The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
Ch. 1 - Pre-Socratic Philosophy
Parmenides
- Saw that Thales' philosophy suffered from the problem of change.
- Concerned himself with analyzing the concept of change, not particular changes
- He was a monist, believing that reality is fundamentally one
- He added two self-evident premises:
- What is, is
- What is not, is not
- Viewed all change as illusionary
- The notion of change is self-contradictory
- His two self-evident premises are true in tautologies (A is A) but do not remain true when he adds his whole theory to them
- What is not, is not means that there is no nothing. There can be no object existing as nothing.
- Nothing exists is self-contradictory
- Through his monism and two self-evident premises, he deduced that:
- Whatever is, is uncreated
- Is indestructible
- Is eternal
- Is unchangeable
- If things were created they were either created from nothing or out of something. There is no nothing. Thus, if things were created, they were created out of something else. Monism denies that something else exists. Thus, everything that is, is uncreated.
- Things cannot be destroyed because destruction leads to nothing and nothing cannot exist.
- Things that are uncreated and indestructible are obviously eternal.
- Things that change produce nothing out of old things; thus, everything is unchanging
Zeno's Paradoxes
Zeno was a pupil of Parmenides.
He developed a paradox which showed that motion was impossible.
Aristotle's version: "Before any distance can be traversed half the distance must be traversed. These half distances are infinite in number. It is impossible to traverse distances infinite in number" (Jones, 22).
Zeno illustrated the paradox this way.
A- Achilles
T- a Tortoise
Achilles can begin to pursue the tortoise but, he will never over take it.
Achilles is now where the tortoise began, but the tortoise has moved.
Achilles gets closer to the Tortoise but still has not taken him over. The distance becomes shorter and shorter, but some distance will always separate them.
"These contentions still worry philosophers and mathematicians" (Jones, 23).
Linehan - Why? Zeno has completely ignored concepts of space and time. He has proved something in a vacuum. We do not exist in a vacuum (or the very least not Zeno's version).
Despite the logical reasoning of Zeno, it is at odds with common sense.
The belief and trust in reason over sense perception by some Greek philosophers led to a profound skepticism.
Rationalism and Empiricism
Logical consistency vs. sense perception
Logical consistency has a number of advantages over sense perceptions:
1) It is indubitable
2) It is universal
Rationalists follow logical consistency; empiricists use sensory perception
Neither pure rationalism nor pure empiricism is satisfactory.
The Pluralists
Parmenides argument was hypothetical: if the Milesians' monism is correct, change is impossible.
Parmenides did not question Monism and that is where he failed.
Monism, at least the materialistic form the Milesians pursued, gave way as their premises were questioned. Greek pluralism was born.
Empedocles
Empedocles s the first known pluralist.
He accepted the Parmenidean thesis that nothing is created or destroyed.
He believed that reality was a plenum, a completely full world.
Pluralism replaced monism and motion occurred when two objects exchanged places.
Motion is possible in a plenum, if pluralism is true.
He believed that the many objects were combinations of the four elements: earth, air, fire and water.
Each of the elements was eternal, uncreated, indestructible and unchanging.
There are two types of motion:
1) Love - a motion of uniting things
2) Strife - a motion of separating things and returning to the original element
The world prices was a constant cycle of mixing the four elements. Love is the motion here. Then, gradually, strife replaces love and the four elements begin to be separated. This process continues on and on and on.
The four elements were eternal, the things they created, the things we see, were unstable and finite.
His process anticipated the "survival of the fittest" evolutionary theory.
Empedocles called the process god and worshipped it. He denied his god any anthropomorphic qualities.
Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras was an Ionian and the first critic of Empedocles.
He was troubled by the thought of four elements miraculously coming together in some mixture to form particular things like cabbage or a lion.
He held the Parmenidean notion of change being illusionary.
He believed that:
1) The stuff of the world was eternal
2) There is a many, each one of the many is a Parmenidean one
3) There is a motion within the plenum
He denied that change, resulting in the transformation was possible and maintained that everything existing was a combination of all the stuffs in this world. The particular stuff that is dominant in each thing denotes what that thing is.
Anaxagoras denied Empedocles' two motions of love and strife and replaced them with a single motion: mind.
Mind is material; it sets all things in order.
By setting mind to make all things right he implied purpose, but contradictorily held that mind was purely mechanistic.
Mind (the motion of the world) sets up a vortex which separates the various stuffs from the elements. Eventually, the vortex will rotate wide enough so that every stuff will be separated from every other stuff.
Estimate of Anaxagoras' Theory
The theory of Anaxagoras denied the spirit of the Milesian science.
Empedocles and Anaxagoras failed to solve the basic problems of the Milesians, but they were able to articulate them better.
Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans
The life of Pythagoras is virtually unknown and his views are nearly indistinguishable from his followers.
Pythagoras was reported by Heraclitus to have been one of the most scientific men and a religious philosopher.
Pythagoras was born in Samos, but found the colony of Croton in southern Italy around 530 BC.
Croton was a religious fraternity that conducted scientific experiments. They believed that science was a major part of their worship.
No comments:
Post a Comment