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The meaning of "skepticism"
The word “skepticism” comes from a Greek word that means to “reflect on,” “consider,” or “examine”; usually associated with doubting or suspending judgment.
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Words to associate with knowledge
Common sense, personal, data, truth claims
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Kant's view on knowledge
A priori, A posteriori
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A priori
- -Innate knowledge
- -Knowledge that comes BEFORE sense experience and is therefore independent of sense experience.
- -The emphasis of the rationalist
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A posteriori
- -Only knowledge is memory based
- -Knowledge that comes AFTER sense experience
- -This is the empiricist emphasis.
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Three Kinds of Skepticism
Common sense, Philosophical, Absolute
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Philosophical
The tendency of some philosophers to deny or doubt the more cherished philosophical claims.
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Absolute
What is denied or doubted here is the very possibility of knowledge itself.
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Skeptics
Pyrrho, Cratylus, Academics, & Sextus Empiricus
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The classic skeptics
Pyrrho
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The last 15 years of his life, he only communicated by waging his finger.
Cratylus
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Complicated communication; knowledge is not possible, because communication is not possible
Cratylus
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Nothing is knowable
Academics
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"I suspend judgement over whether or not knowledge is possible."
Sextus Empiricus
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Pyhrrho's Ten Modes
Variety in Animals, Difference in Human Beings, Different Structures of the Organs of Sense, Circumstantial Conditions, The Legendary Beliefs, Intermixtures, Positions, Underlying Objects, Occurrence, Fact of Relativity
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One of the main theories about bassis of knowledge; it's the position of sense experience (Greek empeiria); based on our senses
Empiricism
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The theory that some knowledge about actualy existing things is delivered by reason (our mind) rather than sense.
Rationalism
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Claims of knowledge that we know from birth
- -Every event must have a cause.
- -It is morally wrong to kill people for ther fun of it.
- -All individuals are endowed with basic rights.
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Why philosophers desire death?
Real philosophers view their lives as lifelong preparations for death. Because as long as we are in this world we are held back from the attaintment of real knowledge and, therefore, happiness.
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The view that direct awareness of at least some fundamental ideas of reality as universally and necessarily true is either that basis of knowledge of one of its bases.
Intutionism
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Two operations of the mind
Intuition (Immediate), Deduction (Mediated)
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The faculty by which truths are grasped immediately, without the invention of sense enperience of other ideas; direct knowledge
Intuition
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The faculty by which subsequent truths are known with necessity from intuited truths, or from intuited truths taken together with other deduced truths.
Deduction
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What name is most associated with Psycho-linguistics or "language of the mind"
Noam Chomsky
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What is the epistemological claim?
That the mind at birth is a "black tablet" and that all knowledge (logical and mathematical knowledge) is derived ultimately from sense experience. (Remember: Aristotle)
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Aristotle argued that forms are __________; Plato argued that forms are ____________.
Immanent, transcendent
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Repeated observation of an object or experience and coming up with a conclusion. Ex. (empirical science).
Induction
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What is Aquinas known for?
The process of how we learn as abstraction
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The concept of seeing various examples (encounter things), we abstract it (developing an idea of what it is about)
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"To abstract" means to remove or separate something from something else.
Intellectual Abstraction
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A shorthand way of expressing the empiricist denial that any ideas or even intellectual structure is inscribed on the mind from birth; "blank tablet"; the mind
Tabula Rosa
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The three stages of knowledge by Aristotle and St. Thomas
- -Particular things in the sensible world
- -Universal concept in mind
- -Knowledge of the world utilizing universal concept
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John Locke's view on Experience
Experience takes two forms: external & internal; "external" experience by which objects in the external world, outside of our minds; this enter our minds through sensation (material). "Internal" experiences are operations of our minds (mental)
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John Locke's View on Reflection
To reflect on; Reflection on what is going on inside no less than sensation of what is going on outside.
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What are contributed by sensation and reflection?
Simple ideas (Passive side)
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What ideas are constructed out of simpe ones, by means of combining, comparing, and abstracting?
Complex ideas (Active side)
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We encounter things through out senses.
Representative perception
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The view that there are two factors invovled in knowing: The mind (knowning) and its ideas (the known).
Epistemological dualism, or the representative theory of knowledge
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Our hopeless inability to get outside our own minds and ideas; we are trapped in the world of our own ego (or selves) and ideas. We could never get outside ourselves to verify whether ideas correspond to anything in the external world.
The Egocentric Predicament
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Who believed in empiricism and also believed that it had its problems?
David Hume
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Two ways by David Hume
- -Relations of ideas (things that we know that are logically true, but they don't translate into reality)
- -Matters of fact (things do bare on reality, but are based on observation)
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Hume's view on Perceptions, Impressions, and Ideas
We all have perceptions. These are divided between impressions (which are vivid or lively sensations, or the immediate data of experience) and ideas (which provide the material for thinking).
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When we perceive two events, we perceive one event and then the other, exclusing their connection.
Causality
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The view that we have no rational knowledge beyond what is disclosed in the phenomena of perceptions. Mind is there fore merely a collection of perceptions.
Phenomenalism
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Three empiricists
Hume (holding the view of a Skeptic), Aristotle, & Locke.
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True by definition, but not bearing on reality; certainity
Analytic Knowledge
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Not logically certain, but bearing on reality
Synthetic Knowledge
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Is there a synthetic a priori knowledge?
According to Kant, yes; he suggests a couple of ideas (the "Copernican Revolution" of the mind).
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Ideas such as substance and causality do not make their way into our minds through experience, but are “a priori categories of the understanding” that mold and shape and constitute our experience.
Kant's "Copernican Revolution" in Philosophy
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KANT ----- HEGAL ----- MARX
KANT ----- HEGAL ----- MARX
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Kant arguement
Kant argues that are senses give us access to one world = the Phenomenal World and another world where we can’t interact with knowledge without the mind = Noumenal (God); these worlds NEVER connect
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Looking at the action
Deontological
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Looking at the consequence, instead of the action
Teleological
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A deeply lead belief about what is right and wrong
Moral
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How the individual's morals come into play; how they approach their morals; 99.9% or arguments are based on ethics.
Ethics
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Denies any absolute or objective moral values that are common at all and affirms that the individual is the source or criterion of all judgments.
Relativism (Subjectivism)
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Affirms that moral values are independent and ascribes to them an abiding and fixed reality common to all.
Absolutism (Objectivism)
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It is the particular or individual culture that is said to define morality; "...Each culture has its own set of goods, and what is good in one culture may not be good in another."
Cultural Relativism
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Rejects the ideas the ethics and morality can't coexist.
Ethicial Relativision
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Belief that there are morals, ethics, rights, and it's their job to convince them.
Foundationalism
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The view that all things are causally conditioned.
Determinism
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The belief that not only are all things are determined, but that they are determined ultimately by purely external factors, factors outside yourself and over which you have no control.
Hard-Determinism
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Shifting out whole attention to the causes that lie within the individual.
Soft-Determinism
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The view that some thing, and therefore possibly the will, are free of causal determination.
Indeterminism
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The claim that all of us, all the time, with all of actions are pursing bothing but our own self-interest.
Psychological Egoism
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Not everybody does this, but you whould, because it's the right thing to do.
Ethical Egoism
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To say that you ought (morally) to do something implies that it must be possible for you to do it (i.e., you can do it). In other words, you cannot be morally obligated to do something it is literally impossible for you to do.
Ought Implies Can
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A common strategy for psychological egoists; an unselfish action can appear as unselfish until we reinterpret the motives in a selfish direction.
Strategy of Reinterpreting Motives
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The item is related to Plato’s the Republic and provides a thought experiment that seems to support psychological egoism; it’s the magical ring that makes the wearer invisible when turned a certain way.
Plato's Ring of Gyges
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The Existentialists
Dostoyevsky, Camus, Soren Kierkegaard
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Takes the position that life is meaningless and that we have to create our own meaning of life.
Existentialism
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The views of the Existentialists
- -Dostoyevsky (having a belief in God)
- -Camus (should I or should I not commit suicide?; intimacy/community; we all have this desire for certainty and stability)
- -Kierkegaard (Kaving a leap of faith in God's Existence)
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The Latin phrase meaning "the image of God"
Imagodei
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The greatest pleasure, the least amount of pain for society as a whole and not for a particular individual.
Utilitarianism
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Utilitarianist Jeremy Bentham says
- -Anytime we undertake an action, we quantify pleasure and pain.
- -Pleasure and pain are subjective
- -Unit of pleasure = hedon; Unit pain = dolor
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The ethical principal that the moral thing do is generate pleasure for yourself.
Egoism
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Do the consequences of our actions matter?
In some sense, yes.
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Do the consequences of our actions matter morally?
That is, can our actions be judged moral or immoral based on their consequences.
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Emphasis on the results of actions as the text of their rightness.
Teleological
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Emphasis on the performance of duty, rather than results, as the sign of right action.
Deontological
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The word “utility” simply mean “usefulness,” but the utilitarian’s employ it to mean that which promoted the greatest blance of good over evil.
The Principle of Utility
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The doctrine that we ought to act so as to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
The Benevolence Principle
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The theory that we should promote the good of
society or the pleasure of all people.
UTILITARIANISM AS A SOCIAL HEDONISM
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As democratic point of view it has often been the basis of legislative and judicial advances, social reforms, welfare
movements, and egalitarian ideals.
UTILITARIANISM AS A POLITICAL POSITION
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THE HEDONIC CALCULUS: SEVEN CRITERIA OF THE GREATEST PLEASURE
Intensity, Duration, Certainty, Propinquity, Fecundity, Purity, Extent
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Nature, Civil Law, Opinion, God
Bentham's Four Sanctions
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Bentham's Four Sanctions
They “persuade” us to overcome our perverse inclinations and to act in accordance with social utility.
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