Analisi testi fil. In inglese A.A. 16-17

Lez. 1 3/10/16

Annunci Vi invito a seguire il convegno LA SPIEGAZIONE IN LOGICA, ONTOLOGIA E SCIENZA, 4-6 Ottobre NON FAR0’ LEZIONE E RICEVIMENTO MARTEDì 11 OTTOBRE

Programma Programma per i frequentanti: Il problema dell'identità personale nell'empirismo britannico Si analizzeranno testi, che saranno indicati durante il corso, tratti dalle seguenti opere (per un totale di circa 100 pp.): J. Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding D. Hume, Treatise of Human Nature J. Butler, The Analogy of Religion T. Reid, Essays on the intellectual powers of man B. Russell, The Problems of Philosophy B. Russell, An outline of philosophy

Presentazione in classe tutti gli studenti (possibilmente suddivisi per gruppi di studio) saranno chiamati a presentare in classe una porzione specifica di testo.

Locke Leggeremo il cap. 27, Of ideas of identity and diversity, dal Book II dell’Essay concerning human understanding (1689) Quest’opera è divisa in 4 books Ripassiamo un po’ guardando la voce su Locke dalla SEP

Da voce su Locke di William Uzgalis in SEP John Locke (b. 1632, d. 1704) was a British philosopher, Oxford academic and medical researcher. Locke's monumental An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) is one of the first great defenses of empiricism and concerns itself with determining the limits of human understanding in respect to a wide spectrum of topics. It thus tells us in some detail what one can legitimately claim to know and what one cannot.

The empiricists Locke is often classified as the first of the great English empiricists (ignoring the claims of Bacon and Hobbes). This reputation rests on Locke's greatest work, the monumental An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. … Perhaps the most important of his goals is to determine the limits of human understanding.

Books I and II Some philosophers before Locke had suggested that it would be good to find the limits of the Understanding, but what Locke does is to carry out this project in detail. In the four books of the Essay Locke considers the sources and nature of human knowledge. Book I argues that we have no innate knowledge. (In this he resembles Berkeley and Hume, and differs from Descartes and Leibniz.) So, at birth, the human mind is a sort of blank slate on which experience writes. In Book II Locke claims that ideas are the materials of knowledge and all ideas come from experience. The term ‘idea,’ Locke tells us “…stands for whatsoever is the Object of the Understanding, when a man thinks” (Essay I, 1, 8, p. 47).

sensation and reflection Experience is of two kinds, sensation and reflection. One of these — sensation — tells us about things and processes in the external world. The other — reflection — tells us about the operations of our own minds. Reflection is a sort of internal sense that makes us conscious of the mental processes we are engaged in. Some ideas we get only from sensation, some only from reflection and some from both.

simple and complex ideas Locke has an atomic or perhaps more accurately a corpuscular theory of ideas. There is, that is to say, an analogy between the way atoms or corpuscles combine into complexes to form physical objects and the way ideas combine. Ideas are either simple or complex. We cannot create simple ideas, we can only get them from experience. In this respect the mind is passive. Once the mind has a store of simple ideas, it can combine them into complex ideas of a variety of kinds. In this respect the mind is active.

Books III and IV Thus, Locke subscribes to a version of the empiricist axiom that there is nothing in the intellect that was not previously in the senses — where the senses are broadened to include reflection. Book III deals with the nature of language, its connections with ideas and its role in knowledge. Book IV, the culmination of the previous reflections, explains the nature and limits of knowledge, probability, and the relation of reason and faith. 

Lezione 2 3/10/ 16 Ore 12-13

1. Wherein Identity consists. ANOTHER occasion the mind often takes of comparing, is the very being of things, when, considering ANYTHING AS EXISTING AT ANY DETERMINED TIME AND PLACE, we compare it with ITSELF EXISTING AT ANOTHER TIME, and thereon form the ideas of IDENTITY and DIVERSITY. When we see anything to be in any place in any instant of time, we are sure (be it what it will) that it is that very thing, and not another which at that same time exists in another place, how like and undistinguishable soever it may be in all other respects: and in this consists IDENTITY, when the ideas it is attributed to vary not at all from what they were that moment wherein we consider their former existence, and to which we compare the present.

For we never finding, nor conceiving it possible, that two things of the same kind should exist in the same place at the same time, we rightly conclude, that, whatever exists anywhere at any time, excludes all of the same kind, and is there itself alone. When therefore we demand whether anything be the SAME or no, it refers always to something that existed such a time in such a place, which it was certain, at that instant, was the same with itself, and no other.

From whence it follows, that one thing cannot have two beginnings of existence, nor two things one beginning; it being impossible for two things of the same kind to be or exist in the same instant, in the very same place; or one and the same thing in different places.

Lezione 3 4/10/16

That, therefore, that had one beginning, is the same thing; and that which had a different beginning in time and place from that, is not the same, but diverse. That which has made the difficulty about this relation has been the little care and attention used in having precise notions of the things to which it is attributed.

2. Identity of Substances. We have the ideas but of three sorts of substances: 1. GOD. 2. FINITE INTELLIGENCES. 3. BODIES. First, GOD is without beginning, eternal, unalterable, and everywhere, and therefore concerning his identity there can be no doubt. Secondly, FINITE SPIRITS having had each its determinated time and place of beginning to exist, the relation to that time and place will always determine to each of them its identity, as long as it exists.