Difine dialectic

— dialectic – from the Greek word “discourse”

— originally the method of philosophical inquiry perfected by Socrates, later developed as the basis of the philosophies of Hegel and Marx. In all cases, dialectic works through contradiction.

10. Virtue in Greek philosophy. Explain the meaning of knowledge in Socrate’s ethics

— The highest state is arête (virtue) or excellence, a moral knowledge that sees clearly the best course of action in any situation.

— The way to arête is self-knowledge; as Socrates says in the Apology, “The unexamined life is not worth of living”.

— Socrates’ supposed impiety was based on his perception that the gods of mythology no longer provided the basis of a viable ethic; instead a morality based on knowledge was necessary.

— Eutyphro is almost entirely devoted to that topic

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11. Explain the ‘’Euthyfro dilemma”

The ancient Greek philosopher Euthyphro developed a theory of moral correctness stating that, “what is pleasing to the gods is holy, and what is not pleasing to them is unholy.” In other words, “what God approves of is morally right, and what God disapproves of is morally wrong.” This form of thought, known as the Divine Command Theory, is perhaps among the most basic of theories relating morality and religion.

12. Plato’s theory of ideas: ideas and sensual objects – differences and similarities

— In his theory of ideas, Plato sought to resolve a dichotomy that vexed the Greek mind, the opposition between Change and Being.

— He said that the world we experience, the world of change, the world of sense experience and impressions is only an imperfect outcropping, a shadow of the pristine, unchanging, universal World of forms, that is World of Ideas.

— That world, not this, is the real world. In it are conatined the ideal forms of everything. The world of Ideas is eternal, the world of sensual objects is temporary and illusory.

— A beatiful rose we admire is merely a flawed approximation of the ideal rose and of the ideal standard of beauty – an illusion in fact.

— This illusion (which according to Plato is only a reflection of the real thing, that is the idea) “participates” only partially in its ideal form. Hence there are thousands and thousnads of roses which are different but somehow alike, yet there is only one ideal that is the ideal rose and all the roses in the world (past, present and future) participate in the one ideal

— individual objects take on the characters of the Forms (Ideas)

13. Plato’s theory of ideas: the conception of participation

— individual objects take on the characters of the Forms (Ideas)

14. Plato’s theory of ideas: the allegory of the cave

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— Plato’s theory of knowledge (which has a lot do with his ideas about politics and state) is exemplified by the allegory of the cave described by Socrates in book 7 of the Republic.

— We are asked to imagine a group of people chained from birth inside a cave. All they can see is the wall in front of them and the flickering shadows cast upon it. To these people the shadows are reality, even though they are merely illusions or imperfect copies of the real objects that exist outside the cave.

— Our world is like this cave: We humans are shackled (spętani) by our ignorance of the true nature of reality, which for Plato consists in his ideal forms. If we wish to see the world aright we must struggle out of the cave into the sunlight. It will at first dazzle and blind us but if we are strong enough we will begin to see the real world instead of shadows. Only the philosopher who is carefully educated as well as thoughtful and persistent will be able to attain anything close to this true knowledge; the rest will be content to stay in the cave and watch the shadows dance.

15. Plato’s theory of ideas: the ideal state

— In his theory of ideas, Plato sought to resolve a dichotomy that vexed the Greek mind, the opposition between Change and Being.

— He said that the world we experience, the world of change, the world of sense experience and impressions is only an imperfect outcropping, a shadow of the pristine, unchanging, universal World of forms, that is World of Ideas.

— That world, not this, is the real world. In it are conatined the ideal forms of everything. The world of Ideas is eternal, the world of sensual objects is temporary and illusory.

16. Aristotle: syllogisms

— Aristotle’s logic was founded on the syllogism, in which, given two premises a certain conclusion necessarily follows, for instance:

— “All trees are made of wood, an oak is a tree, all oaks are made of wood (A is B, C is A, C is B)..

17. Hylomorphism: substance and its components

— In general, then, matter is closely connected to potential or power; the potential or power to become some particular sort of thing.

— Only by giving it form can it be made actual (i.e., made into an actual object of a particular kind).

— This portion of Aristotle's metaphysics is called hylomorphism, because it is the claim that all objects are a combination of matter (hulê ⁶) and form (morphê)

— Aristotle believed that his hylomorphic theory answered the problem of change posed by Parmenides.

— Parmenides believed change to be impossible because it implies that something passes into nothing, and something else passes out of nothing. Since the "nothing" was thought not to exist, Parmenides concluded that all change is impossible.

— Aristotle's reply is that the basic matter remains the same underneath all change. Only new forms are put in the place of old forms. For example, a block of stone becomes a statue of Pericles because the block-form is removed and replaced with a Pericles-form by the sculptor.

18. Aristotle: the four causes: what is the sence of final cause?

— The idea of potentiality is connected to Aristotle’s theory of the four causes of things.

— Every substance can be described by four causes:

— 1. material (matter),

— 2. formal (form),

— 3.efficient (action)

— 4 final.

— The efficient cause of something is the motion that brings it to its final cause – what it was intended to be.

— Tracing efficient cause back to its source Aristotle concluded that the chain of causes cannot go back ad ifinitum (infinitely, endlessly) therefore there must be a Prime Mover, an “uncaused cause” that is pure form and wholly actualised, namely God.

19. Aristotle: the theory of virtue (Golden Mean)

— But how can we be sure what is best for us that is, was is virtuous?

— the answer to this is one of Aristotle’s brightest ideas and it is known as the famous principle of the Golden Mean;

— virtue, informed by reason lies in the middle between two extremes that is two opposite vices, one of excess and the other of deficiency.

— For example: what does it mean to be brave, what is courage as a virtue – it lies right in the middle between cowardice and recklessness: being a coward is not enough, being a reckless person, showing too much courage is not only unnecessary but also too much (and usually stupid).

— Gentleness lies right in the middle between submission and quick temper (hastiness).

—

20. Aristotle: what does it mean to be a political animal?

— At the very begging of his book Aristotle makes his famous definition that man is “a political animal”.

— By the gift of speech and sense of moral values, man is distinguished from the other animals. The solitary man is “either a beast or a god”;

21. The existence of God: ontological argument as formulated by St. Anselm

The ontological argument runs as follows:

we understand by God a being greater than which nothing can be thought. This idea clearly exists in our minds: it is the idea of a being endowed with every positive attribute and every perfection (God is conceived in all sides as timeless, immutable, omnipotent, omniscient, supremely good and supremely just).

22. The existence of God: ontological argument as formulated by Descartes (deceitful demon and “Matrix”)

Descaretes echoed and somehow repeated Anselm’s argument and added an elaboration of his own:

Our idea of God is the idea of a perfect being and only a perfect being could be the author of the idea; our idea that God exists cannot be false because God in allowing us to have that idea, would not be deceitful, since that would not be in the character of a perfect being.

It is possible, says Descartes, that what I perceive is a reasult of a manipulation; there might exist a powerful demon who deceives our senses and, what follows, makes us perceive the world the way he wants us to perceive so that he could use us.

But, according to Descartes we must refute such a presumption for the idea of God as a mean and deceitful being runs against the idea of a perfect being which above all guarantees legitimacy of notions such as “good” “bad” and “just” that is guarantees the legitymacy of ethics.

23. The existence of God: Pascal’s wager

Pascal simply stated that we do not have to proove the existence of God (since it is impossible within the framework of reason) – we can make a bet instead.

Pascal’s wager i s an argument for belief in God based on probability theory

Pascal proposed that to believe in God or not constitutes a wager that he exists or does not exist. Being alive and human we cannot avoid making a bet on one side or the other.

If God exists then to believe in him is to receive eternal life, while to deny him is to suffer damnation. If he does not exist, than to either receive or refuse him is to lose nothing. Hence, the wise gambler will choose to accept God, since to win the wager is to win all, and to lose is to lose nothing.

24. Theodicy: how to explain suffering and injustice?

— The term theodicy was introduced by a German XVII century philosopher Gottfreid Wilhelm Leibniz.

— The word theodicy derives from Greek (theos – god, dike – justice) and can be translated as the God’s justice.

— Theodicy is a vindication of the divine attributes, particularly holiness and justice, in establishing or allowing the existence of physical and moral evil

Even if we find the existence of God believeable or we just believe in Him, or we think it is problabe that he exists, there is one more problem to be confronted, namely the problem of theodicy.

Theodicies usually claim that evil and suffering are a necessary condition for the achievement of God’s greater plan that is even greater good

25. Descartes: the Cartesian method – its main assumptions and functions

Descartes began from the premise “Doubt everything” – for, as he used to say, Descartes therefore intended, as many others, to make philosophy a science and as he was a very good mathematician himself he took the pattern of mathematics to create his famous new method

The Cartesian method had four primary rules:

— accept as as true only what is clear and insusceptible of doubt

— divide every problem into as very parts as necessary

— consider each part clearly and completely, building by accretion to knowledge as the whole

— omit nothing of consideration that might be a source of error

in other words: accept only what is clear and evident.

26. Descartes: cogito and the mind/body problem

Cogito

— Descartes set out to build a new fundation for philosophy beginning with the search for a base that was immune from doubt.

— As St. Augustine had done before him he concluded that doubt itself implies the existence of doubting being. This conclusion led to his famous declaration “Cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am).

The mind/body problem

— The famous mind/body problem is the question whether there exists a distinct mental or spiritual sphere separate from the physical and, if so, how the two interact.

— The relationship between spirit and matter is an age-old mystery and is basic to many religious conceptions. Its importance as philosophical problem derives from the strict dualism of Descartes. For whom reality consisted of two disparate types of substance, mind and matter.

— The question rised by this formulation is how two utterly dissimilar substances can interact; if I cut my finger, how does my mind know it hurts? If I want to rise my hand, how does my body know what it should do?

27. The theory of substance: monism and monistic theories

— The one-substance-view is reffered to as monism or monistic theories

— Probably the most extreme monist was Parmenides, who held that there is only one eternal being and that the appereance of individual things is only an illusion.

— The term is most closely associated with Spinoza who believed that God and nature are one and that mind and matter are a “double aspect” of a single universal substance, fundamentally neither physical, nor mental and therefore “neutral”.

— This view is imperatively linked to pantheism God and nature are one and therefore there is no Divine person – God is not a person – God is everything and by the same token every human being being a part of the nature is a part of God.

— Other monisms are not neutral for according to them there is only one substance but the substance is either material or spiritual.

— Therefore a materialias t is a monist;

— the materialsit view asserts that mind is reducible to an aspect of matter (according to Democritus who is seen as the firt materialist philosopher, even human soul is made of atoms, according to Thomas Hobbes, another materialist living in the XVIIth century our ideas and everthing which is falsly described by us as spiritual can be explained by physics.)

— On the other hand idealistic or solipsistic view holds that the reality is fundamnetally spititual or mental and that what we tend to perceive as matter is just a phenomenon, an illusion or that simply we cannot find any sensible proof for the existence of metrial world (hence solipsism from the Latin expression “Solus ipse sum” – “Therefore I am alone”.)

28. The theory of substance: pluralism and pluralistic theories

— The many-substance-view is reffered to as pluralism. The best known though highly improbable and and eccentric example of pluralism is the system of monadology created by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. According to Leibniz the only existing things are so called monads – ultimate elements of the universe

— Monads are centers of force; each monad possesses its own degree and kind of force;

— God is a monad (the highest one) and every human soul is a monad too but they do not interact – as Leibniz used to say they are windowless, their activities are coordinated according to a divine preestablished harmony (harmonia prestabilita) like perfectly synchronized clocks ticking in unison.

— Monads are centers of force; substance is force, while space, matter, and motion are merely phenomenal.

29. What is the ultimate source of our knowledge? Nativism vs.empiricism

“What is the ultimate source of our knowledge?”

— those who claim that some notios are innate are reffered to as nativists.

— those who claim that there are no innate ideas nad that experience is the only and ultimate source of our knowledge are widely known as empiricists

— (the word empiricis from Greek empeiria – experience)

30. Locke’s tabula rasa and the critique of nativism

— Locke identified experience as the source of knowledge. The mind, he said, is at birth a tabula rasa or “blank slate”, on which the world of experience gradually imprints itself in a series of descrete sensations.

— Locke: if so called innate ideas are already imprinted in our minds at the moment of birth how can we explain the lack of certain ideas in the minds of children, idiots or so called savage people?

— Nativists argued that the general laws of logic are commonly shared by all the humans because our minds simply have them. Locke replied that Indians cannot understand neither the idea of one God, nor the idea of identity. What’s more, we cannot have an innate sense that God should be worshipped, when we cannot even agree on a conception of God or whether God exists at all. One of Locke's fundamental arguments against innate ideas is the very fact that there is no truth to which all people attest.

31. Locke: primary and secondary qualities

— Primary qualities, such as shape, motion or number are independent of our experience of them;

— secondary qualities, such as color and taste, depend on our individual perceptions.

— Locke saw primary qualities as actual attributes of the perceived object rather than sensations. While Locke was an empiricist.

— Primary qualities (shape, hardness, position, number) are actually present within an object and are not easily divorced from it. Secondary qualities are those that have the power to produce a sensation in the observer (color, scent, taste, sound).

32. Berkeley: “esse est percipi” and phenomenalism

— Berkeley maintained that the objects of perception exist only in our experience of them.

— what we do not perceive does not exist and what we do perceive exists only by virtue of our perception.

— He called this view immaterialism and summed it up in a phrase “esse est percipi” (to be is to be perceived).

— In Berkeley’s theory, the objects of our perception are “ideas” that cannot exist outside our concsiousness; there is therefore no material world as such.

— Berkeley did not believe, however, that the world dissapears when we close our eyes; these ideas also exist in the mind of God, who guarantees the continued existence of things that escape fallible, temporary human perception. An omniscent, ever-vigiliant God must exists in fact, to preserve the stability and continuity of the universe.

— Phenomenalism – a version of empiricism also realted to skepticism.

The theory states that we can have knowledge only of pehenomena we perceive, that the reality of a thing depends on our perception of it and that therefore we cannot be certain of the true nature of reality. Matter exists, so far, as we can know for sure, only if and when we perceive it. If there is a fundamental reality beyond the world of phenomena it is unknown and therefore not worth of speculating about

— Berkeley distinguished between “being” and “being perceived” and maintained that the objects of perception exists only in our experience of them.

33. Hume: ideas and perceptions

— Hume's analysis of human belief begins with a careful distinction among our mental contents:

— impressions are the direct, vivid, and forceful products of immediate experience;

— ideas are merely feeble copies of these original impressions.

— (Thus, for example, the color of the table at which I am now looking is an impression, while my memory of the color of the Mediterenean sea is merely an idea. Since every idea must be derived from an antecedent impression, Hume supposed, it always makes sense to inquire into the origins of our ideas by asking from which impressions they are derived.

— According to Hume each of our ideas and impressions is entirely separable from every other. The apparent connection of one idea to another is invariably the result of an association that we manufacture ourselves

— We use our mental operations to link ideas to each other in one of three ways: resemblance, contiguity or cause and effect. (This animal looks like that animal; this book is on that table; moving this switch turns off the light, for example.)

— Experience provides us with both the ideas themselves and our awareness of their association. All human beliefs (including those we regard as cases of knowledge) result from repeated applications of these simple associations.

34. Hume: the critique of necessary connection between cause and effect

— According to Hume our belief that events are causally related is a custom or habit acquired by experience: having observed the regularity with which events of particular sorts occur together, we form the association of ideas that produces the habit of expecting the effect whenever we experience the cause.

— But something is missing from this account: we also believe that the cause somehow produces the effect. Even if this belief is unjustifiable, Hume must offer some explanation for the fact that we do hold it. His technique was to search for the original impression from which our idea of the necessary connection between cause and effect is copied.

— The idea does not arise from our objective experience of the events themselves. All we observe is that events of the "cause" type occur nearby and shortly before events of the "effect" type, and that this recurs with a regularity that can be described as a "constant conjunction."

— Although this pattern of experience does encourage the formation of our habit of expecting the effect to follow the cause, it includes no impression of a necessary connection. Still, we do have the idea of a necessary connection, and it must come from somewhere…..

— For an explanation, Hume refers us back to the formation of a custom or habit. Our (non-rational) expectation that the effect will follow the cause is accompanied by a strong feeling of conviction, and it is the impression of this feeling that is copied by our concept of a necessary connection between cause and effect. The force of causal necessity is just the strength of our sentiment in anticipating efficacious outcomes.

35. Kant: a priory/ a posteriory and analytic/synthetic judgements

— A prori knowledge is prior to and independent of observation and experiment, a posteriori knowledge comes only after direct experience. Which means that a priori knowledge is general and universal and a posteriori knowledge is accidental and refers to details.

— Parallel to the a priori/a posteriori distinction is that bewteen analytic and synthetic judgements – the difference, in effect, bewteen statements whose truth depends purely on the meaning of their terms (i.e: “All bachelors are unmarried”, Oak is a tree, Every dog has four legs, A parrot is an animal, Socrates is a human being– these are all examples of analityc judgements, for their predicate is already present in their subject).

— Synthetic judgements require outside evidence to determine their truth or falsity (i.e. All bachelors live alone, Socrates drinks a lot of wine, This parrot doesn’t speak Russian).

— Kant claimed, which was quite obvious, that all analityc judgements are a priori because they do not depend on experience; however, since they tell us nothing new they are of no practical use. But, on the other hand, necessary truths cannot be proved by obeservation or experience which only tells us how things are, never how they must be. Necessary truths are known, if at all, a priori, in other words by pure reasoning. We can understand how there can be truths which are anlityc and a priori. But can there be synthetic a priori truths?

— This, he said is the fundamental question of philosophy. For it is only by a priori reasoning, that philosophy could reach beyond confines of human thought, so as to prove that the world is real. In others words, we have to decide which part of our knowledge can be called “science” and which is just a speculation, in other words what can we know for sure?

—

36. Kant: forms of sensible intuition and “the second Copernican revolution”

— Our expreience is not a passive absorption of sensations but the result of our own metal process; the phenomenal world does not reaveal itself to us but is reavealed by us.

— Kant, very modestly, called this fundamental reversal of perspective “the second Copernican revolution”.

37. Kant: is metaphysics a science?

— Kant claimed, many metaphysical questions – such as the existence of God and the soul or the extent of free will fall beyoond the possibility of human knowledge.

— Nevertheless, reason seeks a state of rest from the regression of conditioned, empirical judgments in some unconditioned ground that can complete the series. Reason's structure pushes us to accept certain ideas of reason that allow completion of its striving for unity.

38. Kant ethics: categorical imperative

“Act as if the principle of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature”.

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