Happy New Big Revision Essay!!

I have finally put the final version of the very important revision essay plan on my website: you can find it and download it here:   http://www.mrbrodie.com/Philosophy/Units_%26_Themes.html just click on the 'Reason & Experience fish'.  Why not look at the other marvellous resources while you're there!

I know the essay is quite challenging in places, but it's really vital that you get to grips with it if you're going to have any chance of doing well in the exam. Use the text books and handouts - that's what they're for.


If you have any problems just email me. Please don't use the plan I've put on this blog below as the new one is different and better.

The Big Revision Essay & Colby's happy Day!

I suppose I was tempting fate! Have unpleasant virus and conjunctivitis (hideous bloodshot weeping eye disease!)  At least Colby will be happy.

Here is the Big Revision Essay plan. Please try to make progress. I'm sure I'll be back very soon - hopefully tomorrow. Sorry the formatting is a bit weird; I'll sort out when I'm recovered.

You should be able to complete the Hume section:

Q.2, refers to the Hume we read on Friday and only requires a summary of what he says.

Q.4, You can do the bit about ʻinductionʼ, but will need to research the bit on ʻcausalityʼ:

there are many excellent explanations of Humeʼs ideas on the internet - including these:

http://science.jrank.org/pages/8538/Causality-Hume.html

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/

Outline & Discuss the development of epistemology from Plato through Descartes, Locke, Hume & Kant, to Wittgenstein and the ‘linguistic turn’.

You must use all the ‘tools’ at your disposal:

The text book, the blog, (which is now searchable!!) the website.

• ·     Briefly explain Plato’s ‘cave’ metaphor and how it may be seen as shaping the development of epistemology.  

Think about and discuss/explain:

1.   Plato’s notion that philosophers can gain knowledge of the ‘reality’ beyond appearance through thought – through introspection

2.   How this powerful metaphor that suggests a divide between appearance and reality, helps inspire the whole idea of epistemology.

3.   Remember the ‘Plato and the Slave boy’, from the ‘Meno’ where Socrates showed that mathematical understanding was ‘in’ the slave boy waiting to brought out.

• ·     How does Descartes set about discovering some point of certainty. Why does he come to privilege the mental over the physical? 

Key Terms: ‘Cartesian doubt’ ‘Extreme scepticism’ ‘Cartesian dualism’,  ‘cogito ergo sum’ (I think therefore I am) Rationalist/rationalism

 Think about and discuss/explain:

1.     How Descartes tries to establish the existence of the mind, the physical world and god through a priori reasoning.

2.   His ideas about how we understand  the wax.

3.   The fact that he thinks his idea of God is innate.

·     What aspects of Descartes’ thought does Locke reject?

  Key Terms: Tabula rasa; empiricism; innatism;   

Think about and discuss/explain:

1.   Locke’s definition of innate ideas and his  three arguments against them.

2.   Locke’s beliefs about the two ways we get ideas about the world: ‘sensation’ & ‘reflection’

3.   Why Locke’s notion of primary and secondary qualities is significant. (realist)

4.   What Locke said about words and why it is problematic (You  mention  Wittgenstein now, but he comes later so save some!)

 key quote: ‘So words in their primary or immediate signification stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them’ Locke, (Essay Bk 3, Ch. 1 -3)

•  How does Hume build on Locke’s Empiricist ideas?

Key Terms: empiricism; analytic; synthetic; innatism; a priori; a posteriori; necessary; contingent; scepticism

      Think about and discuss/explain:

1.   Hume’s method for gaining clarity and precision in philosophical questions.

2.   Hume’s ideas about the ‘association of ideas’ – how we construct ideas (Section 3 – 4 Enquiry)

3.   Hume’s fork.  Include reference to ‘relations of Ideas’ and ‘matters of Fact’

4.   Hume’s ideas about induction (causality - cause and effect – the billiard balls)   

key quote: ‘we never really advance a step beyond ourselves’.

·     How Kant attempt to synthesis the empiricist and rationalist theories of knowledge? (epistemologies)

Key Terms: empiricism; rationalism;, noumenal; phenomenal; empiricism; rationalism a priori; a posteriori; analytic; synthetic;    

          Think about and discuss/explain:

1.   Kant’s copernican turn.

2.   Conceptual schemes ‘Schema’ : the categories: time, space, cause & effect

3.   Kant’s synthesis.

·     Briefly outline the problems that Locke and Hume’s empiricism seems to run into: (Holland) (again)

·     Explain how Wittgenstein’s ideas about language inform our understanding of the problems of empiricism.

Key Terms: language use, community of language users.

Think about and discuss/explain:

1.   Solipsism and the private language argument (Beetle in the box)

2.   Language as a conceptual scheme.

3.   The difference between Kant’s ‘schema’ and language as a conceptual scheme.

·      The ‘Linguistic turn’: Sapir, Davidson, Rorty etc. (use the last bit of the text book Ch. 1 & the Rorty extract)

Key Terms: representationalism; antirepresentationalism, realism; antirealism.

Think about and discuss/explain:

1.   the move away from attempts to understand the way thought or the mind connects with the world to attempts to understand the way language connects to the ‘world’

And finally …. what do you think?

(The more I think the less I know!)

Locke: primary & secondary qualities, Wittgenstein and Truth!

We saw how Locke’s views on ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ qualities emphasise his belief in the physical world as grounding the sense data that empiricism relies on.

Locke’s famous snowball has primary qualities of ‘solidity, extension, figure and mobility’, in other words it takes up a certain round space in the world, you can see it and if it hits you, you’ll feel it! These qualities are in the snowball itself and will not vary according to the circumstances of the person experiencing it: they are what we might call (although I don’t think Locke does) objective qualities.

On the other hand the secondary qualities such as colours sounds and tastes vary as the circumstances of the person experiencing the snowball vary: the first snowball to hit you feels colder that than the fifth, the colour and sound it presents to your senses varies according to when, where and how you experience it.

So, if Locke thinks that the objects in the real world have primary qualities that are independent of observers then he is a ‘realist’. He thinks that our perceptions of the world, our sense impressions, are directly given by the real world. 

This might seem obvious, but it is important in terms of empiricist epistemology: for empiricism, as for science, knowledge is grounded (guaranteed, given by) a 'real' world. For empiricists (and scientists) the truth is out there waiting to be discovered. Whereas for many modern philosophers who have followed Wittgenstein's lead on how language works the truth is created through language use. 

This fundamental difference about the nature of truth is at the heart of modern philosophical (and scientific) debate. 

This is a question of metaphysics: do you think that the fundamental nature of being is knowable? 

Kant Podcasts!

The Kant podcasts are here (and on iTunes)

Kant (advanced! :)

The first one we listened to in class.
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Revision questions.

The point of these questions is to get you working out what they are really asking you to say: what is relevant? how can you link to the various ideas and thinkers we've looked at. They are all inter-related and you could write one long essay covering them all, but the exam has two short short essay questions and two long essay questions so it makes sense to try to write in 'sections' - if you see what I mean.

1. Outline the strengths and weaknesses of the view that all ideas are derived from sense experience.

2. Outline the strengths and weaknesses of the view that the mind contains innate ideas.

3. Is certainty confined to ‘introspection’ and the tautological (analytical)? 

4. Outline and discuss the view that experience is only intelligible through a conceptual scheme.

Kant & Shopping

Don't panic! Kant is notoriously difficult, so don't worry if you don't entirely get him. All the confusing terms will fall into place before long - it's a bit like learning a foreign language, but you'll soon be fluent!

Try to remember what the point of all this is: you're learning the 'basics' (not that basic) of epistemology which is, as you know, the study of knowledge: what knowledge is, where it comes from, what we can know and how we can know it.

We have seen how there are two competing theories: empiricism and rationalism. If you think we can account for everything we know through our sensual experience of the world - if you think there's nothing in your head that didn't get there through your senses - you saw it, you heard it, you tasted it, you smelt, you, felt it then you are an empiricist. If you think the total amount of stuff in your head is greater than you can account for by your experience then you are probably a rationalist.

A SHOPPING ANALOGY
Imagine you go on a long and extravagant shopping spree buying lots of nice things like slippers and philosophy books!! Anyway, you get home and get all the stuff out of the bags and check it off against your receipts. Now, an empiricist would be able to match all the new things to the receipts, but the rationalist would find things that she had no receipt for!!  Rationalists claim that we have stuff (knowledge) in our heads that cannot be accounted for - cannot be explained by experience.

So whereas Hume thinks that it is obvious (analytic) that if we 'bought' '7' and we 'bought' '5' we would have '12' in our shopping bags, Kant thinks having '7' and '5' in our shopping bags doesn't explain how  we have '12'. He thinks we have '12' by a rational intuition - by the power of rational thought. He thinks that rational thought - the power of reason is a capacity that humans have that allows them know things that experience doesn't give them.

For Hume, saying that 7+5=12 is no more clever than saying all kangaroos are animals, but Kant thinks it is. Kant agrees that if you 'bought' a kangaroo you would have an animal in your shopping bag, but he doesn't think 'buying' a '7' and a '5' would mean you automatically had a '12' in your bag. He thinks you have to 'do' something to a '7' and a '5' to get a '12', but you don't have to do anything to a kangaroo to get an animal!!

Descartes, another rationalist, didn't come up with the maths thing, but is a rationalist because, like Kant, he thinks we can know things that we couldn't get from experience.

I hope this is helping, please don't despair if it isn't - chocolate biscuits next week. And think how smart you are that you are even doing this stuff compared to the fools doing ... other subjects, and ow big your brain muscle will be after all this exercise!! And you only have to have fairly basic grasp to do well in the exam. Honest!! :)

bIG rEVISION PLAn ThinG

Revision Plan / Diagram List

Epistemology

Empiricism

Rationalism

Kant Corner

Locke

- tabula rasa

- Sensations - reflection

Hume

- Impressions - ideas

- Induction - deduction

- Hume’s ‘copy method’

Hume’s fork

Analytic / synthetic - relations of ideas - matters of fact

A priori / a posteriori knowledge / propositions

Locke on language - role of words

Carruthers -

Sapir - Whorf

Chomsky

Descartes

Primacy of reason - rational intuition

Wittgenstein - Beetle in box - language

Solipsism

R.F Holland (criticisms of Empiricism)

Chomsky Research Homework

H/W Investigate Noam Chomsky’s ideas on the possibility of innate grammar 

(sometimes referred to as 'universal grammar). 

• Summarise his argument
• Give two or three reasons / arguments that support Chomsky
• Give two or three reasons / arguments against  his claims
• What do you think?

This it is exactly the kind of thing you ought to be doing if you want to get really good.

Try these places for starters: 

http://richarddawkins.net/discussions/475609-grammar-comes-from-a-biologically-innate-dedicated-faculty

Excellent!

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/innateness-language/

Very comprehensive, but perhaps a little daunting. I haven't read al of it yet, but I will before I see you again so that you can't expose my ignorance!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#Debates

Very useful

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_grammar

There are lots of others  - be independent!

Some string, the self, Independent objects and difficulties for empiricists

We spent some time trying to get our heads around the slightly tricky notion that we cannot get the concept of independently existing physical objects through experience. When we experience something the experience happens in our heads and is not, therefore, 'independent' of us. So, something existing independently of our experience is by definition beyond our experience and therefore unknown to us. 

So, if you get all your ideas through experience, then how do you get the idea of an independently existing physical object? This kind of thing is obviously a problem for  Empiricists and there are marks:) for remembering it. 

Other problematic concepts include: causality and the self. 

Now, the concept of the 'self' seems like the most obvious thing that could possibly occur to a human bean (sic), but nothing's obvious anymore - not in the crazy old world of philosophy (ha, ha, ha!! they laughed ironically!) According to Hume, and he's got good point,  'Just as there is no mind independent of perception, there is no self independent of perceptions'. We tend to think of the self as 'having' or at least 'containing' our experiences, but if you think about it this is actually  rather stupid, after all how could you have a self if you hadn't ever experienced anything - no thoughts no nothing. No self. Even if something did 'have' or 'contain' the experiences and thoughts, that something wouldn't be part of the self. Imagine a bucket of water: the water equals perceptions / thoughts etc and the bucket equals the thing that contains the thoughts; it is clear that the bucket is not part of the water and in the same way the thing that contained the perceptions wouldn't be a perception/experience/thought and therefore wouldn't be part of the self!!


Is this making sense to anybody except me??


And of course we can think of the the various perceptions / experiences / thoughts as being like the strands in a ball of string: none of them run the whole length of the string none of them constitute a 'self' existing as one thing, one identity through time. I need to stop my brain becoming numb. :)

Locke, Caruthers Babies & Birdsong

Last week we covered a lot of ground in 3 lessons. We read some John Locke; Bk 1, Ch 2. ‘No innate Principles in the Mind’ and saw his three arguments against innate ideas they went something like this:

 1. The argument from universal consent (or assent): If any idea were innate in all human minds then surely certain ideas would be universally accepted and agreed on. But they're not.

 2. Children and Idiots: It makes no sense to speak of an idea being in our minds without us being aware of it. How can we have 'understandings' that we don't understand. Surely the whole point of an idea is that it is 'had'. (As in, "I've just had an idea!" said Clive.) So, according to Locke, if ideas were innate then children and idiots would have ideas in their minds that they didn't know they had and couldn't understand anyway!!

3 The circular argument: The argument that we only come to knowledge of these 'innate' ideas when we develop our 'reason', is again non-sensical and seems circular' according to Locke. (And Sam.) Because in order to know innate ideas we have to have reason, but the evidence that we have 'reason' is our knowledge of innate ideas.

What is an idea? 

You also spent some time working out what an idea actually is - in philosophy one should always try to define one's terms:) 

We/you decided there were two kinds of ideas: propositions e.g. the sun will rise tomorrow, and concepts e.g. 'yellow' or 'ugly' or 'friend'. 

Experience as a Trigger: We read about Peter Carruthers' theory that suggests ideas can develop in a similar way to physical capacities like sight or speech. And we drew some marvelous diagrams!! Here are Tansy and Abby's 

And then we began to tackle the first really tricky bit of philosophical thinking and writing in order to answer the question: 

How do Peter Carruthers’ Ideas about pre-linguistic thought help refute Locke’s arguments against the possibility of innate ideas.  

Roughly speaking the answer to this is going to suggest that for Caruthers the imagery used in mental rehearsals of action (something that babies can possibly do without language) is a kind of pre-linguistic thought. When we acquire language this triggers the our full understanding of the 'innate idea'. 


TheIf we push this a little further and point out that  the concept of 'self' , which is bound up with the concept of identity, is difficult to account for empirically (we don't seem to experience the idea of self) and that David Hume (the most important early empiricist) accepted  that the concept of self could not be gained from experience, then we begin to construct a rather clever way of suggesting the possibility of an innate idea of the self!! (get it?) :) 

The Homework was to

read the next bit of Locke's Bk 2 Ch 1-7 up to, but not including, Chapter iii Ideas of one sense

A salute to the philosophical hardcore!

Well done to all of you who are still 'with it'. We've achieved a lot this week ...

We have:
1. Sorted out Descartes' 3 arguments: illusion, dreaming and deception.

2. consolidated our understanding of 'a priori' and 'a posteriori' knowledge claims, not to mention the analytic / synthetic distinction.

3. Waded through the philosophical treacle of Descartes' third Meditation and seen how he tried to prove the existence of God.

4. Given some thought to the concepts of infinity, perfection, God etc. and ...

5 considered whether Descartes was right to think those concepts were innate with all that that would imply (the existence of God!!?? - possibly)

6. Then we started on John Locke - who thought Descartes was rubbish - we read his arguments against innate ideas - remember: 'no universal consent', 'children and idiots' and the 'circular argument' of 'assent when reason is reached'.

7. and we considered what a 'idea' might consist in.

Lots of you have said some very smart things and I'm very encouraged. I mustn't forget the biscuits!

By the way if any of you managed to get Philosophy the Classics yet you ought to read the chapters on Descartes and Locke.

Next week we will mainly be eating biscuits!

In honour of those who couldn't stand the philosophical heat! :)

I think therefore I homework!

So, the essay task is:

Try to explain how Descartes’ thoughts about:

A) ‘the cogito’ the ‘I’ that thinks and

B) his thoughts about the wax

lead him to his ideas about the separation of mind and body (Cartesian Dualism)

The blog below - 'Waxing Philosophical' should help you and there are other hopefully useful bits and pieces on my website at http://www.mrbrodie.com/ click on Descartes > wax essay (I'll put the Leibniz 'Superman thing in the 'Gallery of resources') use it if you think it's useful, but you don't have to)

This is must be completed by Friday 24th by which day you must have a well organised folder in which I will find the various handouts I've given you so far and the following:

Summary of wax - argument: (Yes and no arguments)

Summary of 3 arguments - illusion - dreaming - deception

Wax essay

(If you want to cover all of these in the wax essay that‘s fine)

Don't worry if you're finding this all a little confusing at the moment - if you stick with it it will begin to make sense! Probably :) If it doesn't you can always come and tell me - my door is always open (metaphorically) 

Ghosts in the machines

I thought I'd bored everybody to death with all the mind / brain business, but I'm happy to bore some more. And I think I might have to as lots of you still seem to think you're powered by some kind of weirdy ghost / spirit / mind / souly thing! (Obviously I utterly respect everybody's right to believe what they want to believe, but in Philosophy you have to either:
a) have a good 'rational' argument that atempts to justify your belief
Or
b) keep it in a quiet corner of your 'soul' away from the pollution of thought!

Descartes Waxing Philosophical

Below is a revised, redrafted and extended (hurrah! they cry) version of the various notes I have blogged on this wax business in the last couple of years. It's got quite long and I possibly repeat myself a little, but it has been useful to me to re-read and re-write it, so I hope it will help you.

Descartes’ ‘Meditations’ are an attempt to find the foundations of objective (certain, unchanging and universal) knowledge. Descartes believes that if he can find an ‘Archimedian point’ - just one thing about which there can be no doubt then he will be able to ‘ground’ all his other ideas. It is an attempt to construct a complete epistemology - a theory of knowledge - by building, piece by piece (brick by brick) on his foundation - his point of certainty the cogito. (I think therefore I am)

Believing he has found his one point of certainty - that he exists as a ‘thinking thing’ Descartes tries to work out the status and validity of the various thoughts and ideas that this ‘thinking thing’ has. In other words now he's certain that he is thinking thoughts he needs to know if the thoughts have any meaning or connection to the person he thought he was and the world he thought he lived in before he started doubting everything! 

His problem is that most of his ideas seem to come through his senses and he has already shown these to be unreliable and deceptive.

He decides that this thinking thing is ‘a thing that doubts, perceives, affirms, denies, wills, does not will, that imagines also and which feels.’ The less these activities of the mind have to do with the physical world the more Descartes thinks he can rely on them. Therefore the imagination, which seems to build its ideas from perceptions of the physical world is less trustworthy than, for example, the act of doubting, (Remember Descartes prefers geometry to geography for similar reasons.)

In his Second Meditation, having pushed his scepticism, his 'method of doubt', through various arguments concerning illusion and dreams and on to the point of considering that a malignant demon might be feeding him illusions about the world, Descartes, finally arrives at his point of certainty, 'I am, I exist', he claims, and goes on to say that this 'must be true whenever I assert it or think it.' To be thinking the thought of one's existence is, in itself, proof of that existence, he says.

Although Descartes is now certain of his existence as a mental entity he is still in doubt about the thoughts and ideas that he has as a thinking thing. (where do they come from? how trustworthy are they? are some more trustworthy than others?) He thinks again about the ideas that seem to come to him through the senses and begins to reconsider the physical world and the way he perceives it in order to understand how it is that he can be certain about his mental existence, but in doubt about the physical world.

In a famous passage he considers the way his senses give him perceptions of a piece of wax, and how those perceptions are utterly different and distinct depending on whether the wax is hard or melted. He concludes that although we normally understand our senses as providing us with understanding - to 'see' something is to understand it - the example of the wax shows Descartes that 'Something that I thought I saw with my eyes ... was really grasped solely by my mind’s faculty of judgment.

Descartes discussion of the wax is central to understanding his notion of what it is to be a human being. It is his ability to conceive of (have a concept of) the wax - grasp its essence - that, for him, demonstrates the power of rational thought. He concludes that because the information given to him by his senses about the wax is insufficient to allow him to know that the wax remains the same thing after it changes all its 'sensible qualities', it must therefore be his 'reason', his faculty of judgement that gives him knowledge of the wax. It is as if through the power of rational thought the sum of his understanding is greater than the understanding his senses alone could provide. This 'added power' provided by ‘reason’ is the underlying principle of Rationalist philosophy.

Descartes believes that knowledge of the external world is gained through the mind’s understanding (judgement) of the information we receive through the senses. The faculty of judgement is a mental capacity (ability) that brings together the ‘raw’ and potentially incoherent information of the senses and allows us to understand.  This makes him a rationalist as opposed to an empiricist. (we're doing them next).

For Descartes, this wax business confirms his belief that, he can know his internal world - his mental processes - better and more certainly than he can the external physical world. This emphasises the separation and the difference of the two ‘stuffs’ mental and physical and makes clear his ‘dualism’ - his Cartesian dualism!

Jigsaw Bits & and two 'Pieces' of Descartes

We've done an awful lot for the first week, so well done if you haven't weakened yet!

First of all we read the 'First Meditation' from Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy' (probably the most read philosophy book ever written - but not the best!) and we saw how Descartes sets out to test the validity of the 'knowledge' he thinks he has. He decides to use a form of extreme scepticism: everything he thinks he knows is subjected to the test 'can I be completely certain it is true?' 

He gives examples of three different ways in which he may be wrong about how he perceives the world. Firstly he uses the argument from illusion; (sticks appearing bent in water etc.) to show that his senses are not reliable. Secondly he suggests he could be dreaming: the argument from dreaming. And thirdly he considers that a malignant demon may be deceiving him deliberately about everything: the argument from deception. (The Matrix / brain in a vat business)'

In the Second Meditation he goes on a bit more about all the doubt stuff (Cartesian doubt / extreme scepticism) and then fairly quickly arrives at the point where he concludes that all he can really be sure of is that he is a 'thinking thing' an 'I" that thinks. This is the famous 'cogito' 'I think therefore I am' (cogito ergo sum) Even if he is being fed all his thoughts by the 'malignant demon' he can still be sure that it is him he must exist in order to think these thoughts. So he can't be certain that anything he thinks is true, but he can be certain he is thinking those thoughts! :)

We also learned the meaning of ‘epistemology’, it is the study of knowledge: what can we know and how can we know it? And how can we know we know it!! :) 


We also learned how to distinguish 'a priori' statements of knowledge from 'a posteriori' ones: think of 'a priori' as meaning 'independent of experience'. If you could lie in a floatation tank, deprived of all sensory input, and still be certain a statement is true, then you know it 'a priori'. You don't need to and check. If you need to check the truth of a statement (even if you couldn't actually check it e.g. there is genuinely a creature that lives deep in the Atlantic Ocean that bears an uncanny resemblance to 'Spongebob Square-Pants') then it's claim is 'a posteriori'. 


These terms, and the distinction between 'analytic' and 'synthetic' propositions will become very important very soon. 


HOMEWORK:

Read to end of Meditation 2.                                                                 

Write brief summary of Descartes ‘wax’ example': what is the point he's trying to make? Use Philosophy online summary if you're stuck. 

Due Monday   

BUY BOOKS  

If you are serious about doing Philosophy you really ought to try to buy (and read) these two books. They will be useful throughout the A Level - course. 'The Classics' is probably the first one to get as it's a fairly gentle introduction,  but 'The basics' is also very, very useful. Get them both if you possibly can! 

They seem to be cheapest here (but I hate Amazon!) 

Philosophy: The Classics

Philosophy: The Basics