(Originally written November 13, 2016 in Book 26)
Introducing Plato
D. Robinson & J. Groves
The Sophists sold their wisdom for profit. They treated philosophy as a self-help method to earn political position.
Plato & Socrates were hostile to the Sophists for two reasons:
1. The Sophists debased philosophy
2. The Sophists sold their teaching to whoever could pay, not just the Aristocracy
Sophists were on a sliding scale, but preached cultural and ethical relativism and ethical skepticism. The worst held ethical nihilism as a viewpoint.
Protagoras (490-420 BC)
- Agnostic
- Ethical relativist
While Protagoras was a relativist and Sophist he did garner some respect from Plato and Socrates, which is more than the cynical Callicles in the Gorgias got.
The Meno:
Concludes that virtue cannot be taught, it must be recalled.
"For Plato, knowledge is something we are already born with, and so 'learning' is simply forcing this knowledge to resurface into our conscious minds" (Robinson, 44).
Learning is anamnesis - recalling something imparted from the divine to the pre-existant souls of men.
The Republic:
Thrasymachus argues that society and the state are artificial constructs to limit the natural state of men.
Thrasymachus' views on morality predicted the views of Nietzsche and Marx.
Glaucon has a very negative view of humanity and posits a psychological egoist viewpoint. Humans are vicious, predatory beasts. Thomas Hobbes adopted this view and advocated strong governments to enforce morality.
Plato chooses not to argue against this as "psychological egoist explanations of all human behavior usually tend to be self-confirming and difficult to refute (Robinson, 60).
Showing posts with label Hobbes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hobbes. Show all posts
Sunday, November 13, 2016
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Beyond Good & Evil 248-256
(Originally written August 26, 2007 in Notebook 18)
Beyond Good & Evil
Friedrich Nietzsche
248
There are two types of genius:
1) That which wants to beget (man)
2) That which wants to give birth (woman)
These two types of peoples and genius search for one another looking to combine (as with man and woman) but, as with man and woman they often misunderstand one another.
249
"What is best in us we do not know - we cannot know" (Nietzsche 375).
250
Europe owes many things to the Jews, both good and bad.
Above all Europe owes the grand style of morality, infinite demands, infinite meanings; these we owe to the Jews and it is both the best and worst they have offered.
Nietzsche seeks to initiate a revolution process. He uses the Jews as a model on how to do so while disagreeing with the values they have set.
251
The Jews are the strongest and purest race in all of Europe. They prevail in hardships and change when they wish to.
The Jews have a faith that stands unembarrassed in the presence of modern ideas.
The Jews, if they wished, could take over all of Europe.
But rather than conquering the Jews wish only to be admitted and assimilated into a nation's culture.
The task which Nietzsche is serious about is the cultivation of a new caste that will rule Europe.
252
The English are unphilosophic as a race. Bacon is an attack on the philosophical spirit. Hobbes, Hume and Locke have amounted to a debasement of the value of philosophy.
His characteristic of an unphilosophical race is to cling to Christianity. The English need Christianity for its discipline, its power to moralize and its power to humanize.
The English person lacks a musical sense. The movements of their bodies and souls completely lack rhythm and dance.
253
There are truths that are recognized by mediocre minds at best.
The spirit of respectable, albeit mediocre, English minds like Darwin, John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer is becoming fashionable in middle Europe.
These mediocre minds are necessary at times. For they are knowledgeable, but the higher man is a man who "can"
The disparity between 'know' and 'can' is great. In fact, a high mind must be able to do something starkly new and innovative. Their focus on new and can may demand that he not know as much.
254
The French are a semi-successful blending of the North and South cultures.
255
We must rise above the good and evil, and as the sun sets on the moral world it becomes hospitable and profound enough for fugitives.
256
"Europe wants to become one" (Nietzsche, 386).
Beyond Good & Evil
Friedrich Nietzsche
248
There are two types of genius:
1) That which wants to beget (man)
2) That which wants to give birth (woman)
These two types of peoples and genius search for one another looking to combine (as with man and woman) but, as with man and woman they often misunderstand one another.
249
"What is best in us we do not know - we cannot know" (Nietzsche 375).
250
Europe owes many things to the Jews, both good and bad.
Above all Europe owes the grand style of morality, infinite demands, infinite meanings; these we owe to the Jews and it is both the best and worst they have offered.
Nietzsche seeks to initiate a revolution process. He uses the Jews as a model on how to do so while disagreeing with the values they have set.
251
The Jews are the strongest and purest race in all of Europe. They prevail in hardships and change when they wish to.
The Jews have a faith that stands unembarrassed in the presence of modern ideas.
The Jews, if they wished, could take over all of Europe.
But rather than conquering the Jews wish only to be admitted and assimilated into a nation's culture.
The task which Nietzsche is serious about is the cultivation of a new caste that will rule Europe.
252
The English are unphilosophic as a race. Bacon is an attack on the philosophical spirit. Hobbes, Hume and Locke have amounted to a debasement of the value of philosophy.
His characteristic of an unphilosophical race is to cling to Christianity. The English need Christianity for its discipline, its power to moralize and its power to humanize.
The English person lacks a musical sense. The movements of their bodies and souls completely lack rhythm and dance.
253
There are truths that are recognized by mediocre minds at best.
The spirit of respectable, albeit mediocre, English minds like Darwin, John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer is becoming fashionable in middle Europe.
These mediocre minds are necessary at times. For they are knowledgeable, but the higher man is a man who "can"
The disparity between 'know' and 'can' is great. In fact, a high mind must be able to do something starkly new and innovative. Their focus on new and can may demand that he not know as much.
254
The French are a semi-successful blending of the North and South cultures.
255
We must rise above the good and evil, and as the sun sets on the moral world it becomes hospitable and profound enough for fugitives.
256
"Europe wants to become one" (Nietzsche, 386).
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Notes on Discourse on Metaphysics (B)
(Originally Written May 16, 2007 in Book 14)
Discourse on Metaphysics
G.W. Leibniz
(Continued)
18.
- Force is a change that is separate from size, shape or motion
- Thus, not everything that exists in a body exists merely within the extension of that body.
19.
- It is a mistake to banish final causes from physical studies because it would seem to follow that God designed body with no end.
- It is foolish to believe we can decipher the end of everything that God hath mad because He sees all connections at once, but he has made the universe to suit man and man to suit the universe. "There is nothing in the universe which does not affect us and does not also accommodate itself in accordance with his regard for us" (Leibniz, 21).
- God does nothing by chance.
20.
Leibniz agrees with Socrates' criticism of Anaxagoras in Phaedo that philosophy cannot be so materialistic.
21.
- Mechanical rules depend on metaphysics.
- The physical phenomenal world would be entirely different without its metaphysical system.
22.
- Nature operates under natural phenomena, but this natural phenomena only occurs because God has caused it.
- God is so skilled an artisan that He has produced a world that can function completely with God's original simple design.
23.
- There are true and false ideas.
- Ideas precede reasoning about something
- Thus, the proof of God in ontological form states that I reason about God and in order for me to reason about God, I must first have the idea of God. The idea of God entails all perfections and thus, existing is more perfect than not existing and thus, God exists.
- The problem with the ontological argument is that we can have false ideas that do not correspond to reality. Thus, the ontological argument merely proves that if God is possible then He necessarily exists.
24.
- Confused knowledge - the ability to recognize a thing without being able to articulate its differences or properties.
- Distinct knowledge - recognition of a thing and an ability to explain its properties and differences.
- Distinct knowledge has degrees
- Adequate knowledge - a distinct knowledge of a thing down to its primitive notions
- Intuitive knowledge - an adequate knowledge in which all the primitive notions of a thing are known at once, distinctly.
- Intuitive knowledge is extremely rare because most human knowledge is confused or suppositive.
- Suppositive knowledge - "A notion intermediate between intuitive and clear is when I have been deprived of clear knowledge of all surrounding notions"
- Clear knowledge - knowing how a thing is distinguishable from other things but only being able to say, I know not what makes X different than Y, but know that they differ.
Degrees of Knowledge
Confused - recognition
Clear - Recognition + ...
Distinct - Recognition and some explanatory ability
Adequate - Distinct + ...
Intuitive - immediate full knowledge
Clear, Distinct and Adequate are suppositive knowledge. Suppositive is a combinative knowledge.
Nominal definitions - a definition that leaves one able to still doubt if that which is defined be possible.
Real definition - a definition that includes a property which makes the thing's possibility known
"As long as we have only a nominal definition, we cannot be certain of the consequences we derive, for if it concealed some contradiction or impossibility, the opposite conclusions could be derived from it"
But truths are not dependent on name nor are they arbitrary, contra Hobbes.
Real definitions are twofold:
1) When it is known via experience a thing is real its definition is merely a real one.
2) When the proof of possibly is a priori the definition is real and causal.
An essential proof is perfect, a priori, and sees all the way to its primitive notions
25.
- We can have no idea of a notion when it is impossible
- We cannot contemplate a notion when we have suppositive knowledge of it because it may have some hidden contradiction
- We skip over the contemplation in suppositive knowledge because we suppose we know the thing
- "Only in confused notions when our knowledge is clear or in distinct notions when it is intuitive do we see the entire idea in them" (Leibniz, 28).
26.
- An idea is a quality of our soul.
- Our souls have these qualities in them whether we are thinking on them currently or not
- Our souls express God, the universe, all essences and all existences.
- Nothing can be taught to us whose idea is not already in our mind
- Plato's doctrine of reminiscence is correct so long it is purged of his notion of preexistence.
- "Our soul knows all these things virtually and requires only attention to recognize truths, and that, consequently, it has, at very least, the ideas upon which these truths depend" (Leibniz, 29).
27.
- Some things outside us express things more particularly than our own souls. It is through their more acute expression that we can understand a truth more completely.
- Ideas are expressions in our soul whether we conceive them or not
- Notions or concepts are ideas that we conceive or form
- It is false that all of our conceptions come via the senses, the sensual data we receive merely brings our attention to internal experience
28.
- There is no external cause acting upon us aside from God
- No other external object is capable of touching our soul or perception
- We have ideas of everything in our soul by virtue of God's continual action on us
- "God is our immediate external object and that we see all things by Him" (Leibniz, 30).
29.
- Our ideas however are in us and not in God.
30.
- Ordinarily, God does nothing more than follow the laws He established
- God determines our wills to choose the better option without necessitating it
- God finds it good that certain men should exist despite foreseeing they will sin
- It ought to be enough for us to know this without understanding it while we are yet on this earth
- God is clearly not the cause of evil
Discourse on Metaphysics
G.W. Leibniz
(Continued)
18.
- Force is a change that is separate from size, shape or motion
- Thus, not everything that exists in a body exists merely within the extension of that body.
19.
- It is a mistake to banish final causes from physical studies because it would seem to follow that God designed body with no end.
- It is foolish to believe we can decipher the end of everything that God hath mad because He sees all connections at once, but he has made the universe to suit man and man to suit the universe. "There is nothing in the universe which does not affect us and does not also accommodate itself in accordance with his regard for us" (Leibniz, 21).
- God does nothing by chance.
20.
Leibniz agrees with Socrates' criticism of Anaxagoras in Phaedo that philosophy cannot be so materialistic.
21.
- Mechanical rules depend on metaphysics.
- The physical phenomenal world would be entirely different without its metaphysical system.
22.
- Nature operates under natural phenomena, but this natural phenomena only occurs because God has caused it.
- God is so skilled an artisan that He has produced a world that can function completely with God's original simple design.
23.
- There are true and false ideas.
- Ideas precede reasoning about something
- Thus, the proof of God in ontological form states that I reason about God and in order for me to reason about God, I must first have the idea of God. The idea of God entails all perfections and thus, existing is more perfect than not existing and thus, God exists.
- The problem with the ontological argument is that we can have false ideas that do not correspond to reality. Thus, the ontological argument merely proves that if God is possible then He necessarily exists.
24.
- Confused knowledge - the ability to recognize a thing without being able to articulate its differences or properties.
- Distinct knowledge - recognition of a thing and an ability to explain its properties and differences.
- Distinct knowledge has degrees
- Adequate knowledge - a distinct knowledge of a thing down to its primitive notions
- Intuitive knowledge - an adequate knowledge in which all the primitive notions of a thing are known at once, distinctly.
- Intuitive knowledge is extremely rare because most human knowledge is confused or suppositive.
- Suppositive knowledge - "A notion intermediate between intuitive and clear is when I have been deprived of clear knowledge of all surrounding notions"
- Clear knowledge - knowing how a thing is distinguishable from other things but only being able to say, I know not what makes X different than Y, but know that they differ.
Degrees of Knowledge
Confused - recognition
Clear - Recognition + ...
Distinct - Recognition and some explanatory ability
Adequate - Distinct + ...
Intuitive - immediate full knowledge
Clear, Distinct and Adequate are suppositive knowledge. Suppositive is a combinative knowledge.
Nominal definitions - a definition that leaves one able to still doubt if that which is defined be possible.
Real definition - a definition that includes a property which makes the thing's possibility known
"As long as we have only a nominal definition, we cannot be certain of the consequences we derive, for if it concealed some contradiction or impossibility, the opposite conclusions could be derived from it"
But truths are not dependent on name nor are they arbitrary, contra Hobbes.
Real definitions are twofold:
1) When it is known via experience a thing is real its definition is merely a real one.
2) When the proof of possibly is a priori the definition is real and causal.
An essential proof is perfect, a priori, and sees all the way to its primitive notions
25.
- We can have no idea of a notion when it is impossible
- We cannot contemplate a notion when we have suppositive knowledge of it because it may have some hidden contradiction
- We skip over the contemplation in suppositive knowledge because we suppose we know the thing
- "Only in confused notions when our knowledge is clear or in distinct notions when it is intuitive do we see the entire idea in them" (Leibniz, 28).
26.
- An idea is a quality of our soul.
- Our souls have these qualities in them whether we are thinking on them currently or not
- Our souls express God, the universe, all essences and all existences.
- Nothing can be taught to us whose idea is not already in our mind
- Plato's doctrine of reminiscence is correct so long it is purged of his notion of preexistence.
- "Our soul knows all these things virtually and requires only attention to recognize truths, and that, consequently, it has, at very least, the ideas upon which these truths depend" (Leibniz, 29).
27.
- Some things outside us express things more particularly than our own souls. It is through their more acute expression that we can understand a truth more completely.
- Ideas are expressions in our soul whether we conceive them or not
- Notions or concepts are ideas that we conceive or form
- It is false that all of our conceptions come via the senses, the sensual data we receive merely brings our attention to internal experience
28.
- There is no external cause acting upon us aside from God
- No other external object is capable of touching our soul or perception
- We have ideas of everything in our soul by virtue of God's continual action on us
- "God is our immediate external object and that we see all things by Him" (Leibniz, 30).
29.
- Our ideas however are in us and not in God.
30.
- Ordinarily, God does nothing more than follow the laws He established
- God determines our wills to choose the better option without necessitating it
- God finds it good that certain men should exist despite foreseeing they will sin
- It ought to be enough for us to know this without understanding it while we are yet on this earth
- God is clearly not the cause of evil
Monday, May 14, 2007
Notes for the Aesthetics Final
(Originally written May 14, 2007 in Book 16)
Studying for the Aesthetics Final. Only 2.5 hours to go!
I. Eco on Television & Mass Art
Eco feels that contemporary art, especially television and mass art and pop music is dominated by repetition.
A. The Serial - the repetition of the same abstract type (i.e. Soap Operas)
B. The Retake - Recycling characters from previously successful stories (i.e. Star Wars, Superman)
C. The Remake - telling the same story over again (i.e. Romeo & Juliet, Dr. Jekyll)
D. The Series - Fixed number of characters and situations and narrative scheme (Friends, Seinfeld)
Eco claims that the series respond to man's infinite need of hearing the same story repeated.
Also the series enables us to reward ourselves for guessing what will happen.
E. Loop series - a series with characters that have enormous pasts but no futures
F. Spiral - Characters are deepened and enriched but nothing new happens to them
II. Nehamas: Plato & The Mass Media
Nehamas applies Plato's critique of poetry to contemporary mass Media
Plato argued that poetry is dangerous because it is a medium that is suited for representation and imitation of vulgar subjects and shameful behavior.
Nehamas notes that mass media is strikingly similar to the poetry of Plato's age.
III. Carrol: Defining Mass Art
Carroll aims at defining mass art without passing judgment on it.
He claims that mass art is exoteric (as opposed to Avant-Garde art as being esoteric)
Mass art is meant for mass audience.
Mass art is designed so it can be enjoyed by a lot of people with little effort.
Mass art requires a mass delivery technology.
Formal Definition: "X" is mass art if and only if X is a multiple instance or type artwork, produced and distributed by mass technology, intentionally designed to be enjoyed virtually effortlessly by a largely untutored audience.
Mass art is nonetheless art according to Carrol because it is descendant of traditional art forms.
He denies that Mass Art can be labeled as bad simply because it is mass art because mass art is its own genre.
IV. Gracy K - Why is Rock Music so Noisy?
Gracy K claims rock is so "noisy" because of the distortion of amplified electric guitars.
The distortion of tone produced by volume adjustments in what accounts for the noisiness of rock music.
V. Rudinon: Can White People Sing the Blues?
Arguments against it and their problems:
1) The Proprietary Argument - Blues as a genre belongs to the African American community and when whites perform the blues they misappropriate the cultural heritage of Black Americans.
Problem - "Red Herring" The history of music is full of instances of borrowing genres among cultures.
2) The experiential access argument - One cannot understand the blues or authentically express oneself in it unless one knows what it is like to live as a Black American
Problem - This argument is the myth of ethnic memory - Not all Black Americas fully comprehend what their ancestors went through. And it observes the universal human element of the blues.
Rudinon contends that the blues can be authentically played by whites if one recognizes the proper sources of inspiration and technique which spawned the blues.
VI. Adorno
Adorno was a Marxist and was against all commodification of art.
Adorno felt that pop music does not resist the temptation to be commodified and is therefore is gross simplification of art.
Artistic music is individualized and unique. Pop music is standardized and not unique.
Stages of listening to Pop Music:
1) Vague Remembrance - I've heard this before
2) Actual Identification - I have heard this before
3) Subsumption by label - The listener knows the band or album or some lyrics
4) Self-reflection (act of identification) - identifies with the music
5) Psychological transfer - judges the song good and further identifies with it
6) Disillusionment - shallowness of song becomes apparent. Listener despises the songs and those who still like it.
7) Recycling - Song comes back as a "golden oldie" and is repackaged for new consumers
Brown points out numerous problems with Adorno's argument.
1) Adorno puts all pop music in a single category
2) Adorno is guilty of tonal chauvinism
3) Adorno picks the best classical music and compares it with the worst pop music
4) Adorno overlooks the point that classical music would become disillusioned if it were played at the quantity pop music is
5) Adorno overlooks that not all pop music is standardized (i.e. Tom Waits)
6) Classical music is also subject to commodification
VII. Shusterman - Form & Funk
Susterman aims to defend pop music against its critics.
A. The Passivity Argument
- Pop Music involves no aesthetic challenge and requires and induces passivity because of the simple and repetitive nature of it.
Objector: not all effort is intellectual effort, there can be "somatic" forms of effort
B. The Formal Complexity Argument
- High art has a formal complexity that is lacking in pop arts. High art focuses on form not content
Objection: Their argument mistakenly opposes form and content
C. The Argument from Aesthetic Autonomy
- Genuine art operates autonomously and resists commodification and serves only art itself. Pop art serves many functions.
Objection: Why should art not fulfill other roles and human codes.
VIII Solomon: Kitsch
A. Kitsch provokes excessive or immature expressions of emotion
Problems: A) The Purpose of art is to provoke emotion
B) How much emotion is too much?
B. Kitsch manipulates emotion
problems: A) The use of reason manipulation
B) We manipulate emotions in many ways in everyday life
C. Kitsch evokes cheap or superficial emotions
Problems: This is bias to ethnicity because what is cheap is relative to one's ethnicity and social class
D. Kitsch is self-indulgent
Objection - There is nothing wrong with enjoying one's emotions
E. Kitsch distorts our perceptions and interferes with rational thought and understanding
Objection - All emotions distort our perception to some degree
IX. Theories of Humor
A) Superiority Theory: People laugh when they feel a sudden sense of superiority to some one: "Sudden glory" - Hobbes
B) Incongruity Theory - People laugh when they see two things put together that are somehow incongruous - Kant
C) Relief Theory: People laugh to relieve nervous tension resulting from anxiety or nervousness - Freud
X. Cohen: Jokes
A. Sense of humor - a capacity to be amused by the amusing
B. The point of telling a joe is the attainment of community. There is an intimacy in sharing laughter that provide community.
C. Heretic Jokes: Jokes that make sense to those with special information
D. Affective Jokes: Jokes that call upon a certain attitude or prejudice
XI. Hayman and Pratt: What are Comics?
A. Medium-biased definition: classifies comics in terms of material components by which they are typically produced. Comics are pictures with ink and newsprint in papers or comic books.
Problem: Would Peanuts not still be a comic if it were printed on canvas?
B. Word Balloon definition - comics contain word balloons
Problem: Many comics do not have word balloons
C. Pictorial Narrative definition - X is a comic if and only if it is a sequence of discrete pictures that comprise a narrative with or without a text.
Problem: What about the Far Side or Family Circus?
XII. Goldblatt: Ventriloquism
A. Ecstasis - Greek concept of stepping beside or outside of one's self.
B. Ventriloquism - the paradigm case of stopping beside one's self in art, but in all art one must look at it from outside one's self
XIII. Crawford: Nature and Art
A. Dialectical relationship between natural and artifactual
Natural - what is not made by man
Artifactual - What is man-made
The combination is the "aesthetic attention or appreciation"
B. Ruins are aesthetically valuable because of their basic form and unity but also because
1) Future learning
2) Past leaning
are both Aesthetically interesting
C. Classical approach to ruins - consists in the missing fragments so the viewer can imaginatively reconstruct them
D. Romantic approach to ruins - consists of the viewer's sense of history and association with mystery
XIV. Carlson: Aesthetic Appreciation of the Natural Environment
A. Appreciating the beauty of nature poses Aesthetic problems
B. Several Approaches to aesthetic appreciation of nature:
1) Object of Art Model - appreciate the physical object itself
Problem: any physical object itself as a part of an environment and cannot be divorced from its setting
2) Landscape Model - beauty of nature as a landscape
problem: this reduces nature to two-dimensional scene
3) Human Chauvinistic Aesthetic - Denies aesthetic appreciation of nature
Problem: Goes against the natural impulse to aesthetically appreciate natural objects
4) AOE - Aesthetic appreciation through engaging with all of nature
Problem - Way too subjective aesthetic approach
5) Natural Environment Model (Carlson's approach) - stresses the importance of it being a natural system and does not assimilate natural objects to art objects
XV Vance and Mattock on government funding of Art
XVI Feinberg and Berger: Pornography
A. Berger's 3 Conditions for censorship
1) There most be strong evidence of a very likely and serious harm
2) The harm must be clearly directly linked with the expression
3) It must be unlikely that further speech or expression can be used effectively to combat the harm
B. Berger claims that pornography ought not to be censored because it does not fit any of the three criteria
C. Feinberg argues against censoring pornography because violent pornography's authors and vendors do not solicit rape or urger rape or advocate rape
MacKinnon: Pornography
A. MacKinnon rejects arguments like Feinberg who frame the harm of porn in empirically traceable causal roles
B. McKinnon claims that porn's real herm is that it contributes to a sexist social order
C. Pornography construes social reality and becomes invisible harm
D. She denies that the harm caused by porn must be empirically visible with the harm a car wreck causes.
XVIII Peck: Porn as Propaganda
A. Art is guided by illusion and allusion. Art gives us clues we must decipher for ourselves.
B. Sex is (in Christianity's view) a symbolic reflection of the nature of God and occurs only in the context of a proper relationship
C. Sex in art, according to Peck, should:
- Feature the primacy of relationship
- Preserve the illusion
- Be Redemptive in character
D. Under his view pornography fails all 3 criteria
E. Pornography destroys the illusion quality of artistic conceptions of sex
XIX. Carroll: Film
A. The Power of films lie in their capacity to direct audience attention
B. Variable framing - ensures the audience will see what the producer/director wants:
1) Indexing - moving the camera toward an object
2) Bracketing - including certain objects and excluding others
3) Sealing - changing the size of an object through positioning
C. Erotetic narrative - telling a story by generating questions that subsequent scenes answer
- This leaves audiences satisfied because they feel they have learned all there is to know.
XX. Woltersorff: Norms in Art
A. Non-aesthetic merits
- Truth
- Desirable efforts
- Genetic Aspects
- Audience approval
B. Aesthetic Merits
- Unity
- Complexity
- Fittingness Intensity
C. Beautiful or aesthetically excellent artifacts have aesthetic merits and beauty is therefore, a complex concept
XXI. Ryken: What is Christian Art?
Ways a work can be Christian:
1) Allusion - referencing Christian themes or ideas
2) Inclusively Christian - themes that have intersecting points with other religions
3) Exclusively Christian - themes that are uniquely Christian
XXII. Spiegel: Aesthetic model of providence and divine omnipathos
A. Aesthetic model of providence - God sustains everything by creating everything at each moment: beauty is central to this
B. The world as divine art - God is a cosmic artist and the world is his masterpiece
C. God is omnipathos - God experiences all emotions at once as He experiences all knowledge at once.
Studying for the Aesthetics Final. Only 2.5 hours to go!
I. Eco on Television & Mass Art
Eco feels that contemporary art, especially television and mass art and pop music is dominated by repetition.
A. The Serial - the repetition of the same abstract type (i.e. Soap Operas)
B. The Retake - Recycling characters from previously successful stories (i.e. Star Wars, Superman)
C. The Remake - telling the same story over again (i.e. Romeo & Juliet, Dr. Jekyll)
D. The Series - Fixed number of characters and situations and narrative scheme (Friends, Seinfeld)
Eco claims that the series respond to man's infinite need of hearing the same story repeated.
Also the series enables us to reward ourselves for guessing what will happen.
E. Loop series - a series with characters that have enormous pasts but no futures
F. Spiral - Characters are deepened and enriched but nothing new happens to them
II. Nehamas: Plato & The Mass Media
Nehamas applies Plato's critique of poetry to contemporary mass Media
Plato argued that poetry is dangerous because it is a medium that is suited for representation and imitation of vulgar subjects and shameful behavior.
Nehamas notes that mass media is strikingly similar to the poetry of Plato's age.
III. Carrol: Defining Mass Art
Carroll aims at defining mass art without passing judgment on it.
He claims that mass art is exoteric (as opposed to Avant-Garde art as being esoteric)
Mass art is meant for mass audience.
Mass art is designed so it can be enjoyed by a lot of people with little effort.
Mass art requires a mass delivery technology.
Formal Definition: "X" is mass art if and only if X is a multiple instance or type artwork, produced and distributed by mass technology, intentionally designed to be enjoyed virtually effortlessly by a largely untutored audience.
Mass art is nonetheless art according to Carrol because it is descendant of traditional art forms.
He denies that Mass Art can be labeled as bad simply because it is mass art because mass art is its own genre.
IV. Gracy K - Why is Rock Music so Noisy?
Gracy K claims rock is so "noisy" because of the distortion of amplified electric guitars.
The distortion of tone produced by volume adjustments in what accounts for the noisiness of rock music.
V. Rudinon: Can White People Sing the Blues?
Arguments against it and their problems:
1) The Proprietary Argument - Blues as a genre belongs to the African American community and when whites perform the blues they misappropriate the cultural heritage of Black Americans.
Problem - "Red Herring" The history of music is full of instances of borrowing genres among cultures.
2) The experiential access argument - One cannot understand the blues or authentically express oneself in it unless one knows what it is like to live as a Black American
Problem - This argument is the myth of ethnic memory - Not all Black Americas fully comprehend what their ancestors went through. And it observes the universal human element of the blues.
Rudinon contends that the blues can be authentically played by whites if one recognizes the proper sources of inspiration and technique which spawned the blues.
VI. Adorno
Adorno was a Marxist and was against all commodification of art.
Adorno felt that pop music does not resist the temptation to be commodified and is therefore is gross simplification of art.
Artistic music is individualized and unique. Pop music is standardized and not unique.
Stages of listening to Pop Music:
1) Vague Remembrance - I've heard this before
2) Actual Identification - I have heard this before
3) Subsumption by label - The listener knows the band or album or some lyrics
4) Self-reflection (act of identification) - identifies with the music
5) Psychological transfer - judges the song good and further identifies with it
6) Disillusionment - shallowness of song becomes apparent. Listener despises the songs and those who still like it.
7) Recycling - Song comes back as a "golden oldie" and is repackaged for new consumers
Brown points out numerous problems with Adorno's argument.
1) Adorno puts all pop music in a single category
2) Adorno is guilty of tonal chauvinism
3) Adorno picks the best classical music and compares it with the worst pop music
4) Adorno overlooks the point that classical music would become disillusioned if it were played at the quantity pop music is
5) Adorno overlooks that not all pop music is standardized (i.e. Tom Waits)
6) Classical music is also subject to commodification
VII. Shusterman - Form & Funk
Susterman aims to defend pop music against its critics.
A. The Passivity Argument
- Pop Music involves no aesthetic challenge and requires and induces passivity because of the simple and repetitive nature of it.
Objector: not all effort is intellectual effort, there can be "somatic" forms of effort
B. The Formal Complexity Argument
- High art has a formal complexity that is lacking in pop arts. High art focuses on form not content
Objection: Their argument mistakenly opposes form and content
C. The Argument from Aesthetic Autonomy
- Genuine art operates autonomously and resists commodification and serves only art itself. Pop art serves many functions.
Objection: Why should art not fulfill other roles and human codes.
VIII Solomon: Kitsch
A. Kitsch provokes excessive or immature expressions of emotion
Problems: A) The Purpose of art is to provoke emotion
B) How much emotion is too much?
B. Kitsch manipulates emotion
problems: A) The use of reason manipulation
B) We manipulate emotions in many ways in everyday life
C. Kitsch evokes cheap or superficial emotions
Problems: This is bias to ethnicity because what is cheap is relative to one's ethnicity and social class
D. Kitsch is self-indulgent
Objection - There is nothing wrong with enjoying one's emotions
E. Kitsch distorts our perceptions and interferes with rational thought and understanding
Objection - All emotions distort our perception to some degree
IX. Theories of Humor
A) Superiority Theory: People laugh when they feel a sudden sense of superiority to some one: "Sudden glory" - Hobbes
B) Incongruity Theory - People laugh when they see two things put together that are somehow incongruous - Kant
C) Relief Theory: People laugh to relieve nervous tension resulting from anxiety or nervousness - Freud
X. Cohen: Jokes
A. Sense of humor - a capacity to be amused by the amusing
B. The point of telling a joe is the attainment of community. There is an intimacy in sharing laughter that provide community.
C. Heretic Jokes: Jokes that make sense to those with special information
D. Affective Jokes: Jokes that call upon a certain attitude or prejudice
XI. Hayman and Pratt: What are Comics?
A. Medium-biased definition: classifies comics in terms of material components by which they are typically produced. Comics are pictures with ink and newsprint in papers or comic books.
Problem: Would Peanuts not still be a comic if it were printed on canvas?
B. Word Balloon definition - comics contain word balloons
Problem: Many comics do not have word balloons
C. Pictorial Narrative definition - X is a comic if and only if it is a sequence of discrete pictures that comprise a narrative with or without a text.
Problem: What about the Far Side or Family Circus?
XII. Goldblatt: Ventriloquism
A. Ecstasis - Greek concept of stepping beside or outside of one's self.
B. Ventriloquism - the paradigm case of stopping beside one's self in art, but in all art one must look at it from outside one's self
XIII. Crawford: Nature and Art
A. Dialectical relationship between natural and artifactual
Natural - what is not made by man
Artifactual - What is man-made
The combination is the "aesthetic attention or appreciation"
B. Ruins are aesthetically valuable because of their basic form and unity but also because
1) Future learning
2) Past leaning
are both Aesthetically interesting
C. Classical approach to ruins - consists in the missing fragments so the viewer can imaginatively reconstruct them
D. Romantic approach to ruins - consists of the viewer's sense of history and association with mystery
XIV. Carlson: Aesthetic Appreciation of the Natural Environment
A. Appreciating the beauty of nature poses Aesthetic problems
B. Several Approaches to aesthetic appreciation of nature:
1) Object of Art Model - appreciate the physical object itself
Problem: any physical object itself as a part of an environment and cannot be divorced from its setting
2) Landscape Model - beauty of nature as a landscape
problem: this reduces nature to two-dimensional scene
3) Human Chauvinistic Aesthetic - Denies aesthetic appreciation of nature
Problem: Goes against the natural impulse to aesthetically appreciate natural objects
4) AOE - Aesthetic appreciation through engaging with all of nature
Problem - Way too subjective aesthetic approach
5) Natural Environment Model (Carlson's approach) - stresses the importance of it being a natural system and does not assimilate natural objects to art objects
XV Vance and Mattock on government funding of Art
XVI Feinberg and Berger: Pornography
A. Berger's 3 Conditions for censorship
1) There most be strong evidence of a very likely and serious harm
2) The harm must be clearly directly linked with the expression
3) It must be unlikely that further speech or expression can be used effectively to combat the harm
B. Berger claims that pornography ought not to be censored because it does not fit any of the three criteria
C. Feinberg argues against censoring pornography because violent pornography's authors and vendors do not solicit rape or urger rape or advocate rape
MacKinnon: Pornography
A. MacKinnon rejects arguments like Feinberg who frame the harm of porn in empirically traceable causal roles
B. McKinnon claims that porn's real herm is that it contributes to a sexist social order
C. Pornography construes social reality and becomes invisible harm
D. She denies that the harm caused by porn must be empirically visible with the harm a car wreck causes.
XVIII Peck: Porn as Propaganda
A. Art is guided by illusion and allusion. Art gives us clues we must decipher for ourselves.
B. Sex is (in Christianity's view) a symbolic reflection of the nature of God and occurs only in the context of a proper relationship
C. Sex in art, according to Peck, should:
- Feature the primacy of relationship
- Preserve the illusion
- Be Redemptive in character
D. Under his view pornography fails all 3 criteria
E. Pornography destroys the illusion quality of artistic conceptions of sex
XIX. Carroll: Film
A. The Power of films lie in their capacity to direct audience attention
B. Variable framing - ensures the audience will see what the producer/director wants:
1) Indexing - moving the camera toward an object
2) Bracketing - including certain objects and excluding others
3) Sealing - changing the size of an object through positioning
C. Erotetic narrative - telling a story by generating questions that subsequent scenes answer
- This leaves audiences satisfied because they feel they have learned all there is to know.
XX. Woltersorff: Norms in Art
A. Non-aesthetic merits
- Truth
- Desirable efforts
- Genetic Aspects
- Audience approval
B. Aesthetic Merits
- Unity
- Complexity
- Fittingness Intensity
C. Beautiful or aesthetically excellent artifacts have aesthetic merits and beauty is therefore, a complex concept
XXI. Ryken: What is Christian Art?
Ways a work can be Christian:
1) Allusion - referencing Christian themes or ideas
2) Inclusively Christian - themes that have intersecting points with other religions
3) Exclusively Christian - themes that are uniquely Christian
XXII. Spiegel: Aesthetic model of providence and divine omnipathos
A. Aesthetic model of providence - God sustains everything by creating everything at each moment: beauty is central to this
B. The world as divine art - God is a cosmic artist and the world is his masterpiece
C. God is omnipathos - God experiences all emotions at once as He experiences all knowledge at once.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Philosophy of Soul
(Originally written May 8, 2007 in Book 25)
Soul
There are many theories about the soul that are dualistic, but there are a few that are not.
Thomas Hobbes believed that man was purely physical.
Bishop Berkeley believed that the physical nature was essentially soul.
Plato - essence of man is his soul, which is trapped in the body
Descartes
- Dualist, but not as strict as Plato
- Believed the soul and body interacted
Problems: implied that there is a specific center between physical and soul
How can extended and unextended substances interact?
Augustine
- Soul and physical men make up whole man
- somewhat Platonic
- Believed the soul was immortal
- Soul gives life to the body
Nemesius
- Platonic
- Soul not just a part of a composite man
- Soul is an intelligible substance, incorporeal substance
Problem: if man is a soul that uses the body, what is the body?
Bible rules out some theories:
1. Materialism (Hobbes)
2. Spiritualism (Berkeley) [Not Really]
3. Strict Dualism
Aristotle
- Everything has four causes:
1. Final
2. Material
3. Formal
4. Efficient
Man:
- Soul is the formal Cause
- Mom and Dad is the efficient cause
- Flesh & bones is the material cause
- Happiness is the final cause
Soul is the form of man. Soul is inextricable from the body.
Aristotle's theory allows for a separation of mind and body
Aristotle's theory allows for a separation of mind and body
Does not have the Cartesian problems.
Allows man to be physical and spiritual
His theory is Biblically justifiable
Thomas Aquinas
Soul is the form of man, but differed from Aristotle
God: Ideals -> Exemplar Cause:
- Efficient
- Formal
- Material
- Final
Soul distinguish us from animals.
Soul is not the motor of the body
Soul is indestructible (similar to Plato)
Antony Flew objected:
Why is the new Flew better than the original Flew (post-return of Christ/resurrection of the body)?
Thomas' questions
1. Is the soul a body?
2. Is the soul a man or is the man composite of body and soul?
3. Is the soul composed of matter and form?
4. Is the intellectual principle united to the body as a form?
5. Is the intellectual principle multiplied according to the bodies or a single collective mind?
The soul is moved accidentally, but the body is moved essentially.
The soul is the first principle of life.
The soul is not a body, but is the act of a body.
The intellect is the form of the body. It is separate, but it still exists in matter. The intellect can be united with the body but not an act of the body.
How can the soul influence the body?
Way of power relation:
How does the pot hold the clay together? Power relation. There is no mechanism that holds it together, but it does. So it is how the soul influences the body.
Man: Shape, vegetative soul, sensitive soul and rational soul are the form of man
The soul and body are aspects of the single substance that is man.
String Theory?
Soul
There are many theories about the soul that are dualistic, but there are a few that are not.
Thomas Hobbes believed that man was purely physical.
Bishop Berkeley believed that the physical nature was essentially soul.
Plato - essence of man is his soul, which is trapped in the body
Descartes
- Dualist, but not as strict as Plato
- Believed the soul and body interacted
Problems: implied that there is a specific center between physical and soul
How can extended and unextended substances interact?
Augustine
- Soul and physical men make up whole man
- somewhat Platonic
- Believed the soul was immortal
- Soul gives life to the body
Nemesius
- Platonic
- Soul not just a part of a composite man
- Soul is an intelligible substance, incorporeal substance
Problem: if man is a soul that uses the body, what is the body?
Bible rules out some theories:
1. Materialism (Hobbes)
2. Spiritualism (Berkeley) [Not Really]
3. Strict Dualism
Aristotle
- Everything has four causes:
1. Final
2. Material
3. Formal
4. Efficient
Man:
- Soul is the formal Cause
- Mom and Dad is the efficient cause
- Flesh & bones is the material cause
- Happiness is the final cause
Soul is the form of man. Soul is inextricable from the body.
Aristotle's theory allows for a separation of mind and body
Aristotle's theory allows for a separation of mind and body
Does not have the Cartesian problems.
Allows man to be physical and spiritual
His theory is Biblically justifiable
Thomas Aquinas
Soul is the form of man, but differed from Aristotle
God: Ideals -> Exemplar Cause:
- Efficient
- Formal
- Material
- Final
Soul distinguish us from animals.
Soul is not the motor of the body
Soul is indestructible (similar to Plato)
Antony Flew objected:
Why is the new Flew better than the original Flew (post-return of Christ/resurrection of the body)?
Thomas' questions
1. Is the soul a body?
2. Is the soul a man or is the man composite of body and soul?
3. Is the soul composed of matter and form?
4. Is the intellectual principle united to the body as a form?
5. Is the intellectual principle multiplied according to the bodies or a single collective mind?
The soul is moved accidentally, but the body is moved essentially.
The soul is the first principle of life.
The soul is not a body, but is the act of a body.
The intellect is the form of the body. It is separate, but it still exists in matter. The intellect can be united with the body but not an act of the body.
How can the soul influence the body?
Way of power relation:
How does the pot hold the clay together? Power relation. There is no mechanism that holds it together, but it does. So it is how the soul influences the body.
Man: Shape, vegetative soul, sensitive soul and rational soul are the form of man
The soul and body are aspects of the single substance that is man.
String Theory?
Saturday, December 9, 2006
Quick notes & Barebones Outline of a lost Epistemology Paper
(Originally written December 9, 2006 in Book 12)
Ok, it's Saturday about 1:00 pm. I have a major epistemology paper due at 9:00 am on Monday, which I have not ben diligent in working on. So, it's research time!
Thesis (preliminary) all knowledge is analytic in nature. Synthetic nature is artificial.
Louis Pojman
The Theory of Knowledge 3rd Edition
VII.2 An Empiricist Critique of A priori knowledge - A.J. Ayer
No matter of fact can be shown to be logically necessarily or universally true (Hume).
Ayer states that no proposition with factual content is necessarily true.
Every empiricist must accept the thesis that no factual propositions can be necessary truths.
Empiricism faces difficulties with this thesis in dealing with mathematics and logical truths. There are two ways of dealing with this:
1) They are not necessary truths (in this case their universalness must be somehow explained).
2) They have no factual content (in this case they must be able to explain why a proposition without factual content can be true and useful and surprising).
If both of these prove unsatisfactory, empiricism is proven wrong and rationalism is vindicated.
Rationalism states that thought, independent of experience is a more reliable source of knowledge than experience.
John Stuart Mill adopted the thesis that mathematic and logical truths are not necessary. He maintained that they were merely inductive generalizations based on a very large number of experiences. Thus, these mathematical and logical truths were very probable, but not certain.
The difference between Mathematical and logical truths and scientific generalizations was a difference of degree, not kind.
Ayer admits that by rejecting Mill's approach, empiricists are obliged to be somewhat dogmatic.
The Irrefutability of the Propositions of Mathematics and Logic
In every instance when a mathematical or logical truth appears to be refuted we can easily find a way to show that it has not. Truths of logic and mathematics are analytic propositions or tautologies.
The Nature of Analytic Propositions
Kant's definition of an analytic proposition, "one in which the predicate B belonged to the subject A as something which was covertly contained in the concept of A" (Pojman, 381).
Analytic judgments add nothing to the subject; whereas synthetic judgments do.
Analytic judgments provide no factual content and it is for this reason no experience can refute them.
Because analytic judgments provide no factual content it does not follow that they are senseless.
Analytic propositions provide us with some new knowledge. They clarify. They show new linguistic usages.
Analytic judgments allow us to make explicit what was implicit.
The Propositions of Geometry
Kant believed that geometry was the study of the properties of physical space.
Non-Euclidean Geometry has proven that geometry is not the study of physical space. We merely use geometry to reason about physical space.
Necessary truths are devoid of factual content. A priori truths are always analytic. They are always tautologies.
How can Tautologies be surprising?
The power of logic or mathematics to surprise us has its origin solely in the limitedness of our minds, not in their content.
All a priori truths are tautologies. Tautologies serve to guide us in our empirical search for knowledge, they do not contain any information about any matter of fact.
Monadology and Other Philosophical Essays
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
translated by: Paul Schrecken and Anne Martin Schrecker
The Unity of Leibniz's philosophic thought
There is a pervasive inner unity that flows through all of Leibniz's work.
Leibniz held a belief in a universal language.
Reflections on knowledge, truth, and ideas
All knowledge is either obscure or clear. Clear knowledge is either confused or distinct. Distinct knowledge is either adequate or inadequate. Distinct knowledge is either symbolic or intuitive.
"The most perfect knowledge is that which is both adequate and intuitive" (Leibniz, 3).
Knowledge is obscure when it is insufficient to recognize what it represents.
Knowledge is clear when it is sufficient to recognize the object it represents.
Clear knowledge is confused when it cannot be distinguished from other objects in description. It is recognizable, but only to me.
Distinct knowledge is distinguishable and explicable knowledge. It is distinct when we can explain it to others.
Perfect knowledge is both adequate and distinct, but Leibniz doubts whether or not man can give a true account of this, but numbers come close.
Intuitive knowledge occurs when the whole of simple idea is known at once. Symbolic knowledge is knowledge o highly complex notions where the whole is known without full knowledge of all the parts.
There is a difference in definitions:
1) Nominal definitions - contain only marks to distinguish the defined thing from other things
2) Real definitions - actually describing the object in its fullest
By distinguishing these definitions we refute Hobbes' notion that all truths are arbitrary. (Hobbes' assumption rests on all definitions being nominal ones).
An idea is true when it is possible (it is false when it involves a contradiction).
Possibility is known either a priori or a posteriori
Causal definitions are known a priori.
A posteriori possibility is known when we experience a thing in reality.
When we have adequate knowledge we also possess a priori knowledge of a possibility.
Thought experiment - when we perceive green we are unaware that we are actually perceiving blue + yellow. Thus, what is green is known, analytically, as yellow+blue.
On the Universal Science: Characteristic XIV
All certain knowledge is established through demonstration or experiments.
Science is based on reason.
We need some exact language, or a form of truly philosophical writing in which ideas are reducible to a kind of "alphabet of human thought"
Leibnizian demonstrations involve two principles:
1) What implies contradiction is false
**2) Reason can be given for any truth, the predicate concept always inheres in its subject concept, either explicitly or implicitly
Necessary truths can be reduced to identical propositions
Contingent truths require an infinite analysis which can be performed solely by God. Only God can know contingent truths a priori.
Contingent truths are truths of fact.
XV
"All human reasoning uses certain signs or character" (Leibniz, 17).
Knowledge is symbolic.
All human ideas can be reduced into a few primitives. (cogitationes -> primitivas)
Critical remarks concerning the General Part of Descartes' principles
One must, in searching for truth, doubt everyone at some point in one's lifetime.
2. That what is doubtful should be considered false.
-There is no advantage to this.
4. Why one can place in doubt the truth of sensible things.
-All we need to know is that they are consistent among themselves.
Linehan - This is interesting, but unhelpful to my research. I'm skipping it.
On the Improvement of Metaphysics and on the concept of substance
Mathematics possesses clarity; metaphysics possesses obscurity.
The cause of metaphysical obscurity is that the general concepts of metaphysics are ambiguous.
Metaphysics needs clarity and clearness and certitude even more than mathematics.
Force is inherent in substance. Force is the faculty to act, action itself and requires effort.
What is nature? Reflections on the force inherent in created things and on their actions
What does nature consist of?
Do created things posses an energy?
The whole of nature is the perfect work of God's making.
Robert Boyle states that nature is the mechanism of bodies.
Linehan - I think I have exhausted my resources in this book for my epistemology paper. But, just reading a little bit of Leibniz has restored my love and respect for him and rationalism in general.
So now it is time for the paper!
Paper Structure:
I. Thesis
II. Definitions
A. Historical
i. epistemological/metaphysical/semantical categories
1. Kant's 4 Quadrants
2. A.J. Ayer's a priori
3. Leibniz divisions of knowledge
B. Personal
III. Thought Experiments (proofs of I)
1. Logical
2. Mathematical
3. Propositional
IV. Objections and responses
V. Closing
Thesis: Knowledge is...
1) Analytic (semantical)
2) Tautological (semantical)
3) A Priori (epistemological)
4) Necessary (metaphysical)
Knowledge has three major components
1) Epistemological
2) Semantical
3) Metaphysical
Epistemological and semantical knowledge are closely related and focused on together, mainly because of Kant. Metaphysical knowledge has been intertwined with epistemological and semantical, though less explicit.
Definitions of Knowledge
Leibnizian distinctions lead to my definition.
First of the three components: Epistemological
definition of a priori (Pojman, 367)
definition of a posteriori (Pojman, 367)
Kantian definition of analytic propositions
Ayer definition of a priori truths
2nd of the 3 components: Semantical
definition of analytic
definition of synthetic
Ayer's distinction
Leibnizian definition/personal additions
Ayer's truth of logic (mathematics)
Thought experiments
1) Logic
2) Mathematics
3) Empirical (most controversial)
3rd of 3 Components: Metaphysical
definition of necessary truths
definition of contingent truths
Hume's objection (needs more research)
Ayer's factual content necessary truth?
Metaphysical difficulties for the empiricist
Ayer has satisfactory proved factual content but he has not eliminated rationalism. Explain why and you'll be able to demonstrate all three parts of your thesis and vindicate your definition of knowledge (conclusion).
Ok, it's Saturday about 1:00 pm. I have a major epistemology paper due at 9:00 am on Monday, which I have not ben diligent in working on. So, it's research time!
Thesis (preliminary) all knowledge is analytic in nature. Synthetic nature is artificial.
Louis Pojman
The Theory of Knowledge 3rd Edition
VII.2 An Empiricist Critique of A priori knowledge - A.J. Ayer
No matter of fact can be shown to be logically necessarily or universally true (Hume).
Ayer states that no proposition with factual content is necessarily true.
Every empiricist must accept the thesis that no factual propositions can be necessary truths.
Empiricism faces difficulties with this thesis in dealing with mathematics and logical truths. There are two ways of dealing with this:
1) They are not necessary truths (in this case their universalness must be somehow explained).
2) They have no factual content (in this case they must be able to explain why a proposition without factual content can be true and useful and surprising).
If both of these prove unsatisfactory, empiricism is proven wrong and rationalism is vindicated.
Rationalism states that thought, independent of experience is a more reliable source of knowledge than experience.
John Stuart Mill adopted the thesis that mathematic and logical truths are not necessary. He maintained that they were merely inductive generalizations based on a very large number of experiences. Thus, these mathematical and logical truths were very probable, but not certain.
The difference between Mathematical and logical truths and scientific generalizations was a difference of degree, not kind.
Ayer admits that by rejecting Mill's approach, empiricists are obliged to be somewhat dogmatic.
The Irrefutability of the Propositions of Mathematics and Logic
In every instance when a mathematical or logical truth appears to be refuted we can easily find a way to show that it has not. Truths of logic and mathematics are analytic propositions or tautologies.
The Nature of Analytic Propositions
Kant's definition of an analytic proposition, "one in which the predicate B belonged to the subject A as something which was covertly contained in the concept of A" (Pojman, 381).
Analytic judgments add nothing to the subject; whereas synthetic judgments do.
Analytic judgments provide no factual content and it is for this reason no experience can refute them.
Because analytic judgments provide no factual content it does not follow that they are senseless.
Analytic propositions provide us with some new knowledge. They clarify. They show new linguistic usages.
Analytic judgments allow us to make explicit what was implicit.
The Propositions of Geometry
Kant believed that geometry was the study of the properties of physical space.
Non-Euclidean Geometry has proven that geometry is not the study of physical space. We merely use geometry to reason about physical space.
Necessary truths are devoid of factual content. A priori truths are always analytic. They are always tautologies.
How can Tautologies be surprising?
The power of logic or mathematics to surprise us has its origin solely in the limitedness of our minds, not in their content.
All a priori truths are tautologies. Tautologies serve to guide us in our empirical search for knowledge, they do not contain any information about any matter of fact.
Monadology and Other Philosophical Essays
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
translated by: Paul Schrecken and Anne Martin Schrecker
The Unity of Leibniz's philosophic thought
There is a pervasive inner unity that flows through all of Leibniz's work.
Leibniz held a belief in a universal language.
Reflections on knowledge, truth, and ideas
All knowledge is either obscure or clear. Clear knowledge is either confused or distinct. Distinct knowledge is either adequate or inadequate. Distinct knowledge is either symbolic or intuitive.
"The most perfect knowledge is that which is both adequate and intuitive" (Leibniz, 3).
Knowledge is obscure when it is insufficient to recognize what it represents.
Knowledge is clear when it is sufficient to recognize the object it represents.
Clear knowledge is confused when it cannot be distinguished from other objects in description. It is recognizable, but only to me.
Distinct knowledge is distinguishable and explicable knowledge. It is distinct when we can explain it to others.
Perfect knowledge is both adequate and distinct, but Leibniz doubts whether or not man can give a true account of this, but numbers come close.
Intuitive knowledge occurs when the whole of simple idea is known at once. Symbolic knowledge is knowledge o highly complex notions where the whole is known without full knowledge of all the parts.
There is a difference in definitions:
1) Nominal definitions - contain only marks to distinguish the defined thing from other things
2) Real definitions - actually describing the object in its fullest
By distinguishing these definitions we refute Hobbes' notion that all truths are arbitrary. (Hobbes' assumption rests on all definitions being nominal ones).
An idea is true when it is possible (it is false when it involves a contradiction).
Possibility is known either a priori or a posteriori
Causal definitions are known a priori.
A posteriori possibility is known when we experience a thing in reality.
When we have adequate knowledge we also possess a priori knowledge of a possibility.
Thought experiment - when we perceive green we are unaware that we are actually perceiving blue + yellow. Thus, what is green is known, analytically, as yellow+blue.
On the Universal Science: Characteristic XIV
All certain knowledge is established through demonstration or experiments.
Science is based on reason.
We need some exact language, or a form of truly philosophical writing in which ideas are reducible to a kind of "alphabet of human thought"
Leibnizian demonstrations involve two principles:
1) What implies contradiction is false
**2) Reason can be given for any truth, the predicate concept always inheres in its subject concept, either explicitly or implicitly
Necessary truths can be reduced to identical propositions
Contingent truths require an infinite analysis which can be performed solely by God. Only God can know contingent truths a priori.
Contingent truths are truths of fact.
XV
"All human reasoning uses certain signs or character" (Leibniz, 17).
Knowledge is symbolic.
All human ideas can be reduced into a few primitives. (cogitationes -> primitivas)
Critical remarks concerning the General Part of Descartes' principles
One must, in searching for truth, doubt everyone at some point in one's lifetime.
2. That what is doubtful should be considered false.
-There is no advantage to this.
4. Why one can place in doubt the truth of sensible things.
-All we need to know is that they are consistent among themselves.
Linehan - This is interesting, but unhelpful to my research. I'm skipping it.
On the Improvement of Metaphysics and on the concept of substance
Mathematics possesses clarity; metaphysics possesses obscurity.
The cause of metaphysical obscurity is that the general concepts of metaphysics are ambiguous.
Metaphysics needs clarity and clearness and certitude even more than mathematics.
Force is inherent in substance. Force is the faculty to act, action itself and requires effort.
What is nature? Reflections on the force inherent in created things and on their actions
What does nature consist of?
Do created things posses an energy?
The whole of nature is the perfect work of God's making.
Robert Boyle states that nature is the mechanism of bodies.
Linehan - I think I have exhausted my resources in this book for my epistemology paper. But, just reading a little bit of Leibniz has restored my love and respect for him and rationalism in general.
So now it is time for the paper!
Paper Structure:
I. Thesis
II. Definitions
A. Historical
i. epistemological/metaphysical/semantical categories
1. Kant's 4 Quadrants
2. A.J. Ayer's a priori
3. Leibniz divisions of knowledge
B. Personal
III. Thought Experiments (proofs of I)
1. Logical
2. Mathematical
3. Propositional
IV. Objections and responses
V. Closing
Thesis: Knowledge is...
1) Analytic (semantical)
2) Tautological (semantical)
3) A Priori (epistemological)
4) Necessary (metaphysical)
Knowledge has three major components
1) Epistemological
2) Semantical
3) Metaphysical
Epistemological and semantical knowledge are closely related and focused on together, mainly because of Kant. Metaphysical knowledge has been intertwined with epistemological and semantical, though less explicit.
Definitions of Knowledge
Leibnizian distinctions lead to my definition.
First of the three components: Epistemological
definition of a priori (Pojman, 367)
definition of a posteriori (Pojman, 367)
Kantian definition of analytic propositions
Ayer definition of a priori truths
2nd of the 3 components: Semantical
definition of analytic
definition of synthetic
Ayer's distinction
Leibnizian definition/personal additions
Ayer's truth of logic (mathematics)
Thought experiments
1) Logic
2) Mathematics
3) Empirical (most controversial)
3rd of 3 Components: Metaphysical
definition of necessary truths
definition of contingent truths
Hume's objection (needs more research)
Ayer's factual content necessary truth?
Metaphysical difficulties for the empiricist
Ayer has satisfactory proved factual content but he has not eliminated rationalism. Explain why and you'll be able to demonstrate all three parts of your thesis and vindicate your definition of knowledge (conclusion).
Sunday, December 3, 2006
Intellectual Virtues - Zagzebski
(Originally written December 3, 2006 in Book 12)
Virtues of the Mind
Linda Zagzebski
4: The two components of intellectual virtues
Each virtue is definable only in terms of its corresponding motivation.
4.1 The motivation for knowledge and reliable success
A distinction between moral and intellectual virtues can be made on their motivational basis.
Intellectual virtues are motivated by motivation for knowledge.
4.1.1 The motivation for knowledge
Hobbes and Spinoza connected the intellectual virtues with the passions and connected them all with a single motivation: self-preservation or power.
The motivation for knowledge is not a basic motive, it is a form of the motivation for power (Hobbes).
Hobbes states that cognitive virtues/vices arise from differences in motivation.
Deficiency in the desire for truth leads to cognitive vices like dogmatism (Ralph Waldo Emerson).
Hobbes implies that excess in desire for truth also leads to cognitive vices.
John Dewey believes that we ought to cultivate attitudes to foster better motivation to think more effectively.
Hilary Kornblith and Laurence BonJour introduced a motivational element into the notion of epistemic responsibility. Kornbluth stated, "An epistemically responsible agent desires to have true beliefs, and thus desires to have his beliefs produced by processes which lead to true beliefs, his actions are guided by these desires" (Zagzebski, 174).
James Montmarquet connected a large set of intellectual virtues with the desire for truth.
Montmarquet calls the desire for truth "epistemic conscientiousness" and claims that some intellectual virtues are out of this desire.
4.1.2 The success component of the intellectual virtues.
Ok, it's 2:30 am. I have a 1500-2000 word essay due at 9:00 am on pgs. 232-282. I'm on page 176. I'm screwed. I had such an emotional drain. I lost my wedding ring and then we spent hours looking for it. Thank God somebody found it.
Contemporary epistemology has focused extensively on the concept of a truth conducive belief-forming process.
There is a weak connection between motive and success. John Dewey made notice of it.
Intellectual virtues arise from and serve the motivation to know the truth and are crucial in activities like the arts, crafts and games.
The distinction between intellectual and moral virtues and the distinction between intellectual and practical virtues are both artificial.
Amelie Rarty pointed out that the utility and success of intellectual virtues depend on their becoming habits, but habits can become pathological and idiotic.
The motivation for intellectual virtue involves a desire for possessing true beliefs and avoiding false beliefs.
The reliabilist theory of truth-conduciveness focuses on it as a function of the number of true beliefs and on the proportion of true to false beliefs.
Zagzebski points out that processes that put forth a high percentage of false beliefs can still be truth-conducive if that process leads to a new way of discovering truth.
Self-correction is essential in Zagzebski's truth-conduciveness theory.
C.S. Pierce claims that the Scientific Method operates under a truth-conducive theory similar to Zagzebski's model.
4.1.3 Montmarquet on the virtues and truth conduciveness
Are intellectual virtues knowledge conducive?
"The motivation to know leads to the motivation to act in intellectually virtuous ways" (Zagzebski, 185).
Montmarquet objects to [the motion that intellectual virtues are truth conducive and intellectual vices are not] because:
1) Some intellectual virtues may not be truth conducive even though they would be desired by persons who love the truth
2) Some intellectual virtues not only seem to fail to lead to truth but aren't associated with the desire for truth
3) The history of ideas does not fit with this
4) some vices may arise out of desire for knowledge
5) Some intellectual vices appear to be truth conducive
I'm going to skip to what I need right now. Pg. 187-231 need to be read still.
pg 232 - This is a quick, not through reading
6. The definition of Deontic Concepts
Acts and beliefs arise from moral and intellectual traits
An act is right because it is the sort of act a virtuous person might do according to pure virtue-theory.
6.1 Right acts, justified beliefs
"A right act is what a person who is virtuously motivated, and who has the understanding of the particular situation that a virtuous person would have, might do in like circumstances. A wrong act is what a person who is virtuously motivated, and who has the understanding of the particular situation that a virtuous person would have, would not do in like circumstances. A moral duty is what a person who is virtuously motivated and who has the understanding of the particular situation that a virtuous person would have, would do in like circumstances. That is to say, some thing is a duty if and only if it is wrong not to do it" (Zagzebski, 235)
Virtues of the Mind
Linda Zagzebski
4: The two components of intellectual virtues
Each virtue is definable only in terms of its corresponding motivation.
4.1 The motivation for knowledge and reliable success
A distinction between moral and intellectual virtues can be made on their motivational basis.
Intellectual virtues are motivated by motivation for knowledge.
4.1.1 The motivation for knowledge
Hobbes and Spinoza connected the intellectual virtues with the passions and connected them all with a single motivation: self-preservation or power.
The motivation for knowledge is not a basic motive, it is a form of the motivation for power (Hobbes).
Hobbes states that cognitive virtues/vices arise from differences in motivation.
Deficiency in the desire for truth leads to cognitive vices like dogmatism (Ralph Waldo Emerson).
Hobbes implies that excess in desire for truth also leads to cognitive vices.
John Dewey believes that we ought to cultivate attitudes to foster better motivation to think more effectively.
Hilary Kornblith and Laurence BonJour introduced a motivational element into the notion of epistemic responsibility. Kornbluth stated, "An epistemically responsible agent desires to have true beliefs, and thus desires to have his beliefs produced by processes which lead to true beliefs, his actions are guided by these desires" (Zagzebski, 174).
James Montmarquet connected a large set of intellectual virtues with the desire for truth.
Montmarquet calls the desire for truth "epistemic conscientiousness" and claims that some intellectual virtues are out of this desire.
4.1.2 The success component of the intellectual virtues.
Ok, it's 2:30 am. I have a 1500-2000 word essay due at 9:00 am on pgs. 232-282. I'm on page 176. I'm screwed. I had such an emotional drain. I lost my wedding ring and then we spent hours looking for it. Thank God somebody found it.
Contemporary epistemology has focused extensively on the concept of a truth conducive belief-forming process.
There is a weak connection between motive and success. John Dewey made notice of it.
Intellectual virtues arise from and serve the motivation to know the truth and are crucial in activities like the arts, crafts and games.
The distinction between intellectual and moral virtues and the distinction between intellectual and practical virtues are both artificial.
Amelie Rarty pointed out that the utility and success of intellectual virtues depend on their becoming habits, but habits can become pathological and idiotic.
The motivation for intellectual virtue involves a desire for possessing true beliefs and avoiding false beliefs.
The reliabilist theory of truth-conduciveness focuses on it as a function of the number of true beliefs and on the proportion of true to false beliefs.
Zagzebski points out that processes that put forth a high percentage of false beliefs can still be truth-conducive if that process leads to a new way of discovering truth.
Self-correction is essential in Zagzebski's truth-conduciveness theory.
C.S. Pierce claims that the Scientific Method operates under a truth-conducive theory similar to Zagzebski's model.
4.1.3 Montmarquet on the virtues and truth conduciveness
Are intellectual virtues knowledge conducive?
"The motivation to know leads to the motivation to act in intellectually virtuous ways" (Zagzebski, 185).
Montmarquet objects to [the motion that intellectual virtues are truth conducive and intellectual vices are not] because:
1) Some intellectual virtues may not be truth conducive even though they would be desired by persons who love the truth
2) Some intellectual virtues not only seem to fail to lead to truth but aren't associated with the desire for truth
3) The history of ideas does not fit with this
4) some vices may arise out of desire for knowledge
5) Some intellectual vices appear to be truth conducive
I'm going to skip to what I need right now. Pg. 187-231 need to be read still.
pg 232 - This is a quick, not through reading
6. The definition of Deontic Concepts
Acts and beliefs arise from moral and intellectual traits
An act is right because it is the sort of act a virtuous person might do according to pure virtue-theory.
6.1 Right acts, justified beliefs
"A right act is what a person who is virtuously motivated, and who has the understanding of the particular situation that a virtuous person would have, might do in like circumstances. A wrong act is what a person who is virtuously motivated, and who has the understanding of the particular situation that a virtuous person would have, would not do in like circumstances. A moral duty is what a person who is virtuously motivated and who has the understanding of the particular situation that a virtuous person would have, would do in like circumstances. That is to say, some thing is a duty if and only if it is wrong not to do it" (Zagzebski, 235)
Thursday, November 23, 2006
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.
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.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Metaphysics - Ch. 11
(Originally written August 13, 2006 in Book 11)
Life is shit. It will always be shit. Dress it as nice as you can, but never allow hope to fill you because then the shit tastes worse than ever.
Metaphysics - Peter van Inwagen
Chapter 11 - The powers of Rational Beings & the Freedom of the Will
Determinism vs. Free-Will
Common opinion holds that free-will is required by morality.
Free Will is the possibility of having choices then consciously making a choice between alternatives. Determinism holds that there is only one possibility and thus, no choice.
Determinism holds that while it appears that choices are being made between alternatives there are not really alternatives because the laws of nature demand a set future.
Incompatiblists hold that free will and determinism are incompatible. Compatibilsts hold that free-will and determinism are in fact, compatible.
Hobbes, Hume and John Stuart Mill were compatabilists. Kant was not a compatibilist.
Humean cause and effect declares that causes and effects are always events (also called event-causation).
Agent-causation states that events can be caused by agents, i.e. a person.
Life is shit. It will always be shit. Dress it as nice as you can, but never allow hope to fill you because then the shit tastes worse than ever.
Metaphysics - Peter van Inwagen
Chapter 11 - The powers of Rational Beings & the Freedom of the Will
Determinism vs. Free-Will
Common opinion holds that free-will is required by morality.
Free Will is the possibility of having choices then consciously making a choice between alternatives. Determinism holds that there is only one possibility and thus, no choice.
Determinism holds that while it appears that choices are being made between alternatives there are not really alternatives because the laws of nature demand a set future.
Incompatiblists hold that free will and determinism are incompatible. Compatibilsts hold that free-will and determinism are in fact, compatible.
Hobbes, Hume and John Stuart Mill were compatabilists. Kant was not a compatibilist.
Humean cause and effect declares that causes and effects are always events (also called event-causation).
Agent-causation states that events can be caused by agents, i.e. a person.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Three Doctors of the Church
(Originally Written July 16, 2006 in Book 5)
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
Chapter III - Three Doctors of the Church
By the way I am watching "Take Home Defensive Driving". Rest of all it cost $40 bucks. Ridiculous. Secondly, it is four hours long. Absurd. Thirdly, it is immensely boring. Irritating.
There are four men regarded as Doctors of the Western Church. (I believe there are a number who have been added since Russell wrote this).
1) St. Ambrose
2) St. Jerome
3) St. Augustine
4) Pope Gregory the Great
"Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine all flourished during the brief period between the victory of the Catholic Church in the Roman Empire and the barbarian invasion" (Russell, 334).
The Barbarian invasions stunted intellectual growth and men of this caliber were not produced for another thousand years.
They, more than any other men molded the Church in how it would be shaped.
Ambrose determined the Church as being dominant to the State. Jerome produced the Latin Vulgate and made great strides in monasticism. Augustine laid the foundation of theology until the reformation and was widely used by both Luther and Calvin.
Ambrose's establishment as the Church being independent of the State was not challenged (philosophically) until Hobbes. It was revolutionary. The capital of the Western Empire at the end of the fourth century was Milan. Ambrose was the bishop of Milan.
His duties brought him into contact with the emperors frequently. He always treated them at least as equals, sometimes as subordinates.
At his time the State was "feeble, incompetent, governed by unprincipled self-seekers, and totally without any policy beyond that of momentary expedients. Contrarily, the Church was vigorous, able, guided by men prepared to sacrifice everything personal in its interests, and with a policy so far-sighted that it brought victory for the next thousand years" (Russell, 335).
Ambrose had every opportunity to become a powerful political figure.
Ambrose was born at Augusta Treverorum to a prefect of the Guals. At thirteen he went to Rome, was educated and learned a strong grounding in Greek. The young adult Ambrose took to law and was successful.
At 30 he became the governor of Liguria and Æmilia. At 34 he turned away from the secular government and became bishop of Milan. He gave all his wealth to the poor and served the Church the rest of his life, sometimes in the face of peril.
All three Doctors of this period, Jerome, Augustine and Ambrose wrote innumerable letters, many of which have survived. For this reason we know them better than any pagan philosopher or ecclesiastics of the Middle Ages.
Jerome wrote mostly to women, instructing them on how to maintain their virginity. Augustine wrote letters to everyone, mostly on doctrine or Church discipline. Ambrose wrote most interesting letters to emperors, chastising them when they failed in their duties and praising them when they fulfilled them.
The first public matter Ambrose dealt with was the altar and stature to Victory in Rome. It was a pagan icon removed by Constantinius (son of Constantine) reinstated by Julian the Apostate and then removed again by Emperor Gratian. Paganism lasted longer in the Senate than elsewhere in Rome. After Gratian's death a senator named Symmachus (a pagan) fought to bring it back. In 384 he became the prefect of Rome. When Symmachus sought to have the new Emperor Valentian II put it back, Ambrose wrote the boy king. He wrote "Let no one take advantage of your youth" and put for the thesis that "as all Romans owed military service to their sovereign, so he (the Emperor) owed service to the Almighty God" (Russell, 337). In addition to flattery, Ambrose threatened the young emperor with not being able to see a priest in Church or receiving a hostile greeting from a priest. Ambrose won the argument. But a usurper of Valentian II, Eugenics (a pagan) restored the idol. In 394 Emperor Theodosius defeated Eugenics and removed the altar.
Initially Ambrose had favor in the imperial court. But when the mother of Valentian II, Empress Justina (an Arian) asked for an Arian church in Milan, the Catholic Ambrose refused. The Empress sent troops to a church in Milan demanding it as it belonged to the Emperor. Ambrose assured the Empress that she may take anything that belonged to the emperor but since the wealth of the church belonged to the poor and the church to God, he had nothing to give her. The soldiers refused to take the church by force because the citizens backed Ambrose. The empress gave in. This established the precedent of the Church having authority over the State in some matters.
Ambrose's next conflict came with the Emperor Theodosius. A synagogue was burned at a bishop's instigation. Theodosius demanded that those responsible be punished and the synagogue be rebuilt at the bishop's expense. Ambrose was furious. He demanded that no such action be taken because it would cause only trouble. If the punishment is carried out the bishop will be martyred for standing up for his faith in Christ or acquiesce and become apostate. Also, money of the Church should not be used to support unbelief (as occurs in a synagogue). Theodosius backed down.
The next conflict between these two occurred when a mob in Thessolonica murdered a Roman captain. Theodosius orchestrated the slaughter of 7,000 Thessalonians in revenge. Ambrose withheld the sacraments from Theodosius until the emperor rented. Theodosius repented, without his purple kingly robes and paid public penance.
Ambrose was a remarkable statesman, but inferior to Augustine in philosophy and inferior to Jerome as a scholar.
Jerome is most notable for producing the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible. The Vulgate was translated from original Hebrew texts, not the more erroneous Septuagint. Because Jerome illicit help from Jews in the translation it was initially met with harsh responses. Augustine's endorsement helped it to become the accepted version of the Catholic Church.
Jerome was born in 345 AD near Aquileia to a well-to-do, but not rich family. He studied rhetoric in Rome but he sinned there. He traveled through Gaul, retiring to Aquileia and became ascetic. He became a hermit in the Syrian desert and performed penance for his sinfulness in Rome. He then went back to Rome and befriended Pope Damasus, who encouraged him to create the Vulgate.
Jerome was quarrelsome to say the least. He fought with Augustine over the behavior of St. Peter. He fought with his friend Rufinius over Origen. He opposed Pelagius so avidly that his monastery was attacked by a Pelagian mob. He also fought with the Pope after the death of Damasus.
He left Rome for Bethlehem in 386 and lived there until his death in 420.
He converted and convinced many noble women to become nuns, pissing off people all over.
A young girl he convinced to become a nun was Eustochium. He wrote letters to her on how to maintain her virginity, exact meanings of Old Testament euphemisms, erotic mystical praise of covenantal life, stated that a nun is the Bride of Christ and the the Song of Solomon praises this type of relationship.
Linehan - I believe that this is a very bad misrepresentation of this book.
In a vision Jerome heard Christ tell him that he was a follower of Cicero, not Christ. Upon waking from this vision he denounced his love of Greek and Roman learning.
In his letters he embodies the Christian otherworldly hope of redemption outside of the collapsing world of the temporal Roman Empire.
It is strange (Russell contends) that Jerome, Augustine, and Ambrose all devoted themselves to Church issues, but no practical measures to save their collapsing state.
Linehan - The emphasis on virginity by the early church to me seems harmful. It is true that some men and women may be called to a life of abstinence, but I do not think that this is a very likely occurrence. I know from a personal standpoint that living an abstinent life makes it hard to focus on anything other than virginity or how to lose it. I remained a virgin because of fear (partially) and because of failure (mostly). This was a source of enormous tension, self-turmoil, disappointment, frustration, agony, desperation, depression, guilt and countless hours of wasted time and effort. Virginity or abstinence as an end is not a virtue. What makes it virtuous is the reasoning behind it. If one declares perpetual virginity in accordance to God's plan then it is virtuous, but if it (or anything) is done as a way to impress God it is boastful and not a virtue at all. Also I find the practice of father's giving their daughters over to virginity reprehensible. It's a shame that things like this happened within Christianity because it gives ammo to those who are seeking to attack Christianity.
Augustine was born in 354 in Africa to a Christian mother and Pagan father. He spent time as a Manichaean, then became a Christian. He then became the bishop of Hippo, near Carthage, where he remained until he died in 430.
We know much of Augustine's life because of his autobiographical work Confessions.
Augustine was a passionate youth, unconcerned with virtue and impulsive. He searched for truth and righteousness relentlessly.
His youthful sins caused him to have a strong sense of sin later in life, "which made his life stern and his philosophy inhuman" (Russell, 345).
Linehan - I'm sure Russell meant this as a stab, but Augustine may very well have modestly accepted it as a compliment. I must admit that there are a few philosophers, theologians, or men that matter, with whom I identify with or respect more than Augustine.
Augustine opens Confessions with the story of stealing a pear for mischief's sake alone. He condemns himself for loving the act of sinning so much. Russell mocks this and calls it morbid to the modern mind. While this may be true it is a blight on the modern mind, not on Augustine.
Christian theology had two parts:
1) that concerned with the Church
2) that concerned with the individual.
The Catholics emphasized the first. The Protestants emphasized the second. Augustine created a harmonious synthesis that focused on both without any inconsistencies.
Augustine believed individual soul wee predestined to salvation, but had to be baptized and become a member of the Church. Predestination marks a direct connection between God and man, the Church was an intermediate between.
Sin was essential to the direct relation for two reasons:
1) Shows how God can cause man to suffer
2) Shows how souls are the most important member of the created order.
Russell calls Augustine's sense of sin 'abnormal'. Russell's indifference to sin however, is much more abnormal than any developed sense of it.
Augustine grabbed Latin easily, but hated Greek.
Lust overcame him at the age of sixteen.
Augustine's father did not pay any attention to his sins but kept him focused on school. His mother, in vain, tried to keep him chaste. He went to Carthage at 16 and fell in love with love. He also took a mistress because he was not ready for a wife, but was faithful to her and had a son he loved by her.
His mother then encouraged him to marry a girl worthy of his social status (which his mistress was not). In breaking up with his mistress to be married he broke his heart. He then took another mistress while waiting for his bride-to-be to come of age. At this time he prayed, "give me chastity and continence, only not yet" (Russell, 348).
By the time his marriage was to occur he had devoted himself to religion and chastity.
Augustine was excellent in rhetoric and introduced to philosophy by Cicero. He then became a Manichaean and taught rhetoric. He was fond of astrology at this time, but later despised it.
He read as much philosophy as was translated into Latin and mentions Aristotle's 'Ten Categories'. He grasped these works without a teacher, but decried his understanding because it profited him none.
Initially he began to reject Manichaeism because of scientific reasons, citing astronomy and Mani's (the founder of Manichaeism) blatant errors on astronomical matters. After doubting Manichaeism he went to teach in Rome.
He began to feel at odds with the Manichaeans more and more in Rome and began to slide in to skepticism, but still believed that something in men, some nature caused them to sin.
He believed evil to be a substance.
From Rome he went to Milan to teach rhetoric. He began to love Ambrose and admire the Catholic faith, but his newfound skepticism held him back.
His mother joined him in Milan and hastened his conversion.
In Milan he became acquainted with Platonism and fused the Platonic metaphysical doctrine of Logos with Christianity.
He then completely rejected Manichaeism and the notion of Evil as a substance, instead believing evil to come from the perverseness of the will.
Augustine found comfort in the writings of St. Paul (one reason I identify with him so well).
He gave up his new mistress and his wife-to-be and devoted himself to the Church. He moved back to Africa in 388 and spent the remainder of his life fighting heresies like the Donates, Manichaeism and Pelagianism.
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
Chapter III - Three Doctors of the Church
By the way I am watching "Take Home Defensive Driving". Rest of all it cost $40 bucks. Ridiculous. Secondly, it is four hours long. Absurd. Thirdly, it is immensely boring. Irritating.
There are four men regarded as Doctors of the Western Church. (I believe there are a number who have been added since Russell wrote this).
1) St. Ambrose
2) St. Jerome
3) St. Augustine
4) Pope Gregory the Great
"Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine all flourished during the brief period between the victory of the Catholic Church in the Roman Empire and the barbarian invasion" (Russell, 334).
The Barbarian invasions stunted intellectual growth and men of this caliber were not produced for another thousand years.
They, more than any other men molded the Church in how it would be shaped.
Ambrose determined the Church as being dominant to the State. Jerome produced the Latin Vulgate and made great strides in monasticism. Augustine laid the foundation of theology until the reformation and was widely used by both Luther and Calvin.
Ambrose's establishment as the Church being independent of the State was not challenged (philosophically) until Hobbes. It was revolutionary. The capital of the Western Empire at the end of the fourth century was Milan. Ambrose was the bishop of Milan.
His duties brought him into contact with the emperors frequently. He always treated them at least as equals, sometimes as subordinates.
At his time the State was "feeble, incompetent, governed by unprincipled self-seekers, and totally without any policy beyond that of momentary expedients. Contrarily, the Church was vigorous, able, guided by men prepared to sacrifice everything personal in its interests, and with a policy so far-sighted that it brought victory for the next thousand years" (Russell, 335).
Ambrose had every opportunity to become a powerful political figure.
Ambrose was born at Augusta Treverorum to a prefect of the Guals. At thirteen he went to Rome, was educated and learned a strong grounding in Greek. The young adult Ambrose took to law and was successful.
At 30 he became the governor of Liguria and Æmilia. At 34 he turned away from the secular government and became bishop of Milan. He gave all his wealth to the poor and served the Church the rest of his life, sometimes in the face of peril.
All three Doctors of this period, Jerome, Augustine and Ambrose wrote innumerable letters, many of which have survived. For this reason we know them better than any pagan philosopher or ecclesiastics of the Middle Ages.
Jerome wrote mostly to women, instructing them on how to maintain their virginity. Augustine wrote letters to everyone, mostly on doctrine or Church discipline. Ambrose wrote most interesting letters to emperors, chastising them when they failed in their duties and praising them when they fulfilled them.
The first public matter Ambrose dealt with was the altar and stature to Victory in Rome. It was a pagan icon removed by Constantinius (son of Constantine) reinstated by Julian the Apostate and then removed again by Emperor Gratian. Paganism lasted longer in the Senate than elsewhere in Rome. After Gratian's death a senator named Symmachus (a pagan) fought to bring it back. In 384 he became the prefect of Rome. When Symmachus sought to have the new Emperor Valentian II put it back, Ambrose wrote the boy king. He wrote "Let no one take advantage of your youth" and put for the thesis that "as all Romans owed military service to their sovereign, so he (the Emperor) owed service to the Almighty God" (Russell, 337). In addition to flattery, Ambrose threatened the young emperor with not being able to see a priest in Church or receiving a hostile greeting from a priest. Ambrose won the argument. But a usurper of Valentian II, Eugenics (a pagan) restored the idol. In 394 Emperor Theodosius defeated Eugenics and removed the altar.
Initially Ambrose had favor in the imperial court. But when the mother of Valentian II, Empress Justina (an Arian) asked for an Arian church in Milan, the Catholic Ambrose refused. The Empress sent troops to a church in Milan demanding it as it belonged to the Emperor. Ambrose assured the Empress that she may take anything that belonged to the emperor but since the wealth of the church belonged to the poor and the church to God, he had nothing to give her. The soldiers refused to take the church by force because the citizens backed Ambrose. The empress gave in. This established the precedent of the Church having authority over the State in some matters.
Ambrose's next conflict came with the Emperor Theodosius. A synagogue was burned at a bishop's instigation. Theodosius demanded that those responsible be punished and the synagogue be rebuilt at the bishop's expense. Ambrose was furious. He demanded that no such action be taken because it would cause only trouble. If the punishment is carried out the bishop will be martyred for standing up for his faith in Christ or acquiesce and become apostate. Also, money of the Church should not be used to support unbelief (as occurs in a synagogue). Theodosius backed down.
The next conflict between these two occurred when a mob in Thessolonica murdered a Roman captain. Theodosius orchestrated the slaughter of 7,000 Thessalonians in revenge. Ambrose withheld the sacraments from Theodosius until the emperor rented. Theodosius repented, without his purple kingly robes and paid public penance.
Ambrose was a remarkable statesman, but inferior to Augustine in philosophy and inferior to Jerome as a scholar.
Jerome is most notable for producing the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible. The Vulgate was translated from original Hebrew texts, not the more erroneous Septuagint. Because Jerome illicit help from Jews in the translation it was initially met with harsh responses. Augustine's endorsement helped it to become the accepted version of the Catholic Church.
Jerome was born in 345 AD near Aquileia to a well-to-do, but not rich family. He studied rhetoric in Rome but he sinned there. He traveled through Gaul, retiring to Aquileia and became ascetic. He became a hermit in the Syrian desert and performed penance for his sinfulness in Rome. He then went back to Rome and befriended Pope Damasus, who encouraged him to create the Vulgate.
Jerome was quarrelsome to say the least. He fought with Augustine over the behavior of St. Peter. He fought with his friend Rufinius over Origen. He opposed Pelagius so avidly that his monastery was attacked by a Pelagian mob. He also fought with the Pope after the death of Damasus.
He left Rome for Bethlehem in 386 and lived there until his death in 420.
He converted and convinced many noble women to become nuns, pissing off people all over.
A young girl he convinced to become a nun was Eustochium. He wrote letters to her on how to maintain her virginity, exact meanings of Old Testament euphemisms, erotic mystical praise of covenantal life, stated that a nun is the Bride of Christ and the the Song of Solomon praises this type of relationship.
Linehan - I believe that this is a very bad misrepresentation of this book.
In a vision Jerome heard Christ tell him that he was a follower of Cicero, not Christ. Upon waking from this vision he denounced his love of Greek and Roman learning.
In his letters he embodies the Christian otherworldly hope of redemption outside of the collapsing world of the temporal Roman Empire.
It is strange (Russell contends) that Jerome, Augustine, and Ambrose all devoted themselves to Church issues, but no practical measures to save their collapsing state.
Linehan - The emphasis on virginity by the early church to me seems harmful. It is true that some men and women may be called to a life of abstinence, but I do not think that this is a very likely occurrence. I know from a personal standpoint that living an abstinent life makes it hard to focus on anything other than virginity or how to lose it. I remained a virgin because of fear (partially) and because of failure (mostly). This was a source of enormous tension, self-turmoil, disappointment, frustration, agony, desperation, depression, guilt and countless hours of wasted time and effort. Virginity or abstinence as an end is not a virtue. What makes it virtuous is the reasoning behind it. If one declares perpetual virginity in accordance to God's plan then it is virtuous, but if it (or anything) is done as a way to impress God it is boastful and not a virtue at all. Also I find the practice of father's giving their daughters over to virginity reprehensible. It's a shame that things like this happened within Christianity because it gives ammo to those who are seeking to attack Christianity.
Augustine was born in 354 in Africa to a Christian mother and Pagan father. He spent time as a Manichaean, then became a Christian. He then became the bishop of Hippo, near Carthage, where he remained until he died in 430.
We know much of Augustine's life because of his autobiographical work Confessions.
Augustine was a passionate youth, unconcerned with virtue and impulsive. He searched for truth and righteousness relentlessly.
His youthful sins caused him to have a strong sense of sin later in life, "which made his life stern and his philosophy inhuman" (Russell, 345).
Linehan - I'm sure Russell meant this as a stab, but Augustine may very well have modestly accepted it as a compliment. I must admit that there are a few philosophers, theologians, or men that matter, with whom I identify with or respect more than Augustine.
Augustine opens Confessions with the story of stealing a pear for mischief's sake alone. He condemns himself for loving the act of sinning so much. Russell mocks this and calls it morbid to the modern mind. While this may be true it is a blight on the modern mind, not on Augustine.
Christian theology had two parts:
1) that concerned with the Church
2) that concerned with the individual.
The Catholics emphasized the first. The Protestants emphasized the second. Augustine created a harmonious synthesis that focused on both without any inconsistencies.
Augustine believed individual soul wee predestined to salvation, but had to be baptized and become a member of the Church. Predestination marks a direct connection between God and man, the Church was an intermediate between.
Sin was essential to the direct relation for two reasons:
1) Shows how God can cause man to suffer
2) Shows how souls are the most important member of the created order.
Russell calls Augustine's sense of sin 'abnormal'. Russell's indifference to sin however, is much more abnormal than any developed sense of it.
Augustine grabbed Latin easily, but hated Greek.
Lust overcame him at the age of sixteen.
Augustine's father did not pay any attention to his sins but kept him focused on school. His mother, in vain, tried to keep him chaste. He went to Carthage at 16 and fell in love with love. He also took a mistress because he was not ready for a wife, but was faithful to her and had a son he loved by her.
His mother then encouraged him to marry a girl worthy of his social status (which his mistress was not). In breaking up with his mistress to be married he broke his heart. He then took another mistress while waiting for his bride-to-be to come of age. At this time he prayed, "give me chastity and continence, only not yet" (Russell, 348).
By the time his marriage was to occur he had devoted himself to religion and chastity.
Augustine was excellent in rhetoric and introduced to philosophy by Cicero. He then became a Manichaean and taught rhetoric. He was fond of astrology at this time, but later despised it.
He read as much philosophy as was translated into Latin and mentions Aristotle's 'Ten Categories'. He grasped these works without a teacher, but decried his understanding because it profited him none.
Initially he began to reject Manichaeism because of scientific reasons, citing astronomy and Mani's (the founder of Manichaeism) blatant errors on astronomical matters. After doubting Manichaeism he went to teach in Rome.
He began to feel at odds with the Manichaeans more and more in Rome and began to slide in to skepticism, but still believed that something in men, some nature caused them to sin.
He believed evil to be a substance.
From Rome he went to Milan to teach rhetoric. He began to love Ambrose and admire the Catholic faith, but his newfound skepticism held him back.
His mother joined him in Milan and hastened his conversion.
In Milan he became acquainted with Platonism and fused the Platonic metaphysical doctrine of Logos with Christianity.
He then completely rejected Manichaeism and the notion of Evil as a substance, instead believing evil to come from the perverseness of the will.
Augustine found comfort in the writings of St. Paul (one reason I identify with him so well).
He gave up his new mistress and his wife-to-be and devoted himself to the Church. He moved back to Africa in 388 and spent the remainder of his life fighting heresies like the Donates, Manichaeism and Pelagianism.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Brief notes on Ethics
(Originally written February 16, 2006)
Ethics
Essence of modernism: scientific reasoning provides all truth
Thomas Hobbes
Egoism: enlightened self-interest is the ultimate moral absolute
Held all people are ethical egoists
How do I react with other human beings as an ethical egoist?
-Social contracts
David Hume
One of the few philosophers to promote ethical relativism; moral relativism is usually promoted by social scientists, not philosophers.
Empiricist
Immanuel Kant
Secular deontology (duty-based ethics)
Kant's ultimate moral principle is the categorical imperative
The categorical imperative is if you can do it and it is good or moral for everyone then it is a moral act
Kant stated that it is immoral to use a person for a means. Humanity must always be treated as an end.
John Stuart Mill
Utilitarian
Teleological systems: emphasis on consequences of actions
-Consequentialists
-Non-consequentialists
-Utilitarianism/Egoism
Deontological systems: duty and principles
All deontology begins with the value of human life. Protects our human integrity.
Moral Choices: Chapter 3 "Major Figures in the History of Ethics"
Ethics was dominated historically by Christian ethics: Augustine in the early dark ages, Aquinas in the Middle Ages. Christian ethics' influence declined as the influence of religion declined during the Renaissance and Enlightenment.
Secular ethics are not totally bad. Aquinas fused Aristotle and Augustine to develop Medieval Roman Catholic Morality. Jewish and Muslim contemporaries of Aquinas attempted to blend their religion with Aristotelian ethics as well.
Ethics
Essence of modernism: scientific reasoning provides all truth
Thomas Hobbes
Egoism: enlightened self-interest is the ultimate moral absolute
Held all people are ethical egoists
How do I react with other human beings as an ethical egoist?
-Social contracts
David Hume
One of the few philosophers to promote ethical relativism; moral relativism is usually promoted by social scientists, not philosophers.
Empiricist
Immanuel Kant
Secular deontology (duty-based ethics)
Kant's ultimate moral principle is the categorical imperative
The categorical imperative is if you can do it and it is good or moral for everyone then it is a moral act
Kant stated that it is immoral to use a person for a means. Humanity must always be treated as an end.
John Stuart Mill
Utilitarian
Teleological systems: emphasis on consequences of actions
-Consequentialists
-Non-consequentialists
-Utilitarianism/Egoism
Deontological systems: duty and principles
All deontology begins with the value of human life. Protects our human integrity.
Moral Choices: Chapter 3 "Major Figures in the History of Ethics"
Ethics was dominated historically by Christian ethics: Augustine in the early dark ages, Aquinas in the Middle Ages. Christian ethics' influence declined as the influence of religion declined during the Renaissance and Enlightenment.
Secular ethics are not totally bad. Aquinas fused Aristotle and Augustine to develop Medieval Roman Catholic Morality. Jewish and Muslim contemporaries of Aquinas attempted to blend their religion with Aristotelian ethics as well.
Thursday, February 9, 2006
Structure of Christian Morality & Utilitarian Ethics
(Originally written February 9, 2006 in Book 21)
Class notes
The Structure of Christian Morality
The Hierarchy:
The Glory of God (The social weight that God carries) ->
The image of God in Humanity ->
The principle of the common Good (love your neighbor/do unto others) ->
Moral principles (justice, mercy, etc.) ->
Specific commands
The higher up in the hierarchy the more absolute it becomes. The lower in the hierarchy the more subjective possibilities arise.
Since there is a hierarchy of morality are there levels of evil?
Yes, Moses had different punishments in his law.
Jesus speaks of the "weightier matters" in Matthew 23:27
Some contest this view based on the fact that God is infinitely holy and all sin offends him equally.
Topic 3
I. Plato (early 4th century B.C.)
Virtue = performing 'function' well
A. Internally a virtuous person is one whose internal parts are working well (harmoniously). Reason controlling physical and emotional desires
B. Externally: one's role (function) in society
II. Aristotle (late 4th century BC)
-Student of Plato
-teacher of Alexander the Great
III. Augustine (late 4th/early 5th century AD)
IV. Thomas Aquinas (13th century)
V. Thomas Hobbes (17th century)
VI. David Hume (18th century)
VII. Immanuel Kant (18th century)
VIII. John Stuart Mill (19th century)
S&P Ethics
Can non-consequentialists satisfactorily handle conflicting rights and principles
1) Deliverances of moral common sense still have to be examined critically
2) Non-consequentialists shouldn't rest contently until they figure out the differences in their prima facie principles
Utilitarianism Once More
Act Utilitarianism - only moral obligation is the maximization action of happiness for everyone concerned and every action is judged by how well it lives up to the standard
Rule Utilitarianism - utilitarian code should be applied to moral codes as a whole but not to an individual's actions
The optimal moral code must take into account what rules can reasonably be taught and obeyed, as well as the costs of calculating those rules in people
What will the optimal code look like?
Pluralistic, prima facie
Criticism of rule Utilitarianism
1) Act utilitarians maintain that a utilitarian who cares about happiness should be willing to violate rules in order to maximize happiness
2) Non-consequentialists still balk at seeing morality determined by their consequences
Class notes
The Structure of Christian Morality
The Hierarchy:
The Glory of God (The social weight that God carries) ->
The image of God in Humanity ->
The principle of the common Good (love your neighbor/do unto others) ->
Moral principles (justice, mercy, etc.) ->
Specific commands
The higher up in the hierarchy the more absolute it becomes. The lower in the hierarchy the more subjective possibilities arise.
Since there is a hierarchy of morality are there levels of evil?
Yes, Moses had different punishments in his law.
Jesus speaks of the "weightier matters" in Matthew 23:27
Some contest this view based on the fact that God is infinitely holy and all sin offends him equally.
Topic 3
I. Plato (early 4th century B.C.)
Virtue = performing 'function' well
A. Internally a virtuous person is one whose internal parts are working well (harmoniously). Reason controlling physical and emotional desires
B. Externally: one's role (function) in society
II. Aristotle (late 4th century BC)
-Student of Plato
-teacher of Alexander the Great
III. Augustine (late 4th/early 5th century AD)
IV. Thomas Aquinas (13th century)
V. Thomas Hobbes (17th century)
VI. David Hume (18th century)
VII. Immanuel Kant (18th century)
VIII. John Stuart Mill (19th century)
S&P Ethics
Can non-consequentialists satisfactorily handle conflicting rights and principles
1) Deliverances of moral common sense still have to be examined critically
2) Non-consequentialists shouldn't rest contently until they figure out the differences in their prima facie principles
Utilitarianism Once More
Act Utilitarianism - only moral obligation is the maximization action of happiness for everyone concerned and every action is judged by how well it lives up to the standard
Rule Utilitarianism - utilitarian code should be applied to moral codes as a whole but not to an individual's actions
The optimal moral code must take into account what rules can reasonably be taught and obeyed, as well as the costs of calculating those rules in people
What will the optimal code look like?
Pluralistic, prima facie
Criticism of rule Utilitarianism
1) Act utilitarians maintain that a utilitarian who cares about happiness should be willing to violate rules in order to maximize happiness
2) Non-consequentialists still balk at seeing morality determined by their consequences
Monday, February 6, 2006
Notes on W.T. Jones - Hobbes
(Originally Written February 6, 2006 in Book 4)
A History of Western Philosophy, Vol. 3
W.T. Jones
Chapter 4 - Hobbes
-Hobbes believed that the inhumanity of man warranted an all-powerful government.
-Hobbes stated that the task of philosophy was to work out social, political and ethical theories consistent with the nature of reality.
-Hobbes called matter (which was reality) an independent thing from mind; matter was in perpetual motion.
-Perfect, eternal reality was nonsense to Hobbes.
Hobbes' Philosophy has 3 divisions:
1) Body
2) Man
3) State
Body contains:
1) 'First philosophy'
2) Causality
3) Identity
4) Motion
5) The Special Sciences
Man contains:
1) Cogitating Motions
2) Sensation
3) Association of Ideas
4) Thought distinguished from sensation
5) Scientific knowledge
6) Voluntary motions
7) Relation between Physics and Psychology
8) Religion
The State contains:
1) Laws of nature
2) Necessity for a sovereign
3) Contrast between descriptive and normative theories
Body: First Philosophy
-entails the nature of ultimate reality
-Hobbes did not believe that ultimate reality was perfect in nature; it was 'determinate'
-it was simply the exposition of the most general properties of bodies
-All other philosophers' first philosophy which predated him was useless due to their insistence on the perfect nature of the ultimate reality
Body: Causality
-Hobbes defined a cause as the "aggregate of all the accidents of both of the agents how many soever they be, and of the patient, put together; which when they are all supposed to be present, it cannot be understood but that the effect is produce at the same instant; and if anyone of them be wanting, it cannot be understood but that the effect is not produced" (Jones, 124).
Body: Identity
-no two bodies are the same
-once the principle of individuation is realized to be a matter of defining the name 'same' is, the metaphysical question which vexed us become merely the task of getting others to believe our definition of same
Body: Motion
-Motion is made in less space and time than can be given
-quickness of motion is the swiftness or velocity in which a body moves
-resistance is the endeavor of one moved body in contrary to another body
-force is the quickness of motion multiplied into itself
-motion occurs when two bodies come into contact
Body: The Special sciences
-Physics, Astronomy and the sciences that deal with bodies of determinate magnitude moving at determinate velocity
-we know of changes in these determinate bodies because of the change they put on us
-Hobbes' version of the special sciences was actually a projection of physiology
Man
-Man is nothing but body (matter)
-What distinguishes man from all other matter is motion, of which there are two:
1) Motion involved in knowing
2) Motion involved in willing
Cogitating motions
-phantasms - the knowers of motion
-phantasms are sensations, motions occurring outside the mind, but only the mind knows of the motion (through sensations)
-What we know is only what are body (matter) senses and what we mind infers from these senses. We know only perception of motions and we see those motions as real things, when in fact they are merely motions.
-The problem with this knowledge, which is perception, actually delivers us into thinking there is something in reality
Sensation
-Historically the mind has been thought to have the power of perception, thought, imagination, memory, etc. Hobbes states that these are merely motions in our bodies. According to him, the most primary motion is perception and all other motion is a derivative.
Association of ideas
-There is a pattern in which various phantasms succeed one another; they tend to succeed or come through imagination
-Hobbes' association of ideas was the forerunner of empirical psychology
-He intended to study thought behavior as men study physical objects' behavior and to attribute scientific laws to them
-Hobbes' method failed, but he did point to an important fact: patterns do exist in minds.
Thought distinguished from sensation
- What distinguishes man from animals is not "some spiritual power that reaches into things and collects their intelligible species; still less an immortal soul made in God's image" (Jones, 132). The ability to name things by the law of association is man's distinguishing trait, according to Hobbes.
Names have a twofold use:
1) They help our memory
2) They enable us to communicate with others
By names, a phantasm we can recall it four our own personal use (memory) or to let another understand what were stating about a sensation (communication)
Scientific Knowledge
For Hobbes reasoning is "nothing but reckoning, that is adding and subtracting, of the consequences of general names" (Jones, 134).
Science is the knowledge which results from reasoning.
Scientific knowledge is certain, yet conditional. What we know through science is true of what we perceive that a motion is.
Through his own definition, Hobbes used his philosophy to place man in a place of immense power over nature.
Hobbes lived in a time when men were searching for certainty because they had been convinced that God was no longer certain. A vacuum ensued and men tried to fill the void of certainty with science.
Hobbes rejected that science could fill this void. Experience could give us knowledge, but only of particulars. Reason is certain but it gives us only truths of the "if x is true, then y is true/false" variety.
Hobbes believed that the faith in God, which formerly produced certainty, could only be replaced by the power of the state.
Voluntary Motions
-Voluntary motions are motions caused by phantasms
-phantasms are not merely changes in the cortex. he believed they were the way this change is experienced.
Relation between Physics and Psychology
Psychology can be based on physics because men move toward what they think is good.
Hobbes believed men had 3 basic drives:
1) Competition
2) Diffidence
3) Glory
If Hobbes were correct on this assumption, Hobbes would be correct in believing men are unfit to live in a community
Religion
-Religion is not a primary drive like sex, sleep and elimination. It is a powerful drive though. Its roots can be traced to a combination of fear and egoism.
-Hobbes maintained that religion was a fear
-In order to prevent a reformer's causation of a civil war, anarch and general misery, the sovereign must regulate and control ideals. Reform is bad because it causes terror; terror causes war.
-Hobbes believed that reformers were merely attempting to further their own personal ends.
-Religion is different from other fears because it is completely irrational.
-Men choose their religion based on personal preferences. If man were free to choose their religion they would attempt to subject everyone else to it and cause chaos and war. Thus, the sovereign must choose the religion of the people.
-There is no such thing as a religious truth
The State
-The State is a natural phenomena like body and man, just more complex
-If men followed the laws of nature then he would not need a sovereignty to govern him. Man does not follow these laws; therefore, there is a need for the sovereignty.
-Hobbes begins his theory of State on the premise of the dark nature of man and their incapability of being at peace with one another
The Laws of Nature
-Hobbes bases the laws of nature on the first natural law: the right man has to preserve his own life. All other natural laws are based on this one.
-Aquinas believed that the laws of nature were God's decrees for the universe, in so much as they were simultaneously the way the universe acted and the way it ought to act. For Hobbes, these laws were a number of recommendations based on observed facts and causal relationships.
-Hobbes holds that in the state a sovereign is never unjust because he decides what is just.
-Hobbes believes the theory of moral justification to be a pointless debate. The only thing that matters in the State's sovereign is his power.
Necessity for a Sovereign
-The enlightened egoists could live together without a sovereign because they would be able to see the long-range good of following the natural laws. All men are egoists, just not enlightened. Thus, there is a need for a sovereign to make us follow these laws.
Hobbes theory of State in a nutshell: "All men want peace and security. By doing such-and-such things they could attain in this end. Unfortunately, they are not rational enough to do these things on their own initiative. If, however, they contract together to appoint an all-powerful sovereign he will be in a position to compel them to do these things. Therefore it is sensible to appoint such a sovereign" (Jones, 150).
Contrast between descriptive and normative theories
-Hobbes, unsuccessfully, attempted to fuse descriptive and normative theories
Hobbes' place in the History of Philosophy
Hobbes' antagonism of the norms of society produced a more negative impact on society than positive.
His extreme conclusions made other great minds of the time shy away from his theories.
Hobbes' views are important to Western Civilization in that they form what philosophical synthesis should avoid being.
Hobbes attempts to find a place for value in a world of only pure facts.
Hobbes' contemporaries wanted to adopt his premise for the 'first philosophy' because they were purely scientific. They didn't because they were not willing to come to his conclusion and produce an amoral society.
If medieval philosophy is one extreme (emphasis on values, ignoring of science), Hobbism is its opposite (emphasis on science, ignoring of values).
All philosophy post-Hobbes is to find a medium between the two extremes.
Hobbes was a turning point.
A History of Western Philosophy, Vol. 3
W.T. Jones
Chapter 4 - Hobbes
-Hobbes believed that the inhumanity of man warranted an all-powerful government.
-Hobbes stated that the task of philosophy was to work out social, political and ethical theories consistent with the nature of reality.
-Hobbes called matter (which was reality) an independent thing from mind; matter was in perpetual motion.
-Perfect, eternal reality was nonsense to Hobbes.
Hobbes' Philosophy has 3 divisions:
1) Body
2) Man
3) State
Body contains:
1) 'First philosophy'
2) Causality
3) Identity
4) Motion
5) The Special Sciences
Man contains:
1) Cogitating Motions
2) Sensation
3) Association of Ideas
4) Thought distinguished from sensation
5) Scientific knowledge
6) Voluntary motions
7) Relation between Physics and Psychology
8) Religion
The State contains:
1) Laws of nature
2) Necessity for a sovereign
3) Contrast between descriptive and normative theories
Body: First Philosophy
-entails the nature of ultimate reality
-Hobbes did not believe that ultimate reality was perfect in nature; it was 'determinate'
-it was simply the exposition of the most general properties of bodies
-All other philosophers' first philosophy which predated him was useless due to their insistence on the perfect nature of the ultimate reality
Body: Causality
-Hobbes defined a cause as the "aggregate of all the accidents of both of the agents how many soever they be, and of the patient, put together; which when they are all supposed to be present, it cannot be understood but that the effect is produce at the same instant; and if anyone of them be wanting, it cannot be understood but that the effect is not produced" (Jones, 124).
Body: Identity
-no two bodies are the same
-once the principle of individuation is realized to be a matter of defining the name 'same' is, the metaphysical question which vexed us become merely the task of getting others to believe our definition of same
Body: Motion
-Motion is made in less space and time than can be given
-quickness of motion is the swiftness or velocity in which a body moves
-resistance is the endeavor of one moved body in contrary to another body
-force is the quickness of motion multiplied into itself
-motion occurs when two bodies come into contact
Body: The Special sciences
-Physics, Astronomy and the sciences that deal with bodies of determinate magnitude moving at determinate velocity
-we know of changes in these determinate bodies because of the change they put on us
-Hobbes' version of the special sciences was actually a projection of physiology
Man
-Man is nothing but body (matter)
-What distinguishes man from all other matter is motion, of which there are two:
1) Motion involved in knowing
2) Motion involved in willing
Cogitating motions
-phantasms - the knowers of motion
-phantasms are sensations, motions occurring outside the mind, but only the mind knows of the motion (through sensations)
-What we know is only what are body (matter) senses and what we mind infers from these senses. We know only perception of motions and we see those motions as real things, when in fact they are merely motions.
-The problem with this knowledge, which is perception, actually delivers us into thinking there is something in reality
Sensation
-Historically the mind has been thought to have the power of perception, thought, imagination, memory, etc. Hobbes states that these are merely motions in our bodies. According to him, the most primary motion is perception and all other motion is a derivative.
Association of ideas
-There is a pattern in which various phantasms succeed one another; they tend to succeed or come through imagination
-Hobbes' association of ideas was the forerunner of empirical psychology
-He intended to study thought behavior as men study physical objects' behavior and to attribute scientific laws to them
-Hobbes' method failed, but he did point to an important fact: patterns do exist in minds.
Thought distinguished from sensation
- What distinguishes man from animals is not "some spiritual power that reaches into things and collects their intelligible species; still less an immortal soul made in God's image" (Jones, 132). The ability to name things by the law of association is man's distinguishing trait, according to Hobbes.
Names have a twofold use:
1) They help our memory
2) They enable us to communicate with others
By names, a phantasm we can recall it four our own personal use (memory) or to let another understand what were stating about a sensation (communication)
Scientific Knowledge
For Hobbes reasoning is "nothing but reckoning, that is adding and subtracting, of the consequences of general names" (Jones, 134).
Science is the knowledge which results from reasoning.
Scientific knowledge is certain, yet conditional. What we know through science is true of what we perceive that a motion is.
Through his own definition, Hobbes used his philosophy to place man in a place of immense power over nature.
Hobbes lived in a time when men were searching for certainty because they had been convinced that God was no longer certain. A vacuum ensued and men tried to fill the void of certainty with science.
Hobbes rejected that science could fill this void. Experience could give us knowledge, but only of particulars. Reason is certain but it gives us only truths of the "if x is true, then y is true/false" variety.
Hobbes believed that the faith in God, which formerly produced certainty, could only be replaced by the power of the state.
Voluntary Motions
-Voluntary motions are motions caused by phantasms
-phantasms are not merely changes in the cortex. he believed they were the way this change is experienced.
Relation between Physics and Psychology
Psychology can be based on physics because men move toward what they think is good.
Hobbes believed men had 3 basic drives:
1) Competition
2) Diffidence
3) Glory
If Hobbes were correct on this assumption, Hobbes would be correct in believing men are unfit to live in a community
Religion
-Religion is not a primary drive like sex, sleep and elimination. It is a powerful drive though. Its roots can be traced to a combination of fear and egoism.
-Hobbes maintained that religion was a fear
-In order to prevent a reformer's causation of a civil war, anarch and general misery, the sovereign must regulate and control ideals. Reform is bad because it causes terror; terror causes war.
-Hobbes believed that reformers were merely attempting to further their own personal ends.
-Religion is different from other fears because it is completely irrational.
-Men choose their religion based on personal preferences. If man were free to choose their religion they would attempt to subject everyone else to it and cause chaos and war. Thus, the sovereign must choose the religion of the people.
-There is no such thing as a religious truth
The State
-The State is a natural phenomena like body and man, just more complex
-If men followed the laws of nature then he would not need a sovereignty to govern him. Man does not follow these laws; therefore, there is a need for the sovereignty.
-Hobbes begins his theory of State on the premise of the dark nature of man and their incapability of being at peace with one another
The Laws of Nature
-Hobbes bases the laws of nature on the first natural law: the right man has to preserve his own life. All other natural laws are based on this one.
-Aquinas believed that the laws of nature were God's decrees for the universe, in so much as they were simultaneously the way the universe acted and the way it ought to act. For Hobbes, these laws were a number of recommendations based on observed facts and causal relationships.
-Hobbes holds that in the state a sovereign is never unjust because he decides what is just.
-Hobbes believes the theory of moral justification to be a pointless debate. The only thing that matters in the State's sovereign is his power.
Necessity for a Sovereign
-The enlightened egoists could live together without a sovereign because they would be able to see the long-range good of following the natural laws. All men are egoists, just not enlightened. Thus, there is a need for a sovereign to make us follow these laws.
Hobbes theory of State in a nutshell: "All men want peace and security. By doing such-and-such things they could attain in this end. Unfortunately, they are not rational enough to do these things on their own initiative. If, however, they contract together to appoint an all-powerful sovereign he will be in a position to compel them to do these things. Therefore it is sensible to appoint such a sovereign" (Jones, 150).
Contrast between descriptive and normative theories
-Hobbes, unsuccessfully, attempted to fuse descriptive and normative theories
Hobbes' place in the History of Philosophy
Hobbes' antagonism of the norms of society produced a more negative impact on society than positive.
His extreme conclusions made other great minds of the time shy away from his theories.
Hobbes' views are important to Western Civilization in that they form what philosophical synthesis should avoid being.
Hobbes attempts to find a place for value in a world of only pure facts.
Hobbes' contemporaries wanted to adopt his premise for the 'first philosophy' because they were purely scientific. They didn't because they were not willing to come to his conclusion and produce an amoral society.
If medieval philosophy is one extreme (emphasis on values, ignoring of science), Hobbism is its opposite (emphasis on science, ignoring of values).
All philosophy post-Hobbes is to find a medium between the two extremes.
Hobbes was a turning point.
Leviathan Ch. 17, 18, 21
(Originally written February 6, 2006 in Book 21)
Human liberation (Bruno) or alienation (Pascal) in the face of an infinite and indifferent universe.
Pascal gave a, "oh my God, please save me" existentialist point of view on being alienated in the universe.
New demand for metaphysical inquiry came out of the Scientific Revolution. "Were all our religious beliefs just mere vain attempts of explaining particulars of the universe we were not capable of scientifically comprehending?"
Hobbes: British Philosopher (1583-1679) who branched into every field of philosophy.
Key features of his philosophy:
1) Systematic
2) Materialistic or naturalistic with a lip service to God
3) Determinist
4) Atomist (universe made of atoms)
5) Empiricist
6) Moral subjectivist
7) Social Contract Theorist
Leviathan (Hobbes' greatest work)
- Serves as an apologetic for monarchy
- Accused of pandering to the powers that be
Leviathan is political philosophy without purpose to:
- Rationally defend political authority
- Representative theory of Government
- Social Contract
- Bourgeois political theory
Ch. 13
- All people are equal
- Equality brings diffidence (timidity, shyness)
- Equal ability leads to equality of hope in attaining our ends. Since we desire the same things we become enemies
- Enmity results in a condition of war
Man's state of nature is:
1) Equality of man
2) Equality brings diffidence
3) Condition of War
Hobbes: Leviathan Ch. 17
The laws of nature generally entail justice, equity, modesty, mercy and doing uno others as we want done to us.
These laws are contrary to our natural passions and would be consistently broken if there was no terror inspiring institution to punish those who break these laws and those who break their covenants.
Without a government man is right to disregard the laws of nature in view of his self preservation.
Without this government families lived by honor alone and this was honor in stealing from other families as long as the thieves left the other men their lives and their "instruments of husbandry". Cities are large families and will war with one another to serve themselves.
Man cannot work as bases for the betterment of the society for a number of reasons:
1. Men are continually in competition for honor and dignity which causes envy, hatred and finally war.
2) Man's joy consist with comparing himself to another and his interests of the common good differ from that of his own personal ones
3) Men think themselves wiser than all others and therefore best to govern the public and causes civil war
4) Men are capable of words which leads to the diminishing of the apparent greatness of good and evil which troubles the peace
5) Man, when he is at ease, attempts to spread his version of wisdom and causes a clash with other men at ease, which leads to war
6) Man's agreement with each other is not natural; it comes by covenant.
The way to erect an institution to keep man from being in perpetual war is to confer all their power on one man or on a body of men that reduces all of men's will into will.
The commonwealth is this forgoing of one's will to the common will.
By way of terror of punishment, the commonwealth can enforce the will of men to be in peace.
The commonwealth is sovereign and all the people are subject to that commonwealth.
Sovereignty is gained three ways:
1) Naturally by passing it along through generations
2) Through subduing of war
3) The election of man to be, or the men to be the governing class of the commonwealth.
Chapter 18: Of the rights of sovereigns by institution
The people institute the sovereignty of this type of commonwealth they are subjected by their voting (whether or not they voted for the winner is of no consequence)
Rebellion is unjust because the sovereign has the right to impose will.
The sovereign does not make covenants, men make covenants with other men to make him sovereign. Rebellion is breaking covenant with those other subject to the sovereign.
Rebels have to deal with those loyal to the sovereign. When one rebels against the sovereign he is no longer protected and any man who is not rebellious is just in destroying the rebel.
The sovereign cannot be accused of injustice by the subject because he has the authority of sovereignty and therefore acts on behalf of the subjects. (Sovereigns can sin though).
The sovereign cannot be punished.
The goal of the sovereign is peace and defense of the subjects, therefore the sovereign has the right to any man's necessary to reach this goal.
The sovereign must govern opinions because opinions precede actions. Warlike opinions must be squashed before they become warlike actions.
The sovereign must institute laws to stop men from having the right to possess all things, which causes war.
The sovereign is the judge of all controversies or law to ensure peace.
The sovereign has the right to make war and peace with other sovereignties, in light of the peace and defense of his subjects.
The sovereign is to appoint who he chooses as counselors, ministers, magistrates, generals and other officials (also to depose them).
The sovereign bestows rights and honor on whose he sees fit and punishes whom he deems necessary.
Chapter 21 Of liberty of subjects
Liberty is the absence of opposition
A freeman is someone who is free to do his will
Fear does not impose liberty, a man choose to do something out of fear because he has the liberty to do it.
All man's will is derived from God's will. Anything a man does on his own will comes from the liberty of God for man to do it.
Laws cannot protect liberty, only "swords in the hands" of those who make laws can protect liberty.
"Every subject is the author of every act the sovereign doth" (Pojman, 562). The sovereign cannot do any injustice to the subject because then the subject would be doing it to himself, which would break a natural law.
Every commonwealth has an absolute liberty to do as it pleases
A subject has the liberty to disobey a sovereign when:
1) The Sovereign commands the subject to harm himself
2) To abstain from confessing a crime whoosh would cause himself harm
Avoidance of battle is not injustice, it is cowardice.
No subject has the liberty to defend another subject from the sovereign.
A man has the librety attempt to escape from imprisonment.
Human liberation (Bruno) or alienation (Pascal) in the face of an infinite and indifferent universe.
Pascal gave a, "oh my God, please save me" existentialist point of view on being alienated in the universe.
New demand for metaphysical inquiry came out of the Scientific Revolution. "Were all our religious beliefs just mere vain attempts of explaining particulars of the universe we were not capable of scientifically comprehending?"
Hobbes: British Philosopher (1583-1679) who branched into every field of philosophy.
Key features of his philosophy:
1) Systematic
2) Materialistic or naturalistic with a lip service to God
3) Determinist
4) Atomist (universe made of atoms)
5) Empiricist
6) Moral subjectivist
7) Social Contract Theorist
Leviathan (Hobbes' greatest work)
- Serves as an apologetic for monarchy
- Accused of pandering to the powers that be
Leviathan is political philosophy without purpose to:
- Rationally defend political authority
- Representative theory of Government
- Social Contract
- Bourgeois political theory
Ch. 13
- All people are equal
- Equality brings diffidence (timidity, shyness)
- Equal ability leads to equality of hope in attaining our ends. Since we desire the same things we become enemies
- Enmity results in a condition of war
Man's state of nature is:
1) Equality of man
2) Equality brings diffidence
3) Condition of War
Hobbes: Leviathan Ch. 17
The laws of nature generally entail justice, equity, modesty, mercy and doing uno others as we want done to us.
These laws are contrary to our natural passions and would be consistently broken if there was no terror inspiring institution to punish those who break these laws and those who break their covenants.
Without a government man is right to disregard the laws of nature in view of his self preservation.
Without this government families lived by honor alone and this was honor in stealing from other families as long as the thieves left the other men their lives and their "instruments of husbandry". Cities are large families and will war with one another to serve themselves.
Man cannot work as bases for the betterment of the society for a number of reasons:
1. Men are continually in competition for honor and dignity which causes envy, hatred and finally war.
2) Man's joy consist with comparing himself to another and his interests of the common good differ from that of his own personal ones
3) Men think themselves wiser than all others and therefore best to govern the public and causes civil war
4) Men are capable of words which leads to the diminishing of the apparent greatness of good and evil which troubles the peace
5) Man, when he is at ease, attempts to spread his version of wisdom and causes a clash with other men at ease, which leads to war
6) Man's agreement with each other is not natural; it comes by covenant.
The way to erect an institution to keep man from being in perpetual war is to confer all their power on one man or on a body of men that reduces all of men's will into will.
The commonwealth is this forgoing of one's will to the common will.
By way of terror of punishment, the commonwealth can enforce the will of men to be in peace.
The commonwealth is sovereign and all the people are subject to that commonwealth.
Sovereignty is gained three ways:
1) Naturally by passing it along through generations
2) Through subduing of war
3) The election of man to be, or the men to be the governing class of the commonwealth.
Chapter 18: Of the rights of sovereigns by institution
The people institute the sovereignty of this type of commonwealth they are subjected by their voting (whether or not they voted for the winner is of no consequence)
Rebellion is unjust because the sovereign has the right to impose will.
The sovereign does not make covenants, men make covenants with other men to make him sovereign. Rebellion is breaking covenant with those other subject to the sovereign.
Rebels have to deal with those loyal to the sovereign. When one rebels against the sovereign he is no longer protected and any man who is not rebellious is just in destroying the rebel.
The sovereign cannot be accused of injustice by the subject because he has the authority of sovereignty and therefore acts on behalf of the subjects. (Sovereigns can sin though).
The sovereign cannot be punished.
The goal of the sovereign is peace and defense of the subjects, therefore the sovereign has the right to any man's necessary to reach this goal.
The sovereign must govern opinions because opinions precede actions. Warlike opinions must be squashed before they become warlike actions.
The sovereign must institute laws to stop men from having the right to possess all things, which causes war.
The sovereign is the judge of all controversies or law to ensure peace.
The sovereign has the right to make war and peace with other sovereignties, in light of the peace and defense of his subjects.
The sovereign is to appoint who he chooses as counselors, ministers, magistrates, generals and other officials (also to depose them).
The sovereign bestows rights and honor on whose he sees fit and punishes whom he deems necessary.
Chapter 21 Of liberty of subjects
Liberty is the absence of opposition
A freeman is someone who is free to do his will
Fear does not impose liberty, a man choose to do something out of fear because he has the liberty to do it.
All man's will is derived from God's will. Anything a man does on his own will comes from the liberty of God for man to do it.
Laws cannot protect liberty, only "swords in the hands" of those who make laws can protect liberty.
"Every subject is the author of every act the sovereign doth" (Pojman, 562). The sovereign cannot do any injustice to the subject because then the subject would be doing it to himself, which would break a natural law.
Every commonwealth has an absolute liberty to do as it pleases
A subject has the liberty to disobey a sovereign when:
1) The Sovereign commands the subject to harm himself
2) To abstain from confessing a crime whoosh would cause himself harm
Avoidance of battle is not injustice, it is cowardice.
No subject has the liberty to defend another subject from the sovereign.
A man has the librety attempt to escape from imprisonment.
Friday, February 3, 2006
Leviathan Ch. 13-15
(Originally written February 3, 2006)
Continental Rationalism
-Descartes
-Spinoza
-Leibniz
British Empiricism
-Locke
-Berkeley
-Hume
Rationalism (early Modern)
1) Built a system by using math and geometry as a model
2) Believed in innate ideas (certain inborn ideas, conceptions, knowledge we have at the time of birth)
3) The explainability thesis: everything is susceptible to some rational explanation
Empiricism (early modern)
1) The source of ideas come from sense data (experience)
2) Justification of their beliefs must produce evidence of that belief
The Scientific Revolution
- Preceded and concurrent with the births of rationalism and empiricism
The pre-scientific revolution cosmology included:
1) geocentricism
2) the heavenly vault
3) the heterogeneity of the universe (terrestrial and celestial bodies moved differently)
4) Aristotelian doctrine of change/motion (demands a cause for motion, that cause also has to have a purpose)
-Efficient Cause - Mechanical
-Telic cause - giver of purpose
Galileo's science did not defeat the Church or Church theology. Galileo's sound theory deposed a bad influence of Aristotelianism on an uncritical theology.
Keys in Scientific Revolution
-Copernican Revolution (heliocentric)
-Kepler's law of planetary motion
-Bruno's infinite cosmos
-Galileo's kinetics
What are the implications of these on philosophy?
1) Universe is rational
2) The world is comprehensible
3) The cosmos is homogenous
4) Fruitfulness of systematic inquiry
5) Teleological (purpose oriented) explanation is no longer necessary
Classics of Philosophy
Ch. 13 of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan
Ch. 13 "of the natural condition of mankind as concerning their felicity, and misery"
Men are made equal. No one can claim to be greater by birth alone. "The weakest has the strength to kill the strongest" (Pojman, 542)
All men believe they are smarter than other men
From the fact that all men are equal in ability, all men have equal hope to achieve a goal. When these goals become conflicting then the men become enemies and both are capable in one way or another of destroying their enemy.
All men want to have their value assessed by their companions (equal, which is all men) assessed at what they have assessed it as.
In the nature of man we find three principles to quarrels
1) Competition
2) Diffidence
3) Glory
Competition makes men invade for gain, use violence for that gain
Diffidence makes men defend their position for safety
Glory makes men fight for glorify and trifles
Without a power to stop them, man is constantly at war with all other men.
The war exists in the act of fighting and in the knowledge that tensions are there that could ignite and inspire fighting. When there is no fighting and no intention of fighting there is peace.
When man is at war, there is no time for life, art, wealth, knowledge or worst of all, society. In times of war there is "continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" (Pojman, 543).
Hobbes condemns men with words, other men condemn them with acts of locking doors and securing themselves.
Sin is not found in man's nature, passions or desires. It is not found even in his actions until he breaks the law.
Where there is no power to fear there is no law. Where there is no law there is no justice.
Justice and injustice do not lie in man or his nature; they lie in society.
The passions or desires that make men want peace are:
1) Fear of death
2) Desire for commodious living
3) The hope for the means to secure the commodious living
Chapter 14: Of the first and second natural law of contracts
The right of nature is the liberty of man to preserve his own life through any means necessary
Liberty is the absence of anything that would stop him from using his power.
A law of nature is a general rule that forbids man to destroy himself.
Right is the liberty to do something.
Law is what forbids them to do something
The first law of nature is to seek peace because it is good for him.
The second law of nature is to defend ourselves by any means necessary when the first law cannot be achieved.
This law is from the Gospel: "do whatever you wish done unto yourself"
If man insists on keeping the right to do whatever he wishes he is constantly at war; but, if he renounces that right and others renounce theirs they are at peace with each other. But not only one man can renounce his right and all others retain theirs for the man who renounced his right in the face of the others retaining theirs breaks the second law of nature by not employing all means to defend himself.
The bonds by which men transfer or renounce their rights to pursue peace are strengthened by the fear of some evil consequence upon the rupture of this agreement. They are not strengthened by the word of men because nothing is so easily broken as the word of man.
The renunciation or transfer of rights by a man is done so for a right being renounced by another or transferred to him by another or in the hopes of good that will come to him.
The mutual transferring of a right is a contract.
If a contract is made when one man's right is immediately transferred for the future transfer of another's right it is called a pact or a covenant.
When one transfers his right in hope of some future good to come to him it is called a gift, free gift or grace and is not a contract.
When a contract is made for both parties to transfer at a future date upon a power over them is needed to quash their constant tendency to return to state of war.
To make a covenant with God is impossible because we cannot know whether or not our covenants have been accepted.
Men are freed of their covenant in 2 ways:
1) by preforming: natural end of an obligation
2) by being forgive: restoration of a liberty
Chapter 15 "of other laws of nature"
The third natural law is that men perform the covenants that they make, otherwise their covenants are in vain and we are still in the condition of war.
Without any covenants there can be no covenants broken and if no covenant is broken than no injustice has been done.
The definition of justice is simply performing no unjust acts (not breaking any covenants)
To be justice their must be no war, because in a state of war there are no unjust acts. To be no war there must be a coercive power to force men to perform their covenants and thus be justice.
To enforce covenants (justice) the punishment of breaking covenants (injustice) must be greater than the anticipated gain of breaking the covenant.
The foolish man states that there is no justice and that there is no God.
The just man is the man who has taken all reasonable care to keep his covenants, the unjust man is the man who has neglected this reasonable care.
A just man does not by one or a few mistakes or unjust acts caused by sudden passion become unjust.
Injury is done to the man who breaks a covenant. Damage is done to the man whose covenant is broken by the other man.
No man gives without the intention of good to himself.
Compliance is a law of nature that states every man must strive to accommodate himself to the rest.
If a man retains what is superfluous to himself, yet necessary to others he should be cast out of society because he has become cumbersome to that society.
Forgiveness is another law of nature. A man should grant forgiveness for offenses past to another man that desires it.
Pardon is a granting of peace.
Another law of nature is that revenge should be forgone for the greatness of good that will follow a lack of revenge.
Avoidance of hatred is a natural law because hatred breeds war.
Another natural law is that all men must acknowledge one another as equal.
Equity is the distributive justice
There can be no unequal share given to different then, for that is contrary to equity.
Where there can be no equal distribution it is determined first by agreement, second by first seizure or first possession
An arbitrator should decide any dispute of covenant.
Continental Rationalism
-Descartes
-Spinoza
-Leibniz
British Empiricism
-Locke
-Berkeley
-Hume
Rationalism (early Modern)
1) Built a system by using math and geometry as a model
2) Believed in innate ideas (certain inborn ideas, conceptions, knowledge we have at the time of birth)
3) The explainability thesis: everything is susceptible to some rational explanation
Empiricism (early modern)
1) The source of ideas come from sense data (experience)
2) Justification of their beliefs must produce evidence of that belief
The Scientific Revolution
- Preceded and concurrent with the births of rationalism and empiricism
The pre-scientific revolution cosmology included:
1) geocentricism
2) the heavenly vault
3) the heterogeneity of the universe (terrestrial and celestial bodies moved differently)
4) Aristotelian doctrine of change/motion (demands a cause for motion, that cause also has to have a purpose)
-Efficient Cause - Mechanical
-Telic cause - giver of purpose
Galileo's science did not defeat the Church or Church theology. Galileo's sound theory deposed a bad influence of Aristotelianism on an uncritical theology.
Keys in Scientific Revolution
-Copernican Revolution (heliocentric)
-Kepler's law of planetary motion
-Bruno's infinite cosmos
-Galileo's kinetics
What are the implications of these on philosophy?
1) Universe is rational
2) The world is comprehensible
3) The cosmos is homogenous
4) Fruitfulness of systematic inquiry
5) Teleological (purpose oriented) explanation is no longer necessary
Classics of Philosophy
Ch. 13 of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan
Ch. 13 "of the natural condition of mankind as concerning their felicity, and misery"
Men are made equal. No one can claim to be greater by birth alone. "The weakest has the strength to kill the strongest" (Pojman, 542)
All men believe they are smarter than other men
From the fact that all men are equal in ability, all men have equal hope to achieve a goal. When these goals become conflicting then the men become enemies and both are capable in one way or another of destroying their enemy.
All men want to have their value assessed by their companions (equal, which is all men) assessed at what they have assessed it as.
In the nature of man we find three principles to quarrels
1) Competition
2) Diffidence
3) Glory
Competition makes men invade for gain, use violence for that gain
Diffidence makes men defend their position for safety
Glory makes men fight for glorify and trifles
Without a power to stop them, man is constantly at war with all other men.
The war exists in the act of fighting and in the knowledge that tensions are there that could ignite and inspire fighting. When there is no fighting and no intention of fighting there is peace.
When man is at war, there is no time for life, art, wealth, knowledge or worst of all, society. In times of war there is "continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" (Pojman, 543).
Hobbes condemns men with words, other men condemn them with acts of locking doors and securing themselves.
Sin is not found in man's nature, passions or desires. It is not found even in his actions until he breaks the law.
Where there is no power to fear there is no law. Where there is no law there is no justice.
Justice and injustice do not lie in man or his nature; they lie in society.
The passions or desires that make men want peace are:
1) Fear of death
2) Desire for commodious living
3) The hope for the means to secure the commodious living
Chapter 14: Of the first and second natural law of contracts
The right of nature is the liberty of man to preserve his own life through any means necessary
Liberty is the absence of anything that would stop him from using his power.
A law of nature is a general rule that forbids man to destroy himself.
Right is the liberty to do something.
Law is what forbids them to do something
The first law of nature is to seek peace because it is good for him.
The second law of nature is to defend ourselves by any means necessary when the first law cannot be achieved.
This law is from the Gospel: "do whatever you wish done unto yourself"
If man insists on keeping the right to do whatever he wishes he is constantly at war; but, if he renounces that right and others renounce theirs they are at peace with each other. But not only one man can renounce his right and all others retain theirs for the man who renounced his right in the face of the others retaining theirs breaks the second law of nature by not employing all means to defend himself.
The bonds by which men transfer or renounce their rights to pursue peace are strengthened by the fear of some evil consequence upon the rupture of this agreement. They are not strengthened by the word of men because nothing is so easily broken as the word of man.
The renunciation or transfer of rights by a man is done so for a right being renounced by another or transferred to him by another or in the hopes of good that will come to him.
The mutual transferring of a right is a contract.
If a contract is made when one man's right is immediately transferred for the future transfer of another's right it is called a pact or a covenant.
When one transfers his right in hope of some future good to come to him it is called a gift, free gift or grace and is not a contract.
When a contract is made for both parties to transfer at a future date upon a power over them is needed to quash their constant tendency to return to state of war.
To make a covenant with God is impossible because we cannot know whether or not our covenants have been accepted.
Men are freed of their covenant in 2 ways:
1) by preforming: natural end of an obligation
2) by being forgive: restoration of a liberty
Chapter 15 "of other laws of nature"
The third natural law is that men perform the covenants that they make, otherwise their covenants are in vain and we are still in the condition of war.
Without any covenants there can be no covenants broken and if no covenant is broken than no injustice has been done.
The definition of justice is simply performing no unjust acts (not breaking any covenants)
To be justice their must be no war, because in a state of war there are no unjust acts. To be no war there must be a coercive power to force men to perform their covenants and thus be justice.
To enforce covenants (justice) the punishment of breaking covenants (injustice) must be greater than the anticipated gain of breaking the covenant.
The foolish man states that there is no justice and that there is no God.
The just man is the man who has taken all reasonable care to keep his covenants, the unjust man is the man who has neglected this reasonable care.
A just man does not by one or a few mistakes or unjust acts caused by sudden passion become unjust.
Injury is done to the man who breaks a covenant. Damage is done to the man whose covenant is broken by the other man.
No man gives without the intention of good to himself.
Compliance is a law of nature that states every man must strive to accommodate himself to the rest.
If a man retains what is superfluous to himself, yet necessary to others he should be cast out of society because he has become cumbersome to that society.
Forgiveness is another law of nature. A man should grant forgiveness for offenses past to another man that desires it.
Pardon is a granting of peace.
Another law of nature is that revenge should be forgone for the greatness of good that will follow a lack of revenge.
Avoidance of hatred is a natural law because hatred breeds war.
Another natural law is that all men must acknowledge one another as equal.
Equity is the distributive justice
There can be no unequal share given to different then, for that is contrary to equity.
Where there can be no equal distribution it is determined first by agreement, second by first seizure or first possession
An arbitrator should decide any dispute of covenant.
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