Class notes on Aquinas (B)

(Originally written November 30, 2006 in Book 7)

Thomas Aquinas

Metaphysics:

Hierarchy of Substances:
God
Angels
Humans
Apes
Reptiles

Each member is placed in the category and placed by the amount of actuality it possess. The amount of excellence is determined by the amount of actuality a being possesses.

Angels, man, apes, etc. Each have their own hierarchy.

To Do List:

1. Go pay ticket
2. Come back to apartment and start laundry
3. Read 1 section of Zagzebski
4. Call Merkers
5. Box up CD's
6. Read 1 section of Zagzebski
7. Box up clothes
8. Read 1 section of Zagzebski

No specific order
-Read History I
-Read Logic
-Box up Mugs
-Read Epistemology
-Do a Precis! (or 2)
-Read Leibniz (new book)
-Read Genesis (new book)

Freedom and Determinism

-Freedom from coercion
-Freedom of contingency
-Freedom to choose a particular
-We are not free to choose God. All of us desire God and seek the love of God, but we don't manifest it correctly all the time
-Predestination (Augustinian view)
-There are divine exemplars (decrees) for all that come to pass
-God does not cause sin or damnation. God simply abandons some to their chosen sin and they damn themselves
-Why does God save the ones He does? We don't know why, but he doesn't do so arbitrarily

Virtue or Vice - a Habit

(Originally written November 29, 2006 in Book 12)

Virtues of the Mind continued...

2.5 Virtue and habit: the transformation machine

A virtue is an acquired excellence. A vice is an acquired defect.

A virtue or a vice becomes a second nature of a person.

A virtue/vice is relatively permanent and gradually acquired.

Virtues and vices form a part of who a person is.

Virtue is a kind of habit, but virtue is not identical with habit.

Virtues are acquired through a process of repetition over time.

Aristotle did not hold moral strength or continence as the same as virtue.

A virtuous person has a better form of moral knowledge than a continent person.

"Aristotle claims that moral virtue is logically connected with phronesis and phronesis involves an insight into particulars that may not be fully capture by any general rule" (Zagzebski, 119).

A person's moral identity is intrinsically connected with experience of the world.

Virtue is not a virtue if it is not acquired gradually.

A single act of will is causally insufficient to transform oneself.

David Brown argues that it is impossible for a person to be transformed into a state of moral perfection of death. If there is a heaven, there must be a purgatory.

Class Notes on Aquinas (A)

(Originally written November 29, 2006 in Book 7)

History of Philosophy Notes I

Thomas Aquinas
-1225 - 1274
-Born in Monte Casino
-Studied at the Universities of Paris and Cologne
-Studied under Albert the Great
-Studied the newly rediscovered Aristotelian works
-Embraced a separative approach to faith and reason
-Embraced an empiricist approach to epistemology

Historical developments that set the stage for 13th century philosophy:

1) European recovery of Aristotle's works (12th century)
2) Emergence of the University
-Three major ones
A) Salerno - Medicine
B) Paris - Theology
C) Bologna - Law
Medieval Education (classical)
-Trivium: Grammar, logic, rhetoric
-Quadrivium: Math, astronomy, music, geometry
3) Mendicant Orders
-Dominicans
-Franciscans

Thomas Aquinas was concerned with reconciling theology and classical Greek thought, especially Aristotle. He wanted to synthesize, systematize and create a sound philosophical/theological theory.

The relationship between philosophy and theology according to Aquinas: faith and reason were separate realms.

Revealed Theology: special revelation and knowledge of God via the Bible
Natural Theology: knowledge of God via reason and experience.

Natural theology confirms revealed theology.

Theistic proofs: 'Five Ways'
3 cosmological arguments
1 argument from perfection
1 teleological argument

1) the argument from motion
2) the argument from efficient cause
3) the argument from necessary being
4) the argument from perfection
5) the argument from order - all things act from an end (Telic cause)

Attributes of God

God is a single, unitary spirit who is unified by the fact that God is one with his essence ('one of a kind')

He is His only category

He has no accidental or incidental qualities

Doctrine of divine simplicity, he is indivisible, unchanging, immutable

God is omnipotent - the ability to do anything that is logically possible

Book notes on Aquinas

(Originally written November 29, 2006 in Book 7)

Louis Pojman
Classics of Philosophy 2nd Edition

Thomas Aquinas

-Roman Catholic Dominican Monk
-1225 - 1274 A.D.
-He is considered to be the greatest theologian in Western religion
-He was born in Roccasecca to the Count Aquino.
-He studied at the University of Naples and joined the Dominicans, despite his parents' strong objection
-He was determined to live the celibate life of the Dominicans. He avoided the company of women.
-He went to the Dominican school at Cologne and studied under Albert the Great
-He earned the nickname "dumb ox" from his fellow classmates
-In 1252 he went to the University of Paris and began to develop an Aristotelian version of Catholic theology
-He wrote voluminously and encyclopedically
-Then on December 6, 1273 he had a deep religious experience, stating, 'All that I have written seems to me like straw composed to what has now been revealed to me' and stopped writing. He died four months later

Summa Theologica

Question 2 - The Existence of God

First article: whether the existence of God is self-evident?

Objection 1 - The knowledge of God is naturally implanted in all, thus the existence of God is self-evident.

Objection 2 - Once the name God is understood, his existence is seen to be actual, therefore God's existence is self-evident

Objection 3 - The existence of truth is self evident. God is truth. Therefore, the existence of God is self-evident.

A thing can be self-evident in two ways:
1) Self-evident in itself
2) Self-evident in itself and to us.

Aquinas claims that God's existence is self-evident in itself.

Reply to objection 1 - This natural knowledge of God is general and confused. We know something is out there, but we know not what.

Reply to objection 2 - Once the term God is understood, a mental existence, not an actual existence of God is known.

Reply to objection 3 - The existence of truth in general is self-evident, but the existence of a primal truth is not self-evident to us

Second Article - Whether it can be demonstrated that God exists?

Objection 1 - It is an artifice of faith that God exists. Faith is not demonstrable.

Objection 2 - Essence is the middle term of demonstration, but we cannot know in what God's essence consists.

Objection 3 - If the existence of God were demonstrable, it could be only from his effects. God is infinite, but his effects are finite.

Reply to objection 1- Faith presupposes natural knowledge, faith or reason can lead to knowledge of the existence of God.

Reply to objection 2: the means of the name God is the middle term, not God's essence.

Reply to objection 3: we cannot have a perfect knowledge of God, but we can know some from his effects.

Third Article - Whether God Exists?

Objection 1 - There is evil in the world and if there were an infinitely good being this would not be so.

Objection 2 - There is no need to assume God exists, everything can be explained naturalistically.

Reply to objection 1 - Augustinian response: His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good out of evil

Reply to objection 2 - Whatever is done by nature must be traced back to God.

Skils vs. Virtues

(Originally written November 28, 2006 in Book 12)

Virtues of the Mind continued...

Every virtue must have a corresponding vice.

Virtues are not faculties or natural capacities. Aristotle calls them "states of character".

Skills, like virtues, are acquired excellences, but the two are not the same.

Aristotle's lack of care in distinguishing virtues from skills has led to subsequent mischief.

Phillippa Foot says skills are merely capacities. Gilbert Meilander states that skills can be unpracticed and retained, but virtue has to be constantly practiced.

James Wallace argues that some skills are not worth having, but virtues always are. Wallace argument only proves that not all skills are virtues, but virtues could still be skills. Wallace also states that skills are mastering techniques to do a different task. Virtues help a person perform difficult tasks, but these tasks are not difficult because they are technically difficult. Wallace argues that a skill can be forgotten, but a virtue cannot. Wallace took his idea from Gilbert Ryle and Aristotle. Wallace also argues that a person without a virtue can act consistently wit that virtue, but a person cannot act consistently with a skill he/she does not have.

Zagzebski argues that advice is the contrary of a virtue, not its contradictory. A skill has no contrary, only a contradictory. A vice is not analogous to a lack of skill in that a vice is not merely a lack of a virtue.

Vice, like virtue, is acquired by habituation.

She also argues that an exercise of skill is not essentially connected to anything valuable, whereas a virtue is essentially connected to something valuable.

Zagzebski maintains there are moral skills and moral virtues, and intellectual skills and intellectual virtues.

Moral virtues often have many skills associated with them.

List of moral virtues/moral skills: pg. 113
List of intellectual virtues/intellectual skills: pg. 114

"There are intellectual skills connected with moral virtues and moral skills connected with intellectual virtues" (Zagzebski, 115).

Virtues are psychically prior to skills because the motivational component of a virtue defines it more than external effectiveness.

Virtues are broader than skills.

von Wright argued that skills are tied to specific activities, whereas there is no essential tie between virtue and a specific activity.

Virtues are strongly connected to Motivational structure.

Zagzebski on what is virtue

(Originally written November 27, 2006 in Book 12)

Virtues of the Mind
Linda Zagzebski

"Although a virtue is always a good thing for a person to have, then, there is a complication in that equal degrees of a virtuous trait are not always associated with equal degrees of internal good in the agent" (Zagzebski, 96).

This concept has existed since Aristotle's golden mean being relative to each person.

Intellectual virtues are similar to this, some people do their best work by "careful plodding" and others do their best work in "Exuberant intellectual impetuousness"

Zagzebski states that phronesis (practical wisdom) is an exception to this rule because it is a higher-order virtue.

Nietzsche maintains that virtues are not good for their possessor. A virtue makes its possessor the victim of the virtue.

Plato held that virtues are good for the possessor.

Alasdair MacIntyre holds that the benefit of a virtue is intrinsically valuable to its possessor by definition. MacIntyre defines virtue as "an acquired quality the possession and exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents us from achieving any such goods" (Zagzebski, 97-98).

Zagzebski applies MacIntyre's definition of virtues to intellectual virtues.

Virtues are good for the possessor and for the world. Virtues are good internally and externally.

Zagzebski holds that a virtue is good, but not because it increases the goodness of its possessor and the goodness for the world, but because it makes the possessor closer to the ideal level of admirability and the world closer to a high level of desirability.

Virtue is related to the good in a number of ways:
1) A person is good through the possession of virtue
2) A person who possess a virtue is closer to the good
3) The world is closer to the good because of #2
4) A virtue increases the possessor's moral worth

2.3 Virtues distinguished from natural capacities

The narrower conception of virtue maintains that virtue is acquired.

Phillippa Foot states nothing is virtue unless it involves the will and resistance to contrary temptation.

G.H. von Wright states that the virtuous person is no longer susceptible to temptation like he/she was at one point.

von Wright and Foot state virtue is not a natural trait and the opposite of virtue is actually the natural state of humanity. Zagzebski believes this is too strong.

Logical exercises involving Santa, Eskimos and Scarlet Fever

(Originally written on November 27, 2006 in Book 9)

Quantificational Logic

No Santas are at the North Pole
Some who live at the North Pole are eskimos
Therefore, eskimos are not Santas

Santa - major term
Eskimos - minor term
At the North Pole - Middle Term

[logical argument and proof not worth typing here]

Some Santas are red.
Some red people have scarlet fever
Therefore, some who have scarlet fever are santas.

[another logical argument, proof and refutation that are not worth typing]

An existential statement is true if it is true for at least one constant. It is false if it is false for all constants.

A universal statement is true if it is true for all constants. It is false if it is true for no constants.

Intellectual Virtue & Moral Virtue

(Originally Written November 27, 2006 in Epistemology)

Title for my paper:
All I need to know I learned before Kindergarten: A look at how all knowledge is grounded in a priori

Zagzebski

Intellectual virtue is a subset of moral virtue

Aristotelian arguments for the division between intellectual virtues and moral virtues

1. Two parts of the soul argument
2. Pleasure and pain argument
3. The means of acquisition argument
4. The argument from independent possession of intellectual virtues or moral virtues

Aristotle - the unity of virtues

Virtues of the Mind - A theory of virtue and vice

(Originally written November 26, 2006 in Book 8)

Virtues of the Mind
Linda Zagzebski

Part II: A Theory of Virtue and Vice

Pure virtue theory makes the concept of a right act derivative from the concept of virtue.

The two main forms of pure virtue theory Zagzebski is concerned with are:
1) Happiness-based
2) motivation-based

Motivation-based pure virtue theory is more radical, but it can still be developed in ways that adequately handle epistemic evaluation

1. Types of Virtue Theories

Most ethical theories have something to say about virtues, but virtue theories focus on the analysis of concepts involved in evaluation rather than the evaluation itself.

The weakest form of virtue theory focuses on virtue because it contends that the concept of virtue offers the most useful criterion for the rightness of an act. Zagzebski does not call this a pure-virtue theory.

In a pure virtue theory a right act is defined in terms of the concept of virtue or a component of virtue as motivation. Also, the property of rightness is something that emerges from the inner traits of persons.

Rightness or wrongness of an act is directly tied to inner personal traits.

A good argument for pure virtue-theory has a strong argument in its favor: persons are ontologically more fundamental than acts; acts are defined in terms of persons. Thus, virtues and vices are ontologically more fundamental than the rightness or wrongness of acts. Thus, the concept of right act ought to be defined in terms of the concept of virtue.

The concept of a good life (eudaemonia) or good in the impersonal sense is the easiest way to interpret Aristotle's ethics. Michael Slote calls this "agent-prior"; Zagzebski calls it "good-based".

Slote promotes "agent-based" theory. This theory makes virtue, motivation and other internal states of the agent ethically fundamental.

An act is right because it is an act of a virtuous person would (or might) do. A state of affairs is good because it is what virtuous persons are motivated to want or to pursue.

In the common form of good-based theory the virtues are explained as constituents of the good life or as means to the good light (where the good life is identified with happiness or the Aristotelian concept of eudaemonia).

Rosalind Hursthouse, an advocate of this good-based, the "happiness-based" theory defines virtue as "a character trait a human being needs to flourish or live well" (Zagzebski, 81).

According to Hursthouse the order of the fundamental concepts is the good in the sense of eudaemonia is conceptually foundational. The concept of virtue is derivative from the concept of eudaemonia and the concept of a right act is derivative from the concept of a virtue.

Eudaemonia -->Virtue --> Right act

2. The nature of virtue

2.1 The many notions of virtue

A virtue is an excellence, but not every excellence is a virtue.

Virtue is a broad, broad term. Hume's usage of it is one of the broadest uses in the history of philosophy, encompassing justice, fidelity, honor, allegiance, chastity, humanity, generosity, charity, affability, lenity, mercy, moderation, public spirit, discretion, caution, enterprise, industry, assiduity, frugality, economy, good sense, prudence, discernment, temperance, sobriety, patience, constancy, perseverance, forethought, considerateness, secrecy, order, insinuation, address, presence of mind, quickness of conception, facility of expression, etc.

Despite the broadness of the term 'virtue', Victorian England limited virtue to chastity and the archaic ring to the term has caused many to abandon it.

Most people use the term 'virtue' in a broader sense than the Victorian Age and in a narrower sense than either Hume or Aristotle.

Another nearly universal claim about virtues is that it is a state of the soul or a property that is attributed to a person on a very deep level.

The concept of a virtue has both theoretical and practical significance.

The practical aspect of virtues is that we can use them in making decisions and in evaluating others.

John Locke points out that particular virtues and vices are culturally relevant, but that in every case a virtue is something that is praiseworthy and vice is something that is blameworthy.

Locke points out that despite variations in virtues, there is a good deal of uniformity and he rejects a conventionalist conclusion.

There is at leas a minimal core concept of virtue that is uncontroversially universal.

"An analysis of virtue is hopeless, I believe, unless we can assume that most of a selected list of traits count as virtues and do so in a way that is not strictly culture bound" (Zagzebski, 89).

An account of virtue should contain these traits:
1) Virtue is an excellence
2) Virtue is a deep trait of a person
3) Those qualities that have appeared on the greatest number of lists of the virtues in different places and different times in history are actual virtues: wisdom, courage, benevolence, justice, honesty, loyalty, integrity and generosity.
4) Some virtues are intellectual, others moral, some may be neither moral nor intellectual
5) It should aim for a high degree of theoretical significance combined with practical usefulness

2.2 Virtue and the good

When we call a virtue good, do we mean that it makes the possessor good? Or do we mean that the possession of the virtue is good?

If the virtue makes the possessor good, then it is admirable; if it is good to be possessed it is desirable.

As a property, a virtue can be considered an abstract object. "is that abstract object good in itself or do we call it good only because it makes its possessor good?" (Zagzebski, 90)

Thomas Aquinas held that a virtue is called good, not because good is a property of it, but because it makes the possessor good.

Aquinas denies the possibility of making bad use of a virtue.

Virtue is a good-making quality of a person and a quality that cannot lead to bad use. Virtue is good for the world in Aquinas.

Can a virtue be used to make a bad act? Courage in a Nazi makes him much worse than if he was a coward.

Gregory Trianosky proposes that virtue is a certain kind of potentiality. A virtue is a potential contributor to the overall moral worth of a possessor.

Zagzebski holds that "a virtue is worth having even in those cases in which it makes a person worse over all" (Zagzebski, 93). A person is better off having the virtue, even if the possessor must overcome some other trait because without that virtue the moral agent would have to overcome the lack of virtue and the other moral defect.

Anyone who possess a virtue is closer to achieving high moral worth thane who does not possess it. Zagzebski applies this principle to epistemology as well. Anyone with an intellectual virtue is closer to a high epistemic status even if that intellectual virtue leads to wrong beliefs.

Book 8: 09/04/06 - 11/26/06

Christopher Linehan

Virtues of the Mind - 2.1-5

(Originally written November 26, 2006 in Book 8)

Virtues of the Mind
Linda Zagzebski

2.1

Internists often try to relativize epistemic justification. A justification in internalism is one that justifies an individual's belief

2.2 The neglect of understanding and wisdom

Arguments against contemporary epistemology have shown that it is favorable to adapting a virtue epistemology.

Some philosophers have complained that contemporary epistemology is insufficiently attentive to the social aspects of cognitive activity.

Virtue is more adaptable to social context than reliabilist positions like reliable belief-forming mechanism (Goldman) or belief forming faculty (Sosa).

Aristotle understand the acquisition of virtue as fundamentally social.

Jonathon Kvanvig objects to the focus on one belief in one person in epistemology. If it is impossible to abstract a single belief from a core of beliefs, a belief-based epistemological theory appears less attractive.

Contemporary epistemology is concerned with amassing the most propositional knowledge as possible.

In post-Aristotelian ancient philosophy and modern philosophy certitude has been favored over wisdom. Wisdom was the focus of Plato, Aristotle, the Middle Age philosophies by the latter two, Spinoza and Locke.

Propositional knowledge was secondary to wisdom and understanding in Greek philosophy. Plato (according to Julius Moravcsik) sees propositional knowledge as a derivative of the process of understanding.

Moravcsik maintains that the increasing complexity of modern social and scientific theories has created a need to return to the concept of understanding in epistemology.

Gai Fine holds that Plato's focus on understanding in his epistemology leads to a less atomistic approach in epistemology.

Understanding ought to be a major point in epistemology. It has been ignored for too long

A belief-based epistemology is incapable of explaining the nature of understanding involving the comprehension of structures of reality, rather than its propositional structure.

Wisdom, like understanding has been neglected in modern epistemology.

Wisdom is tough to define, but whatever it is, it is qualitatively different than the accumulation of propositional knowledge.

Wisdom is not a property of propositional beliefs or a matter of relations between propositional beliefs.

Wisdom is concerned with grasping reality as a whole.

3. More reasons to try a virtue approach: the relations between believing and feeling

The advantages of virtue-based epistemology have been shown from:
1) Ethics and corresponding epistemic theories
2) Problems within epistemology
Now, 3) Philosophy of mind

"The treatment of belief as a psychic state independent of non-cognitive states is happily nearing its demise" (Zagzebski, 51).

Stephen Stich argues that the concept of belief is a useless figment of folk psychology.

Psychic states conventionally assigned to epistemologists are not that distinct from psychic states assigned to ethicists.

Many philosophers tend to think of the influence of feeling as an embarrassment, a defect, that needs to be eliminated.

William James held feelings in high regards, stating that belief is more allied to the emotions than anything else.

James defined belief as "the sense of reality". Hume defined belief as to believe is to have a vivid impression.

Without going as fas as James or Hume we can find supporting evidence that vividness of conception is causally connected with belief.

Belief comes in degrees. Belief is closely connected with states like wanting, hoping and expecting.

Wanting and hoping are emotive states, whereas belief and expecting are usually not considered emotive. But, are the emotive states truly distinguishable from cognitive states?

Emotion is either a component of belief or has a direct causal relationship with belief.

It is a widely held false notion that a belief influenced by desire makes it a belief acquired independent of facts.

If beliefs and emotions are intimately connected then we should be motivated to search for connections between moral and intellectual values.

4. An objection to modeling evaluation in epistemology on ethics: the dispute over the voluntariness of belief

The widespread assumption that human actions are voluntary, whereas cognitive activity is involuntary could completely undermine the connection of theoretical ethics and normative epistemology.

Believing is thought to be involuntary and this is the strongest argument against evaluating beliefs like moral evaluation.

Beliefs often seem to be the outcome of instinctive processes.

If beliefs are involuntary, then it is inappropriate to evaluate them from a moral standpoint.

It is wrong to blame a person for a belief if it is involuntary.

4.1 The irrelevance of the objection to virtue theory

Since belief is not the focal point of virtue epistemology, the voluntary or involuntary nature of a belief is less important than a person's disposition to virtue or vice.

The question is then: are our intellectual virtues and vices as voluntary as our moral virtues and vices?

Intellectual courage, perseverance, honesty and sincerity appear to be voluntary. But perceptiveness, insight and ability to form theories appear to be less voluntary and based on natural ability.

But, the intellectual virtues based on natural ability are at least as voluntary to the moral virtues of generosity or the vice of envy.

4.2 The voluntariness of belief

The difference between acts and beliefs is less great than what is thought.

Hume is one of the strongest adherents of involuntary belief. James and Descartes are voluntary belief supporters.

The Cartesian position is that the Will, not the intellect assists in one's belief.

Pascal held that the will is one of the chief organs in belief.

Modern cognitive voluntarism theories come from Murray Clarke, Christopher Hookway, Jonathon Cohen and Lorraine Code.

Zagzebski hold that beliefs are like acts in that they arrange themselves on a continuum of degrees of voluntariness.

Perceptual beliefs which are on the low end of the scale of voluntariness should not be used as paradigm cases for human rationality and justification any more than sneezing or scratching an itch should be used as paradigm cases for moral evaluation

4.3 Moral and Epistemic Luck

Sometimes we blame or praise a person more than is deserved because of moral luck or moral unluckiness.

The Kantian attempt to ground moral evaluation in something free of luck is problematic.

Moral luck is relevant to virtue-based epistemology in two ways:
1. It makes the attempt to model epistemology after ethics easier
2. The rejection of the Kantian position that our moral status is completely within our control takes away one of the motivations for wanting the Kantian theory in the first place

A virtue-based epistemology, because it focuses on inner traits, does not have to pay much attention to moral luck.

Even though few, if any, beliefs are objects of direct choice, they are as voluntary as many acts or omissions of acts for which we are responsible.

5. Conclusion to Part I: Why center epistemology on the virtues?

Be open-minded to see the outcome!

Virtues of the Mind - 1.1-2.1

(Originally written November 23, 2006 in Book 8)

Thanksgiving

Virtues of the Mind
Linda Zagzebski

1.1 Contemporary epistemic theories and their ethical models (continued)

Deontological and reliabilist theories of epistemology are structurally similar to act-based ethical theories.

Ernest Sosa proposed that by focusing on intellectual virtues we can bypass the struggle between foundationalist and coherentists and the whole problem of proper cognitive structure.

Sosa is not a virtue theorist. He speaks about intellectual virtues in a consequentialist backdrop.

The only intellectual virtue that really gets any attention is phronesis (tactical wisdom). Phronesis gets attention because Aristotle connects it to the distinctively moral virtues.

Since Sosa introduced the concept of intellectual virtue into epistemic literature, virtue epistemology has become another name for reliablism. Plantinga's theory of proper function and related theories are  prime examples.

Sosa and Greco define intellectual virtue in terms of its propensity to achieve a certain consequence.

Aristotle's intellectual virtues include: sophia (theoretical wisdom), phronesis (practical wisdom), and nous (insight or understanding). Hobbes includes good wit and discretion. Spinoza's primary intellectual virtue is understanding.

Zagzebski holds that virtue-based epistemology is well suited to analyze justification and knowledge.

Lorraine Code stresses a socialized approach to epistemology, connecting epistemology and moral theory. She shows an epistemological importance to human nature, not just a purely cognitive importance.

Code argues for a "responsiblist epistemology", emphasizing the active nature of the knower: A knower/believer has a choice of cognitive structuring, and is then accountable for these choices.

Code denounces reliabilism because she feels it makes knowers too passive. "A reliable knower could simply be an accurate, and relatively passive, recorder of experience" (Zagzebski, 12).

Code still only structures her epistemological theory on deontological and consequentialist ethics, not virtue-theory.

James Montmarquet takes epistemic virtue in the classical sense and connects epistemic works with moral virtue literature.

Montmarquet labels virtues of impartiality:
-openness to the ideas of others
-willingness to exchange ideas
-lack of jealousy
-lack of personal bias
-a lively sense of one's own fallibility

Montmarquet labels virtues of intellectual sobriety:
- sober-minded inquiry, not won't to embrace what is not really warranted.

Montmarquet labels virtues of intellectual courage:
-the willingness to conceive and examine alternatives to popularly held beliefs
-perseverance in the face of opposition from others
-determination to see a project through to completion

Montmarquet holds that any one desiring the truth must have these traits. But he holds that the intellectual virtues, even if they are not conductive and that some epistemic virtues function as regulators of the desire for truth.

Montmarquet's approach is vaguely Aristotelian. His epistemology is belief-based. Montmarquet does not connect his theory with aretaic moral theory.

Alvin Goldman accepts a form of virtue epistemology that is similar to Sosa. He explicitly links justification to intellectual virtue.

Zagzebski states that, while many epistemic theories recognize the desirability of an epistemological theory based on a carefully developed virtue theory, none have fully articulated a theory.

1.2 Some advantages of virtue-based theories

The mark of a virtue theory is that the primary object of evaluation is inner traits of a person, rather than acts of that person.

"To describe a good person is to describe that person's virtues, and it is maintained that a virtue is reducible neither to the performance of acts independently identified as right nor to a moral virtue than a disposition to act in the right way" (Zagzebski, 15).

There is more and less to a disposition to act in a right way to moral virtues.

A virtue includes a disposition to:
1) Characteristic emotions
2) Desires
3) Motives
4) Attitudes

There is less to moral virtues then the disposition to act right because a virtuous person does not invariably act in a way that can be fully captured by any independent set of normative criteria.

Agent-focused virtue theories focus on the agent and her traits as a way of determining what is right, but do not maintain that what is right is right because it is what a virtuous person would do. What a virtuous person would do is the best criterion for what is right. Zagzebski calls this weak virtue-theory.

Pure virtue-theory treats act-evaluation as a derivative from the character of an agent. An act is right because it is what a virtuous person might do.

Elizabeth Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy" (1958) was probably the first major attempt in recent philosophy to show the advantages of virtue ethics over act-based ethics.

Anscombe argues that the principal notions of modern moral discourse (right, wrong, obligation and moral duty) lack content, but concepts of virtue (justice, chastity, courage and truth) are conceptually rich.

Anscombe also argues that right, wrong, obligation and duty are legal concepts and worthless without judge and jury. Since ethics is not rooted in theism (as it was when God was judge and jury) they are worthless terms.

Anscombe argues that we should return to Aristotelian virtue ethics, which doesn't hold to a blanket concept of wrong or a concept of duty.

The idea that there can be no exhaustive set of rules for how to act in every situation is showing more and more philosophers that a virtue-based theory of ethics is advantageous to cover all bases.

Virtue theory ethics can better explain the moral value of personal goods like love and friendship.

Duty-based ethics does not clearly show that their hierarchical approach is correct.

Another reason for favoring virtue-based ethics is that some virtues are not reducible to specific acts or disposition.

Modern epistemology is belief-based. A positively evaluated belief is called justified.

Legalistic language makes very little sense in epistemology. What does it mean to be epistemically guilty?

Linehan - does this notion give better fuel for virtue-based epistemology or does it glorify the ignorance of epistemology in ordinary people? One should not be swayed by the ignorance or fervor of the masses.

Wisdom is the unification of propositional and other types of knowledge. Knowledge can be misused but wisdom cannot be. Wisdom unifies knowledge and desires and values.

The focus on belief in epistemology has led to the neglect of wisdom. Also, a belief-based theory cannot explain the connection between wisdom and moral goodness.

Consequentialism is an externalist moral theory. A good is something that is produced.

Externalist moral theories face all sorts of problems. Reliabilism, which is structurally similar to consequentialism, faces similar problems.

Reliabilism's epistemic goal is to form true beliefs and not to form false ones. It is quantitative.

In Reliabilism, an accumulation of propositional knowledge is the goal, regardless of how that knowledge is gained. It can be done ignorantly or in a vicious manner.

Because of the difficulties faced by reliabilism and its basis of consequentialism, it is a good idea to search for an alternative ethical mode for epistemology.

Act-based ethics label right as merely not-wrong. Right means permissible. Virtue ethics focus on praiseworthiness.

Belief based epistemology see justification as analogous to epistemic blamelessness. It isn't really praiseworthy.

Virtue theory can evaluate virtue, vice and their intermediate states; whereas act-based/belief-based can only offer black and white cases

2. Difficulties in contemporary epistemology

Contemporary epistemology is too atomistic and the value of understanding has been neglected.

2.1 Problems in the notion of justification

For centuries, maybe as far back as Plato, knowledge has been considered to be a justified true belief. Then Gettier screwed everything up.

Justification has been the primary focus of Anlgo-American philosophers in epistemology.

Justification is a hot topic in epistemology, but it is a very vague and ambiguous term used in connection with countless theories.

Planting claims that:
1) The traditional view of justification originated with Locke and Descartes and identifies justification with a component of knowledge and to true belief and to performing one's epistemic duty.
2) The traditional view is incoherent equivocation and responsible for the externalist and internalist impasse
3) The remedy to the impasse is to dissolve the connections between justification and epistemic duty and justification and warrant.

Planting too readily connects moral and deontological concepts. Then by arguing against deontology he denounces internalism.

But, Zagzebski feels Plantinga's historical and conceptual points fail to make a convincing argument against internalism

William Alston goes further than Plantinga. He identifies six candidates for necessary conditions for justification:
1) Must be based on adequate ground
2) what justices a belief must probabalize it
3) a justification must be cognitively accessible to the subject
4) A justified belief must fit into a coherent system of beliefs
5) It must satisfy certain higher-level conditions
6) The believer must satisfy intellectual obligations in forming and maintaining the belief

Alston holds that justification cannot bear all the conceptual weight that has been given to it.

Alston points out that the issue between externalists and internists cannot be resolved because justification is in such different context in these two theories.

Virtues of the Mind - 1-1.1

(Originally written November 20, 2006 in Book 8)

Virtues of the Mind
Linda Zagzebski

1. Using Moral Theory in Epistemology

The relationship between ethics and normative epistemology is close and uneasy.

Christopher Hookway argued that epistemic evaluations ought to focus on the activity of inquiry, rather than beliefs.

The ambivalence about responsibility for having knowledge or justified belief is exemplified in the internalist/externalist debate.

Both externalists/internalists hold that knowledge and justified beliefs are cognitive goods, but what type of good is not always clear.

Externalists see the good of these cognitive states as analogous with eyesight, hearing, intelligence or musical talent. Thus, a large amount of knowledge and justified belief can be praised, but a deficiency of them is not blamed, nor a normal amount of these cognitive states is praised.

Internalists view these cognitive states as goods analogous to acts, motives and persons. Thus, they are good and bad and can be blamed or praised.

When we criticize beliefs we do so most often from a moral base. Thus, epistemic criticizing is similar to moral criticizing.

"She should have known better" and similar statements are obviously moral critiques of epistemological errors.

Zagzebski claims that epistemic evaluation is a form of moral evaluation.

1.1 Contemporary epistemic theories and their ethical models

Epistemologists assume that the normative concepts of interest to their inquiry are properties of beliefs.

Belief has two senses:
1. Properties of the psychological states of believing
2. Properties of the propositional objects of the properties of the psychological states of believing

The epistemic concept of converting a justified belief into knowledge is analogous to making a right act.

The moral philosopher sees the right act as the basis of his/her inquiry and the epistemologist sees the justified belief as the basis for his/her inquiry.

"The ultimate task of a theory of knowledge is to answer the question, 'What is knowledge?' But to do this it is first necessary to answer the question, 'Under what conditions is a belief warranted?'" - Roderick Firth (Zagzebski, 7).

Contemporary epistemology is belief-based. All belief-based epistemology is based on the moral concept of act-based theory.

Act-based moral theory is either:
1) Deontological
2) Consequentialist

Epistemologists refine their questions into one of two types
1) Does the belief violate any epistemic rules or epistemic duties? (Deontological base)
2) Was the belief formed by a reliable process for obtaining the truth? (Consequentialist base)

Was the belief formed by a reliable process for obtaining the truth is the reliabilist approach.

The epistemic goal of reliabilism is to bring true beliefs and avoid false beliefs.

Reliabilism (like consequentialism) understands the good quantitatively.

"Whereas the Utilitarian aims to maximize the balance of pleasure over pain, the reliabilist aims to maximize the balance of true over false beliefs" (Zagzebski, 8).

Virtues of the Mind - Introduction

(Originally Written November 19, 2006 in Book 8)

Virtues of the Mind
An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge
Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

Introduction

The deepest disputes in epistemology focus on concepts that are ethical. Epistemic duty, epistemic responsibility, we ought to form beliefs in one way, one way of believing is good, intellectual virtue... are all ethical concepts.

"Almost all epistemological theories are modeled on act-based moral theories" (Zagzebski, xiii).

A true aretaic approach to epistemology requires a theory of virtue that fives intellectual virtues their proper place.

Zagzebski claims that she will show how normative epistemology is a branch of ethics; either discipline is ignores the other at its peril.

She holds that intellectual virtue is the primary normative component of both justified belief and knowledge.

Zagzebski divides the book into three parts:
1. Part I is on meta-epistemology
2. Part II is on normative ethics
3. Part III is on normative epistemology

Part I: The Methodology of Epistemology

Knowledge is the central concern of epistemology. It is one of the major interests of philosophy from its beginning.

Roderick Chisholm stated that "many of the characteristics philosophers have thought peculiar to ethical statements also hold of epistemic statements" (Zagzebski, 1).

Nearly all contemporary epistemic theories take an act-based moral theory as their model.

Zagzebski hopes to make a connection between theoretical ethics and normative epistemology. But, she admits that a major objection hampers this: acts are voluntary, but beliefs are not. This means there is a rift between the primary object of moral evaluation (the act) and the primary object of epistemic evaluation (the belief).

What is this thing called science? Ch. 16

(Originally written November 18, 2006 in Book 8)

What is this thing called science?
Chapter 16 - Epilogue

There is no general account of science and scientific method to be had that applies to all science in all things.

Philosophy does not have the resources to provide the account of science.

Historical accounts of science in the philosophy of science deal with knowledge of the epistemology of science.

Philosophy of science, though it is unable to provide us an account of science in general can provide characterizations of a given science at a given time.

Philosophers of science are useful because while scientists are good at making scientific progress they are not good at characterizing that progress. Philosophers of science are good at just that.

Linehan - The Way Chalmers presents philosophy of science makes me wonder if philosophy of science really isn't a muddled mess of philosophy of history, anthropology, and sociology.

What is this thing called science? Ch. 15

(Originally written November 18, 2006 in Book 8)

What is this thing called science?
Ch. 15 - Realism and Anti-Realism

[Introduction]

Realism views science as being able to accomplish its goal of telling us about things going on beyond the surface of things (i.e. DNA) and about things that happened long ago, prior to man's existence.

Many philosophers of science doubt realism. One reason for this doubt is that claims about the unobservable world must be hypothetical to the extent that they transcend what can be firmly established by observation.

Realism is too rash for philosophy of science because it claims way more than it can reasonably defend. History has reinforced this doubt as countless theories about the unobserved world have been proven false.

Anti-realists point out that when theories based on unobservable and observable facts that when the unobservable is proved wrong and the observable is retained. They hold that the enduring part of science is the part based on observation and experiment.

Anti-realists stress the inconclusiveness of theoretical science.

[Global anti-realism: language, truth and reality]

Global anti-realism holds that we are trapped by language and cannot ever directly describe reality. We can only describe it through a human perspective.

Global anti-realism denies that we have access to reality in any way, not just in science.

While most contemporary people are global anti-realists in that we all deny that we can come face to face with reality and directly read off facts about it, that doesn't prove much. At this point, global anti-realism is a very weak thesis.

The thesis becomes stronger when it is taken to have consequences that justify a skeptical attitude toward science and knowledge in general.

Chalmers calls this strengthening of thesis "unwarranted". He admits that we understand the world through conceptional framework, but that the framework can be tested for accuracy.

We learn about the world through observing it and describing it but, also through interacting with it.

Realists use the correspondence theory of truth because it is most conducive to their position. The correspondence theory of truth states that a sentence is only true if it corresponds to reality. A sentence is true if it describes things as they really are.

One problem with the correspondence theory of truth is that it can lead to paradoxes very easily.

The Liar paradox is a good example:

Example 1: "I never tell the truth"

If this is true, then you do tell the truth.

Example 2: If one side of the card has the sentence, "the sentence on the other side of this card is true" and the other side states, "the sentence on the other side of this card is false". This situation proves that either of the sentences are both true and false, which leads to the paradox.

Alfred Tarski demonstrated how, in a reasonably simple language system, paradoxes can be avoided. He distinguished between: one must carefully distinguish sentences between 'object language' and 'meta-language'

Object language deals with truth or falsity of sentences. Meta-language talks about object language.

Using Tarski's formula one of the sentences on the card must be object language and the other must be meta-language and thus, no paradox arises.

One of the main components of Tarski's correspondence theory is that if we are going to talk about truth for sentences, we need a more general language, a meta-language.

Meta-language refers to object language and to the facts to which those object language sentence are intended to correspond.

Tarski needed to show how the correspondence notion of truth can be systematically developed for all sentences within the object language in a way that avoids paradoxes. The difficulty of his task is that for any interesting language there are an infinite number of sentences

Tarski achieved this task for languages involving a finite number of single placed predicates. He took what it means for a predicate to be satisfied by an object.

The everyday language makes it sound trivial. The predicate 'is white' is satisfied by "X" only if X is white.

Using the notion of primitive satisfaction as a given, Tarski defined truth recursively.

Tarski's work was technically important for mathematical logic. It had a fundamental bearing on model theory and effected proof theory. He showed how contradictions can arise when truth is discussed in natural language, and showed how these contradictions can be avoided.

Tarski merely showed a commonsense thing. He proved that "snow is white" is true only because snow is white.

Tarski showed that a commonsense idea of truth can be utilized in a way that is free from paradoxes that were believed to threaten it.

From Tarski's point of view, a scientific theory is true, if and only if it describes the world as it really is.

Anti-realism will maintain that Tarski has not proven a correspondence between truth and a sentence, only a correspondence between one sentence and another.

The traditional debate between realists and anti-realists, in science, concerns whether scientific theories should be seen as truth in an unrestricted sense, or if they should be seen as making claims about the observable world exclusively. Neither side of this debate defends global anti-realism.

Anti-realism

Anti-realism maintains that the content of a scientific theory involves only a set of claims that can be substantiated by observation and experiment.

Many anti-realists are called instrumentalists.

Instrumentalists hold theories are nothing more than useful instruments that aid in correlating and predicting the results of observation and experiment.

Theories, in instrumentalism, are not interpretable as true or false.

Theories must be overarching, general, simple and compatible with observation and experiment.

Bas van Fraassen is an anti-realist who is not an instrumentalist.  He believes theories are true and false, but that truth or falsity is beside the point of science.

van Fraassen's merit of a theory is located in terms of its generality and simplicity and the extent to which it is borne out by observation and leads to new kinds of observation.

van Fraassen calls his position "constructive empiricism"

A motive for anti-realism is a desire to restrict science to claims that can be justified by scientific means.

Anti-Realists employee historical evidence to justify their claim that the theoretical part of science is not securely established.

Anti-realists note that even when theories are proven false there is no denying their utility in discovering new methods of observation.

"They (theories) are simply scaffolding to help erect the structure of observational and experimental knowledge, and they can be rejected once they have done their job" (Chalmers, 233).

[Some standard objections and the anti-realist response]

Anti-realists differentiate between observational knowledge, which is securely established and theoretical knowledge, which is not securely established.

One objecting to anti-realism is that if theories are not approximately true, how can they be so predictively successful in experiment?

History, however, forces the realist to admit that the predictive success is not a necessary indication of truth.

Realists claim that anti-realists can sweep difficult problems under the rug. Anti-realists would call this a caricature of anti-realism.

Realists claim that anti-realists don't take phenomena that is unobservable serious enough if they call it useful fiction. Anti-realists admit that these useful fiction and hold that as technology increases useful fictions can become observable phenomena.

[Scientific realism and conjectural realism]

Scientific realism claims that science's aim is to discover how the world behaves at all levels, not just observable ones.

Scientific realism claims that it is true because the testability of realism makes it scientific.

A key problem in the strong version of realism is the fact that history reveals science as fallible.

Ian Hacking, a realist, states that anti-realists place an inappropriately strong emphasis on what can and cannot be observed and pay insufficient attention to what can be practically manipulated in science.

Hacking maintains that an entity is real in science if it can be manipulated by science.

Some realists hold that scientific realism is too strong and attempt to weaken it.

Popper and his followers adhere to conjectural realism. Conjectural realism stresses the fallibility of our knowledge and admit that numerous theories in the past have been falsified and that we have no idea which current theories will be falsified in the future

The conjectural realist, however, still maintain that the aim of science is to discover the truth about what really exists and theories are to be judged on the extent to which they can fulfill this aim.

Conjectural realists will insist that their position is the most fruitful one in science, but will not call it a scientific position.

Conjectural realists hold that scientific realists' position as too ambitious.

Conjectural realism is a philosophical position, not a scientific one.

Conjectural realism has not criteria of judging true theories or false theories. They only recognize that in the past there have been false theories.

[Idealisation]

One objection to realism is that its theories cannot be taken as literal because it idealizes the world in a way it is not.

Theoretical descriptions are idealizations that cannot correspond to real-world situations.

Chalmers claims that the idealization of theoretical science do not pose the difficulties they are thought to.

[Unrepresentative realism or structural realism]

Science is dominated by realism because it attempts to discover reality.

Structural realism sees the theories as being more than calculating tools (anti-realism's position) but are still useful as such when they prove to be false.

More book notes on Augustine

(Originally written November 17, 2006 in Book 11)

Augustine's ethics

Augustine's ethics have a negative tone.

Augustine saw the good life being attainable only as a gift from God.

He believed it was much easier to do wrong rather than right.

Augustine's asceticism was moderate compared to his contemporaries, but severe by modern standards.

Augustine agreed with the Platonic notion that the wise man is cultivated in a society.

He had little to say about social ethics other than we ought to help one another as much as we can.

Augustine advocated for a strong law and strong ruler because it is better than the alternative: civil war.

Revolting against a leader is revolting against God.

Slavery was viewed as an evil, but agitating for its abolition was wrong because it was instituted by God as a punishment for sins.

To improve or altar existing social arrangements is to imply we are not content with God's program for us.

The evils we suffer are either goods in disguise or well-deserved punishments.

The delights and pains of the flesh are inconsequential as compared to the delights and pains of the soul.

Ethical value lay in motive rather than accomplishment for Augustine.

Augustine and Aristotle treated incontinence in similar manners, but for different reasons.
1) Where Aristotle disliked incontinence because it demeaned man, Augustine disliked it because it was disobedience to God.
2) Aristotle relieved men of responsibility when temptation became too great to overcome. Augustine held men accountable for their actions regardless of their temptation.
3) Augustine would have regarded many thing Aristotle held to be continent as incontinent

Augustine saw men as being incontinent frequently and paradoxically blamable

Everything except love for God was a snare and a delusion.

Augustine believed that living morally will not significantly help us, but living immorally will damn man.

The good for Augustine was a reunion with God. A separation occurred between man and God as a result of Adam's sin.

The way back to God was through faith in Jesus, "Through religion, that is not through ethics, which is first and foremost concerned with behavior in this world" (Jones, 119).

The Drama of Salvation

Each man is an actor who plays a small role in the big production of God's drama.

Sinful desires are incredibly difficult to eradicate, especially pride. Even when men overcome pride and are humble they take pride in their humility.

No one is certain of salvation. Even those who have been saved by divine intervention came are not freed from the temptations of the flesh.

Relapse for the saved is possible at all times. Therefore, complacency is an acute danger.

Life is desperately hazardous. The past is due to anyone's future.

The Mechanics of Salvation

To whom was Christ praying when he died for man's sins?

If it was God the Father, then God has a divided will, which is absurd. It can't be Satan because God doesn't owe him anything.

Augustine began with traditional Biblical language but began reinterpret it.

The Son became man to prove that flesh is not evil.

The Son died to show that death, though a punishment for sin, is not itself a sin.

Christ's death shows us how we ought to die - in piety, humility and peace.

God sending His Son shows us His great love for us better than anything else could.

The Play within a play

The passion is a play-within-a-play designed to invoke emotions in the other players of the large play. Man's egoism has often prevented Him from seeing just how much love God has shown us.

God cod could have redeemed man via divine fiat (as He created the world) but for mysterious reasons chose this way instead.

Augustine's notion of redemption is much more enlightened than the primitive notion of bloody sacrifice.

Augustine faces problems like if God is all then man is nothing. "No man is rightly saved by the assistance of divine aid" is an inadequate formula.

An arguing against the Manichaeism and Pelagians he used Pelagian arguments to refute Manichaeism. He used the arguments of Manichaeism to refute Plagiarism. The Pelagians were acute enough to point this out.

Linehan: Jones' characterization of Augustine is pretty awful. Even Russell give him more of a fair treatment. Jones is atrociously guilty of the fallacy of equivocation, especially in regards to the Doctrine of redemption.

The world is actually a puppet theater. God writes the parts and pulls the strings. Why would God write and perform a play for himself? Why go to the trouble of the play if God knows who will be saved and who will be damned?

Another problem for Augustine is that God arbitrarily chooses who will be saved.

Augustine's conception of justice was much different than modern men's conception of justice. Modern man sees it as unjust that we should inherit Adam's sin. "It seems unfair that Adam, who might just as well have been created with fewer deficiencies should be blamed for what, given his nature, was bound to happen. It seems unfair... that some few of us should be arbitrarily pulled out of the common cesspool of iniquity" (Jones, 124).

Augustine's doctrine of predestination is immoral and impracticable.

Augustine could not live up to the doctrine of predestination because otherwise he would not have advocated for us to pray, to do good, to fast, to struggle against temptation, or to do anything because whether or not we do anything is irrelevant to whether or not we are to be saved.

Augustine's life leading up to his conversion was irrelevant because his conversion was directly induced by God. At the moment of conversion he stood in an immediate relation to the Deity.

Augustine's interpretation of salvation is unacceptable in ecclesiastical terms because the Church in the exclusive agency through which souls are saved. The Church is the mediator between God and Man.

Augustine had a problem because he saw salvation in both mystical and ecclesiastical terms.

The Donatism Heresy

Augustine faced this problem when he went to Hippo in 391.

Donatism was a vigorous rival to the Church at this time.

Donatism was a peculiar heresy because it did not differ from the Church in doctrine.

Donatists believed that the sacraments were ineffective if performed by unworthy priests.

While this may seem plausible and harmless the Church saw it as a danger to their institution.

The Church had to maintain that the worth of the sacraments came from God and the Church, not from the administering priests.

Augustine first tried to reason with the Donatists. He believed the truth would prevail over heresy. When this failed Augustine elicited help from imperial authorities. This was easy because in addition to being heretics, the Donatists were social radicals.

Through persecution the Donatists lost their grip on N. Africa and Catholic Christianity held it for one more century (only to lose it to Islam).

While this may seem inhumane, Augustine advocated it because it turned many back to the Catholic faith. This ideal paved the way for the Inquisition.

Augustine did not recognize the primacy of the Pope because he held no man to be infallible.

Augustine saw the final authority of Christ as a general council.

Augustine held that we ought to use reason to discover truth as best we can, remembering that God would not have given us reason if we weren't to use it, but to remember that if we believe reason to be the ultimate source of truth we will be damned by our pride.

Augustine held a belief that man, in a general use of the word could slowly but steadily increase his grasp of truth through corrections of councils and doctrine. But no council or doctrine could ever arrive at the ultimate truth.

Augustine's view of the sacraments:

The earthly city had a dual meaning:
1) hell
2) the pilgrimage of this life

The City of God had a duel meaning:
1) Heaven
2) The Church

The visible Church is the embodiment the invisible church.

The Church and its members are the body of Christ. It owes its allegiance and life to Jesus.

The City of God was a very complex structure.

The synthesis of Augustine's two conceptions of man's relationship to God (ecclesiastical through the Church and its rites and the mystical conversion) is difficult and problematic. In the mysticism and predestinarianism synthesis God and man are privately united and the City of God is a mere aggregate of private relations. In the ecclesiastical version the Church and its sacraments were the key to salvation and private salvation was danger to the authority of the Church.

Nature and Natural Science

The physical world was the stage on which the drama of salvation unfold.

Augustine's Disinterest in science

Augustine was basically disinterested in science and the physical world.

He lacked the curiosity of the Greeks and the moderns. Curiosity was replaced by the fear of intellectual pride.

He did not have the incentive of happiness in this world that Greek and the moderns have.

His otherworldliness made him indifferent to ethics, politics and physical interests.

Nature was dominated by a naive teleology in Augustine.

Man, thought nothing in respect to God, was the center of the physical universe. Man is the end or purpose for which the universe was created.

"Augustine's teleology was so naively anthropocentric that it ws impossible for him to reach an unbiased conclusion" (Jones, 130).

Uncritical of the marvelous

Augustine's disposition made him very open to miracles.

Modern man looks at miracles and see them not as miracles, but as challenges.

Other reasons for Augustine's unscientific approach

Augustine's ingenuity achieved an incredibly synthesis between the Scriptures and his personal beliefs. It was a correspondence between two conceptual systems, not a conceptual system and reality.

Augustine held that whatever was to be known about the physical world was easily discovered and what was not easily discovered was purposely hidden by God.

Belief in the regularity of nature

Since everything is caused by God, everything is, in sense, a miracle.

Unusual things only appear more miraculous.

Augustine believed in a uniformity or regularity in nature and that unusual things were only unusual in our minds. This line of thinking paved the way for science to have a good argument for the regularity of nature.

History

The history of humanity was to serve as instruction for future acts of man.

Prior to Jesus' life, God gave signs to man to point them to Him. The history of the Jews was a sign.

Teleological Bias

Augustine's account of history was dominated by a teleology that was anthropocentric.

Augustine and the Greek Historians

Herodotus and Thucydides (the greatest Greek Historians) were far more scientific than Augustine. But, in some respects were much more narrow than Augustine.

The Greeks were dominated by current events. Their historians also attributed a lot to chance and accident. Augustine held that nothing happened by chance. His historical conversion "may be worthless" but his notion of unity and purpose in everything is key to historians today.

Augustine held that Jesus' life was the turning point of history. Everything leading up to it was actually leading up to it and everything after it was designed to supplement it.

While most people do not see divine providence in action, the teleological approach is necessary in historian work today.

Augustine's focus on universal history vs. the provincial focus of the Greek was a vast improvement over the Greeks.

Conclusion

Augustine does not evoke a neutral response.

Most people see Augustine as hopelessly unbalanced - "a neurotic exaggeration of guilt and sin and an unhealthy otherworldliness that results in almost total neglect of the really serious social and political problems that it is the business of the philosopher to discuss" (Jones, 136).

Augustine's mystical experience is viewed as a sign of psychic instability.

Others will see modern times as going too far in the other direction. Even those who do not accept Augustine's Christianity see his picture of human nature as better and more accurate than the 18th and 19th century philosophers.

Linehan - It is a bit sickening to read a trashing misrepresentative account of Augustine. And though Jones pays some respect to him in a few final paragraphs it was atrocious to read.

What is this thing called science? Ch. 14

(Originally written November 17, 2006 in Book 8)

What is this thing called science?
Ch. 14 - Why should the world obey laws?

[Introduction]

This section deals with the ontological questions.

What kind of entities are assumed to or shown to exist by modern science? Why do we assume that there are laws that govern the environment's behavior?

The notion that laws govern the world and that it is the aim of science to discover them is commonplace.

What makes matter conform to laws? This is highly problematic.

[Laws as regularities]

One way of dealing with natural laws is to deny them as David Hume did. This line of thinking brings causation into question.

Laws are seen as matter of fact realities by Hume. They appear regular and that's why we label them as laws, though they aren't.

A problem with this view is that we see regular before and after things all the time and do not label them as laws.

There is more to laws than mere regularity.

If laws are taken as exceptionalness regularities than no scientific law qualifies because there are always exceptions.

When proponents of law as regularity are confronted with difficulties they reformulate the law from "when X, Y follows" to When X, Y normally follows unless some extra condition denies it".

But, after adding a condition, experiments are made null and void because the laws cannot be tested under any other condition than the one specified.

[Laws as characteristics of powers or disposition]

The world is active. Thus, natural objects behave in the way they do because they have the power or disposition to behave that way.

Laws can then be understood as characteristics of material things' tendencies.

Causes and laws are intimately linked in this view. "Events are caused through the action of particulars that possess the power to act as causes" (Chalmers, 219).

Law-like behavior is brought about by efficient causation.

Many philosophers reject this view of ontology because it seems primitive. Chalmers questions why this is so. Scientists invoke powers and dispositions in their work all the time. Chalmers admits though that there are laws of science that do not fit nicely in this scheme.

[Thermodynamic and conservation laws]

The first and second laws of Thermodynamics and a host of conservation laws in fundamental particle physics do not mesh well with the dispositional account of laws.

The first and second laws of Thermodynamics cannot be construed as causal laws.

A large range of laws within physics can be understood as causal laws, but a few cannot. "What makes systems behave in accordance with the laws of conservation of energy? I don't know. They just do. I am not entirely comfortable with this situation, but I don't see how it can be avoided" (Chalmers, 225).

What is this thing called science? Ch. 13 (B)

(Originally written November 15, 2006 in Book 8)

What is this thing called science?
Ch. 13 (Continued)

According to Mayo, an experiment constitutes support for a claim only if possible sources of error have been eliminated so that the claim would be unlikely to pass the rigorous test unless it were true.

The new experimentalists are generally concerned to capture a domain of experimental knowledge that can be reliably established independent of high-level theory.

Scientific knowledge is thus experimental knowledge confirmed by experiments. The growth of scientific knowledge is the accumulation and extension of experimental laws.

[Learning from error and triggering revolutions]

Mayo is also concerned with how well-conducted experiments enable us to learn from error.

An experiment offers a falsification; but, it also serves to identify an effect not perviously known.

The positive role of error detection in science comes out in Mayo's reformulation of Kuhn's notion of normal science.

Mayo identifies normal escinde with experimentation.

The experimentalists' detailed knowledge of the effects at work in an apparatus puts him or her in a position to be able to learn from error.

[The new experimentalism in perspective]

The new experimentalists have shown how experimental results can be substantiated. They have shown the products of experimental effects were highly independent of theory.

They see science as an accumulation of experimental facts.

To them, the best theories are those that survive severe experimental testing.

They have shown how rival theories can be brought together and shown how experiment can lead to scientific revolutions.

Experimentalism has brought philosophy back down to earth. But, Chalmers says that experimentalism is not the final answer.

Experimentalism seems to give too little emphasis to the theories of science.

Experimental knowledge is great, but to apply it to anything a theory is needed.

A problem with the new experimentalism is their concept of experimenting with he same type of experiment. What constitutes as the same type of experiment? Judgments made about what constitutes as a similar type of experiment must be made against a theoretical background.

Despite its efforts, the new experimentalism cannot eliminate theory or high-level theory from science.

[Appendix: Happy meetings of theory and experiment]

The merit of theory is demonstrated by the extent of which it survives severe tests.

The new experimentalists, though they try their best, cannot completely sever theory from the philosophy of science. Any adequate philosophy of science must include theory and experimentation.

What is this thing called science? Ch. 12

(Originally written November 14, 2006 in Book 8)

Chapter 12: The Bayesian Approach

[Introduction]

The reliability and practical use of science's predictions in recent history may highlight that philosophers of science have exaggerated the fallibility of theories.

The Bayesians have gravitated to this view and stated that something has gone radically wrong in philosophy of science.

Bayesian are followers of Thomas Bayes, an 18th century mathematician who proved a probability theory.

[Bayes' Theorem]

The theorem is about conditional probabilities. Conditional probabilities are those propositions who depend on the evidence bearing on those propositions.

Bayes' theorem is a method of prescribing how probabilities are to be changed in the light of new evidence.

Bayes' Theorem:

P(h/2) = P(h) P(e/h)/P(e)

P(h) is prior probability of hypothesis 'h'
P(h/e) is posterior probability: the probability of 'h' in light of 'e'

Bayes' theorem indicates that prior probability is to be changed by a scaling factor in light of evidence 'e'.

The weight of evidence 'e' will strengthen or weaken the original probability. Thus P(h) will become P(h/e) and P(h/e) will become more or less probable than P(h) based on the evidence 'e'.

'e' will be 1 if it proves 'h'.
'e will be 0 if it disproves 'h'.
If it neither proves more disproves 'h' its value will be greater than 0 and less than 1

"The extent to which some evidence supports a hypothesis is proportional to the degree to which the hypothesis predicts the evidence" (Chalmers, 176).

If the evidence is confirmed the hypothesis is confirmed and the opposite (and the in between).

The Bayesians allow and need auxiliary assumptions in their theory.

Bayes' theorem is a theorem.  It takes for granted some minimal assumptions about probability.

The minimum assumptions are probability calculus (which is widely accepted).

[Subjective Bayesianism]

The Bayesians disagree on a fundamental question concerning the nature of the probabilities involved.

According to objective Bayesians the probabilities represent probabilities that rational agents ought to subscribe to in the light of the objective situation.

Objective Bayesians hold that probabilities are distributed equally and then the Bayes' theorem is used to modify the probabilities in the light of the evidence.

A major problem with this approach is how to ascribe objective prior probability to hypotheses.

Where is a list of hypotheses to be found in any given field? A possible list could be infinite. In such a case all probabilities will be 0 and Popperian falsficationism is proved right.

Subjective Bayesian is different to the objective versions.

Scientists take certain things for granted and thus probability is not initially evenly distributed. Probabilities are assigned based on subjective beliefs.

The subjective Bayesians take the degrees of belief in hypotheses that scientists take as a matter of fact as the basis for the prior probabilities in their Bayesian calculations.

"Bayesianism makes a great deal of sense in the context of gambling" (Chalmers, 179).

Linehan - I just thought it was funny.

The degree of belief held by a scientist is analogous to the odds on a horse in a fair race.

Not all Bayesians will make the same choice between alternatives when applying the Bayesian calculus to science.

Any attempt to understand science and scientific reasoning in terms of subjective beliefs of scientists would seem to be disappointing for those who seek an objective account of science.

Bayesians insist that the Bayesian theory constitutes an objective theory of scientific inference.

The Bayesians see their approach as similar to logic. Logic doesn't care where the premises come from, only if the conclusion flows from the premises.

Bayesians can take the argument further and state that while scientists can be subjective in assigning prior probability, the Bayes' theorem, if applied correctly on the evidence will bring scientist's to the same conclusion regardless of their starting points.

Applications of the Bayesian Formula

There is a low of diminishing return in science that states once a theory has been confirmed by an experiment once, repeating the same experiment under the same circumstances will not be taken as confirming a theory to as high a degree as the first experiment did.

The Bayesian formula captures the essence of the law of diminishing return.

IF the theory "T" predicts the experimental result "E" then the probability of P(E/T) is 1.

The probability of T is to be increased in the light of a positive result E each time the experiment is performed, consequentially the probability of a theory being correct will increase by a smaller amount each time it is performed.

The Bayesians claim to be able to capture the rationale of Lakatos' ideal that confirmations, not falsifications are the key to scientific development.

Lakatos' 'methodological decisions' seemed plausible in his account, but he gave no proof for it. The Bayesians provided a basis for it.

Bayesianism also helps to eliminate ad hoc modifications.

[Critique of subjective Bayesianism]

One criticism is that by embracing subjective probabilities is too much of a concession to be able to attribute probabilities to theories.

There are two major problems with Bayesianism's approach. A Bayesian must know what any scientist felt about a degree of belief.
1) Gaining access to a scientist's degrees of belief is problematic
2) The implausibility of private beliefs having anything to do with a superiority of a theory or another one is also problematic

These problems are intensified when a collaborative work produces results. Whose beliefs are to be the factor in this account?

The extent to which degrees of belief are dependent upon prior probabilities is also another problem.

The subjectiveness of the starting point of the Bayesians makes it impossible for it to be an objective scientific method. If the starting point is gone all that is left is the Bayes' theorem which without science proves nothing.

What is this thing called science? Ch. 11

(Originally written November 14, 2006 in Book 8)

What is this thing called science?
Alan Chalmers

Chapter 11 - Methodological Changes in Method
[Against Universal Method]

Feyerabend made a strong case against the various accounts of scientific method by showing the incompatibility of these accounts and Galileo's advances in physics and astronomy.

Chalmers states that he takes issue with Feyerabend's historical accuracy, but states that the various scientific methods still fall short with the corrected history.

Feyerabend makes a strong case against a universal, ahistorical method of science.

Feyerabend represents one extreme: not method. Other methods represent the other extreme: dogmatic method.

Feyerabend gives no attack against a fluid, revisable method within any particular science.

Chalmers proposes that there is a middle ground between the two extremes. There are historically contingent methods and standards implicit in any successful science.

A common response to a middle-road approach is that if a scientific method is to change then it must be shown that it changes for the better to avoid extreme relativism. In order for there to be a way to show that any change is a change for the better there must be a standard to judge the standards. Any standard to judge the standards is a super standard or a universal, which Feyerabend thoroughly decimated.

John Worrall proposed an argument like this and concluded that there must be either a universal method or relativism.

[Telescopic for naked-eye data: a change in standards]

Aristotelian opponents of Galileo held that the senses and experience should be our guide in philosophizing and the criterion for science.

Aristotelians backed up the primacy of the senses with a teleological argument.

The Function of the senses was to provide us with information about the world. Because of this it makes no sense to believe that the senses systematically mislead us because that is the opposite of their function.

Galileo had to argue against this Aristotelian/Thomistic mind-set to introduce the telescope and telescopic data.

Feyerabend claims that Galileo resorted to propaganda and trickery to overcome this dilemma.

In fact though, Galileo used his hypothesis, not propaganda to prove his point. The dependence of irradiation is the test he used to change the mind-set of the scientific community. Galileo proved that the eye was misleading when it viewed small light sources (i.e. the stars, planets) at a distance. The telescope removes the irradiation and thus yields more reliable data.

[Piece meal change of theory, method and standards]

Galileo was able to convince his rivals in such a short time-span because he and his rivals showed a lot of common theoretical beliefs.

At any stage, a science will have some specific aims and some methods to meet their knowledge aims.

Science is like a web that grows and catches new things in it.

"Any part of the web of aims, methods, standards, theories, and observational facts that constitute a science at a particular time can be progressively changed, and the remaining part of the web will provide the background against which a case for the change can be made" (Chalmers, 170).

The entire web cannot change at once because the thing would collapse.

[A light hearted interlude]

Opponents of Chalmer's middle-road method would state that rival theorists appeal to some higher or more general standard if they shared aims. Thus there is a universal method (though unarticulated or inarticulate whatever)

Chalmers concedes that there is a common sense version of the universal scientific method. "Take argument and the available evidence seriously and do not aim for a kind of knowledge or a level of confirmation that is beyond the reach of available methods" (Chalmers, 171).

But this concession, if it is the end, all puts all philosophers of science out of business because the formulation this method could be done by anyone with any common sense.

Also once the common sense view has been stated, any further investigation will vary from science to science and be played against an historical backdrop.

An appreciation of the common sense view of the scientific method is sufficient enough to resist socialists and post-modernists who downplay the special status of science on the grounds that scientific knowledge panders to some special interest group.

Michael Mulkay, a post-modernist drew the conclusion that a sociological categorization of science is made necessary by the failure of what he terms the standard view

What is this thing called science? Ch. 10

(Originally written November 14, 2006 in Book 8)

What is this thing called science?
Alan Chalmers

Ch. 10: Feyerabend's anarchistic theory of science

[story so far]

It has been a struggle to distinguish scientific knowledge from any other type of knowledge.

[Feyerabend's case against method]

Feyerabend argued that science posses no features that render it superior to any other knowledge pursuit.

Feyerabend sought to undermine philosophers' attempts to characterize method and progress in science.

Feyerabend insists that scientific theories that are unaccepted or unacceptable in a certain time make use of propaganda to gain acceptance.

Feyerabend teased Lakatos for being so lax in his standards he cannot rule anything out as a non-science.

Feyerabend rejected Kuhn's claim of social consensus of the scientific community because he felt the appeal to consensus of a community was incapable of distinguishing science from other activities.

Feyerabend claimed he had proved there is no way of establishing science as special. Thus, we ought not to claim its superiority.

Feyerabend saw a high regard of science as a dangerous dogma. Dogmatic science plays a repressive role like the Church played for centuries.

[Feyerabend's advocacy of freedom]

Feyerabend's theory of science is formulated in an ethical system that emphasizes individual freedom.

Feyerabend saw individual freedom as the means to creating the best human beings. By removing the methodological constraints placed on scientists, individuals will be free to choose between science and other forms of knowledge.

The institutionalization of science was something that Feyerabend fought against.

He stated that we need to "free society from the strangling hold of an ideologically petrified science just as our ancestors free us from the strangling hold of the One True Religion" (Chalmers, 156).

Feyeabend advocated for an ideologically neutral state.

Feyerabend claims that philosophies of science are based on aesthetic judgments, judgments of tastes, metaphysical prejudices, religious desire and other subjective feelings.

"There is no scientific method, then scientists should follower their subjective wishes. Anything goes" (Chalmers, 157).

[Critique of Feyerabend's individualism]

A central problem with Feyerabend's account of freedom is that it is entirely a negative account. Freedom is simply more than a freedom from constraints.

Scientists are free only to the extent that they are free to choose from various available techniques in their given field.

Another major problem with Feyerabend is his notion of an ideologically-neutral state. It is childishly naive.

More notes on Augustine

(Originally written November 14, 2006 in Book 11)

Chapter 4: Augustine: The Created Universe

The Two Cities: Heaven and Hell

Augustine's dualism came out very strong here. The two cities:
1) The City of God: the community of the saints
2) The City of Earth: the community of lost souls

The saints are predestined to reign eternally with God. The lost souls are predestined to suffer eternal punishment with the devil.

The two cities exist as one until the final judgment day. Thus, neither is wholly good nor wholly bad.

Augustine conceived hell as both literal and symbolic. A literal hell raises problems like how is a being in fire and not consumed?

Heaven was also literal and symbolic. It was a place where saints' souls and risen bodies were reconciled and a peace of soul indwelled them all.

Augustine defines virtue as "the order of love". "When we love the right objects in the right way we are virtuous, and since the wholly right object is God, virtue merges with religion" (Jones, 104). Understanding this maxim will bring an understanding of all of Augustine's most important insights.

Heaven is not so much a fire material state, it is a possible, present spiritual state.

Heaven is a communion with God through love. Hell is a disorder love, a separation from God.

Augustine regarded Heaven and Hell as literal places and metaphysical states. His dualism here is certainly evident.

The Earthly pilgrimage

Man is living in the earthly city and those who will eventually dwell in the Heavenly City live here as a pilgrim.

Man

Augustine's view of man and his place was determined by two main considerations:
1) His conception of God
2) Reflection of his own life and experience

Augustine faced problems in his conception of man because it was based on a problematic conception of God.

The Human Predicament

Augustine was pessimistic in his view of humanity. Nothing seemed more obvious to him than the misery of the human situation.

If Augustine is correct than his debasing of man was necessary because if man has any intrinsic value then God's complete preeminence destroyed.

Augustine's life was dominated by a sense of hopelessness. He struggled to find redemption through intellect, but even when he reasoned that he could only be saved by the Christian God, he was helpless to achieve that salvation. God had to give it.

Despite his inability to achieve salvation, Augustine felt responsible for his actions.

According to Augustine God had to create a sinful man because a sinless man would be a perfect being, it would be whole and total in reality.

Linehan - This is a gross misrepresentation of Augustine. Jones has completely missed the ball here, painting Augustine as pure Neoplatonic.

Sin is the kind of evil that results from a deficient will.

Augustine's account of sin

Evil did not enter the world, it has always been a part of the created universe.

The entrance of sin into the world, which is evil connected to the will, has something to do with the roles that God assigned Adam, Eve and Satan in the cosmic drama.

There is no efficient cause for an evil will. A will becomes evil when it turns from putting God first to putting something lower first. The lower thing is not evil or bad; it is just the turning that is evil.

The cause of an evil will is a defect.

To seek the deficient cause of a will becoming evil is like looking for darkness.

All evil is a privation. Man's sin was not caused by Satan. Both Satan and Man had a privation in their will and thus, turned from good to evil.

Pride is the root of an evil will. Pride is leaving the true end (God) and making one's self an end.

Augustine's distinction between efficient and deficient causes is critical to his theory. But, it does not stand up to scrutiny.

Another problem with Augustine's account is that even if the evil will is caused by a defect, then how is man responsible for a defect God created?

The worst punishment God has given sinful man is a divided will.

Man's will is not wholly bad since it is corrupted. It still yearns for the good, but it is incapable of achieving it.

The flesh is not evil per se. It is only made evil by a corrupt soul.

Augustine was not an extreme ascetic. The bodily needs were to be taken care of, but not to be lusted after.

Book notes on Augustine

(Originally written November 14, 2006 in Book 11)

Notes on Augustine cont'd

The Inner Struggle

Acute sense of sin

Augustine has an acute or abnormal sense of sin.

The modern mind sees Augustine's youth as normal; whereas he sees it as evidence of a diseased soul.

Augustine claims to enjoy sin for the sake of sinning.

Attitude toward sex

Sex was evidence of corruption in Augustine's reflection.

Today's culture finds it hard to understand Augustine's sense of guilt. Despite being unmarried he remained faithful to one woman and compared to his contemporaries was a model of sexual morality.

Like Paul, and many other early Christians, Augustine had a particular horror of the sexual aspect of life possibly because he had a strong sexual drive.

He held that sexual activities should be rigidly limited to the purpose of procreation.

Intellectual Pride

Augustine felt he had committed the sin of "intellectual arrogance". He felt he could reason the mysteries of the universe and discover independently the nature of reality.

Augustine became skeptical of orthodoxy with the problem of evil and was troubled by the naive anthropomorphism of his mother's sect.

He saw that the Christian Scriptures were riddled with contradictions if taken literally.

Augustine's Manichaeism

The problem of evil caused Augustine to gravitate towards Manichaeism. He was a follower of Manichaeism for nine years.

The appeal of Manichaeism was its use of reason over faith contra to Catholic Christianity.

Augustine sought certitude above all else. Augustine developed a belief that if one died in error he/she was to stiffen eternal damnation.

Augustine's drive for intellectual certainty was not intellectual curiosity or the Greek search for happiness; it was a desperate need for salvation.

Years of intellectual effort left Augustine to conclude that truth could not be reached via reason.

Because of this revelation he regarded his time under the influence of Manichaeism as a sinful period of intellectual sin.

Augustine's Neoplatonism

In Milan, Augustine made the acquaintance of Ambrose. From Ambrose he learned that interpreting the Bible allegorically one could make the naïveté and its inconsistencies vanish.

By using Neoplatonic metaphysics he could further dispel these inconsistencies more.

Neoplatonism notion of a deity as a creative force or energy, rather than as a crudely anthropomorphic architect thing fit well into Augustine's scheme.

Neoplatonism also seemed to provide a solution to the problem of evil.

Augustine concluded that the physical world was a product of God's creative force and thus not at all evil. Evil is simply an incompleteness and a finitude resulting from the creature's inevitable separation from its maker.

If evil was a positive thing then the problem of evil would be impossible to overcome; but, if it were a negative thing as Neoplatonism held, Augustine concluded that there was no problem of evil.

Augustine had convinced himself of the truthfulness of Orthodoxy, but did not feel an inner sense of peace. Sin still plagued him.

He felt his will was divided. He was helpless.

Augustine's conversion

Augustine's conversion is a fascinating and revealing psychological account

Augustine's mission

From 386 AD on he was steadfastly a Christian. He knew he was still going to be tempted, but the inner peace he found in Christianity saved him. He sought to give others that inner peace if he could.

He was convinced that his conversion would be a lesson to others.

His fight against heresy was manifested especially strong in his fight against Manichaeism.

He sought to create a rational synthesis of Christianity, but he knew he would need God's help.

Doctrine of Catholic faith was fairly well set by Augustine's time; but, it was not neatly or tightly bound in formal doctrine.

Augustine sought to create a synthesis of loose Christian Doctrine, canonical works, Augustine's own sense of sin and worthlessness and his dualistic views into a Catholic doctrine.

Augustine divided his doctrine into two parts:
1) Concerning God
2) Concerning God's creations

Augustine's Concept of God

As a mystic and a devout Christian Augustine wrote with a fervent piety.

As a philosopher, God was the focal point of Augustine. He had strong metaphysical interest.

His interest in the nature of reality was primarily concerned with the supernatural. He sought to find a satisfactory object of religious faith.

As a Christian, Augustine used religious terms.

Plato and Augustine shared similar metaphysical outlooks.

God - Reality is immutable

Augustine (and Plato) held that ultimate reality must be immutable and impervious to change and decay.

Both concluded that because the sensible would change and it cannot be wholly real.

If God is perfect then He will not change because change will result in a loss of perfection.

The problem, the problem of change was a difficulty for Augustine. But, Augustine could not rely on old Greek strategies for dealing with change because God created the world, thus the world must be something. It can't be mere appearance.

Augustine arrived at a divided reality.

God-Reality is creative

Augustine did not solve Plato's problem, he substituted another more difficult one for it.

The problem of relationship between God and man substituted for the problem of appearance and reality. This new problem was further complicated by the Dogmatic law that God created the world ex nihilo.

The creation act was for Augustine a divine fiat.

God's creative ability and man's are different in kind, not in desire. Thus, is God's creative power intelligible?

Augustine as a philosopher wanted to give a rational account of creation, but religious sentiments kept him from abandoning faith altogether.

Augustine (like Plato) held that there must be a certainty in the world of flux. For Plato, mathematics was this certainty. For Augustine it was a self. If one doubts his own existence on proves he exists because no thing that does not exist cannot doubt.

Augustine was relatively unconcerned with the problem of knowledge. Reasons for this disinterest include:
1) a complete interest in peace or security
2) reason was inadequate for reaching truth.

Knowledge was validated by God's goodness, not logic for Augustine.

While Augustine was deeply religious, he was a phenomenal philosopher. His argument for the existence of self was the starting point of modern philosophy via Descartes.

God-Reality is Eternal

God is eternal. Plato held this, but Augustine's religious mind made the eternality of God more vital to his metaphysics.

God made Time and is thus not limited by it,

The past and future is divisible into the minutest of instances, but the present is only the exact moment we experience.

There are neither past things nor future things. There are:
1) Present of things past (memory)
2) Present of things present
3) Present of things future (expectation)

The past is measured as it passes. It is measurable because it has space. But there is no space for the present to be measured.

Time is not the motion of a body.

"We, therefore, measure neither future times, nor past, nor present, nor those passing by's and yet we do measure times" (Jones, 90).

Time is measured in one's mind.

God knows all things, past, present and future because he can measure all time in His mind.

Augustine's style is characteristically ambivalent to reason. He implores God's help along the way.

Augustine's conception of time:
1) Time flows
2) Time is a continuum
3) Past, present and future are somehow coexistent in individual minds.
4) There are three aspects of time:
a) present past (memory)
b) present present (experience)
c) present future (expectation)

The relation of time as man's conception to God's conception is this: man can hold in his mind the conception of time in the three aspects. He holds a finite amount of present past, present present, and present future. God holds in his mind all present pasts, present presents, and present futures. His infinite knowledge of time (and the events occurring in them) makes time irrelevant to God. Everything is now for God.

Augustine disliked the notion of infinity and thus developed his fine scheme. The inability to rationally fathom infinitude drew Augustine to believe God's mysterious nature is infinite.

Augustine's philosophy still suffers from its basis of mysticism. Mystic philosophy relies on the source of a few exclusive experiences. When philosophy rests on private knowledge like this it abandons its claim to rational inquiry.

God-Reality is All-God

God's all-good. This is another Platonic ideal that Augustine interpreted through Christianity.

To exist is good, and that the most real thing will be most good seemed to be a maxim or self-evident truth to Augustine.

Augustine was not content to say reality is good for man; he added that reality is good to man.

Providence, Evil and Free Will

Providence played a key role in Augustine. His emphasis on providence reflects the sense of uncertainty and insecurity men felt in his age.

Providence gave Augustine the security he sought.

God was identified with ultimate reality. Ultimate reality was identified with ultimate goodness. Evil was therefore a privation of ultimate goodness. It was a deficiency.

Evil, while starting from the Neoplatonist point of view, became a result from a deficiency in us.

The account of evil Augustine gives is advantageous, but it is philosophically unsatisfactory because:
1) It rests on an appeal to ignorance: "If we but knew enough, we would see that everything is really all right" (Jones, 97)
2) The Good is immutable. Evil is therefore mutability. But this makes change evil and how can change (like Augustine's conversion) be evil?

Augustine created a problem between foreknowledge and free will. If God has foreknowledge than man has no free will.

Augustine can be criticized for his account of providence on two reasons:
1) "The fact that God knows everything that is going to happen means that man is not free to choose what he does" (Jones, 99). Augustine's response was that God knows not everything that will happen, but he knows everything that is happening because He is an atemporal being. He sees past, present and future at the present.
2) "The fact that God does everything means that man does nothing" (Jones, 99). Augustine argued that God chooses to work through human wills.

Augustine's account of providence creates a problem of man's responsibility. If God does everything, man does nothing and thus cannot be held responsible.

The Basic Conflict in Augustine's Account of God

Augustine fought against the anthropomorphism of naive Christianity, but in doing so he lost much of the Christian concept of God.

His attempt to reconcile the personal God of primitive Christianity with the ultimate reality of Greek metaphysics failed.

While Augustine failed, he was on a good track. "Aquinas, for instance, showed far greater skill than Augustine in giving rational interpretation to the basic religious insights he and Augustine shared" (Jones, 101).