1. Philosophy 1010 Class #7 Title: Intro to Philosophy
Instructor: Paul Dickey
Address:
Tonight:
Turn in your notes on the videos
Hand Back & Discuss Midterm Exam
Discuss Class Essay
Class Discussion on Chapter 3
Next Week – 10/29/2014
A one to two paragraph “brief” on you essay is due.
Submit Mid-term Exam Second Chance
Be sure you have read Chapter 4, Sections (to page 275) 1

2. Discuss
Class Essay
Due: 11/12

3. Requirements for Class Essay
You are writing a short 3-5-page essay (computer-printed or typed, double-spaced, 1” margins, Times Romans 12-point font).
The paper must demonstrate your understanding of an issue we discussed -- for example, the mind/body problem.
You will need to identify two philosophers to discuss in your essay in regard to your topic.
Your paper will show specific and detailed understanding of the two points of view on the issue by the two philosophers which raises an apparent conflict.
The student will discuss this conflict and propose in his or her paper an argument to resolve the conflict.

4. Requirements for Class Essay
You are free to select from a broad availability of sources (but not Wikipedia). If you have a question about the appropriateness of a source you wish to use, please discuss this with instructor before you turn in your essay.
You must use at least three sources, but not more than five (otherwise your research could get unwieldy).
Topic to be selected with instructor approval by next week. By then, you should have a good idea what your general argument will be.
Essay are due when you come to final exam on the last day of class. No essays will be accepted after that time!!!
The essay will be 20% of your course grade.
Any questions?

5. Requirements for Class Essay
Your essay will be graded as an sum of five scores:
How accurately and completely to you describe the philosophical issue being addressed?
How correctly do you represent the view of the 1st philosopher? NO STRAW MEN ALLOWED!
How correctly do you represent the view of the 2st philosopher? NO STRAW MEN ALLOWED!
Is your resolution of their conflict reasonable and clearly stated? Do you give a good argument for it?
Did you follow the specified requirements of the essay? Did you provide an appropriate bibliography of your sources, etc.

6. Online Philosophy Sources that you
might wish to use in your term paper:

7. (a Metaphysical Study)
Chapter 3
Reality and Being
(a Metaphysical Study)
***

8. Realism
Realism is the view that the real world exists independent of our language, our thoughts, our perceptions, or our beliefs about it.
Our common sense demands of us that we believe in realism.
But how can we know that “our wonderful world is real?” Can we prove it? Or alternately, do we have evidence? Can we provide “reasons to believe” without “begging the question?”
And what does it even mean for our world to be “real?” If someone were to say that the world was NOT real, what would he mean? What we understand that he was saying?

9. What Is Reality?
For now, let us assume we are realists, that is, we believe in realism. So what is the reality we believe in?
Some might argue that reality is what we experience through our senses.
Or would you perhaps argue that reality consists of more than the material world? What about justice, mathematics, liberty, freedom, truth, beauty, space, time, and love?
Is language real?
Is God real?
Or the sub-atomic theoretical entities that physics asserts? Are they real?

10. Metaphysics is the Study of What is Real
The most fundamental question in metaphysics may be:
Is reality purely material or is there reality beyond the material?
We already discussed this question to some degree in terms of the mind/body problem, but now we will begin to look at this issue in a much broader scope.
We have already seen the materialism of Thomas Hobbes, particular in the context of the mind/body problem. Hobbes, however, argued for Materialism in a much broader sense.

11. Disk from “The Examined Life”
What is Real?
***
Disk from “The Examined Life”
Video Series
(If time permits)

12. Descartes & The Scientific Revolution
In 1636, a Hobbes travels to Italy where he may have met with Galileo. With the influence of Galileo, Hobbes develops his social philosophy on principles of geometry and natural science.
Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy", the "father of modern physics", the "father of science", and "the Father of Modern Science“
Galileo proposes that physics should be a “new science” based on methods of observation not just on the methods of reason.

13. Materialism
Thomas Hobbes ( ) rejects Cartesian dualism claiming that Descartes Mind/Body problem itself refutes dualism.
Since mind and body cannot interact, they cannot both exist within human nature.
There can only be one realm of human nature and that is the material world.
All human activities, including the mental, can be explained on the paradigm of a machine.

14. Materialism
Hobbes was reductionist in that he believed that one kind of purported reality (the mind) could be understood entirely in terms of another (matter).
New scientific techniques of observation and measurement being used by Galileo, Kepler, and Copernicus were making giant strides in understanding the universe.
The spirit of his century suggested to Hobbes that all reality would be explained in time in terms only of the observable and the measurable.
Hobbes himself was unable to explain any mental processes in terms of the physical.
Perhaps motivating Hobbes’ view was basically his passionate faith in the advancement of science at the time.

15. Is There an Alternative to Materialism?
Idealism & Plato’s Theory of Forms
The view that reality is primarily composed of ideas or thought rather than a material world is the doctrine known as Idealism. That is, an Idealist would say that a world of material objects containing no thought either could not exist or at the least would not be fully "real."
The earliest formulation of this view is given to us by Plato.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the world of shadows is representative of the material world and is not fully real.

16. Plato’s Theory of Forms
What is the problem with which Plato is faced?
How can one live a happy and satisfying life in a contingent, changing world without there being some permanence on which one can rely?
Indeed, how can the world appear to be both permanent and changing all the time.
Plato observed that the world of the mind, the world of ideas, seems relatively unchanging. Justice, for example, does not seem to change from day to day, year to year.
On the other hand, the world of our perceptions change continuously. One rock is small, the next large, the next…?

17. Plato’s Theory of Forms
To resolve this problem, Plato formalized the classic view of idealism in his doctrine of Forms.
In everyday language, a form is how we recognize what something is and unify our knowledge of objects. (e.g How do we say two objects of different size, color, etc. are both cars?)
Permanence comes from the world of forms or ideas with which we have access through reason.
In Plato’s view, all the particular entities we see as material objects are shadows of that reality. Behind each entity is a perfect form or ideal. Ideal forms are eternal and everlasting. Individual beings are imperfect.
e.g. Roundness is an ideal or form existing in a world different from physical basketballs. Individual basketballs participate or copy the form.

18. Plato’s Theory of Forms
Forms are transcendent, that is they do not exist in space and time. That is why they are unchanging.
Forms are pure. They only represent a single character and are the perfect model of that property.
Material objects are a complex conglomeration of copies of multiple forms located in space and time.
Forms are the cause of all that exists in the world.
Forms exist in a hierarchy with the Form of The Good being the highest form.
Forms are the ultimate reality because they are more objective than material things which are subjective and vary in our perception of them.

19. What is the Essence of the Form of the Good?
Forms are the cause of all that exists in the world. Forms exist in a hierarchy with the Form of The Good being the highest form and thus is the first cause of all that exists.
Forms are the ultimate reality because they are more objective than material things which are subjective and vary in our perception of them.
For Socrates and Plato, the question “What is a thing?” is the question what is the essence of the thing? That is, the attempt is to identify what (presumably one) characteristic or property makes that thing what it is.

20. What is the Essence of the Form of the Good?
Further, Plato compares the power of the Good to the power of the sun. The sun illuminates things and makes them visible to the eye. The absolute or perfect Good illuminates the things of the mind (forms) and makes them intelligible.
The Good sheds light on ideas but, the vision of the idea of the Good is, according to Plato, too much for human minds.
When Plato emphasizes The Good as the cause (I.e. an active agent) of essences, structures, and forms, as well as of knowledge, he seems to be invoking the idea of the Good as God. The Good as absolute order makes all intermediate forms or structures possible.

21. Modern Idealism
The founder of modern Idealism is Bishop George Berkeley ( ).
Berkeley argued against Hobbes’ Materialism that the conscious mind and its ideas and perceptions are the basic reality.
Berkeley believed that the world we perceive does exist. However that world is not external to and independent of the mind.
The external world is derived from the mind.
However, there is a further reality beyond our own minds. Since we have ordered perceptions of the world which are not controlled by an individual’s mind, they must be produced by God’s divine mind.
(9:00)

22. Pragmatism
The major pragmatist philosophers are Charles S. Pierce ( ) and William James ( ).
To the American Pragmatists, the debate between materialism and idealism had become a pointless philosophical exercise.
They wanted philosophy to “get real” (as we might say today.)
The Pragmatists argued that philosophy loses its way when it loses sight of the social problems of its day. Thus, the Pragmatists focused on issues of practical consequence. For them, asking even what is real in the complete sense is not an abstract matter.

23. Pragmatism
In terms of Metaphysics, James argued against both sense observation and scientific method and reason as the determinants of reality.
Reality is determined by its relation to our “emotional and active life.” In that sense, a man determines his own reality. What is real is what “works” for us.
Pragmatism was refreshing and offered new insights to various disciplines, particularly psychology as a developing science.
Ultimately to most philosophers, pragmatism failed to give a systematic response to the traditional philosophical issues that Materialism and Idealism were struggling with.

24. Logical Positivism
Similar somewhat to the American Pragmatists, the Logical Positivists also viewed the debate between materialism and idealism as a pointless philosophical exercise.
Unlike the Pragmatists however, they identified the problem with the metaphysical debate as a problem in understanding language and meaning.
The Logical Positivists proclaimed that Metaphysics was meaningless and both Materialists and Idealists were making claims that amounted to nonsense. They might be proposing theories that seemed to be different but had no consequences to our understanding of the world.
A.J. Ayer (1910 – 1989) proposed a criterion by which it could be determined what was a meaningful statement to make about reality.

25. The Logical Positivist Criteria
of Meaning
Metaphysical statements such as “God exists” or “Man has a mind and body” or ethical statements such as “Lying is wrong” are meaningless for Ayer.
Such statements do not make assertions about the world, but in fact only express emotions and feelings like poetry.
A statement can only be meaningful if it is verifiable by means of shared experience.

26. Anti-Realism
Anti-realism rejects the notion that there is a single reality. Rather, there is multiple realities that are dependent upon how they are described, perceived, or thought about.
Notice that whereas Berkeley emphasized consciousness as the basis of the world, the modern anti-realists focus on the pervasiveness of language.
Is “Realism” a condition of sanity? Can it
be challenged?
How can you even know about “reality” without language? Thus, what sense does it make to say reality exists “beyond” language?
Is reality dependent on our “contextualization” of things. Does this mean “reality” is just whatever you think it is? Is this different than “subjectivity?” Or is it an objective, shareable cultural phenomena?