Philosophy: Study of Existence, Knowledge, Values

Class: B.A.-III

 Prof. Suresh Chander

Subject: Philosophy



The original meaning of the word philosophy comes from the Greek roots Philo-

 meaning "love" and -Sophia, or "wisdom." When someone

studies philosophy they want to understand how and why people do certain

things and how to live a good life. In other words, they want to know

the meaning of life.



Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental questions about existence,

knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed

as problems to be studied or resolved.



Three main areas of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology and Axiology.



Characteristics of Philosophy:



It is a living force.



Open mindedness. ...



It is the oldest and original discipline of thoughts.



It is a search for truth and reality.



It is a systematic approach showing connections between different parts of beliefs

or thoughts systems.



It is a way of life.

Philosophy



Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature

of existence, being and the world. Arguably, metaphysics is the foundation of

philosophy.



Aristotle originally split his metaphysics into three main sections and these remain

the main branches of metaphysics:



Ontology (the study of being and existence, including the definition and

classification of entities, physical or mental, the nature of their properties, and

the nature of change)



Natural Theology (the study of God, including the nature of religion and

the world, existence of the divine, questions about the creation, and the various

other religious or spiritual issues)



Universal Science (the study of first principles of logic and reasoning, such as

the law of non-contradiction)



Metaphysics has been attacked, at different times in history, as

being futile and overly vague, particularly by David Hume, Immanuel Kant and A.

J. Ayer. It may be more useful to say that a metaphysical statement usually implies

an idea about the world or the universe, which may seem reasonable but is

ultimately not empirically verifiable, testable or provable.

Metaphysics



Epistemology

 is the study of the nature and scope of knowledge and justified

belief. It analyses the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions

such as truth, belief and justification. It also deals with the means of production

of knowledge, as well as scepticism about different knowledge claims. It is

essentially about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of

knowledge in particular areas of inquiry.



Epistemology asks questions like: "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge

acquired?", "What do people know?", "What are the necessary and sufficient

conditions of knowledge?", "What is its structure, and what are its limits?", "What

makes justified beliefs justified?", "How we are to understand the concept of

justification?", "Is



What is Knowledge?



Knowledge is the awareness and understanding of particular aspects of reality. It

is the clear, lucid information gained through the process of reason applied to

reality. The traditional approach is that knowledge requires three necessary and

sufficient conditions, so that knowledge can then be defined as "justified true

belief".

Epistemology



Materialism is a form of philosophical monism that holds that matter is the

fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and

consciousness, are results of material interactions.



Materialism

 holds that the only thing that can be truly proven to exist is matter.

Thus, according to Materialism, all things are composed of material and all

phenomena are the result of material interactions, with no accounting

of spirit or consciousness. As well as a general concept in metaphysics, it is more

specifically applied to the mind-body problem in Philosophy of Mind. In common

use, the word "materialist" refers to a person for whom collecting material

goods is an important priority, or who primarily pursues wealth and luxury or

otherwise displays conspicuous consumption. This can be more accurately

termed Economic Materialism.



Ancient Greek philosophers like Thales, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Democritus, and

then, later, Epicurus and Lucretius (99 - 55 B.C.) all prefigure later materialists, and

contributed towards the classic formulation of Materialism. Lucretius wrote 

"De

Rerum Natura"

 (

"The Nature of Things"

), the first masterpiece of materialist

literature, around 50 B.C.

Materialism



The various types of reductive and non-reductive Physicalism are discussed in that section, but there are

some other related concepts which can be mentioned briefly here:



Dialectical Materialism is the philosophical basis of Marxism and Communism. The term, which was never

actually used by Marx himself, refers to the notion of a synthesis of Georg Hegel’s theory of Dialectics (the

concept that any idea or event - the thesis - generates its opposite - the antithesis - eventually leading to

a reconciliation of opposites - a new, more advanced synthesis) and Materialism (in the respect that

Dialectics could also be applied to material matters like economics).

The application of the principle of Dialectical Materialism to history and sociology, the main context in

which Marx used it, is known as Historical Materialism (see below).



Historical Materialism (or the "materialist conception of history") is the Marxist methodological approach

to the study of society, economics and history which was first articulated by Karl Marx and Friedrich

Engels (1820 - 1895), and has been expanded and refined by many academic studies since. It is essentially

the application of the principle of Dialectical Materialism (see above) to history and sociology. According

to Marx, for human beings to survive, they need to produce and reproduce the material requirements of

life, and this production is carried out through a division of labour based on very definite production

relations between people. These relations form the economic base of society, and are themselves

determined by the mode of production which is in force (e.g. tribal society, ancient society, feudalism,

capitalism, socialism), and societies, and their cultural and institutional superstructures, naturally move

from stage to stage when the dominant class is displaced by a new emerging class in a social and

political upheaval.

Although Marx himself said that he was only proposing a guideline for historical research, by the 20th

Century the concept of Historical Materialism had become a keystone of modern Communist doctrine.

Types of Materialism



Dialectical Materialism is the philosophical basis of Marxism and Communism.

The term, which was never actually used by Marx himself, refers to the notion of a

synthesis of Georg Hegel’s theory of Dialectics  and Materialism. The application

of the principle of Dialectical Materialism to history and sociology, the main

context in which Marx used it, is known as Historical Materialism.



Historical Materialism is the Marxist methodological approach to the study

of society, economics and history which was first articulated by Karl

Marx and Friedrich Engels, and has been expanded and refined by many academic

studies since. It is essentially the application of the principle of Dialectical

Materialism to history and sociology. According to Marx, for human beings

to survive, they need to produce and reproduce the material requirements of life,

and this production is carried out through a division of labour based on very

definite production relations between people. These relations form the economic

base of society, and are themselves determined by the mode of production which

is in force, and societies, and their cultural and institutional superstructures,

naturally move from stage to stage when the dominant class is displaced by a new

emerging class in a social and political upheaval.

Although Marx himself said that he was only proposing a guideline for historical

research, by the 20th Century the concept of Historical Materialism had become a

keystone of modern Communist doctrine.

Types of Materialism



Mechanical materialism

 is the theory that the world consists entirely of hard,

massy material objects, which, though perhaps imperceptibly small, are otherwise

like such things as stones.



Materialism gets a bad press. There is an assumption that people who prioritise

“things” are inherently selfish.



Highly materialistic people believe that owning and buying things are necessary

means to achieve important life goals, such as happiness, success and desirability.



But other research shows that materialism is a natural part of being human and

that people develop materialistic tendencies as an adaptive response to cope with

situations.



Underlying desires



Materialism is not only found in particularly materialistic people. Even referring

people as customer, as opposed to using other generic terms such as citizens, can

temporarily activate a materialistic mindset.



Telling people to be less materialistic is like telling people that they shouldn’t enjoy

sex or eat fatty foods. People can learn to control their impulses, but this does not

remove the underlying desires.

Characteristics



Our research examined how materialism is perceived

across cultures and it revealed that there is more to

materialism than just self-gratification



Buying aspirational brands of goods and services is a

common approach in the gift-giving traditions in East Asia.



We also found that materialists in general are “meaning-

seekers” rather than status seekers. They believe in the

symbolic and signalling powers of products, brands and

price tags.

The caring materialists



So how do we get an increasingly materialistic society to care more about the

greater good and be less conspicuous and wasteful in its consumption? The

answer is to look to our culture and what sort of collectivistic values it tries to

teach us.



We found that a simple reminder of the community value that resonates with

who we are as a society can help reduce materialistic tendencies.



Social marketers and public policymakers should tap into society’s materialistic

tendencies to promote well-meaning social programmes, such as refugee

settlement, financial literacy programmes and food bank donations.



A perfect example is the choose love charity pop-up store in central London,

where people get to purchase real products in a beautifully designed retail space

akin to the Apple store, which are then distributed to refugees in Greece, Iraq and

Syria.



Materialism undoubtedly has an ugly face but it is here to stay. Rather than

focusing efforts to diminish it, individual consumers, businesses and policymakers

should focus on using it for promoting collective interests that benefit wider

society.

Reconciling material



1. Idealism Believes in the Universal Mind:



Besides the physical or material universe, there is also a spiritual universe which is

permeated by the Universal Mind of God. He is the Creator and others are the

created. Human mind is a part of the Universal Mind and is dependent of Him.

God or the Universal Mind is the source of all human values and the goal of all

human activities is the realization of this Universal Mind is one’s own self.



2. Idealism Regards Man as a Spiritual Being:



Idealism believes that man is a mere animal. He is essentially a spiritual being

whose chief aim is to develop his spiritual nature. It is this spirituality that

distinguishes man from other lower creatures.



3

. 

The World of Ideas and Values is more important than the world of Matter:



Idealism has full faith in eternal values which never change. They can neither be

created nor destroyed. According to Plato, the outstanding eternal values are

Truth, Goodness and Beauty.

Principles of Idealism



4

. 

Real knowledge is perceived in mind:



The knowledge which is gained through the activity of mind is more

important than the knowledge, acquired through senses.



5

. 

Stress on the Principle of Unity of Diversity:



Idealists stress on the Principle of Unity in Diversity. They believe that

implicit in all the diversities is an essential unity. Prof. H. N. Home

says, “An idealistic philosophy of education, then, is an account of

man finding himself as an integral part of universe mind.”



6

. 

Importance of Personality Development:



Idealists give very’ importance to the ‘Self of the individual. Hence

they insist upon the fullest development of the personality of an

individual. The development of personality means achievement of

perfection.

Cont.



Obviously, some of the types of idealism in the above classifications conflict with

one another.





The famous “Refutation of Idealism” prepared by the meticulous Cambridge

philosopher G. E. Moore and a similar refutation by Russell rest upon the

distinction between a subject’s act of perceiving and the perceptual object of this

act, which they both called a “sense datum.”



Idealists considered all of the foregoing criticisms to be external. Instead of

answering them in detail, some idealists preferred to challenge the critics to make

genuinely constructive efforts to build an adequate substitute for idealism—a

system to be reached by seriously working at the problems from within

philosophy.



Although it is now on the wane, at least in Western 

culture

, the great idealist

tradition has survived many other historical periods of turmoil and has often been

reborn in prolonged periods of settled and peaceful social conditions.

Criticism



1. Teaching is a highly complex occupation, which needs to adapt to a great deal of variety in

context, subject matter and learners. It does not lend itself to broad generalizations.



2. Our underlying beliefs and values, usually shared by other experts in a subject domain,

shape our approach to teaching. These underlying beliefs and values are often implicit and

are often not directly shared with our students, even though they are seen as essential

components of becoming an ‘expert’ in a particular subject domain.



3. Different theories of learning reflect different views on the nature of knowledge.



4. Every teacher starts from some epistemological or theoretical position, even if it is not

explicit, or even if the teacher is not fully aware of their beliefs.



5. With the possible exception of connectivism, there is some form of empirical evidence to

support each of the theories of learning outlined here.



6. It is argued that academic knowledge is different from other forms of knowledge, and is

even more relevant today in a digital age.



7. However, academic knowledge is not the only kind of knowledge that is important in

today’s society, and as teachers we have to be aware of other forms of knowledge and their

potential importance to our students, and make sure that we are providing the full range of

contents and skills needed for students in a digital age.

Nature of Knowledge



Teachers should know their subject matter thoroughly, but it is impossible for one

person to know any subject completely. Teachers are always traveling toward

complete knowledge but never arriving. Of course, every person follows the same

road, whether he notices or not. It's a good road to travel though, always fresh

and challenging. Every day we can stretch again to reach a noble goal.



We meet people with vast stores of knowledge: computer technicians, doctors,

financial planners, mortgage bankers, housing inspectors, auto mechanics. Some

speak in a jargon so dense we struggle to grasp a fraction of what they say.



Everyone is unaware of something—cheesecake recipes, quantum physics,

properties of tanzanite. When the photocopy process was first developed,

businesses were unaware of its useful value; the inventor leased machines to

offices to create awareness. With hindsight the value seems clear, yet we surely

remain blind to certain things that will someday be obvious.

Knowing the Subject



Novices begin with much to learn. Although they have

completed the education department's coursework, they are

still wet behind the ears because there are thousands of facts

and nuances that can be mastered only through experience.

Incomplete knowledge is the normal state of the beginner.



Beginners rarely check to see what students already know.

Novice teachers often follow a plan developed by someone

else—usually a textbook or a prescribed curriculum. Such

outlines imply that the information must be covered in the

order in which it's presented, so novices plunge forward. It may

take months to notice that many students already know the

material or that some lack the background information needed

for full comprehension.

Cont.



Acts of Knowing

 aims to provide readers with a means of

understanding the issues from the perspective of Critical Pedagogy;

an educational philosophy which believes that 'knowing' must be

freed from the constraints of the financial and managerialism logics

which dominate the contemporary university. Critical Pedagogy is

important for three key reasons: it conceptualises pedagogy as a

process of engagement between the teacher and taught; secondly

that that engagement is based on an underlying humanistic view

about human worth and value; and thirdly that the 'knowing' which

can come out of this engagement needs to be understood essentially

as exchange between people, rather than a financial exchange.



It distinguishes the “four standard basic sources”: perception,

memory, consciousness, and reason. A

basic source yields knowledge or justified belief without positive

dependence on another source.

Act of knowing



What is Knowledge?



Ways/Source of Acquiring Knowledge.



Sensory Perception.



Logical Reasoning.



Deductive Reasoning.



Categorical Syllogism.



Major Premise: it is a self-evident assumption, previously

established by metaphysical truth or dogmas. ...

Sources of knowledge



"Objects of knowledge"

 is a term of art and must be

treated as a unit. Forgive the oversimplification, but in

Plato's philosophy, there's a world of being and a world of

Becoming. ... The things in the world of being are objects

of knowledge; those in the world of Becoming

are objects of opinion or perception.



The object of knowledge involves the consciousness of

the distinction between the idea of an object and

the object that warrants. The idea, - a distinction without

which there would be no knowledge and which carries in

its train all the perplexing questions as.

Objects of knowledge



A coherence theory of truth states that the truth of any (true)

proposition consists in its coherence with some specified set of

propositions. The coherence theory differs from its principal

competitor, the correspondence theory of truth, in two essential

respects. The competing theories give conflicting accounts of the

relation that propositions bear to their truth conditions.



                       The coherence theory of truth has several versions.

These versions differ on two major issues. Different versions of the

theory give different accounts of the coherence relation. Different

varieties of the theory also give various accounts of the set (or sets)

of propositions with which true propositions cohere. According to

some early versions of the coherence theory, the coherence relation

is simply consistency. On this view, to say that a proposition coheres

with a specified set of propositions is to say that the proposition is

consistent with the set.

The Coherence Theory



 A more plausible version of the coherence theory states that the coherence relation is some

form of entailment. Entailment can be understood here as strict logical entailment, or

entailment in some looser sense. According to this version, a proposition coheres with a set

of propositions if and only if it is entailed by members of the set. Two principal lines of

argument have led philosophers to adopt a coherence theory of truth. Early advocates of

coherence theories were persuaded by reflection on metaphysical questions. More recently,

epistemological and semantic considerations have been the basis for coherence theories.



                      Early versions of the coherence theory were associated with idealism. Walker

(1989) attributes coherent theory to Spinoza, Kant, Fichte and Hegel. Certainly a coherence

theory was adopted by a number of British Idealists in the last years of the nineteenth

century and the first decades of the twentieth. This argument is subject to at least two

criticisms. For a start, it depends on a coherence theory of justification, and is vulnerable to

any objections to this theory. More importantly, a coherence theory of truth does not follow

from the premises.



                      Coherence theorists need to argue that propositions cannot correspond to

objective facts, not merely that they cannot be known to correspond. In order to do this, the

foregoing argument for coherent theory must be supplemented.

Cont.



 Any coherence theory of truth faces two principal challenges. The first

may be called the specification objection. The second is the

transcendence objection.



                     The transcendence objection charges that a coherence theory

of truth is unable to account for the fact that some propositions are true

which cohere with no set of beliefs. According to this objection, truth

transcends any set of beliefs.



                      Some versions of the coherence theory are immune to the

transcendence objection. A version which holds that truth is coherence

with the beliefs of an omniscient being is proof against the objection.



                        Coherence theorists can defend their position against the

transcendence objection by maintaining that the objection begs the

question. Those who present the objection assume, generally without

argument, that it is possible that some proposition be true even though it

does not cohere with any set of beliefs.

Criticism



The correspondence theory of truth is often associated with

metaphysical realism. Its traditional competitors, pragmatist, as well

as coherentist, verificationist, and other epistemic theories of truth,

are often associated with idealism, anti-realism, or relativism. In

recent years, these traditional competitors have been virtually

replaced by deflationary theories of truth and, to a lesser extent, by

the identity theory.



 The correspondence theory is often traced back to Aristotle’s well-

known definition of truth: “To say of what is that it is not, or of what

is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is

not that it is not, is true”—but virtually identical formulations can be

found in Plato. It is noteworthy that this definition does not highlight

the basic correspondence intuition.

Correspondence Theory



 The traditional centrepiece of any correspondence theory is a

definition of truth. Nowadays, a correspondence definition is

most likely intended as a “real definition”, i.e., as a definition of

the property, which does not commit its advocate to the claim

that the definition provides a synonym for the term “true”.



The main positive argument given by advocates of the

correspondence theory of truth is its obviousness. Descartes: “I

have never had any doubts about truth, because it seems a

notion so transcendentally clear that nobody can be ignorant

of it...the word ‘truth’, in the strict sense, denotes the

conformity of thought with its object”.

Cont.



They apply to truths from some domains of discourse, e.g., the

domain of science, they fail for others, e.g. the domain of morality:

there are no moral facts. The objection recognizes moral truths, but

rejects the idea that reality contains moral facts for moral truths to

correspond to.



Correspondence theories are too obvious. They are trivial, vacuous,

trading in mere platitudes. Locutions from the “corresponds to the

facts”-family are used regularly in everyday language as idiomatic

substitutes for “true”. Such common turns of phrase should not be

taken to indicate commitment to a correspondence 

theory

 in any

serious sense.



Correspondence theories are too obscure. Objections of this sort,

which are the most common, protest that the central notions of a

correspondence theory carry unacceptable commitments and/or

cannot be accounted for in any respectable manner.

Objections



Pragmatic theories of truth are usually associated either with C.S. Peirce’s

proposal that true beliefs will be accepted “at the end of inquiry” or with William

James’ proposal that truth be defined in terms of utility. More broadly, however,

pragmatic theories of truth focus on the connection between truth and epistemic

practices, notably practices of inquiry and assertion.



Pragmatic theories of truth have the effect of shifting attention away from what

makes a statement true and toward what people mean or do in describing a

statement as true. While sharing many of the impulses behind deflationary

theories of truth, pragmatic theories also tend to view truth as more than just a

useful tool for making generalizations.



The history of the pragmatic theory of truth is tied to the history of classical

American pragmatism. According to the standard account, C.S. Peirce gets credit

for first proposing a pragmatic theory of truth, William James is responsible for

popularizing the pragmatic theory, and John Dewey subsequently reframed truth

in terms of warranted assertibility.

Pragmatic Theory



Pragmatic theories of truth have evolved to where a variety of

different approaches are described as “pragmatic”. These

theories often disagree significantly with each other, making it

difficult either to define pragmatic theories of truth in a simple

and straightforward manner or to specify the necessary

conditions that a pragmatic theory of truth must meet.



One way to differentiate pragmatic accounts from other

theories of truth is to distinguish the several questions that

have historically guided discussions of truth. While some have

used decision trees to categorize different theories of truth, or

have proposed family trees showing relations of influence and

affinity, another approach is to distinguish separate “projects”

that examine different dimensions of the concept of truth.

Features



Pragmatic theories of truth have faced several objections since first being

proposed. Some of these objections can be rather narrow, challenging a

specific pragmatic account but not pragmatic theories in general. This

section will look at more general objections: either objections that are

especially common and persistent, or objections that pose a challenge to

the basic assumptions underlying pragmatic theories more broadly.



Some objections are as old as the pragmatic theory of truth itself. The

following objections were raised in response to James’ account in

particular. While James offered his own responses to many of these

criticisms, versions of these objections often apply to other and more

recent pragmatic theories of truth.



One classic and influential line of criticism is that, if the pragmatic theory

of truth equates truth with utility, this definition is refuted by the

existence of useful but false beliefs, on the one hand, and by the

existence of true but useless beliefs on the other.

Critical Assessments



 A second and related criticism builds on the first. Perhaps

utility, long-term durability, and assertibility etc. should be

viewed not as definitions but rather as criteria of truth, as

yardsticks for distinguishing true beliefs from false ones and



 A third objection builds on the second. Putting aside the

question of whether pragmatic theories of truth adequately

address the metaphysical project (or address it at all), there is

also a problem with the criteria of truth they propose for

addressing the justification project.



 One long-standing and still ongoing objection is that pragmatic

theories of truth are anti-realist and, as such, violate basic

intuitions about the nature and meaning of truth: call this “the

fundamental objection”.

Cont.



Rationalism is a fairly straight-forward way of thinking that

promotes the belief that knowledge can be gained outside of

experience. In fact, rationalism essentially functions with the

notion that experience isn't necessary to acquire knowledge.

Rationalism Definition



Most of us have heard the expression, ''Be rational'', especially

when we're reacting emotionally. This is like when our

motivations are inspired by things that don't necessarily make

a lot of sense to other people, or it's clear that our perspective

is skewed because of our feelings. Like our feelings, our senses

can also project a skewed perception of reality. Take optical

illusions for example. Our sense of truth isn't actually real, so

we're not being rational.

Rationalism



In rationalism, knowledge is acquired in three ways:



Deduction

, which means applying principles to draw conclusions. For

example, finding the area of a rectangle. For any rectangle, the same

principle is applied to find the area.



Innate Ideas

, which are the ideas that we're born with, and in some

ways, shape our personality.



Reason

, which means using logic to arrive at a conclusion.



While deduction relies on principles or formulas to find answers,

reason offers different ways to find the truth or draw conclusions. For

example, let's take the biblical story of the Judgment of Solomon.

Solomon had to resolve a dispute between two women who claimed

to be the mother of a baby. Since this was long before DNA testing,

Solomon ordered that the baby be cut in half.

Acquiring Knowledge



The term 

empiricism

 comes from the Greek word for

experience: 

empeiria

. Empiricism contrasts with rationalism,

according to which knowledge is said to also be largely developed

through exploration of concepts, deduction, intuition and revelation



Empiricism regarding concepts and empiricism regarding knowledge

do not strictly imply each other. Many empiricists have admitted that

there are a priory propositions but have denied that there are a priori

concepts. It is rare, however, to find a philosopher who accepts a

priori concepts but denies a priori propositions.



Stressing experience, empiricism often opposes the claims of

authority, intuition, imaginative conjecture, and abstract, theoretical,

or systematic reasoning as sources of reliable belief.

Cont.



In the 

Critique of Pure Reason

 Kant argues that space and time

are merely formal features of how we perceive objects, not

things in themselves that exist independently of us, or

properties or relations among them. Objects in space and time

are said to be “appearances”, and he argues that we know

nothing of substance about the things in themselves of which

they are appearances. Kant calls this doctrine (or set of

doctrines) “transcendental idealism”, and ever since the

publication of the first edition of the 

Critique of Pure Reason

 in

1781, Kant’s readers have wondered, and debated, what

exactly transcendental idealism is, and have developed quite

different interpretations.

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

In the 

Critique of Pure Reason

, Kant argues for a surprising set of

claims about space, time, and objects:



Space and time are merely the forms of our sensible intuition of

objects. They are not beings that exist independently of our intuition

(things in themselves), nor are they properties of, nor relations

among, such beings.



The objects we intuit in space and time are appearances, not objects

that exist independently of our intuition. This is also true of the

mental states we intuit in introspection; in “inner sense”

(introspective awareness of my inner states) I intuit only how I appear

to myself, not how I am “in myself”.



We can only cognize objects that we can, in principle, intuit.

Consequently, we can only cognize objects in space and time,

appearances. We cannot cognize things in themselves.

Appearances and Things



I understand by the 

transcendental idealism

 of all appearances the doctrine that

they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not as things in

themselves, and accordingly that space and time am only sensible forms of our

intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as

things in themselves.



(a)

The nature of appearances.

 Are they identical to representations, i.e., states of

our minds? If so, does Kant follow Berkeley in equating bodies with ideas? If not,

what are they, and what relation do they have to our representations of them?



(b)

The nature of things in themselves

. What can we say positively about them?

What does it mean that they are not in space and time? How is this claim

compatible with the doctrine that we cannot know anything about them?



(c)

The relation of things in themselves to appearances

. Is the appearance/thing in

itself distinction an ontological one between two different kinds of objects? If not,

is it a distinction between two aspects of one and the same kind of object? Or

perhaps an adverbial distinction between two different ways of considering the

same objects?



There are at least two problems with this analysis of universal

experience:



(i)

Unperceived objects

. Kant holds that there are spatiotemporal

objects we cannot perceive. This by itself would pose a problem for

the proposed definition of universal experience. But Kant further

claims that we can 

experience

 unperceivable objects through

perceiving their effects and inferring their existence from causal laws.



(ii)

Secondary qualities

. As we discussed above in the section on Kant’s

empirical realism, Kant distinguishes between the properties

spatiotemporal objects actually have “in themselves” and those they

merely appear to have in sense perception. He has a basically

Lockean distinction between primary and secondary qualities at the

empirical level.

Objects



Since the Feder-Garve objection to Kant has been around almost as

long as the 

Critique

 itself, many objections to broadly phenomena list

readings of Kant’s idealism have accumulated. Perhaps the most

comprehensive list of such objections is given by Allais. They include:



“

Kant’s claim that his notion of appearance implies that there is

something that appears”. I have already explained how the qualified

phenomena list can accommodate this point.



“

Empirically real objects and the space they inhabit are public”. Allais

seems to assume that, on a phenomena list analysis of objects in

space, objects are “private”; meaning the objects each subject

perceives are constituted by sense data of that subject, which, by

definition, cannot be perceived by other subjects. But the qualified

phenomena list conception of universal experience sketched above is

explicitly “non-private” in this sense; it is based on the perceptions

of 

all

 subjects.

Criticisms of Phenomena



“Kant’s distinction between primary and secondary

qualities”. However, the qualified phenomena list can

claim that while our perceptions represent objects as

having secondary qualities, the best scientific theory

justified by the totality of those perceptions does not

represent them as having those properties, because there

is a better theory available: objects do not possess such

properties but do possess powers to cause us to perceive

them as having such properties. There is, in principle,

barrier to a qualified phenomenon list allowing the

distinction between primary and secondary qualities.

Cont.



This article has traced the meaning of transcendental idealism,

sometimes referred to as “critical” or “formal” idealism,

through the text of the 

Critique of Pure Reason

 and various

interpretive controversies. Historically, the main question

dividing different interpretations is whether Kant is a

phenomena list about object in space and time and, if so, in

what sense. The phenomena list interpretation of Kant,

dominant among Kant’s immediate predecessors and later

German idealists, was challenged in twentieth century

Anglophone scholarship by, among others, Graham Bird, Gerold

Prauss, and Henry Allison.

Conclusion



The core question of metaphysics is the question of being. As Aristotle and John

Duns Scotus understood the proper object of this discipline, metaphysics studies

“being 

qua 

being.” “Qua” is the Latin for “in the capacity of,” “as,” and therefore

implies metaphysics studies “being” insofar as it is 

being

, and not insofar as it is a

particular being, accident, mode, or attribute. “Being” could be said to be the

“attribute” par excellence, the 

condition sine qua

non. 

 Hegel points out many

centuries later, “being” is not the opposite of “becoming” but the opposite

of 

nothing. 



 Parmenides was arguing against Heraclitus. While Heraclitus emphasizes the

fundamental role of 

change

 and viewed it as the essential condition for all that

exists, Parmenides argued that change was in principle 

impossible.

 Parmenides

relegated change to the illusory and unreal.



A good many interpreters have taken the poem's first major phase as an

argument for strict monism, or the paradoxical view that there exists exactly one

thing, and for this lone entity's being totally unchanging and undifferentiated

Being & Becoming



Parmenides goes on to consider in the light of this principle the

consequences of saying that anything is. In the first place, it cannot

have come into being. If it had, it must have arisen from nothing or

from something. It cannot have arisen from nothing; for there is no

nothing. It cannot have arisen from something; for here is nothing

else than what is. Nor can anything else besides itself come into

being; for there can be no empty space in which it could do so.



Ordinarily we do not think of “change” as the transition of

“something” from nothing into being, which in Parmenides’ account

is impossible. And here we can see what Parmenides has in mind. So,

how does Parmenides conceive of “being”?



Pure 

Being

 makes the beginning: because it is on one hand pure

thought, and on the other immediacy itself, simple and

indeterminate; and the first beginning cannot be mediated by

anything, or be further determined.

Cont.



In 

conclusion

, a superficial examination of Parmenides and Heraclitus would

reveal what at first seems like two totally opposed notions. Deeper analysis, in

contrast, demonstrates that in fact these notions entail and deeply interpenetrate

each other. Parmenides also says something that finds echoes in Hegel: there is

an 

identity 

between 

thought

, on the one hand, and 

being

, on the other. “We

often hear it maintained that thought is opposed to being. Now in the face of

such a statement, our first question ought to be, what is meant by being. If we

understand being as it is defined by reflection, all that we can say of it is that it is

what is wholly identical and affirmative. And if we then look at thought, it cannot

escape us that thought also is at least what is absolutely identical with itself. Both,

therefore, being as well as thought, have the same attribute” (Hegel’s Logic, p.

132). Although Hegel may not have the 

last word 

on the questions that have been

examined and discussed in this paper, he does, to my mind, represent a

more 

satisfactory 

solution to the problem of “Being, Nothing, and Becoming.”

Parmenides’ way of dealing with the Nothing was merely to negate its

very 

possibility

. Through a Hegelian examination of these concepts, we find that

the concept of Nothing is the missing link between stances or ideas that would

otherwise remain incommensurate and an infinity of worlds apart..

Conclusion



The concept of substance figures centrally in a positive way for the

rationalist philosophers, in a way that it does not for the empiricists. The

rationalists’ substances are not, however, the individual objects of

everyday life.



Descartes believed in only two kinds of substance: material body, which

is defined by extension, and mental substance, which is defined by

thought, which, in this context, is more or less equivalent to

consciousness. Descartes was not an atomist. He did not believe in a void

between bodies, so there is a sense in which there is just one material

substance, numerically as well as specifically.



Descartes, like the atomists, believed that matter operates in an entirely

mechanical way. There is, therefore, no causal role for substantial form to

play and, hence, no need for such forms. His two substances are each

defined in terms of one property; hence there is no problem about the

relation between substance and the properties in terms of which it is

defined.

Substance



For Spinoza, there is only one substance, the existence of which is

demonstrated by a version of the ontological argument that is

thought of as being both God and Nature. It is an unending

controversy whether Spinoza was a pantheist, or an atheist who

called nature ‘God’ because it was the one true substance and existed

necessarily. Everything else is a mode of this one substance. The view

is analogous to a claim that the universe is space-time as a whole,

with matter as distortions in it. If this were true, material objects

would be modes of space-time. The analogy would be more exact if

one also thought of the laws of nature as equivalent to the divine

intellect immanent in nature. Spinoza’s view represents the extreme

end of stressing the status of substance as the fundamental existent

conceived of as wholly necessary and self-subsistent: that is, criteria

(i) and (ii) in the original list come to take on maximum weight.

Nothing but the universe as a whole meets this criterion fully.

Cont.



Leibniz was not satisfied by this conception of divine substance, at least in part

because it confines God to what actually exists. For Leibniz, God contains within

himself all possibilities, not just the actual world: this latter is just that maximal

set of possibilities that he has best reason to actualise. Leibniz acknowledges

created substances, though they are very intimately dependent on God. In

the 

Discourse on Metaphysics

, he says:



It is clear that created substances depend on God, who conserves them and

indeed who produces them continuously by a kind of emanation, just as we

produce our thoughts.



The analogy with thought hardly emphasises the independence of substance!

Nevertheless, created substances do constitute the created world, and do, in that

sense, meet criterion (i) for being substance. They are also the subjects of

predication, so they meet criterion (iii). Leibniz’s substances, however, are the

bearers of change (criterion (iv)) in a very different way from Aristotle’s individual

substances.



Furthermore, there is a sense in which all monads are exactly similar to each

other, for they all reflect the whole world. They each do so, however, from a

different perspective.

Cont.



So each monad reflects the whole system, but with its own perspective

emphasised. If a monad is at place pat time t, it will contain all the features of the

universe at all times, but with those relating to its own time and place most

vividly, and others fade out roughly in accordance with temporal and spatial

distance. Because there is a continuum of perspectives on reality, there are an

infinite number of these substances. Nevertheless, there is internal change in the

monads, because the respect in which its content is vivid varies with time and

with action. Indeed, the passage of time just is the change in which of the

monad’s contents are most vivid.



It is not possible to investigate here Leibniz’s reasons for these apparently very

strange views. Our present concern is with whether, and in what sense, Leibniz’s

substances are subjects of change. One can say that, in so far as, at all times, they

reflect the whole of reality, and then they do not change. But in so far as they

reflect some parts of that reality more vividly than others, depending on their

position in space and time, they can be said to change.

Cont.



All non-relativist philosophical systems acknowledge substances in the most

generic sense of that term, for that is only to acknowledge that there are some

fundamental entities in their system. Most, if not all, philosophers acknowledge

that we cannot function without using substance concepts in the narrower sense,

for the notion of an enduring particular or individual substance is essential to our

making sense of the world as we live in it. But three things at least remain

controversial. First, it is disputed what kinds of concepts need to be deployed to

characterise these enduring things: are they the rich variety of traditional or

‘Aristotelian’ substance concepts, or will various ways of identifying things simply

as physical bodies with certain characteristics do the job? Second, it is still unclear

how far our substance concepts purport to reflect a component in reality (real or

imagined) over and above the bundle of properties that constitute its intelligible

aspects. Third, the clarity of the connection between 

what a thing is

 and 

what it

does

 leaves unresolved the degree of interdependence between substance

concepts and notions of purpose and final causation.

Conclusion



David Hume (1711-1776) is one of the British Empiricists of the Early

Modern period, along with John Locke and George Berkeley. Although

the three advocate similar empirical standards for knowledge, that is,

that there are no innate ideas and that all knowledge comes from

experience, Hume is known for applying this standard rigorously to

causation and necessity. Instead of taking the notion of causation for

granted, Hume challenges us to consider what experience allows us

to know about cause and effect.



Hume’s most important contributions to the philosophy of causation

are found in 

A Treatise of Human Nature,

 and 

An Enquiry concerning

Human Understanding

, the latter generally viewed as a partial

recasting of the former. Both works start with Hume’s central

empirical axiom known as the 

Copy Principle

.

Causation



At first glance, the Copy Principle may seem too rigid. To use Hume’s

example, we can have an idea of a golden mountain without ever

having seen one. But to proffer such examples as counter to the Copy

Principle is to ignore the activities of the mind



In the 

Treatise

, Hume identifies two ways that the mind associates

ideas, via natural relations and via philosophical relations. Natural

relations have a connecting principle such that the imagination

naturally leads us from one idea to another.



The relation of cause and effect is pivotal in reasoning, which Hume

defines as the discovery of relations between objects of comparison.

But note that when Hume says “objects”, at least in the context of

reasoning, he is referring to the objects of the mind, that is, ideas and

impressions, since Hume adheres to the Early Modern “way of ideas”,

the belief that sensation is a mental event and therefore all objects of

perception are mental.



For Hume, the necessary connection invoked by causation

is nothing more than this certainty. Hume’s Copy Principle

demands that an idea must have come from an

impression, but we have no impression of efficacy in the

event itself. Instead, the impression of efficacy is one

produced 

in the mind

.



Beyond Hume’s own usage, there is a second worry

lingering. Attempting to establish primacy between the

definitions implies that they are somehow the bottom

line for Hume on causation. But Hume is at pains to point

out that the definitions are inadequate.



The second of Hume’s influential causal arguments is known as

the problem of induction, a sceptical argument that utilizes

Hume’s insights about experience limiting our causal

knowledge to constant conjunction. Though Hume gives a

quick version of the Problem in the middle of his discussion of

causation in the 

Treatise

, it is laid out most clearly in Section IV

of the 

Enquiry

.



Whether the Problem of induction is in fact separable from

Hume’s account of necessary connection, he himself connects

the two by arguing that “…the knowledge of this relation is not,

in any instance, attained by reasoning’s 

a priori

; but arises

entirely from experience, when we find that any particular

objects are constantly conjoined with each other.”

Problem of Induction



Because of the variant opinions of how we should view the

relationship between the two definitions proffered by Hume, we find

two divergent types of reduction of Humean causation. First, there

are reductionists that insist Hume reduces causation to nothing

beyond constant conjunction, that is, the reduction is to a simple

naïve regularity theory of causation, and therefore the mental

projection of D2 plays no part.



Therefore, the various forms of causal reductionism can constitute

reasonable interpretations of Hume. By putting the two definitions at

centre state, Hume can plausibly be read as emphasizing that our

only notion of causation is constant conjunction with certitude that it

will continue. Nevertheless, reductionism is not the only way to

interpret Hume’s theory of causation.

Cont.



Against the positions of causal reductionism and causal scepticism is the New

Hume tradition. It started with Norman Kemp Smith’s 

The Philosophy of David

Hume

, and defends the view that Hume is a causal realist, a position that entails

the denial of both causal reductionism and causal scepticism by maintaining that

the truth value of causal statements is not reducible to non-causal states of affairs

and that they are in principle, knowable



The first distinction is between ontological and epistemic causal claims. Straw son

points out that we can distinguish:



(O)  Causation as it is in the objects, and



(E)  Causation as far as we know about it in the objects.



He maintains, “…Hume’s Regularity theory of causation is only a theory about (E),

not about (O).” Whether or not we agree that Hume limits his theory to the latter,

the distinction itself is not difficult to grasp. It simply separates what we can know

from what is the case. The realist interpretation then applies this to Hume’s

account of necessary connection, holding that it is not Hume’s telling us what

causation is, but only what we can know of it.

Causal Realism



Existentialism is a catch-all term for those philosophers who consider the

nature of the human condition as a key philosophical problem and who

share the view that this problem is best addressed through ontology. This

very broad definition will be clarified by discussing seven key themes that

existentialist thinkers address. Those philosophers considered

existentialists are mostly from the continent of Europe, and date from

the 19

th

 and 20

th

 centuries. Outside philosophy, the existentialist

movement is probably the most well-known philosophical movement,

and at least two of its members are among the most famous

philosophical personalities and widely read philosophical authors.



Although a highly diverse tradition of thought, seven themes can be

identified that provide some sense of overall unity. Here, these themes

will be briefly introduced; they can then provide us with an intellectual

framework within which to discuss exemplary figures within the history

of existentialism.

Existentialism



Philosophy should not be thought of primarily either as an attempt to investigate

and understand the self or the world, or as a special occupation that concerns

only a few. Rather, philosophy must be thought of as fully integrated within life



First, the ancient Greeks, and particularly the figure of Socrates but also the Stoics

and Epicureans. Socrates was not only non-professional, but in his pursuit of the

good life he tended to eschew the formation of a ‘system’ or ‘theory’, and his

teachings took place often in public spaces.



The second influence on thinking of philosophy as a way of life was German

idealism after Kant. Partly as a response to the 18

th

 century Enlightenment, and

under the influence of the Neoplatonist’s, Schelling and Hegel both thought of

philosophy as an activity that is an integral part of the history of human beings,

rather than outside of life and the world, looking on. Later in the 19

th

 century,

Marx famously criticised previous philosophy by saying that the point of

philosophy is not to know things – even to know things about activity – but to

change them

Way of Life



A key idea here is that human existence is in some way ‘on its own’; anxiety (or

anguish) is the recognition of this fact. Anxiety here has two important

implications. First, most generally, many existentialists tended to stress the

significance of emotions or feelings, in so far as they were presumed to have a

less culturally or intellectually mediated relation to one’s individual and separate

existence. Second, anxiety also stands for a form of existence that is recognition

of being on its own. What is meant by ‘being on its own’ varies among

philosophers.



Related to anxiety is the concept of authenticity, which is let us, saying the

existentialist spin on the Greek notion of ‘the good life’? As we shall see, the

authentic being would be able to recognise and affirm the nature of existence.



For many existentialists, the conditions of the modern world make authenticity

especially difficult. For example, many existentialists would join other

philosophers (such as the Frankfurt School) in condemning an instrumentalist

conception of reason and value. The utilitarianism of Mill measured moral value

and justice also in terms of the consequences of actions.

Anxiety and Authenticity



The next key theme is freedom. Freedom can usefully be linked to the

concept of anguish, because my freedom is in part defined by the

isolation of my decisions from any determination by a deity, or by

previously existent values or knowledge. Many existentialists

identified the 19

th

 and 20

th

 centuries as experiencing a crisis of

values.



The Influence of Existentialism



In the field of visual arts existentialism exercised an enormous

influence, most obviously on the movement

of 

Expressionism.

 Expressionism began in Germany at the beginning

of the 20

th

 century. With its emphasis on subjective experience, Angst

and intense emotionality, German expressionism sought to go

beyond the naiveté of realist representation and to deal with the

anguish of the modern man.

Freedom



As a whole, existentialism has had relatively little direct influence

within philosophy. In Germany, existentialism was criticised for being

obscure, abstract or even mystical in nature. The criticism was

echoed by many in the analytic tradition. Heidegger and the

existentialist were also taken to task for paying insufficient attention

to social and political structures or values, with dangerous results.



However, there are some less direct influences that remain

important. The philosophical importance that the existentialists

placed upon emotion has been influential, legitimising a whole

domain of philosophical research even by philosophers who have no

interest in existentialism. Similarly, existentialism was a philosophy

that insisted philosophy could and should deal very directly with ‘real

world’ topics such as sex, death or crime, topics that had most

frequently been approached abstractly within the philosophical

tradition.

The Influence of Existentialism

Thanks