I promised you a seminar paper and today I deliver on that promise. Here's the magic.
Kant and Hegel were German Idealist philosophers, both writing around a similar time in the late 1700s to early 1800s. Their philosophies however were often at odds and Hegel in particular often wrote in reaction to the approach employed by Kant. Hegel also disagreed with the British Empiricists and their approach to natural law as, and this is a quote from the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, “Empiricism reaches conclusions that are limited by the particularities of its contexts and materials and thus cannot provide universally valid propositions regarding the concepts of various social and political institutions or of the relation of reflective consciousness to social and political experience.” I think what is meant by this is that Empiricism does not address certain social and political issues in its study of epistemology which Hegel believes you need to study.
Back to the differences between Kant and Hegel. Kant’s initial ideas, laid down in his 1781 book, The Critique of Pure Reason were a synthesis of the rationalism of Leibniz, which holds that all knowledge is derived from deductions based on existing ideas and Hume’s empiricism which holds that all knowledge is derived from observation alone. Kant therefore comes to the conclusion that we rely on the structure of our mind to form knowledge of the world, pure reason being something that is a priori. So the mind is not a blank canvas but instead it plays an active part in acquiring knowledge by processing the information it perceives. What we perceive then is more a result of our make-up as an observer than anything we do with the objects themselves. To this end he identifies objects such as time and space, which don’t exist externally and can’t be learned from experience so they help make up the basic concepts of the framework which enables us to make some sort of sense of the world.
The Critique of Judgment is the one I feel has the most relevance to our current work on Romanticism so I’m going to talk about that next. This particular work of Kant’s is most often remembered for its thoughts on aesthetics and with the previous lecture going into detail about first political and the aesthetic Prometheanism I felt it was appropriate to talk about it. Using the wonderful world of the Internet, I found an overview of the critique saying; Kant calls aesthetic judgments “judgments of taste” and remarks that, though they are based in an individual’s subjective feelings, they also claim universal validity. It goes on to say that our feelings about beauty differ from our feelings about pleasure and moral goodness in that they are disinterested. We seek to possess pleasurable objects, and we seek to promote moral goodness, but we simply appreciate beauty without feeling driven to find some use for it. Judgments of taste are universal because they are disinterested: our individual wants and needs do not come into play when appreciating beauty, so our aesthetic response applies universally. Aesthetic pleasure comes from the free play between the imagination and understanding when perceiving an object.
In Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, I was shocked to find scant mention of The Critique of Judgment but Russell has never particularly struck me as Romantic in any of the reading we have done so perhaps his bias should not surprise me. He does however go into some detail about Kant’s epistemology, stating in a round about way that whilst Kant believed ideas like arithmetic and geometry are synthetic in the Hume sense, they are also a priori. But how is this possible? Kant’s solution was that the outer world causes only sensation but our own mental apparatus orders this matter in space and time and supplies the concepts by which we understand experience. Essentially, we have some inbuilt thought processes which help us to make sense of the outer world and order our experiences. As a link to Hegel; Russell talks about Kant’s problem with ‘antinomies’ caused by applying space and time to things that are not experienced. Russell writes, “’The World has a beginning in time, and is also limited as regards space.’ The antithesis says: ‘The world has no beginning in time, and no limits in space; it is infinite as regards both time and space.’ The second antinomy proves every composite substance both is, and is not, made up of simple parts. The third antinomy maintains that there are two kinds of causality, one according to the laws of nature, the other that of freedom; the antithesis maintains that there is only causality according to the laws of nature. Finally, the fourth antinomy proves there is, and also, is not an absolutely necessary Being. This part of The Critique of Pure Reason greatly influenced Hegel who based his dialectic on antinomies.
We now move onto Hegel, viewed as more important than Kant by some, Russell included, because of the political implications of his writings. In Lesley Levene’s book, I Think, Therefore I Am: All the Philosophy You Need to Know she writes briefly on Hegellian Triads joking, “nothing to do with Chinese gangsters”; aside from the puns, she goes on to say there are the three parts of Hegel’s dialectical process. Using her example, first you have your thesis, being; then you come up with its antithesis, nothing; the resulting synthesis is becoming. Simply put, thesis and antithesis are reconciled into the concept ‘becoming’. Working off Kant’s ideas, Hegel reasoned that the world is not a collection of separate, contradictory units; despite appearances, these contradictory units are in fact part of the unified whole; the ‘Absolute’. Since these ideas can be refined and developed once combined, reality must be a rational idea with its fundamental structure mirrored in the structure of our thoughts as we try to unify contradictory ideas. I honestly really like this idea and so far agree with Hegel more than most philosophers, as the idea that we are a blank slate as in Locke’s Tabula Rasa never particularly appealed to me. The suggestion instead that we are using what are essentially a priori thought processes to come to terms with our experiences makes a lot more sense to me.
I made a passing reference to Hegel’s political importance and it was his posthumously published lecture notes on the philosophy of history which had such an impact. He saw history as a progression towards freedom; from the empires of the East, via the Greeks with their city-state, to the Protestant Reformation, when individuals realised they could achieve their own salvation. Imbued with this revolutionary spirit, Hegel had confidence in concepts such as progress and purpose. This had an enormous influence on German Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century and, with all this talk of historical progress, was central to the political theory of Karl Marx whilst Hegel’s dialectical reasoning, (minus all the spirit) became Marx’s dialectical materialism.
Thank you for listening.
Showing posts with label Seminar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seminar. Show all posts
Wednesday, 2 March 2011
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
Seminar notes - David Hume
The seminar today was given by Josh who had David Hume as his subject and more specifically, the Enquiry into Human Understanding. I found it interesting to discuss Hume as I was not entirely confident on the subject of his theories and ideas so here are the notes I made on the seminar.
It interested me that Hume defined two types of philosophy; one that appeals to the sense and one that endeavours to form an understanding to which Hume belongs. On the subject of understanding he believes that you get impressions which imprint on you and so you recollect them to form ideas. The mind can therefore go beyond reality, the image of a winged horse can be imagine because we have seen a horse and we have seen a bird so the mind makes the link. In the same way he reasons that we experience good and intelligence so we believe in a God but there is no way to actually prove it. In the same way we can imagine shades of colour that we have never seen because we have seen other colours; Hume himself acknowledges that this actually goes against his theories as it promotes innate ideas. In the seminar we talked at length about the existence of a greenish purple and whether because you know of green and you know of purple, you can imagine the colour in the middle.
We understand things in sequences so for example we understand injury in the order of things that happen; drop a hammer on your foot, it hurts, sequence. Hume also talks about sceptical doubt which is linked to relation of ideas; if a machine is in a desert for example, our mind tells us that someone must have been here before us to put the machine there but this is not necessarily true. There is absolutely no way we can prove this to be true as it is just a thought process, it is not based on facts. In this way he is not particularly a fan of Descartes obsession with breaking down knowledge as it suggests that all the ideas you have are innate, something Hume would not agree with. He also does not agree with the idea of matter of fact with the example of stone and metal, if you drop a stone we expect it to drop but we cannot assume it will do that next time. We have a concept of upward movement so the next time the stone could shoot upwards. Just because we have seen something happen once does not guarantee it will happen again. In the same way, Hume argues that when in billiards, the white hits the red ball, you cannot assume that this action caused the red ball to move. You cannot assume that A causes B in anything; this is central to his ideas on causality.
His induction theory relies on two types of thought, analytic such as all spiders are arachnids, and synthetic thought where you need to accept the axiom (to use the example from Josh, "men are pigs, I am a pig"). These are irrational thought processes that lead people to unfounded assumptions. This helps form part of his work on miracles and these are not the kind of miracles we might think of, (Chilean miners surviving being trapped underground for 70 days) but actually miracles as in those from scripture. He reasons that you do not know them from experience so why do you accept them as truth; he asks that you weigh up miracles, if someone has been raised from the dead, can you really believe this? If you can't which Hume would say you can't then you can also no longer be a Christian as Hume says you need a miracle to be a Christian. Because of the time in which Hume was writing he could not be totally explicit with these views and so he comments that people who experience miracles must be different as a miracle is unexplainable. In the seminar we talked for a short while about miracles saying that things can only seem miracles without prior scientific knowledge. Penicillin must have seemed like a miracle at first but now it is accepted as standard because we have the scientific proof of how it works and the scientific testing to show what happens. Miracles are defined as something that breaks natural laws so whilst the light bulb would at one point have been seen as something unnatural then now it is accepted as a natural law in itself.
Some final notes on the seminar from our discussion throw light on the issue with colour as colours are not synthetic as may have been suggested earlier. They are vivid impressions so it is practically impossible to imagine the greenish purple colour from before as colours are just fact. Hume also believed that the names we give to objects was secondary to the nature of the thing. He was not a political writer like Locke but believes in provisional truths. With the issue involving the stone and metal, this is not applicable in space for example as things only go up and down in space in relation to you. We also discussed that there was no morality in circumstance; normally stealing is seen as morally wrong but Hume questions why. If you are stealing to save your starving family and feed them then no one would find this reprehensible; this means that stealing must not be a moral thing. As a final point, if Hume were around today he would be anti extremist as he took the view that no one knew all the answers, not even him.
Until next time. You stay classy Internet.
It interested me that Hume defined two types of philosophy; one that appeals to the sense and one that endeavours to form an understanding to which Hume belongs. On the subject of understanding he believes that you get impressions which imprint on you and so you recollect them to form ideas. The mind can therefore go beyond reality, the image of a winged horse can be imagine because we have seen a horse and we have seen a bird so the mind makes the link. In the same way he reasons that we experience good and intelligence so we believe in a God but there is no way to actually prove it. In the same way we can imagine shades of colour that we have never seen because we have seen other colours; Hume himself acknowledges that this actually goes against his theories as it promotes innate ideas. In the seminar we talked at length about the existence of a greenish purple and whether because you know of green and you know of purple, you can imagine the colour in the middle.
We understand things in sequences so for example we understand injury in the order of things that happen; drop a hammer on your foot, it hurts, sequence. Hume also talks about sceptical doubt which is linked to relation of ideas; if a machine is in a desert for example, our mind tells us that someone must have been here before us to put the machine there but this is not necessarily true. There is absolutely no way we can prove this to be true as it is just a thought process, it is not based on facts. In this way he is not particularly a fan of Descartes obsession with breaking down knowledge as it suggests that all the ideas you have are innate, something Hume would not agree with. He also does not agree with the idea of matter of fact with the example of stone and metal, if you drop a stone we expect it to drop but we cannot assume it will do that next time. We have a concept of upward movement so the next time the stone could shoot upwards. Just because we have seen something happen once does not guarantee it will happen again. In the same way, Hume argues that when in billiards, the white hits the red ball, you cannot assume that this action caused the red ball to move. You cannot assume that A causes B in anything; this is central to his ideas on causality.
His induction theory relies on two types of thought, analytic such as all spiders are arachnids, and synthetic thought where you need to accept the axiom (to use the example from Josh, "men are pigs, I am a pig"). These are irrational thought processes that lead people to unfounded assumptions. This helps form part of his work on miracles and these are not the kind of miracles we might think of, (Chilean miners surviving being trapped underground for 70 days) but actually miracles as in those from scripture. He reasons that you do not know them from experience so why do you accept them as truth; he asks that you weigh up miracles, if someone has been raised from the dead, can you really believe this? If you can't which Hume would say you can't then you can also no longer be a Christian as Hume says you need a miracle to be a Christian. Because of the time in which Hume was writing he could not be totally explicit with these views and so he comments that people who experience miracles must be different as a miracle is unexplainable. In the seminar we talked for a short while about miracles saying that things can only seem miracles without prior scientific knowledge. Penicillin must have seemed like a miracle at first but now it is accepted as standard because we have the scientific proof of how it works and the scientific testing to show what happens. Miracles are defined as something that breaks natural laws so whilst the light bulb would at one point have been seen as something unnatural then now it is accepted as a natural law in itself.
Some final notes on the seminar from our discussion throw light on the issue with colour as colours are not synthetic as may have been suggested earlier. They are vivid impressions so it is practically impossible to imagine the greenish purple colour from before as colours are just fact. Hume also believed that the names we give to objects was secondary to the nature of the thing. He was not a political writer like Locke but believes in provisional truths. With the issue involving the stone and metal, this is not applicable in space for example as things only go up and down in space in relation to you. We also discussed that there was no morality in circumstance; normally stealing is seen as morally wrong but Hume questions why. If you are stealing to save your starving family and feed them then no one would find this reprehensible; this means that stealing must not be a moral thing. As a final point, if Hume were around today he would be anti extremist as he took the view that no one knew all the answers, not even him.
Until next time. You stay classy Internet.
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Seminar Notes - Early Journalism
In our latest seminar we had a paper from Ali on the subject of Joseph Addison, one of the early journalists of the late 17th and early 18th century. We talked about how Addison was in fact quite a modern man as the ideas he portrayed in 'The Royal Exchange' talked about how multicultural the place was and how this seemed a good thing. An alternative reading however came to light that changed almost all our opinions on the reading as it showed Addison as a more cynical and possibly even bitter writer who, though witty, was actually displeased with the way his world was. Little things that we had not picked up on, like certain phrases that suggested his point of view. He talks about how Volumes "get away with being dull" which essays do not, suggesting a contempt for the volume format and possibly an air that his form is more worthwhile as it is more focused. He speaks in a humorous way but makes many poignant statements that Ali picked up on such as, 'there is a kind of heaviness that hangs on mans head'.
Often in Addison's writings, the statements which appear to be compliments actually disguise the biggest insults; this was the style at the time which is best observed in the video that used to be on the Winchester Journalism homepage featuring the opening scene of The Draughtsman's Contract which contained the sort of language that Addison would have been familiar with. In his essays he talks about the sort of 'voluntary moles' who do not want to hear the news or have their opinions challenged, similar to the wilful ignorance of some people today. He perfectly describes the tabloids and their methods which can also still apply today.
"Should a writer single out particular persons, or point his rallery at any order of men, who by their profession ought to be exempt from it; should he slander the innocent, or satirize the miserable; or should he, even on the proper subjects of derision, give the full play to his mirth, without regard to decency and good-manners; he might be sure of pleasing a great part of his readers, but must be a very ill man, if by such a proceeding he could please himself".
This can also draw parallels to our media law as it seems to be talking about malice, apparently always the red kryptonite of journalists.
It is also interesting to note that Addison's philosophy was most similar to Locke and they both shared Tory sensibilities in the original sense of the Tories and the Whigs.
EDIT: The video of The Draughtsman's Contract no longer appears to be on the Winchester Journalism homepage so here is the video in all its glory.
Often in Addison's writings, the statements which appear to be compliments actually disguise the biggest insults; this was the style at the time which is best observed in the video that used to be on the Winchester Journalism homepage featuring the opening scene of The Draughtsman's Contract which contained the sort of language that Addison would have been familiar with. In his essays he talks about the sort of 'voluntary moles' who do not want to hear the news or have their opinions challenged, similar to the wilful ignorance of some people today. He perfectly describes the tabloids and their methods which can also still apply today.
"Should a writer single out particular persons, or point his rallery at any order of men, who by their profession ought to be exempt from it; should he slander the innocent, or satirize the miserable; or should he, even on the proper subjects of derision, give the full play to his mirth, without regard to decency and good-manners; he might be sure of pleasing a great part of his readers, but must be a very ill man, if by such a proceeding he could please himself".
This can also draw parallels to our media law as it seems to be talking about malice, apparently always the red kryptonite of journalists.
It is also interesting to note that Addison's philosophy was most similar to Locke and they both shared Tory sensibilities in the original sense of the Tories and the Whigs.
EDIT: The video of The Draughtsman's Contract no longer appears to be on the Winchester Journalism homepage so here is the video in all its glory.
Sunday, 24 October 2010
My Seminar Paper
Sorry it's a bit late and sorry it's a bit rubbish but I was asked by a few people to upload my seminar paper onto the blog and here it is...
Machiavelli is the figure that we have studied so far that interests me the most so for that reason he will be the focus of my seminar paper. This does not mean however that I will ignore the rest of the subjects we have read about. For example I will not be able to ignore the Italian Renaissance because of its relationship to Machiavelli and its huge importance to our study. I also will not be able to ignore the likes of Descartes and also The Scientific Revolution. The importance of the work of Descartes and the Scientists like Galileo et al cannot be overstated. They are the founders of our modern philosophy and science respectively and so whilst Machiavelli may be my main interest in this paper, I will not allow myself to become too distracted by him.
Machiavelli is thought by many to be the beginning of political science and philosophy. He lived in the time of the Renaissance and so his influence on that period is huge. His alliances with some leaders (Caesar Borgia), and his feuds with others (The Medici’s), are what made Machiavelli such an interesting character to study. At times in his life Machiavelli was a diplomat in Florence, one of the many separate states that made up Italy. He was representative of the Southern Renaissance Humanism that ran through this period of history but his theories and ideas laid down in his most famous work The Prince still seem incredibly modern. The Prince was written in the hope of securing the favour of The Medici family but its claims were actually quite provocative. The main point made is that you should secure power by any means, something that many would do but the stark realism in his suggestion of acquiring power by any means necessary would be quite shocking to some. On doing some more research into Machiavelli his professional relationship to Caesar Borgia is quite an interesting one considering that some of the correspondences he sent back to Florence from the court of Caesar Borgia still survive today in Machiavelli’s collected works. Caesar Borgia was an important figure in the time of Machiavelli and had influence across the Renaissance period due to his father being the Pope in the time, one of the most controversial Popes of the renaissance era. Machiavelli writes about Pope Alexander VI in The Prince as a successful politician but as the term Machiavellian came into usage as a pejorative term after this book, so it could possibly be a backhanded compliment.
In The Prince, the ‘how to’ guide for leaders, Machiavelli lays down some main rules: Firstly that you should support the weaker side in any conflict, this is so that when you prevail together with them, you will be the most powerful. Secondly, centralised regimes are difficult to conquer but easy to hold. Lastly that Armed prophets always succeed but unarmed ones fail. In The History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell notes that Machiavelli puts prophets like Moses in the armed category and someone like Savonarola of whom Machiavelli would know very much, into the latter category. Here is a quote illustrating that point from Machiavelli’s The Prince, “If Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus had been unarmed they could not have enforced their constitutions for long — as happened in our time to Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who was ruined with his new order of things immediately the multitude believed in him no longer, and he had no means of keeping steadfast those who believed or of making the unbelievers to believe”. The problem in this is that Machiavelli also asked you to be feared and not loved, because “it is better to be feared than loved, for love is fickle but fear is constant”. How do you become feared though without being hated? Well Machiavelli had an answer for that as well, as cunning and ‘Machiavellian’ in the negative sense as you can get. The answer to the question is that you must never take someone’s property. Kill people if you have to but with good reason but never take someone’s property “for men forget the death of their fathers more easily than the loss of their inheritance”. You can refer this back to Caesar Borgia who used a tactic just as clever to keep the favour of the public whilst keeping his power. “If you are going to take power by villainy – it is best to do it all at once, and get someone else to do it”, the example given in the lecture was that of Caesar Borgia’s governor who Borgia had to do all the things that would make Borgia himself unpopular. Once Borgia had power he killed the governor for the public to see and so had power and was feared but was more popular than ever.
I think I have talked about Machiavelli for long enough and of course if you wanted to know more there are extensive notes on him across the internet, in the library and reading The Prince itself would probably not hurt. Just before I move on however there is something interesting that I found whilst researching Machiavelli that The Prince has been read by some as a Political Satire. Admittedly I found this information on the internet and more specifically Wikipedia so there is no certainty that it is true on a free to edit website but it does have information to back it up.
The contribution of the early scientists like Galileo and Kepel and even earlier figures such as Copernicus, (who according to Russell is too early to be part of the ‘Rise of Science’) is huge on the development of the world, (without Galileo would we have Newton and then no laws of motion) but I did find it difficult to understand its relation to philosophy. In some ways it is the natural progression of philosophy, instead of just thinking about the world you are actually testing and evaluating these theories. Even with this in mind, it is still an important part of history and an interesting part of history to study. This becomes even more relevant when you consider that Galileo himself claimed he was merely following Pythagoras’s ideas that “nature [is] the book of God and it is written in the language of mathematics”. His claim is that he is uncovering God’s will through mathematics in this ‘new priesthood’ of Science.
I’m not sure how long seminar papers are supposed to go on for, in fact I’m not sure if this has really been a seminar paper, but I’m going to end this now with a few thoughts on Descartes. Descartes began as a contemporary of Galileo, believing that the universe could be explained by mathematics. His most repeated idea “I think therefore I am” lead to the idealist philosophy of someone like Hegel. Descartes is one of the most important philosophers as he took philosophy into the modern age, eventually leading on to thoughts of Berkeley and Hegel who believed that everything came from the ego. This came from Descartes total certainty of his own thoughts and his existence. Thanks for listening to my poorly constructed and confusing seminar paper.
Did you enjoy it? Didn't think so.
Machiavelli is the figure that we have studied so far that interests me the most so for that reason he will be the focus of my seminar paper. This does not mean however that I will ignore the rest of the subjects we have read about. For example I will not be able to ignore the Italian Renaissance because of its relationship to Machiavelli and its huge importance to our study. I also will not be able to ignore the likes of Descartes and also The Scientific Revolution. The importance of the work of Descartes and the Scientists like Galileo et al cannot be overstated. They are the founders of our modern philosophy and science respectively and so whilst Machiavelli may be my main interest in this paper, I will not allow myself to become too distracted by him.
Machiavelli is thought by many to be the beginning of political science and philosophy. He lived in the time of the Renaissance and so his influence on that period is huge. His alliances with some leaders (Caesar Borgia), and his feuds with others (The Medici’s), are what made Machiavelli such an interesting character to study. At times in his life Machiavelli was a diplomat in Florence, one of the many separate states that made up Italy. He was representative of the Southern Renaissance Humanism that ran through this period of history but his theories and ideas laid down in his most famous work The Prince still seem incredibly modern. The Prince was written in the hope of securing the favour of The Medici family but its claims were actually quite provocative. The main point made is that you should secure power by any means, something that many would do but the stark realism in his suggestion of acquiring power by any means necessary would be quite shocking to some. On doing some more research into Machiavelli his professional relationship to Caesar Borgia is quite an interesting one considering that some of the correspondences he sent back to Florence from the court of Caesar Borgia still survive today in Machiavelli’s collected works. Caesar Borgia was an important figure in the time of Machiavelli and had influence across the Renaissance period due to his father being the Pope in the time, one of the most controversial Popes of the renaissance era. Machiavelli writes about Pope Alexander VI in The Prince as a successful politician but as the term Machiavellian came into usage as a pejorative term after this book, so it could possibly be a backhanded compliment.
In The Prince, the ‘how to’ guide for leaders, Machiavelli lays down some main rules: Firstly that you should support the weaker side in any conflict, this is so that when you prevail together with them, you will be the most powerful. Secondly, centralised regimes are difficult to conquer but easy to hold. Lastly that Armed prophets always succeed but unarmed ones fail. In The History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell notes that Machiavelli puts prophets like Moses in the armed category and someone like Savonarola of whom Machiavelli would know very much, into the latter category. Here is a quote illustrating that point from Machiavelli’s The Prince, “If Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus had been unarmed they could not have enforced their constitutions for long — as happened in our time to Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who was ruined with his new order of things immediately the multitude believed in him no longer, and he had no means of keeping steadfast those who believed or of making the unbelievers to believe”. The problem in this is that Machiavelli also asked you to be feared and not loved, because “it is better to be feared than loved, for love is fickle but fear is constant”. How do you become feared though without being hated? Well Machiavelli had an answer for that as well, as cunning and ‘Machiavellian’ in the negative sense as you can get. The answer to the question is that you must never take someone’s property. Kill people if you have to but with good reason but never take someone’s property “for men forget the death of their fathers more easily than the loss of their inheritance”. You can refer this back to Caesar Borgia who used a tactic just as clever to keep the favour of the public whilst keeping his power. “If you are going to take power by villainy – it is best to do it all at once, and get someone else to do it”, the example given in the lecture was that of Caesar Borgia’s governor who Borgia had to do all the things that would make Borgia himself unpopular. Once Borgia had power he killed the governor for the public to see and so had power and was feared but was more popular than ever.
I think I have talked about Machiavelli for long enough and of course if you wanted to know more there are extensive notes on him across the internet, in the library and reading The Prince itself would probably not hurt. Just before I move on however there is something interesting that I found whilst researching Machiavelli that The Prince has been read by some as a Political Satire. Admittedly I found this information on the internet and more specifically Wikipedia so there is no certainty that it is true on a free to edit website but it does have information to back it up.
The contribution of the early scientists like Galileo and Kepel and even earlier figures such as Copernicus, (who according to Russell is too early to be part of the ‘Rise of Science’) is huge on the development of the world, (without Galileo would we have Newton and then no laws of motion) but I did find it difficult to understand its relation to philosophy. In some ways it is the natural progression of philosophy, instead of just thinking about the world you are actually testing and evaluating these theories. Even with this in mind, it is still an important part of history and an interesting part of history to study. This becomes even more relevant when you consider that Galileo himself claimed he was merely following Pythagoras’s ideas that “nature [is] the book of God and it is written in the language of mathematics”. His claim is that he is uncovering God’s will through mathematics in this ‘new priesthood’ of Science.
I’m not sure how long seminar papers are supposed to go on for, in fact I’m not sure if this has really been a seminar paper, but I’m going to end this now with a few thoughts on Descartes. Descartes began as a contemporary of Galileo, believing that the universe could be explained by mathematics. His most repeated idea “I think therefore I am” lead to the idealist philosophy of someone like Hegel. Descartes is one of the most important philosophers as he took philosophy into the modern age, eventually leading on to thoughts of Berkeley and Hegel who believed that everything came from the ego. This came from Descartes total certainty of his own thoughts and his existence. Thanks for listening to my poorly constructed and confusing seminar paper.
Did you enjoy it? Didn't think so.
Wednesday, 20 October 2010
Seminar Notes - John Locke
This week, with my Seminar paper out of the way with a small degree of success I looked forward to someone else giving it their best shot on the subject of John Locke.
Notes on John Locke
Locke was a man who was not keen on innate ideas. Experience was his reasoning for knowledge and it was through experience that Locke thought we gained our knowledge. How do we know what we know? Well Locke puts it down to experience. All ideas come from observation and sensation, without them, how would we reflect and therefore gain knowledge. Sensation is the source of all ideas and he uses the example of a child as a blank piece of paper to explain this. When we are children, we have not yet experienced enough to conceive certain things. A child kept in a black and white room for all his life will not be able to perceive of other colours like scarlet and green. This links to Berkeley whom I may blog about subsequently. Reflection is another concept that Locke explores and he suggests that the mind collects information and the soul considers it. In this way we gain knowledge. Some people never truly reflect, Locke argues, and these people then never form actual ideas.
Much of his writings in his Essay on Human Understanding (especially in our specific chapter of interest) focus on the soul. Locke believes the soul is as inseparable from thinking as it is from the body. He claims that the soul doesn't always think, you need to have organisation before it can begin to interpret things. His thoughts on dreams are sceptical as the idea that you can stop thinking worries him. What also worries him is the idea that you can be thinking in a dream, be woken up, and have no recollection of what you were thinking or 'dreaming' about. There is a lot of thought on whether you are the same person asleep and awake; you could have the exact same thoughts as your asleep self and never know it. It is like the soul and the mind are together but are almost unaware of each other. He reasons that the soul must have some ideas that are not from sensation but is sceptical of this as it would mean that a 'perfect being' would have given you these thoughts, (and we know how he feels about innate thoughts...), so he doesn't like it. He in fact sees dreams as a collection of thoughts from a waking mind. Nothing we dream can be something we haven't already experienced and reflected on. The soul is always reflecting and thinking but this cannot be observed by the body, it can't remember, but this worries him too. It doesn't make sense to him that the soul and body could be separate and it also suggests that some people who do not think whilst asleep are actually soulless. We discussed in the seminar that Locke's dependence on the soul as a definitive article is much like Descartes dependence on God to bridge the gap between his theory, (see previous post on Descartes God Shaped Hole). I do not think however that he is using it for the same reason that Descartes is; i.e. for convenience and to placate the Church. But I do think the use of the soul is slightly contrived in that Locke explains away innate thought using the idea of a perfect being (i.e. the soul) in much the same way Descartes uses God.
In a kind of round about summing up way. Locke then says that the more experience you get, the better thinker you become; a man can have no original thought without context and experience; the mind can receive intrinsic and extrinsic info; you need to walk before you can run in thinking, think little first before you tackle the real issues and interpretation can skew meaning. An example of Locke's principles came up during our seminar discussion. We could see a tree outside the window of the meeting room but how do we know it is a tree? We have been told it is a tree and experience has taught us that objects with a trunk and leaves are trees but how did this idea come about originally? Do we just assume, as Locke does, that the knowledge came from our experience or do we already have the image of a prefect tree in our minds (Plato's forms) and so we can know the image of a tree as long as it conforms to this perfect tree image. This is a little similar to the work we have been doing in Media Key Concepts as it links to Semiotics and Signs. The sign and the signifier concept with the example of a cat, we see a four legged creature with a tail and we know it is a cat. How do we know it is not a dog? Well because we have the referent of the cat already and so can perceive it to be a cat.
I'm going to finish now, having just briefly mentioned perception, which is Berkeley's area of expertise really, with the poem from Berkeley's chapter in the History of Western Philosophy as I think it actually sums up his theories better than I ever could:
Notes on John Locke
Locke was a man who was not keen on innate ideas. Experience was his reasoning for knowledge and it was through experience that Locke thought we gained our knowledge. How do we know what we know? Well Locke puts it down to experience. All ideas come from observation and sensation, without them, how would we reflect and therefore gain knowledge. Sensation is the source of all ideas and he uses the example of a child as a blank piece of paper to explain this. When we are children, we have not yet experienced enough to conceive certain things. A child kept in a black and white room for all his life will not be able to perceive of other colours like scarlet and green. This links to Berkeley whom I may blog about subsequently. Reflection is another concept that Locke explores and he suggests that the mind collects information and the soul considers it. In this way we gain knowledge. Some people never truly reflect, Locke argues, and these people then never form actual ideas.
Much of his writings in his Essay on Human Understanding (especially in our specific chapter of interest) focus on the soul. Locke believes the soul is as inseparable from thinking as it is from the body. He claims that the soul doesn't always think, you need to have organisation before it can begin to interpret things. His thoughts on dreams are sceptical as the idea that you can stop thinking worries him. What also worries him is the idea that you can be thinking in a dream, be woken up, and have no recollection of what you were thinking or 'dreaming' about. There is a lot of thought on whether you are the same person asleep and awake; you could have the exact same thoughts as your asleep self and never know it. It is like the soul and the mind are together but are almost unaware of each other. He reasons that the soul must have some ideas that are not from sensation but is sceptical of this as it would mean that a 'perfect being' would have given you these thoughts, (and we know how he feels about innate thoughts...), so he doesn't like it. He in fact sees dreams as a collection of thoughts from a waking mind. Nothing we dream can be something we haven't already experienced and reflected on. The soul is always reflecting and thinking but this cannot be observed by the body, it can't remember, but this worries him too. It doesn't make sense to him that the soul and body could be separate and it also suggests that some people who do not think whilst asleep are actually soulless. We discussed in the seminar that Locke's dependence on the soul as a definitive article is much like Descartes dependence on God to bridge the gap between his theory, (see previous post on Descartes God Shaped Hole). I do not think however that he is using it for the same reason that Descartes is; i.e. for convenience and to placate the Church. But I do think the use of the soul is slightly contrived in that Locke explains away innate thought using the idea of a perfect being (i.e. the soul) in much the same way Descartes uses God.
In a kind of round about summing up way. Locke then says that the more experience you get, the better thinker you become; a man can have no original thought without context and experience; the mind can receive intrinsic and extrinsic info; you need to walk before you can run in thinking, think little first before you tackle the real issues and interpretation can skew meaning. An example of Locke's principles came up during our seminar discussion. We could see a tree outside the window of the meeting room but how do we know it is a tree? We have been told it is a tree and experience has taught us that objects with a trunk and leaves are trees but how did this idea come about originally? Do we just assume, as Locke does, that the knowledge came from our experience or do we already have the image of a prefect tree in our minds (Plato's forms) and so we can know the image of a tree as long as it conforms to this perfect tree image. This is a little similar to the work we have been doing in Media Key Concepts as it links to Semiotics and Signs. The sign and the signifier concept with the example of a cat, we see a four legged creature with a tail and we know it is a cat. How do we know it is not a dog? Well because we have the referent of the cat already and so can perceive it to be a cat.
I'm going to finish now, having just briefly mentioned perception, which is Berkeley's area of expertise really, with the poem from Berkeley's chapter in the History of Western Philosophy as I think it actually sums up his theories better than I ever could:
There was a young man who said, 'God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no one about in the Quad.'
REPLY
Dear sir: Your astonishment's odd:
I am always about in the Quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by yours faithfully, God
Thanks for reading the ramblings of a confused student. Stay Classy Internet.
Wednesday, 6 October 2010
Seminar Paper Points
Although in the seminar paper we were discussing certain aspects that we have covered before in lectures, there was a point we discussed which I felt important enough to cover in this blog.
Descartes God Shaped Hole:
Before the seminar paper I had not previously thought much about why Descartes decides suddenly that everything he believes is true because God put it there. I originally believed it was because Descartes had a strong personal faith but through discussion in the seminar I came to rest on another possible conclusion.
Descartes was writing at the same time as Galileo and in fact was a contemporary of the Italian scientist. With this is mind it is possible that the use of God to bridge the gap between his thoughts would have been very useful, having seen Galileo condemned by the church and placed under house arrest for his theory of heliocentrism, (Ironically, Galileo did some great work 'Two New Sciences' whilst there).
It is quite cynical in a way to suggest this but by the principles of Descartes own philosophy, isn't it a least a bit possible that he could have been using God to disguise his true thoughts.
Thanks for reading.
More will be added about the seminar to this post soon.
Descartes God Shaped Hole:
Before the seminar paper I had not previously thought much about why Descartes decides suddenly that everything he believes is true because God put it there. I originally believed it was because Descartes had a strong personal faith but through discussion in the seminar I came to rest on another possible conclusion.
Descartes was writing at the same time as Galileo and in fact was a contemporary of the Italian scientist. With this is mind it is possible that the use of God to bridge the gap between his thoughts would have been very useful, having seen Galileo condemned by the church and placed under house arrest for his theory of heliocentrism, (Ironically, Galileo did some great work 'Two New Sciences' whilst there).
It is quite cynical in a way to suggest this but by the principles of Descartes own philosophy, isn't it a least a bit possible that he could have been using God to disguise his true thoughts.
Thanks for reading.
More will be added about the seminar to this post soon.
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