Philosophical inquiry into the modern world (Class 5)
Mind -body dualism and anti-teleological mechanist physics
Table of Contents
ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY ....................................................................................................... 2
THE NETHERLANDS IN THE 17TH CENTURY ..................................................................................... 2
DISCOURSE ON THE METHOD (GALILEO GALILEI)........................................................................... 3
PHILOSOPHICAL SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH ..................................................................................... 3
WHAT ARISTOTLE CALLS SUBSTANCE ............................................................................................ 3
CARTESIAN EPISTEMOLOGY ......................................................................................................... 3
Recab
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Today’s world and modernity
Ideas of reason
Habermas: the public use of reason
In the past:
o Reason is divine (which human not quite really know)
o The entire cosmos reflects reason (even Aristotle believed so)
Ancient Greek philosophy
Plato:
- Objects in this world are imperfect copies of Forms in the ideal realm
o The bottle we see is not a perfect bottle
- “Timaeus” was an important word that time
o Someone created this world
Aristotle:
- Objects in this world are a combination of matter and form
- Form is inherent in matter and of this world, no ideal realm is necessary
- Natural objects carry in themselves their own principle of change
- Their form is their end
o E.g. from baby to adults to elderly
Epistemology (theory of knowledge)
Rationalism
Empiricism
(Knowledge is gained primarily through
(Knowledge is gained
reason)
Plato
Aristotle
Rene
Hobbes
The Netherlands in the 17th century
- Poland: place for philosophy to think
- 1581: declaration of independence from Catholic Spain
- Freedom of conscience
o People can have different religions
o Slowly the church could not control everything, neither control the
explanation of the universe too
o People started learning how to use gun
Discourse on the Method (Galileo Galilei)
- Challenge the church with the Italian inquisition for espousing heliocentrism 日心說.
- Descartes: The Discourse on the Method
- Only published huge part of it
Philosophical search for the truth
- To find absolutely certain truth
- Everything can be doubted
o Try to prove the doubt -> involve thinking
o Something that can be certain
- Cogito, ergo -> I think, therefore I am -> 我思故我在
o We cannot doubt the existence of ourselves when we are thinking
What Aristotle calls substance
- I or God are a (mental) substance whose nature resides in thinking
- my thought (mental substance)
- Materials substance -> e.g. tables
- Dualism
Cartesian Epistemology
- Knowing something = 100% certainty, clearly, absolutely, distinctly
- “I think, therefore I am” = certain knowledge
“Perfection”
- I don’t know everything = imperfect
- Where does the idea of “perfection” come from?
o I am imperfect so it does not come from me
o The idea must have been placed in my head.
 God is the one who put the image of “God” in our head?
God and the Triangle
God (valid but not sound -> whether existence is property)
- If God exists, then he must be a perfect being.
- Perfection exists
- So God exists
o Challenges:
o Thinking that how does perfection exists?
o There must be a list of perfect otherwise we could not think about what is
perfect
Denial of God
This imaginary new world
 Our world is pre-supporting by material substance and natural laws.
 Chaotic matter with the natural laws arranges itself to form precisely the kind of
universe we live in
o God: established the rules and let them run without intervention
 No need for any the existence of “forms” or “qualities”
 No entity exists, soul and body are separated
Challenging the imaginary world
- If matter would continue to arrange itself until bodies were formed that resemble
those of human
- Humans will be purely material: unable to speak, because to be able to speak
requires reason
Mind-Body Problem
- Plato and Descartes: thinking substance and material substance are radically
difference…
- If the world we inhabit is one of change, and the world of the Forms is one that is
eternal, then how could our reason even mediate between them?
o Somehow humans can be overlapped between thinking and material
substance.
o E.g. raising arms -> we think, and then we move
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