Flashcards
INTRO TO METAPHYSICS
Cards in this deck (42)
- 1BACKGROUND / HISTORICAL OVERVIEW- Science answers how, Metaphysics asks why
- Metaphysics looks at the extent to reality objective or subjective
- Becomes important for ethics (whether or not God exists) and epistemology and politics (nature of life - abortion, personhood - relating to slavery) - 2FORMS VS. PARTICULARSPlato created this, he wrote a book theory of the forms and republic
Book states: All of reality is based on something called forms / all reality has its roots in these forms
Forms are eternal (no beginning no end), the essence of things, perfect and changless
Patriculars are dynamic and imperfect
There are levels of completeness and realness - forms are on the highest level of real and completeness particular are on a lower level of real - 3FORMS + TRUE KNOWLEDGE- Forms exist in their own realm, called the realm of the forms, on a higher plane of existence above us
- We live in a imperfect world in which we own view particulars and not forms (such as numbers, we can never truly view oneness only have the idea of it or replicate it on paper)
- We can know forms intellectually through rationality, it is truest form of knowledge that is absolute and cannot be changed - 4THE ONE OVER MANY ARGUMENT- Plato found a flaw in his argument, if every existing had a form and forms were existing things then … wouldn't forms have forms themselves?
- Furthermore forms could exist together under as many things
- St Augustin, an african chap thought Plato was describing God unknowingly, as from the Christian perspective God was the perfection of all things, above in a realm of our existence, humans were subjects of God and the startpoint (The Good -> The God) - 5THE ONE OVER MANY ARGUMENT
- 6MIND DEPENDENCE- Asks what extent is reality mind dependent ?
- Two types of characteristics or qualities of the physical world; primary or secondary
- Primary qualities are positions, shapes, size, fully objective features of external reality (external meaning not in the head) ex. Dollimore is actually 6’1 (objective), although when he slouches he seems 5’9
- Secondary qualities are color, taste, smell, tied to the mind of the observer in which each person may have different perception (ex. Dollimore HATES the smell of flowers, while others may like it) - 7GALILEO GALILEI- Galio Galio was a famous italian scientist, known for his studies for the solar system (yes his
- Galio Quoted: “I hold (believe) that taste, colors, smells and the like (and things like that) exist only in the being which feels, which being removed, these qualities themselves do vanish”
- According to Galio that secondary characters are COMPLETELY mind dependent, that a thing has no taste or smell, it only exist in your mind (Ex if a apple falls from a tree and no one hears it fall, did it actually make noise)
- Everyone is living in a different reality, asking is your green my green? - 8JOHN LOCKELocke had an adjusted version of Galio claim, he did believe that secondary character only existed in the mind he thought that everything had a disposition
A disposition is a latent characteristics, has the ability to trigger a sense of experience in the mind of the observer
It's not completely in the mind, the potential greeness is there waiting to be triggered by our vision (ITS GREENESS IS NOT THERE THE POTENTIAL FOR GREENESS IS)
This is true for all secondary qualities, not just colour - 9IDEALISM - OVERVIEW / EXPLANATIONIdealist believe primary AND secondary characteristics are mind dependent (basically everything is mind dependent, the entirety of the physical world)
In other words, they believe unobserved objects do not exist (observe not just visual but interacting with it, ex. touch, hearing, taste)
It is not only if you personally did not observe these objects, its if ANYONE hasn't observed it - 10PROBLEMS WITH IDEALISM- How do things change in objects that are not being observed (ex. flowers growing, on a house damaged by a hurricane)
- If I leave a room and forget my water bottle, and come back and see it there and be like OH that's where it went .. it wouldn't make sense because objects are mind dependent
- What is the limit to observation, can animal, bacteria observation count? (more of a discussion not really a problem) - 11BERKELEY- George bishop was a anglican philosopher, who wanted to bring back God in philosophy
- He wanted to prove God still played a significant role to Metaphysics, his solution was to drag God into idealism
- He argued that God was:
↪ Omnipotent (powerful)
↪ Omnipresent (god is everywhere)
↪ Omniscient: (all knowing)
- Because God is omniscient and omnipresent, he is observing everything thus all of reality exist (makes the idealism argument pointless)
- Also brings up the point that due to him observing everything, all reality priests and continues because of him, it is in his mind
- God is not only the creator of the universe he is the sustainer
- This could be used to argue / prove the existence of God OR in order to prove Berkeley's argument the existence of God must be proven - 12PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIND - OVERVIEW- Area of the philosophy that deals with consciousness, perception, personhood and memory (a cousin of psychology, gets the most attention)
- Has HUGE impacts on other areas of philosophy, politics (ex. abortion debate)
- We take consciousness for advantage, we don’t pay enough attention and take things for granted the world around us
- In 30 seconds if we just list all the simple things we are aware of, we would realise our conscious experience is rich, personal and individualised
- Here we are these connected beings, in a sea of personal consciousness
- Nagel (an atheist who has argued against atheism / materialist) and wrote “What is it Like to Be a Bat”
- Bats use echolocation in order to see, an mechanism that us humans would not understand unless we experience it, thus making the point in the book consciousness is objective and complete personal - 13THE MIND BODY PROBLEMHow is it your mind is connected your physical body?
- 14SUBSTANCE DUALISM- They believe there are two substances, one being the mind and the other the body
- A substance is thing that can exist independent without another thing (such as the colour red, you cannot ask someone for some red)
- Substances are things that doesn't need a feature it can exist on its own
- The mind is a substance but a mental substance (a different kind), but the body is a physical substance
- Rene Descarte “ I think therefore I am”, relates to the mind body problem as he claimed the only thing you can be sure of is your mind, as you can doubt physical elements (your body) but not the mind (how would u even be able to think about this then)
- You can argue Rene Descarte was a substance dualist, and be one yourself without the belief in God
- BIG CRITICISM: The problem of interaction, if the body and mind are completely independent substances how do they interact? - 15MATERLISLEMS- Arch rival to substance dualism (like coke & pepsi)
- Believe that we are just a brain, every experience and thought is just brain states
“You are your brain”
- The shifts in your brain, the chemicals in it, electral singles are the entrity of you, nothing beyond that - 16SUBSET OF MATERIALIST: LOGICAL BEHAVIORISTS- Mind is complex set of physical dispotions related to the brain
- The brain is a collection of everything physical dispositions (experiences, thoughts, chemical) - 17SUBSET OF MATERIALISM: ELIMINATIVE MATERIALIST- Don't disagree with logical behaviorists, they just emphasize different things
- Believe the mind is a myth of explanation, once upon a time we didn't understand the brain but now we have come to understand the brain is a complex thing, so the mind didn't exist we just tagged it along with the brain
- The main atheist worldview on the mind - 18OBJECTIONS TO MATERIALISM- There is no such thing as “fools pain” (fools gold is iron pirate, it looks like exactly like gold but is not n tricks miners, as gold is actually defined by its chemical composition)
- Human experiences are not defined by static objective characteristics and are rather defined by other intangible elements to experience memories - 19PROPERTY DUALISM- Agree with the matislists that there is only one type of substance, however they would - argue that substance has to have properties and act in two different ways, physical and mental (can do two things at once like a SPORK)
- Brain is a material substance (physical properties, size and mass) and mental properties (feels, thinks) - 20THINKING MACHINES BACKGROUND OVERVIEW- One day machines will conquer us and overtake the world
- Can we one day create computer generated artificial intelligence (video games have this but its simulated)
- Answer one: No because a computer will always be responding to the input of user / respond to commands within the parameters of its limit (instructed in terms of yes or no) - 21CHINESE ROOM- Thought experiments a hypothetical situations philosophers use to approve or disapprove a situation
- Chinese is not a language, symbolically written with no letters
- John Searle proposed a thought experiment imagine you found an individual with no experience on chinese and you put them in a room with a bunch of cards with chinese characters .. now imagine with those cards he had a manual with instructions and every possible meaning to symbols .. then theres is a person behind glass holding up chinese cards and the person must respond using the mannels
- Now imagine that there native people with only their language, and behind the glass they hold up a response ( how are you ) and the individual says ( not bad ), in theory they could be having a complete conversation with each other in chinese with no experience in chinese or aware he is speaking it by following the manual
- THIS IS THE RESPONSE COMPUTERS GIVE - 22ALAN TURING- Grandfather of the computer age, mathematical genius, pioneer of computer languages and predicted that computers would one have artificial intelligence
- Came up with the turing test, that had three separate rooms , 3 rooms the computer would have a text based conversation human and the test subject, and the test subject with the computer that is trying to deceive the test subject into believing that the computer was a human being
- Argument: if the computer consistently trick the test subject, that computer could be claimed as a thinking machine based on the logic that if computers could simulate human thought it might as well just be the same thing
The turing test says more about test subjects perceptions / basis rather than an actual truth or reality
He was smarter than Mr.Dollimore but was wrong about this test - 23DAVID HUME- denied that you can see cause (a ball is flung due to the CAUSE of someone throwing it)
- This is due to when viewing an event (A causing B) we would not be able determine cause having viewed it only once
- Billiard ball example: If i was to play billiards and i was to hit ball A, which hit ball B and moved, if you took a person without any experience of billiards they could not really claim that A was the cause of B only viewing it once
- You DON’T actually see cause you EXPECT cause - 24CONSTANT CONJUNCTIONSHume said we deal with constant conjunction of events, the idea that our mind projects the expectations of an event because it has previously been experienced from memories
A baby goes through this constant conjunction of events, ex. A baby touches the glass on a fireplace, hurts his hand but goes to touch it again and repeat .. he is establishing constant conjunction
We are so amazed by magicians because they mess with out constant conjunction, as well as horror movies (we recognize the high key music, and that the person in the movie will die yet movies trick us)
Wouldn’t apply to math because its conceptual knowledge
Hume says that just because certain things have been a way in our experience doesn't mean that we cannot know if they were the same in the past or will be the future - 25ESTABLISHING CAUSEIf A comes before and contiguous with B AND there is constant conjunctions of such events then we determine cause
If event A always conveys the thought of event B, with constant conjunction deeply engraved in a mind and cannot imagine it happening any other way it can determine cause
Thus .. causality is mind dependent ! - 26GOD ! ! !Every cultures throughout history even isolated, have ideas of God
Arguments against god are very limited, you cannot prove God does not exist only it being unlikely - 27THESE FACTORS ARE ALL COMMON TO ALL CULTURES ON THEIR CONCEPTION OF GOD- Omniscient : knows everything
- Omnipresent : present everything
- Omnipotent : all powerful
- A good guy too : not an absolute necessity
- Perfect / ultimate reality / Alpha & Omega / the start & finish of all things
- Transcendent: he exists beyond our existence but not limited by it - 28ONTOLOGICAL - St. AnselmAttempted to prove God only using logic, the idea of God proves God exists
God is a being greater than which nothing can exist (absolute perfection)
God can be conceived of as either existing or not existing (he may or may not be real)
It is greater to exist than to not exist (therefore God must exist)
If we accept that the word God means perfect, however God itself may or may not exist (yes or no). NOW not existing is imperfect, and existing does not make one perfect but is part of perfection. If God is a perfect thing (previously said before) he cannot be imperfect. THIS IS A LOGICAL TRAP. - 29OBJECTIONS TO THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENTIf you can unravel one premises, you unravel the whole argument
The first premises is not debatable,
The second one is not debatable as well as it remains to be on a middle ground.
The third premise is the most vulnerable to unravel
St. Thomas Aquinas argued against the third premises, stating the absence of a thing does not necessarily mean its imperfect
You can use this logic to prove any perfect thing, perfect in the sense of wholeness (such as donuts but there's no one perfect donut)
HOWEVER ! p l o t t w i s t: There's an counter argument from St. Ansel, to the second objection that God has a special relationship with perfection, and thus perfection can not be applied to everything (the dognut does not need to be perfect in order to exist) - 30COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT { KALAM !!!! }Kalam is an arabic word, this is due this argument born in the golden age of islam
asks the question: why is there something rather than nothing?
because what can be simpler than nothing, nothingness makes more sense than something because nothing is undying simple?
INFINITE REGRESS: questioning everything that exists needs to have an explanation of its existence, a never ending backward chain
Infinite regress is a problem will reach at a certain point to an uncaused cause (non contingent cause), a thing that does dependent on anything for existence and was not caused on anything prior, it just exits because it exists and everything else exists after it
That cause is …. God.
Causality works because God is transcendent and beyond time and space, he does not exist on the timeline of the Big Bang up until now, since God does not exist in time, time exists in God and God creator of cause instead of result of cause, and is not subject to the rules of the universe because he created it.
There's an infinite number of universes creating each other, however this does not work because your - 31SWIMBURNEDAlthough God is not necessarily directly provable, he is the best explanation for life
The most likely source of creation would be from the creator, things such as these are not accidental (painting came from a painter not cans that splashed themselves on the canvas) - 32TELEOLOGICALYou may have have teleology to pass philosophy, however you may also have a teleology to achieve a 85 in philosophy which is interrelated
Kevin in highschool, who had no goals for class would be described as someone with no teleologies
Then there's the other teleology which is uncommon, the last one we think of .. it's the teleology to learn - 33DESIGN ARGUMENTThe universe seems to be designed with particular begging and end, therefore there must have a creator
The universe is so complex and so well ordered that it must have been intentionally designed towards that complexity
Because complex systems do not happen by accident, there must be a creator
An example, when you open a grandfather clock and look at its inner working, everything is place exactly the way it is by a creator for a purpose, it was not a natural phenomenon
ANOTHER ONE, if Dollimore were to smash a computer into dust, how likely would it be that if he were to put the dust into a bag and shake it, it would turn into a computer?
If you accept the secretion of the computer, think of the universe which is expentiancolly more complex than the computer could assemble by accident
We not only have a universe that has intricate design and complexity but is able to balance itself as well - 34INTELLIGENT DESIGNSubset of the design argument, it counters the theory of evolution
When studying science, the universe is intelligible, it can be study and grasped through intelligence
Typically when looking at some intellgeable such as an argument, you can assume it has an intelligence behind it that structure and created it
Letters are symbols that have sounds, a type of basic intelligible idea, you won't find a wild J in the forest, letters were created by an intelligence
Things that we can create a sense of must have had a creator created make them in a sensible way
This contradicts with the theory of evolution, as it states we have evolved through a process of natural of RANDOM MUTATIONS
The word random means having an equal chance of anything happening, if talking about this with intelligent design it means that there was no plan due to us being random mutations
Thus it shouldn’t be considered as random, because God had a plan for us
Irreducible complexity says that some of the evolved traits that are advantages now, however the early stages of these traits would not have been useful (god) - 35OBJECTIONSIf you increase the size of chances, as the universe on the cosmic web is so vast and old, the slight chance is balanced with the extreme denominator of possible chances
- 36OBJECTIONS TO THE OBJECTION ↺A Lot of mathematicians have calculated this and still claim the possible chances are still absurd (using bayesian possibility in which the add the probability of it happening as well as not)
Because there is any possible chance of anything happening, one universe must have a God - and that God must be all perfect, all knowing and everywhere thus the God must exist for all universes - 37PASCAL’S WAGER / TRIANGLEAn argument for why we should believe in the existence of God
It is more reasonable to believe in God then to not believe in God
He views it as a COST, BENEFIT analysis, (when the benefit outweighs the cost it is more desirable) - 38PASCAL’S WAGER / TRIANGLE
- 39OBJECTIONSIt's not a very idealistic way to look at religion, its more forced
- 40GOD + RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCEWe have so many people saying they have experienced God
Can direct encounters with God can prove its veridical
“A imdeitate sense of reality of the unseen” - 41IS IT VERIDICALVeridical, meaning based in reality or true
William James, when people claimed to have experiences with God it was quite common for the to say them to say that the experience was an immediate sense of reality of the unseen, an overpowering
They don’t touch or taste of hear God, they just knows he is there
C.S Lewis, the author of Narnia was an atheist in his youth, until he had a religious experience with God on the bus
St Paul had an experience with God, a guy who was even involved with the arrest and murder of murder of Christians
These experiences of the divine, are experiences that need to be considered - 42OBJECTIONSThese experiences can be explained by a number of things such as
Physical stress or hallucinations of extreme heat
Native people go on vision quests, in which they take drugs and have experience with ‘God’
Near death experiences also may cause some people to see messed up things
These states may cause an alter state of consciousness, however in terms of pure logic that claims that although you were in an altered state doesn't mean that what your seeing is false (it doesn't have to be normal to be real!)
Sigmund Freud said religious experiences were the result of a strong subconscious desire of wanting God to exist, thus we manufacture it
COUNTER TO FREUD: the fact that my mind desires God with such such such extreme desire, that it will event the experience of God that in itself is proof of God
These objections don’t DISPROVE these experiences nor do the experiences PROVE it, they both question it . . .
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