January 18, 2011

• Analyzing and interpreting philosophy actually is doing philosophy.
• Unfamiliar concept (ie. entomology): a description can be given to make it a familiar concept (ie. the study of insects).
• A problematic concept cannot be made familiar with a simple definition.
• Metaphysics: the nature of the world. Ontology: the study of being. Cosmology: the study of the universe.
• A definition of a concept can be given by giving a list of various items that fall under that category, then determining what is in common with all examples.

January 19, 2011

• Why is it important to define a concept? To identify new instances of things
• Examples of how defining concepts has important consequences: heritable traits, nationality, film genres

January 20, 2011

• In philosophy, the emphasis is on the procedure rather/more than the result.
• Heretics are beliefs that deviate from the accepted views.
• Authoritative texts are beyond criticism (ie. Bible). They are interpreted as complete. Works by Homer were considered authoritative texts to the Greeks.
• Our gods are projections of ourselves, but more glorified. If a horse was told to paint a god, it would paint a glorified horse.
• Socrates & Plato were banned and persecuted, pupils fled the city.
• Tendencies: heretical iconoclastic (breaking the images, ridding images of revered figures).
• Apologetics: attempt to rationalize common beliefs, opposite of heretics.
• The heretical strand is the defining strand of philosophy.
• The things that last are the problems the philosophers bring up, rather than the answers they find.

January 25, 2011

• I. Pre-Socratic Philosophy
• Thales asked what the universe was made of. He tries to find the most basic thing that makes everything – he comes up with water
• Water is abundant and ubiquitous. It is able to move among the three phases of matter, high plasticity.
• Anaxamander: Not anything normally categorized. He says it is the infinite (boundless). Opposites combine to neutralize. Universe is constantly merging and separating opposing qualities.
• Anaximenies: The composition of the universe is air. Condensation and rarification: increase and decrease density, which is how air turns into other things. Air is more ubiquitous.
• Argued that this is not the start of physical science because this is just speculation and not scientifically tested.
• Search for answers independently instead of using authoritative texts for answers.
• II. Pythagoreans
• Asks what the basis of the world is (the structure, not just the stuff). Mathematics are the truths of the world. The form is important, not the matter.
• Believed that harmony built up the world. Applying equal tension to strings created a harmonious chord.
• Transmigration of the soul: reincarnation, movement of the soul from one body to another.
• III. Philosophies of Change
• Two answers to the prevalence of change in the world.
• There is no change in the world, and only seems to be. Eleaties, Xenophanes. He has no argument to support it. Creates distinction between appearance and reality.
• Paremides: Truisms are true facts, like “being is and non-being is not.” Argues that nothing enters or exists being, there is no plurality, there is no heterogeneity.
• Reductio ad absurdum: Indirect argument. Take opposition and destroy it.
• Cannot go out of being because non-being does not exist. Cannot come into being because it must be non-being first, but non-being does not exist.
• All change uses non-being but there is no non-being.
• Plurality means each identity is distinct. Distinction involves having being here and having non-being there, but there is no non-being.
• Zeno the Eleadic: Paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, tortoise gets a head start and Achilles will never catch it.
• Taking change/movement and working through it logically will indicate that it cannot be possible.
• Herakleitos (Heraclitus): Has a vision that everything is always changing and nothing remains stable over time.
• Uses fire as a metaphor: It continues to flicker. “You cannot step into the same river twice.” Everything is like the river.
• IV. Compromise Systems of the Fifth Century
• Empedocles: Earth, air fire, water relate via love and hate (forces of attraction and repulsion)
• Anaxagoras: An infinite number of things make up the world. Every particular kind of thing is made up of everything, just in different proportions. Nous: mind, intelligence.

January 26, 2011

• Problems with the Achilles and tortoise paradox
• Over time, the distances between Achilles and tortoise will basically be the same.
• Achilles is described as trying to get to where the tortoise was vs. describing on an instantaneous scale.

January 27, 2011

• IV. Compromise Systems
• Atemests Democritus + Leliceppus: Basic building blocks described by size, shape, weight. Variations make different substances. Atomon: doesn’t have parts, broken down as much as possible.
• We behave like creatures that have a choice: free will and determinism. Without free will, the atoms in our bodies determine what we are going to do.
• Instead of orbit, the world is actually falling and the falling atoms have the ability to spontaneously swerve.
• They believe the god(s) are neither benevolent nor malevolent, but indifferent.
• V. Sophusts
• First professional teachers of philosophy: get paid to teach wisdom.
• Initial claim of philosophy is to make your life better
• learn to protect yourself in the courts; no class of professional lawyers. Self-representation. Teach how to argue well to defend your interests.
• Time when Greeks were successful in battle. Led by Athens with strong army, smaller divisions united to fight.
• There is no argument for a particular cultural custom. Other groups may have different beliefs, they accept cultural relativism.
• Protagoras: “All opinions are true.” Even conflicting opinions are true; they are true for the opinion holder. There is no actual truth when it comes with opinions.
• All opinions are false: same idea as all opinions being true, but presented in a negative way.
• Teach how to handle yourself
• Dictionary definition: people adept at arguing things that may not necessarily be completely true
• Similar to what modern-day lawyers are learning
• Slick but slightly flawed arguments to further a particular case. Commonly used by politicians.
• Athens went to war, captured prisoners, and used them as slaves.
• Athens males over a certain age all had the duty to vote in all legal matters. They all acted as senators.
• Agora: Distinguishes himself from other teachers.
• Socrates’ student Plato wrote recounts of his discussions with Socrates as the protagonist.
• Plato had thoughts and questions that Socrates has never thought of before.
• Plato begins to write his own work but uses Socrates as his mouthpiece.
• Dialogues are literary discussions that involved 2+ people, one develops philosophical knowledge through discussion.
• Treatises are dialogical in spirit in the way it works through ideas. Excessive overpowering of one side does not incite argument.
• The dialogue about piety does not have a conclusion. It is typical for Socrates to not come to a conclusion.
• Many dialogues involve discovering information didactically via questions and answers with someone at a basic level of understanding.

February 01, 2011

• When gods disagree, an action becomes impious. However, there aren’t many issues on which they fully agree, making pious acts rare.
• In a monotheistic religion, they consider god as fully powerful and always correct, and everything he does is moral.
• God tells Abraham to kill his son as a test of Abraham’s loyalty to God, but tells Abraham to stop just before Abraham does so. This act is immoral, and is repeated at a later time to another follower.
• Theistic voluntarism: Something is moral simply because god does it
• (1) State of affairs passively described because of the action. (2) The gods love what is pious because it is pious.
• If A happens because of B and B happens because of C, A and C cannot be the same.
• The people are so low and the gods are so powerful that there isn’t much that we can do for them.
• Assumed that a plurality of gods exist.
• Socrates makes a critical negative conclusion about piety, but it is an acceptable solution because Socrates argues destructively
• The argument for piety still applies to monotheism’s one god. Still valid for atheists where it is determined by others.
• Read texts where the scope of viewpoints is not exclusive of the culture.
• Passive being explained by active is invalid because it is actually perceptual based on specificity.
• Whichever comes first initiates the occurrence. Some arguments simply state facts.

February 08, 2011

• Death is the cessation of existence. Positively, it is a deep sleep without illnesses or nightmares. Socrates believes he can continue philosophical discussion after death with more interesting individuals.
• People disagree with Socrates but he acknowledges it and claims his views are more appealing.
• Deep sleep may not be appealing if one never wakes up from it.
• Sleep is important and holds mystical characteristics. The brain can only retain acquired knowledge with sleep.
• Eternal sleep rids the life of negativity, but it also rids the life of positivity as well.
• Plato states the body may die and decompose because it is composed of parts, but the soul is eternal and never dies because it is a function of the body, it is not physical, it does not exist in space, and it cannot disintegrate.
• The soul is eternal and is reincarnated in bodies; even when it isn’t present in a body, it still exists.
• Does the soul perceive even without the bodily senses? How does one identify other souls in the other realm?
• Greeks are culturally accepting of ending a life when it is worse than dying itself. On the other hand, Americans have an extreme viewpoint about how sacred life is, and refuse to end it even if it would be doing the person a favor.
• In the Greek culture, revenge is acceptable and one can repay injustice with injustice. However, two wrongs do not make a right and the repayment is still unjust.
• Socrates has a principle of not doing evil to someone who has done evil to you.
• Repaying evil with evil may not necessarily be evil because retaliation was provoked; however, the act in itself is evil.
• Socrates agreed to abide by the laws of the Greeks.
• Individually, there is no specific point at which someone agrees to abide by the laws of the society.
• This point is non-episodic and is implied by not leaving the country.
• Popper: “The open societies and its enemies.” Stated that the obligation to follow laws closely resembled the totalitarian views after the war.
• Plato travels the Mediterranean, returns, and creates the Academy to teach philosophy.
• Theory of Forms: There is a plurality of things and kinds of things.
• How can different things be described by the same term? Each element must have something in common.
• The forms are eternal (do not enter or leave existence) and have absolute presence. Even when the individuals go extinct, the forms remain in existence; they simply are not demonstrated.
• Plato’s metaphysical theory: the idea of a circle is perfect, but there are no perfect exemplifications of the circle.
• Plato’s most important pupil is Aristotle. He was very keen and absorbed knowledge.
• Aristotle’s beliefs contrasted with Plato’s essential theory. He states that a list of all examples of a particular thing is complete, and nothing exists outside of the individuals.
• Philosophy states the correct answer is either the view of Plato or Aristotle and it is debated which one is more accurate.
• Aristotle was a biological taxonomist and Alexander the Great helped him classify the world.
• Aristotle created his own school, the Lyceum. He was a peripatetic, one who walks.

February 10, 2011

• Conceptualism: forms (categories, concepts) and instances
• Theory of change: change has a beginning and end; there are different qualities from beginning to end. The entity that changes shifts form – some portions are same and some are different (ie. banana -> green and brown)
• Courage is a virtue in between two non-virtuous extremes. One extreme is cowardice, the other is stupidity.
• Hellenistic: (literal meaning is Greek)
• Christianity was originally a Jewish sect but was made legal after a Roman emperor went against the odds and won the battle.
• Skeptics say we know very little and that it’s much less than we think we know
• Epicurus sets up a school called the Garden. Epicureans focused on things with positive and negative effects. Something is good if it creates pleasure, it’s bad if it creates pain.
• Epicurean adapts another meaning in modern-day context – sophistication in food.
• Focused on pain rather than pleasure: worked to avoid negatives instead of searching for positives.
• If you always eat basic, affordable food, you will generally be satisfied. Eating luxuriously causes frustration when luxurious food is out of reach.
• Best positives are those that leave no negative afterthoughts. Eating lavishly may cause stomach aches in the future, making it not a good positive feeling.
• Death should not be looked at negatively, nor as the ultimate evil
• Hedonist: fixated on self-pleasure. Implies a sense of egoism without considering others
• Psychological hedonism states human behavior is driven by pain and pleasure. All outside influences occur in forms of pain and pleasure. All people are motivated by pleasure.
• On the assumption that death is the cessation of consciousness, death is neither good nor bad because there is no pleasure and no pain. It is neutral.
• Having a neutral opinion about death will cause someone to lose a lot of fear and negativity.
• Stoics: Zeno
• Hegel says the stoic view can be shared by both prisoners and emperors; important because it doesn’t matter if you’re at the top or bottom class.
• It’s better not to consider class as important because it is outside of your control. Don’t be concerned about something that you cannot control.
• Can control beliefs, attitude, opinions. Cannot control wealth, freedom, reputation (how others view you).
• Be concerned about how you feel about yourself, health
• Don’t be concerned about the acquisition or retention of goods because they aren’t you.
• Axiology is the theory of value.
• Reduction of aim, Epicureans and Stoics have similar goals for improving life.
• There is a difference between control and complete control. Control can simply mean having an influence on the outcome.

February 18, 2011

• Romans follow Alexander the Great
• Romans make Christianity the official religion
• Three competing monotheistic religions in that area.
• Thomas Aquinas: Italian philosopher, originally not accepted but later reinvited.
• Great Chain of Being. God -> Intelligences (angels) (minds without bodies, bodies have needs, clouds thinking, and are detrimental) -> Human beings (embodies intelligences, mind has reason, will, and desire) -> Other animals -> Plants -> Organic compounds -> Physical elements
• The bible simply states things, but Greeks justify why something is true.
• Humans have faith: a measure of the capacity to receive divine revelation.
• Renaissance: rebirth of the classic trends.
• Copernicus: dominant old view was that everything revolved around us with us in the center of the universe.
• Copernicus said the sun was in the center because that is simpler. If the Earth was in the center, it would seem like the other planets were revolving in cycles and epicycles. If sun was in the center, everything has one cycle and no epicycles.
• God is omnipotent and omniscious
• T. Brahe Kepler
• Each shape/symbol has a special meaning with circles signifying perfection.
• Galileo: the moon was supposed to be a heavenly body but it is very imperfect and people were dissatisfied at its imperfections.
• Sir Isaac Newton: comes up with theory. Why do things move as they do? Gravity.
• Parallel developments in the human body.
• De fabrica: humans are radically different from other animals
• Process of deduction: deduce the implications and consequences of actions we take.
• Induction: notes similarities, hypothesize based on observation.
• After the Renaissance is the classic modern period. Dominant figure is Descartes.
• Descartes says philosophy has not been advancing. Need to look to for what they don’t know to find out how to develop.
• Rationality: depend on human reason
• Rationalism: focuses on certain procedures in reason
• Absolute rightness are statements that have to be right. Incorrigible, indubitable, certain.
• Axioms or postulates are given facts (such as ones given in geometry). They are true by definition.
• Euclid teases out further principles called theories from postulates, forming a base of geometric knowledge
• This is applied to philosophy.
• Certainty is needed. Lay down certainty at the foundation of the philosophical knowledge.
• Immortal soul: to strike fear in going to hell or reward heaven.
• Doubt everything, reconstruct beliefs.

March 02, 2011

• Each argument has a conclusion. Present an argument in one place and lay out all the steps leading up to the conclusion.
• Don’t include excessive or unnecessary introductions to arguments that present irrelevant background information.
• (1) The concept of god is of a being that which nothing greater can be perceived. (2) Even non-believers understand this concept. (3) God can’t be consistently thought to have being only in the mind because an existing god would be greater than a non-existing god. (C) To be consistent, you must think that god exists.
• (1) The idea of god is of a being with all perfections (and is the most perfect being). (2) Existence is a perfection. (3) If you have the idea of god and you’re consistent, then you must think of god as existing.
• Objections: With the same premise, one could prove anything perfect exists. There would be an infinite number of perfect things. The problem is with the second step. Existing itself does not change the quality of the object.
• (1) Idea of god is of an infinite being. (2) The cause must have as much reality as the effect. (C) God exists.
• Finite beings an only be the cause of finite things.

March 03, 2011

• Things move, are moved by other beings, and the movers are moved by other movers. The unmoving mover is god, because this process cannot continue to infinity.
• There are things that don’t pass out of or enter existence, which is god.
• Everything is caused and has an effect, but there must be something that initiated the chain.
• Time has no specific beginning. Otherwise, it would not be infinite.
• There is nothing in the world that controls a steady or consistent amount of stuff in existence. Eventually, everything will pass out of existence.
• You can’t count the number of things in the world because an object could be one thing or composed of multiple things.
• For every quality, there must be a maximized version of that quality.
• Something can be compared without knowing how the extreme version is like.
• Superlatives can be used without problem in context-based situations.
• Pascal said the portrayal of god in the bible is robust and is different
• Pascal’s bet: you can bet on or against god. If you believe in god, you lose nothing if god does not exist, but gain an ultimate trip to heaven if god exists. If you don’t believe in gods, you go to hell if he exists, but gain nothing if he doesn’t.
• Why does god have to make people believe him when he doesn’t show signs of his existence?
• Does god have a particularly more torturous place in hell for people who believe just to make it to heaven?
• Conception is understanding the meaning and idea of something while imagination is visualizing something you can conceive something but not imagine the same things.
• Perceived images are more detailed and intense than mental imagined images.
• It seems like one’s body is a host of feelings and memories related to one’s mind like no other body is.
• Dreams are distinguished by vivacity because real life is more vivid than imaginations.
• Dreams cannot be connected to a cohesive narrative of life, so we know the experiences that don’t fit in are dreams.

March 22, 2011

• Hume is not one of the three characters in the dialogue.
• Hume questioned the purpose of having a dialogue, and claimed he should begin the argument immediately.
• Hume wrote a book when he was under 30 years of age but people didn’t read it because it was too complex.
• Dialogues can serve to be a way of illustrating the back-and-forth internal thinking conflicts.
• Adumbrate: to hint at
• Hume seems to relate to all of them according to his second reason for dialogue, but it’s expected to think of Hume relating to one.
• The question is about the nature of god, not if it exists or not.
• He would get in trouble, so he only questioned the nature of god, not existence. He left theism alone.
• Philosophical skepticism: behavior shows if they were real skeptics.
• Being skeptical about your senses would mean that you don’t trust them. If this is really true, you wouldn’t use the information acquired by your senses and try to walk out through a wall rather than a door.
• Skeptics aren’t lying because they believe what they say. They are simply confused.
• Basic philosophical thoughts have flaws that may discourage people from believing god, turning them away from religion.
• Studying philosophy more makes us realize that we don’t know most things for sure, but we assume it is true. Because we perceive it, god isn’t apparently there but still can be believed, bringing them toward religion.
• Atheism: believes god doesn’t exist. Skepticism: unsure of existence. Atheism goes against skepticism because atheists have certainty while skepticism has uncertainty.
• The first cause is considered to be god. Being the first cause does not give it massive powers.
• Finite beings cannot perceive infinite things.
• The belief of god is simply a belief of the first cause.
• Nature was put together like a clockwork.
• An artifact must be put together. The world is an artifact so it must have a creator.
• A priori and A posteriori -> prior and posterior come before and after experience.
• The world is like a machine.
• No data derived can be fully certain and can be constantly tested.
• True by definition statements are a priori, such as 2+2=4, apples grow on trees, some pebbles grow on trees.
• Anology shows that machines are created by people, and the world is a machine, so it must have been created.
• Being made consciously is only true some of the time. Things can be made without being intended.
• Having a child is different than making a machine because there is very limited control over making a baby.
• A painting is an artifact because it is an integration of parts combined and desired to form organic unity.
• Animals, plants, and many things are not made in that way of designing specifically.
• Theory of causality: certain events cause other events. (1) Cause precedes effect. (2) Contiguity of cause and effect. (3) Constant conjunction of cause and effect.
• One thing happens because of another in the same space and time.
• Seeing something repeatedly and one causes another, you link the two events together.
• You can’t see it unless you have a backlog of relevantly similar experiences.
• The creation of the world is not something that someone can have past experience about. This is too advanced to apply the analogy.
• Causation of the creation of the world is so large that we cannot apply it understandably.
• Our minds cannot grasp infinite things so we cannot see how impressive impressive and infinite things are.
• A massively sophisticated thing is not created by one, but by many. Apply this to the world -> goes against monotheism, supports polytheism.
• World is like an animal: It was not specifically made with specific intention, it just popped out.

March 24, 2011

• We have never seen another world, so we cannot form a comparison. We also have not witnessed a formation of a world.
• Monotheism is like one person writing a novel. Polytheism is like many people building a ship.
• The world could have been created by a stupid god that doesn’t really know what he’s doing but just used a formula passed down by previous generations.
• Hume states you don’t need an explanation for initial existence, only the coming into being does.
• you don’t need to explain why there is something rather than nothing, only a change in the something.
• God cannot be both good and great because if he had both of those qualities, this type of world would not exist.
• Anthropomorphites conceive god as an infinite sum of all virtues. This cannot be done because we are using our finite knowledge to perceive infinite knowledge.
• We take our experiences and project them to infinity.
• God’s power is different than our power expanded.
• Ineffable: unable to be expressed.
• There are things in the world that are wrong right now, but the future will rectify these problems; or, the afterlife will rectify these problems.
• How is it possible to rectify something that happened in the past? Suffering becomes part of your experiences and cannot be reversed.
• We gauge pleasure by measuring it against pain.
• If god does a perfect job, why is there any suffering?
• God is not infinitely perfect, it is finitely perfect. But, being finite means you have limitations, and being perfect means you have no limits.
• God’s omnipotence is denied, not his benevolence.
• The world is made by a perfect god but god is indifferent, so god doesn’t care if we suffer or not.
• This thought is unsupported by Americans because we also consider morality a part of perfection.
• The idea of perfection as we see it is not logically possible.
• Pleasure and pain serves as a motivation to avoid doing bad things.
• God could have improved the world by eliminating pain and instead using different levels or degrees of pleasure. Less pleasure would result in less motivation.
• There are causal results (fall off a building and get hurt), but god could have made exceptions.
• Living things have many limitations, and humans are particularly weak compared to other animals. God was a rigid master, not an indulgent parent.
• Natural disasters: why should they occur at all?
• Without pain, people would enjoy everything and move toward more pleasurable things.
• Not having pain would not have drastic signals to change something – hand on stove. Reduced pleasure is not intense enough.
• When god intervenes, he would have infinite intelligence and do things that are considered miraculous.
• Assuming miracles will reduce productivity, having regularities in the world provides a sense of comfort.
• Making everything equal would eliminate the competition among species. Some animals would starve because it would disrupt the balance of nature.
• Some natural disasters like forest fires make the soil more fertile, but other natural disasters are difficult to explain.
• Manichean: there is a good god and a bad god. They both influence the world and are always in conflict.
• Because of the mixed nature of the world, there are either two gods (one good and one evil), or indifferent gods.
• The regularity of the world supports the indifference theory because two fighting gods would make the world very irregular based on how the fight is going.
• Indifferent gods means it can be the same as no gods.

March 30, 2011

• Intelligent design argument: (1) Universe is like a finely tuned machine. (2) Such machines are built by an intelligent designer or creator. (3) Thus, by analogy, the universe is brought into being by a super intelligent and powerful creator (god).
• Argument by analogy: the universe bears a similarity to machines.
• Good analogy example: (1) Socrates is like Plato. (2) Plato was mortal. (3) Thus, Socrates is mortal.
• Bad analogy example: (1) Berlusconi is like Hitler. (2) Hitler tried to get rid of Jews. (3) Thus, Berlusconi is trying to kill Jews.
• There must be sufficient relevance between the comparison and the proposed argument by analogy.
• Even if the argument was true, machines can be built by multiple people.
• We assume machines have a builder because we acquire an experience and knowledge that many other machines were built by a designer.
• Using a universe in that comparison, we don’t have lots of experience of witnessing the birth of a machine.
• Problem of evil / Argument from evil: (1) If god exists, then god is all powerful, knowing, and morally perfect. (2) If god is all powerful, god can eliminate all unnecessary evil. (3) If god is all knowing, god knows about all unnecessary evil. (4) If god is morally perfect, god wants to eliminate all unnecessary evil. (5) Unnecessary evil exists. (6) Thus, god doesn’t exist.
• We are anthropomorphizing god – we’re using our own perception of powerful, knowing, and moral to define god.
• People say there must be some similarity between our and god’s definitions.

April 05, 2011

• People describe the world by referring to experiences, such as seeing physical objects.
• The visual image does not always accurately represent the object (such as a straight stick appearing bent when it is in water).
• Naive realism: what I see is part of reality, but it is not actually always real. Preferential naive realism: we see reality some of the time but not all of the time. Casual theory of perception: we assume that one real thing portrays itself in a particular way under particular circumstances.
• Phenomenalism: the notion of the object is not what caused the perception of the object … what
• A physical object is a collection of sensations.
• If an object has visual properties, it should also have tactile and sonic properties if it is not a hallucination.
• The linguistic turn (Richard Rorty)
• Value theory: axiology. Ethics/morals (human actions and character), aesthetics (arts, human looks, nature), other (practicality, functionality).

April 06, 2011

• Sensible thing: color, touch (heat, cold), smell, taste, extension, figure, shape, motion/rest
• If no mind perceives sensible things, they don’t exist. Sensible things only exist in the mind
• Hylas states the object contains these traits rather than only perceiving it
• Fire: the heat of the fire causes the pain in the mind, or the mind perceives heat and pain from the fire at once?
• Hedonic profile: pleasure and pain
• Luke warm water example: a cold hand will perceive it as hot, a hot hand will perceive it as cold. Supposedly, the water is both cold and hot, which is absurd. Temperature only exists as we perceive it. (Perceptual relativity)
• Secondary qualities are color, touch, smell, and taste that exist in the mind
• Primary qualities are extension, figure/shape, motion/rest, that exist inside the actual object that causes secondary qualities
• Extension is also a secondary quality because to a mite, its foot is a normal-sized foot but humans cannot even see a mite’s foot
• Motion/rest is also a secondary quality because the speed of a train varies depending on how fast you’re moving
• Argument for god’s existence: there is a universal perceiver in the form of a mind
• Berkeley “Metaphysics” -> only sensible things and minds exist. (God = special case of a mind)

April 14, 2011

• We seek pleasure and avoid pain, and everything else contributes to achieving that.
• We cannot really be happy, but we can still keep trying and set it as a goal because goals do not necessarily have to be achievable.
• Some qualities, like happiness, can occur in degrees, so we can be as happy as possible.
• One part of happiness is not having expectations that are not possible to achieve.
• The things you do for pleasure will lose value if you repeat it and only it for a long period of time.
• There should be more active pleasures than passive pleasures.
• Schopenhauer states happiness is impossible because we all have individual desires. We are creatures with will.
• If you don’t move toward completing a goal, you are not setting a goal, you’re just wishful thinking.
• Something you want is something you don’t have yet.
• You spend most of your life in a state in which you want something – the lack of something you want.
• If you lack something, you are suffering from that lack. Because most people want something all the time, you will always be suffering from desire.
• If you get what you want, you accept it and move on to something else that you don’t have that you lack.
• Nietzsche
• You can enjoy the process of achieving success, and don’t necessarily have to finish the entire act. The process can be pleasurable.
• The conditions were not very pleasant during his time.
• If one seeks pleasure and avoids pain, it can be seen as egoistic.
• Utilitarianism requires the actor to be as impartial as possible. One should create an association between the good of others and of the self.
• Ultimate motivation for all human action is a psychological theory.
• Reductionistic: find one simple reduced item that causes many other things.
• We think it is admirable when people who sacrifice their happiness, but only if the sacrifice of happiness or comfort resulted in the happiness of the general others.
• There’s no point in giving up happiness in its own sake if it doesn’t increase general happiness. Simply just suffering for no reason is acting stupid.
• Act utilitarianism: apply it to acts. Rule utilitarianism: apply it to rules, laws, and policies which will influence independent decisions. Rule utilitarianism works on a deeper level.
• Kant: you can never be sure if an act increased or decreased human happiness because all the data is never in.
• The president giving tax cuts temporarily increases happiness, but the debt that the country built up decreases happiness.
• Consequentialism: the act should be judged based on its consequences. Kant is an anti-consequentialist.
• John Rawls: similar to how umpires simply apply the rules of the games, judges can only apply the law and cannot change them.
• Making a sports game more interesting to watch is a utilitarian consideration. However, a referee…

April 20, 2011

• Utilitarianism says that you should select the action that produces the greatest net pleasure.
• Net pleasure is all the pleasures minus all the pains.
• Consequentialism: produces most net good for all individuals, each individuals good being weighted equally.
• Utilitarianism is a type of consequentialism. Utilitarianism accepts consequentialism and defines good as happiness (and bad as unhappiness).
• Happiness -> pleasure, unhappiness -> pain/displeasure. Higher-> intellectual/emotional, lower -> physical.
• Pleasure can be evaluated by amount and quality. How much value is assigned to a pleasure?
• One should pursue higher pleasure because it has more value.
• (1) People would prefer to be themselves dissatisfied than an animal completely satisfied. (2) People value higher pleasures more than lower pleasures (quality matters, not just quantity). (3) Thus, people value higher pleasures more than lower pleasures.
• Just because everyone believes one thing does not mean they are correct.
• Objection: We are choosing between higher and lower versus just lower.
• Objection: You are choosing between living dissatisfied or dying and bringing a happy pig into existence.
• Change premise 1 to being yourself dissatisfied or yourself having a gluttonous satisfied life.

April 21, 2011

• The ultimate end is something we want for its own sake. We want other things as a means to get closer to the ultimate end.
• In Utilitarianism, happiness is the ultimate end.
• Similar to how things are visible because people see it and things are audible because people hear it, things may be desirable because people desire it.
• Objection: living a healthy life is desirable, but we don’t want to do it (not eating excess food, getting sufficient sleep).
• Visibility is what can be seen, audibility is what can be heard, but desirability is what should be desired.
• George Edward Moore: Accuses Mill of committing an ethical error called a naturalistic fallacy. You cannot argue for the prescriptive theory on the basis of the descriptive theory.
• You cannot derive an “ought” from an “is.”
• Just because the world is one way does not mean it ought to be that way.
• Some people get happiness from actually having the money rather than using it as a means to get happiness.
• Other examples similar to money is virtue and power.
• Crossword puzzles are satisfying not because you created a masterpiece of letters but because you know you have the capacity of completing the puzzle.
• All these things that seem as they have no means to lead to happiness are included in happiness itself.
• Thus, happiness ends up becoming something and anything that someone wants.
• This combats all objections, but as a result, the argument becomes pointless. Instead of giving insight into what you should strive for, it instead states what you should want is what you want.
• Experientialism: what you want is based on your experiences.
• Eudaemonia/Eudaemonism: happiness, well-being.
• Happiness is experimentalism but the others are not. Some powerful person might not know of his strength, someone doesn’t know of his passed-down wealth, we’re not always aware of how virtuous we are.
• We all have capabilities we are not aware of. Not being aware of something you have is different than experiencing it.
• Mill says the pleasure of everyone else is not covered by additional principles; it’s just arithmetic on top of basic utilitarianism of pleasure and pain.
• It takes more than the principle of utility and arithmetic in order to properly address distribution of happiness.

May 04, 2011

• An indicative sentence is meaningful just when it expresses a proposition that is either analytic or verifiable.
• Empiricist criterion of meaning: a standard of deciding if something is worth thinking about and is meaningful.
• Meaningful -> has a truth value; it is either true or false.
• Indicative sentences state a proposition.
• He says proposition instead of sentence because a sentence can be grammatically proper but may not express anything meaningful.
• Analytic: empirical facts are not required to know whether it’s true. The predicative is contained in the statement. It’s true in virtue of the meaning of the ideas.
• Verifiable: in principle, it’s observable. An observation statement is deductible from it.
• According to itself, the E.C.M. is meaningless because it cannot be true or false.

May 05, 2011

• Value judgments (this is good/bad) are synthetic because they are not true/false.
• A statement is not meaningful if there is no empirical observation that can be made to prove a statement true/false.
• There must be relevant experiences that add truth value to a statement.
• Moral statements or commands are clearly, in their structure, not propositions (which we use to describe things in the world with language).
• Open question argument: it’s right and what I approve of are the same thing.
• Subjectivism (individual, social), Utilitarianism.
• What if something is right but I don’t approve of it, or something is wrong but I approve of it?
• A statement with a moral component also has a commanding, influencing, or convincing component.
• Ayer is not stating that these statements should not be used because it is meaningless, he is stating that these statements don’t have truth value and don’t have literal meaning.
• These statements can be used to express personal opinions and preferences.
• Example: deciding which restaurant to eat at is not a dispute of truth.
• Ayer says all statements declaring religion are inapplicable because they have no literal meaning, don’t have truth or falsity value,