy; and at best is, in every age and period of human life, extremely liable to error and mistake” Reason is so bad/incompetent, that we couldn’t trust anything upon which our survival depends, to reasoning. Great we use a totally irrational habit or custom, and not “the fallacious deductions of our reason”. Radical break with most thinkers of the tradition here. Sceptical conclusions. ▪ Hume’s Theory of Belief: difference between imagining something and believing. I can imagine sun won’t come up, but not believing it. ▪ “It follows, therefore, that the difference between fiction and belief lies in some sentiment or feeling, which is annexed to the latter, not to the former, and which depends not on the will, nor can be commanded at pleasure. It must be excited by nature, like all other sentiments; and must arise from the particular situation, in which the mind is placed at any particular juncture. Whenever any object is presented to the memory or senses, it immediately, by the force of custom, carries the imagination to conceive that object, which is usually conjoined to it; and this conception is attended with a feeling or sentiment, different from the loose reveries of the fancy. In this consists the whole nature of belief.... I say, then, that belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain”. Hume’s Theory of Judgement: When I judge something is true, sort of strength of feeling, strength of the picturing my mind which imagination alone is unable to give me. ▪ Problem: you can’t disbelief an illusion. If I see oasis, strong vivid impression, as strong as sensed perception. But I can still disbelief it. ▪ Hard to see how distinction between strength of an impression, and rational decision to believe it or not, which seem sometimes to take place, and which reason plays a central role, how Hume can do justice to that? VIDEO 5 – Hume’s Enquire, Section VII ▪ Nature of ideas that they have to come from impressions + no process of reasoning that can get us from cause to effect = where does this concept of cause and effect come from? Necessary connection, X happens then something else must happen as well. On causation. ▪ Hume: trouble finding the idea of a necessary connection in our experience. I see one event, then another, but no necessary connection. ▪ E.g. billiard balls: “All events seem entirely loose and separate. One event follows another; but we never can observe any tie between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected. And as we can have no idea of any thing which never appeared to our outward sense or inward sentiment, the necessary conclusion seems to be that we have no idea of connexion or power at all, and that these words are absolutely without any meaning, when employed either in philosophical reasonings or common life” Necessity, power, those basic ideas of cause/effect mean nothing. How do we have illusion we have these ideas? Why we talk about them constantly if they have no meaning? ▪ Hume: “It appears, then, that this idea of a necessary connexion among events arises from a number of similar instances which occur of the constant conjunction of these events; nor can that idea ever be suggested by any one of these instances, surveyed in all possible lights  and positions” If you see something happen once, who knows what is going to happen next time. But if you see things fall down all the time, you start expecting it. Get idea of necessary connection between cause and effect. “But there is nothing in a number of instances, different from every single instance, which is supposed to be exactly similar” Pointing out that seeing something 10 times does not really give you anything new. One observation is in a sense identical to 10 observations, except for one thing. “except only, that after a repetition of similar instances, the mind is carried by habit, upon the appearance of one event, to expect its usual attendant, and to believe that it will exist. This connexion, therefore, which we feel in the mind, this customary transition of the imagination from one object to its usual attendant, is the sentiment or impression from which we form the idea of power or necessary connexion” turns out there is some content to the idea of power or necessary connection after all, just not something in the world. It’s our own mental expectation. ▪ Hume: when I think of cause/effect, it’s your own expectation, your feeling that if this happens then that is going to happen too. ▪ That is the only thing that could give us the idea of power or necessary connection. If that is the case, how should we think of cause and effect: “Suitably to this experience, therefore, we may define a cause to be an object, followed by another, and where all the objects similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the second” Hume’s famous constant conjunction theory of causation. ▪ A causes B means that event A is always followed by event B. Nothing about necessary connection, just these two things happen together. ▪ “Or in other words where, if the first object had not been, the second never had existed” Hume: causation is when A causes B, what I mean is had A didn’t existed, then B wouldn’t existed either. What’s so mysterious about this? Is the “in other words”, because this is not the same! To claim that causation is just two things always happening together, is not the same as claiming that causation is that if something hadn’t happened then the other wouldn’t had happened either. ▪ Humes goes on to give us a third definition of causation “We may, therefore, suitably to this experience, form another definition of cause, and call it, an object followed by another, and whose appearance always conveys the thought to that other” here causation is entirely subjective, A causes B, means if I see A then I expect B to happen, not in the world, but in the human mind. ▪ Maybe he wants to give us some options: here are some possibilities to understand causation in our reasoning, could be this subjective thing about our expectations or could be this objective thing about things always happening after each other in the world, but neither of them is the kind of relation that philosophers were thinking about when they were thinking of causation. This necessity that is in the world itself. And by doing that Hume opens up the modern philosophy of causation. Radical empiricist position about causation that remains influential until now. Lecture 9: Problems of Causation (21 November 2024) VIDEO 1 – Problems of Causation ▪ Metaphysics, problems of causation. Plural, causation is problematic in many ways. Since Antiquity (Aristotle’s theory of the four causes). ▪ First problem: the connection between a causally ordered world and human freedom (free will in a causally determined universe). ▪ Aristotle/Epicurus denied premisses: actions not caused in the way other events are. Stoics: everything follows from strict causal necessity. ▪ Mechanical world developed by moderns increases the tension → philosophy of nature deeply committed to deterministic causality (laws). ▪ Compatibilism: determinism and freedom are compatible. To be free doesn’t mean that there really are multiple options open to you. ▪ Hobbes: to be free is just to have one’s action be determined by one’s will. We must be free to do what we will, not free to will. ▪ Locke: action is free iff (a) I have a volition to act (b) I have a power to act or not. Free: doing what I want and could have done otherwise. ▪ Spinoza: denies free will in the sense of the ability to go against what will actually happen. To be free: to have what happens to oneself follow from one’s own nature rather something else’s nature. Key to this: an understanding of God, everything happens acc. to God’s nature. ▪ Kant: his deterministic system leaves room for faith regarding human freedom. We can’t prove we’re free but neither that we’re not free. ▪ Second problem: the causal relation between minds and bodies (mind/body causation). ▪ Descartes: strict distinction between thinking mind and extended body → dualism. ▪ Bodies can only bump each other/transfer motion. How can bodies influence a mind, and vice-versa? How are perception/action possible? ▪ Berkeley: monistic idealism. No sense of mental-bodily causation → kick out bodies, claim that only an idea can influence another idea. ▪ Focus: causation itself. Hume: denies reality of causation as a relation in the world. Kant: attempts to rescue causation from Hume’s attack. VIDEO 2 – The Rejection of Powers ▪ Aristotle: objects have potentialities/powers that can be actualized (acorn/oak). 17th century: rejection of such powers (mechanical world). ▪ Matter + Form becomes Matter in Motion, and the latter matter is defined purely by modes of extension: there is no room for powers. ▪ First, the moderns believe powers to be explanatorily impotent: pointing out a power doesn’t teach us much; a word to hide our ignorance. ▪ E.g. Moliere. Medical student: why opium puts people to sleep? Because opium has a dormitive virtue Descartes: not much explanation. ▪ Second, moderns believe that powers grant intentionality to physical objects, while physical objects are in fact ‘blind’ and ‘dumb’. ▪ E.g. object with power to move towards the centre of universe. How does it know where the centre is? How does it set itself into motion? ▪ Malebranche: suppose this chair can move itself: which way will it go? You would have to give the chair an intellect and a will capable of determining itself. You would have to make a man out of your armchair. ▪ Powers require a relation to a state of affairs that doesn’t need to exist: fire has the power to burn paper even when there’s no paper around. ▪ But only minds can be related to non-existent states of affairs, so power attributions make no sense. They would require, Descartes suggests, that we attribute ‘little souls’ to physical objects. Moderns: the Aristotelian theory of powers is useless and makes no sense. VIDEO 3 – Occasionalism ▪ Problem with rejection of powers: what about causation? If there are no powers, no own principles of change: what about cause/effect? ▪ Descartes/Malebranche: new top-down picture vs bottom-up picture of Aristotle. Instead of powers in individual objects: laws of nature. ▪ The physical objects do not govern themselves but are governed by the laws. But what are laws of nature? How do they do their work? ▪ We need to think about God. Descartes: some cause must ensure his continued existence, and that this cause must be God. God is certainly causally conserving the world. But is he perhaps not doing more? ▪ In the neo-Aristotelian tradition, the most influential story about God’s role in causation is concurrentism. ▪ Concurrentism: idea that objects have powers, but that they can’t exercise those powers entirely on their own: they need God to concur. ▪ E.g. fire burns paper, but only if God concurs with it – which He normally does. (helps explaining miracles → when Gods does not concur) ▪ Malebranche: against this theory. If God recreates the world every moment, what role remains to be played by objects and their powers? ▪ It seems that the only cause of anything is just God. The correct causal story is that God causes everything, and that physical bodies/mental states are merely occasions for God to create one thing rather than another. Hence the name of this philosophical position: occasionalism. ▪ Now laws of nature become intelligible: for these are simply the principles which God has chosen to be bound as he recreates the world. ▪ Not that physical objects have the power to push each other; but God uses collisions as occasion to change the course of moving objects. ▪ E.g. Descartes believes that the law of the conservation of motion follows from God’s immutability. ▪ Everything, then, is entirely passive, except for God, who is the sole and single cause of everything that happens. ▪ Concurrentism: God does cause all created things with all their properties to exist from moment to moment, but there is secondary causality. ▪ Effect is produced by both God and the created cause. When a natural effect is produced, it’s immediately caused by both God and the creature. God and the creature both directly involved and “concur” in bringing about the natural effects typically attributed to the creature. ▪ Occasionalism: God keeps each created thing with all its properties in being from moment to moment, and there are no secondary causes. ▪ According to occasionalism, it is logically impossible that there are secondary causes. All events are taken to be caused directly by God. VIDEO 4 – Hume ▪ Locke: doesn’t accept occasionalism. Tries to give some sort of causal role to physical objects themselves, objects can do something; pure geometrical insight into natural processes (size, shape, extension are really in the world) is all we need to understand why things happen as they do. The example of the lock and the key. Key that precisely fits the lock, turn the key so the lock turns and everything opens, something that you can describe in a geometrical fashion. Locke claims that just the size and shape of the key and lock that causes this process to go in the particular way it goes. But one problem with this kind of approach is that it seems we need to bring powers back somewhere (something like a force exerted by an object on another). The insight is, after all, not purely geometrical. ▪ All authors in this tradition agree: the relation between a cause/effect must be one of logical necessity: that a cause happening without its effect following is a contradiction. This is true for the Aristotelians, for the occasionalists, and for the geometric model of Locke. ▪ Hume: devastating critique/reinterpretation. There never is a contradiction in the conception of any two events following each other. ▪ Aristotelians would simply deny there is no contradiction. Occasionalists would argue Hume’s point fails precisely for the will of God. ▪ But Hume: empiricist belief that all ideas must come from the senses. ▪ If there never is a contradiction in the conception of any two events following each other, and if experience just is experiencing events following each other, then it automatically also is the case that no experience contains a necessary relation. ▪ Ergo: when we talk about necessary relations between events, no idea what we are talking about. All events “entirely loose and separate”. ▪ But we think in terms of cause/effect all the time. Hume: cause-effect relations are believed in only after repeated experience. ▪ Now repeated experience cannot offer us any new idea or reveal any relation between the events that the first experience did not reveal. ▪ But: creates a customary relation of expectation in our mind between the two: seeing one automatically makes me think of the second. ▪ Hume defined belief in terms of strength of the idea; so seeing one event will make us believe that the other will happen too. ▪ Hume: this is what causation really consists of → causal anti-realist. No causal relation in the world (only from God to the world) but no God → occasionalism w/o God. Just events happening one after another. Any patterns: we cannot explain them rationally. Humean Mosaic. VIDEO 5 – Kant’s Second Analogy ▪ Kant: Second Analogy of Experience, wants to show that existence of causal laws is a necessary precondition to our conception of time. ▪ If we want to think of external objects as having positions in time, we must also think of them as subject to causal laws. ▪ Ergo: a Humean theory which acknowledges succession but not causation is simply not an option. ▪ ‘Apprehension’ = conscious mental image. Then our conscious sensation consists in the temporal succession of apprehensions. ▪ NOT that we apprehend an objective time order. BUT, the temporal succession of apprehensions is compatible with three types of situation. ▪ First: situations like dreams, in which my apprehensions do not correspond to an object at all. No objects. ▪ Second: situations like looking over a house. Apprehension of the door comes before the apprehension of the roof. Here there is an object, but order of the apprehensions doesn’t correspond to an order in that object: the door doesn’t come ‘before’ the roof in any objective sense. ▪ Third: situations where the order of the apprehensions does correspond to an order in the object that is apprehended. E.g. apple falling from a tree. Not some merely subjective order of my apprehensions but the objective temporal order of the apple’s states. ▪ In the Second Analogy of Experience, Kant is concerned with understanding the difference between third situation and the other situations. ▪ Thus: concerned with objective time order; with the temporal ordering of (states of) objects. But not how we can know that a certain succession that we apprehend is an objective succession. Rather, how we can think an objective succession. ▪ What is it that allows us to conceive of the subjective temporal succession of apprehensions as corresponding to a temporal succession of the objects? How can we think of ourselves as being in a changing world, rather than just think of ourselves as changing? ▪ Or: what is the difference between a subjective and an objective order? Answering this question requires us to make a distinction between our subjective mental states and the objects that are apprehended in those mental states. E.g. idea of this hand (mental state) vs hand itself. ▪ Object: that which makes it necessary for our apprehensions to be combined according to a certain rule – it is what ensures that our stream of mental images cannot change in any which way (as it can in a dream, where we are not apprehending objects). ▪ To conceive of objects as undergoing change (to conceive of an objective temporal order of events) is to conceive of them as necessitating a certain temporal order of apprehensions. If A happens objectively before B, then it is necessary in my experience that B follows A. ▪ Now the idea of a necessary temporal relation, that is, of one thing having to follow from something else, is for Kant simply the idea of causality; and any particular such rule is a causal law. Hence the upshot of Kant’s argument is that thinking objects as placed in time, that is, thinking an objective temporal order, is thinking objects under the concept of causality, that is, thinking the world as being subject to causal laws. A temporal world that is not also a causal world is simply inconceivable. Lecture 10: Mary Shepherd; Canonicity and History (28 November 2024) VIDEO 1 – Reflections on the Canon ▪ Philosophical canon’s (1) aim: introduce philosophers that will reappear (historical importance of some authors) → conservative teaching. ▪ But: impoverished view of past of philosophy because names might be important but they don’t cover everything that happens. ▪ Well-rounded view of what is going on in these periods: looking at figures we don’t generally look at. ▪ (2) aim: tell a narrative that makes sense. Development/narrative. People are working out answers/investigating/how to react to each other. VIDEO 2 – Margaret Cavendish on Women and on Matter ▪ 17th century. She reacts to authors like Hobbes and Descartes while setting out her original philosophical system. ▪ Talk about rhetoric and the ideas surrounding the idea of women doing philosophy. ▪ “So I having no learning or art to assist me in this dangerous undertaking, thought, I must of necessity perish under the rough censures of my readers, and be not only accounted a fool for my labour, but a vain and presumptuous person, to undertake things surpassing the ability of my performance; but on the other side I considered first, that those worthy authors, were they my censurers, would not deny me the same liberty they take themselves; which is, that I may dissent from their opinions, as well as they dissent from others, and from amongst themselves: