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What are the limits of human knowledge? What is the difference between knowledge and opinion? What is the difference between a subjective and an objective viewpoint? How is mind related to the physical body? What is it to do the right thing and why should we even try? Are we free? Can a machine be conscious? These are some of the key questions that have puzzled philosophers and scientists for centuries, and in this course we will try to gain an introductory overview not just of how contemporary thinking deals with such questions, but also of how much the way we think today owes to the great thinkers of the past. Starting in the ancient world with Socrates’ inquiries about the nature of goodness and the difference between appearance and reality, we will see how the ancient worldview gradually developed into the modern scientific worldview of the seventeenth century. This shift in thinking is often seen as a great leap forward that resolved many of the problems inherent in ancient thinking.
However, as we shall see, while this new world view seemed to answer certain questions, it inevitably threw up yet further questions and problems of its own, most of which we are still grappling with today. The aim of the course, therefore, is to provide students with an overview of the landscape of western thought and its historical roots, and to explore the way that many of the questions and issues listed above are related to each other.
The course aims:
• To introduce students to basic philosophical terminology
• To introduce students to certain fundamental philosophical debates and problems
• To explore the relevance of these debates to student’s core area of study and to wider contemporary concerns
• To develop essential transferable skills, including written and oral communication, the synthesis and analysis of texts and sources, and the use of a wide range of resources
• To enable students to think critically and to understand the difference between an opinion and an argument
Having taken this course, students should be able to:
• Show an understanding of key philosophical concepts and be able to read philosophical texts
• Articulate and discuss critically the philosophical problems studied during the course and to begin to grasp their relevance to contemporary enquiry
• Develop an understanding and use of various learning resources
• Develop skills in constructing and defending arguments both verbally and in writing
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• Recognize the difference between an opinion and an argument
• Know about, and begin to grasp the significance of various philosophical and conceptual issues in relation to their core area of study
Classes take place on Tuesdays from 16.00 to 18.00. The autumn term runs from 22
October to 10 December 2013. The spring term runs from 21 January to 11 March 2014.
Please note that you are expected to attend every class. If, for some unavoidable reason, you need to miss a class please e-mail me in advance. There is a minimum attendance requirement of 75%. Please make every effort to be on time for the start of the class when register will be taken. If you are late, it is your responsibility to alert me to update the register at the end of the class.
The first 50 mins or so of each session will comprise an initial lecture where I will outline the core content and raise some issue and questions related to the topic for that week. This will be followed by a tutorial discussion where you will have the opportunity to raise questions and explore and debate the topics raised during the lecture. Sometimes these tutorial discussions will be a large group, and sometimes we will break into smaller groups. These sessions are your chance to really get to grips with the subject and have your questions answered.
Queries relating to course content or assessment should be discussed with me, Greg Artus.
You can speak to me after each class, or email with any enquiries.
Essays (80%)
The course will be assessed largely by essay. You will be expected to write two essays during the course, the first of which will constitute 30 % of your overall mark, while the second will constituted 50%. The reason for this is that we are fully aware that, being science students, many of you will not have written essays for a very long time, so the first essay is more of a practice run and the bulk of the mark will be on the second essay, which should be more representative of your abilities. Help will be provided to help you learn the skills of essays technique. There will be files on Blackboard giving advice and tips, and I will also set aside at least one tutorial where I will discuss essay writing and answer any questions and worries you have. Essay writing is a skill like any other, and there are certain tricks and principles you can learn that will make it easier. The
Handbook
Student Assessment
also has sections on essay technique, as well as details regarding eligibility for extensions, formatting and referencing protocols.
There is a list of essay titles for you to choose from at the end of this document. If, however, you wish to write on a subject for which I have not provided a title, then talk to me and I will formulate one for you. Whatever you do, do not simply make up a title of your own. If you do, it will not be marked. You must always clear any essay titles with either myself or course tutors.
Written assignments are to be submitted through the Turnitin assignment portal on
Blackboard
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Participation (20%)
The remaining 20% of the overall mark is devoted to participation. To earn a good mark here you need to ensure that you attend sessions and make a constructive contribution to class.
Please note that it is the value
This is because I recognise that not everyone is happy contributing to large scale discussions and may speak very rarely, or never in class, while others are quite happy talking in large groups. Consequently it is important for me to recognise that a person that contributes rarely, but intelligently can earn the same mark as someone who contributes more regularly with the same degree of intelligence. It is the content of what you say that interests me. Really what I am looking for with the participation mark is engagement with, and critical thinking about the subject, and obviously this can be shown in many ways, from the questions you ask in class to the questions you address to me after lectures or in emails.
Below under the heading General Readings are listed a number of useful general texts and anthologies that will be helpful to you during the course of your research. These are reference works that cover many of the topics dealt with during the course and they can all be found in the library.
You will also see in the course outline below that for each session there will be a short preparatory reading that you will be expected to look at before each lecture. This will usually comprise a short text that either has been chosen so as to give you a brief introduction to that week’s topic, or it will sometimes be a short extract from a famous text, chosen so as to provoke you or stimulate your thinking. It is important that you do this reading, as it will give you a chance to think about the topic before you hear the lecture and perhaps even formulate some questions of your own that you might wish to raise in the tutorial. For this reason these readings will be very short and manageable each week.
Following the preparatory readings you will see listed a number of supplementary readings related to each week’s topic. You are not expected to read these before each lecture (though don’t let me stop you if you really want to), but they are provided as starting points to help you research your essays, and will normally include not only the core texts, but also a number of commentaries and anthologies that deal with the topic in question.
This list is not supposed to be exhaustive. On Blackboard you will find more references, plus links and pdfs to other readings, which will be updated throughout the term as I come across useful sources, so keep your eyes open for these. You will also find many more sources in the library, where there is a limited but extremely useful philosophy section in the
Haldane collection. The internet you to be very cautious in how you choose your sources, since the word philosophy is much misunderstood and often attracts all sorts of people of questionable judgement and credentials to spew their ill-informed musings onto the screen. Reputable, free academic material that is useful can be hard to find, and I do not expect to see Wikipedia referenced in your essays. Use only reputable academic sources from the net. Researching at the academic level does not simply mean Googling.
General Readings
Blackburn, S. (1999) Think.
THINK)
Oxford, Oxford University Press (henceforth referred to as
Blackburn, S. (2001) Being Good.
Oxford, Oxford University Press (henceforth referred to as
BEING GOOD)
Bowie, G. L., Michaels, M. W. & Solomon, R. C. (1992) Twenty Questions: An Introduction to
Philosophy.
Forth Worth, Harcourt Brace (henceforth referred to as BOWIE)
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Perry, J. & Bratman, M. (eds) (1993) Introduction to Philosophy. Classical and Contemporary
Readings.
New York/Oxford, Oxford University Press (3rd edn, as PERRY)
1999) (henceforth referred to
Trigg, R. (2001) Philosophy Matters.
Malden, MA, Blackwell Publishers
Trigg, R. (2004) Morality Matters.
Malden MA and Oxford, Blackwell Publishers
Scruton, R. (1993) London, Routledge (henceforth referred to as SCRUTON)
Hospers, J. (1997) An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis.
referred to as HOSPERS)
London, Routledge (henceforth
Danto, A. C. 1997 Connections to the World (The Basic Concepts of Philosophy).
Harper Collins (henceforth referred to as DANTO)
New York,
Russell,.B. (1985) A History of Western Philosophy.
London, Counterpoint (henceforth referred to as RUSSELL)
Useful reference tools
Blackburn, S. (ed.) (1994) The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy.
Press
Oxford, Oxford University
Craig, E. (ed.) (1997) The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.
London/New York,
Routledge
Useful Online resources
The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy , at http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html
The Internet Encyclopaedia
at http://www.iep.utm.edu/
Western thought as we know it is often said to begin with the works of Plato, whose writings expounded and elaborated upon the ideas of his teacher and mentor, Socrates. In this introductory lecture we will explore the way they tried to resolves some of the key problems bequeathed to them by the classical tradition, problems that revolve around the distinction between appearance and reality and the nature of true knowledge.
Preparatory reading
Sayers. S. (1999) Plato’s Republic: An Introduction.
Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, pp. 106–108. Extract to be found on Blackboard.
Supplementary readings
Plato, (Blackboard link to e-text) Part VII (particularly sections 5, 6 & 7)
Cornford. F. M. (1935) Plato’s Theory of Knowledge . London, Routledge & Kegan Paul. On
Blackboard there is a pdf of the introductory essay from this work where Cornford summarises some of the key issues and problems surrounding the Forms and the immortality of the soul. The dialogue it refers to is the Theatatus.
Plato, (Blackboard link to e-text)
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Sayers, S. (1999) Plato’s Republic: An Introduction particularly chapter 10 : The Theory of Forms.
Annas, J. (1991)
10 & 11
An Introduction to Plato’s Republic.
Oxford, Clarendon Press. Chapters 9,
Aristotle was Plato’s pupil, but rejected some key aspects of Platonic thought. Most particularly he rejected the existence of Ideal Forms and replaced them in his explanatory framework with the idea of Function the working of the natural world, in terms of their function, or that towards which they are becoming. This teleological sciences and moral thinking right up until the 17 th century. telos (end), or final cause i.e.
type of explanation dominated the
Preparatory reading
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics , Book 1 available in: http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.1.i.html
Supplementary reading
On Aristotle’s metaphysics
Aristotle (trans Lawson-Tancred. H)(1998), introductory essay is very informative here)
The Metaphysics. London, Penguin. (Lawson’s
Barnes, J. (ed) (1995) Cambridge Companion to Aristotle.
Press. various articles. (copies in the library). Chapter 3
New York, Cambridge University
Metaphysics. Also chs 4 & 5.
On Aristotle’s ethics
Hutchinson, D. S. Ethics. In: Barnes, J. (ed) (1995) (op cit) Ch 7
Stich & Warfield (eds) (2000)
Chapter 7
MacIntyre, A. (1989) After Virtue.
Guildford, Duckworth (particularly the first 3 chapters)
During the 17 th century the birth of, and advances by, modern science led philosophers to challenge the accepted Aristotelean doctrines and to try to develop a metaphysics that could underpin the findings of the new experimental method. With this in mind, Rene Descartes wrote his Meditations on First Philosophy , where he introduced his ‘method of doubt’ and launched what has become known as the ‘modern era’ of philosophy. It is this work that will occupy us for most of the next two lectures.
Preparatory reading
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
BOWIE chapter 6
1 and 2, available in:
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PERRY part III.A http://www.wright.edu/cola/descartes/mede.html
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/d/descarte.htm
(If you wish to buy a copy of the Meditations, get the Cottingham Translation (1997): John
Cottingham (ed.), New York, Cambridge University Press)
Supplementary reading
THINK ch1
Cottingham, J. Descartes , chs 1&2
Kenny, A. Descartes
Cottingham, J Cambridge Companion to Descartes
Scruton, R. A Short History of Modern Philosophy
See also the entries on Descartes in the various encyclopedias (both on-line and in the library) for some introductory background
Cottingham, J. 1988 The Rationalists.
Oxford, OUP
DANTO, Sections 1 & 2 (pp. 3–13)
In lecture 3 we saw Descartes’ method cast doubt upon everything we previously thought we knew. He has reduced his knowledge to the simple truth that he - or to be more precise, just his mind - exists. All else is doubtful. However, the purpose of his meditations was to find a secure foundation for science, so now he must find a way to use this basic truth about his own existence to not only prove the existence of the external world, but also to lay out a method by which science might gain trustworthy access to that world and thus learn the
‘truth’ about it. With this in mind he first sets about proving the existence of God using only the contents of his own mind. Once he has proved God’s existence, then, as we shall see, much else follows from this about science and our perceptual access to the outside world, so these two proofs are crucial to Descartes’ project. The question is, of course, whether his proofs of God are workable. With this in mind this lecture will look in detail at his proofs to see how they work and how they are related to his overall project and to the possibility of
‘true’ knowledge.
Preparatory reading
Rene Descartes, Meditations 3 & 5 available at: http://www.wright.edu/cola/descartes/mede.html
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/d/descarte.htm
Supplementary reading
Cottingham’s discussion of the proofs of God in his Descartes (op cit) is excellent, and he is particularly good at showing how Descartes might defend himself against the classic objections that have been put up against his two proofs.
Both Kenny and Scruton (see refs for previous lecture) also have very good discussions of
Descartes’ proofs, as does Blackburn in THINK.
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An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis , ch 7 (in library) has a good general discussion about proofs of god’s existence (Descartes’ and others’)
For Descartes’ own defence against objections see the Objections and Replies that are printed at the end of the Meditations.
As we have seen, the picture of knowledge that Descartes develops is a Rationalist one that has many affinities with Plato’s Rationalism. In response to Descartes, however, certain other philosophers could not accept many of the assumptions and ramifications of
Rationalism and rejected some of its central claims. Chief among the ideas that they couldn’t accept was the notion that in order to understand the world we must be born with an innate knowledge of the world. This a priori knowledge, as it is called, is central to rationalism, but thinkers such as Locke, Berkeley and Hume rejected such innate knowledge and developed various theories that all argued that everything we know we must have learnt through direct perceptual experience of the world. All such theories are known as theories, which is why the three mentioned above are known collectively as ‘The British Empiricists’. In this lecture we will look at Empiricism and ask whether it is a coherent and workable alternative to Rationalism.
Preparatory reading
Locke, J. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Section 1 , chapter 2 is where Locke gives his arguments against Descartes’ notion of innate ideas, and his account of how ideas are derived entirely from experience. He also touches on the issue of general terms/ universals, which we first encountered when looking at Plato.)
Supplementary reading
Berkeley, G. The Principles of Human Knowledge (introduction) available at http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/berkeley/principles_contents.html
HOSPERS pp. 80–86 On Berkeley and Idealism. Also Chapter 2 On Knowledge
SCRUTON pp. 83–105
RUSSELL on Locke, pp. 584–595; on Berkeley, pp. 623–634
Perhaps the most consistent and hence the most radical of the Empiricists was the Scottish philosopher, David Hume. He took Empiricist thinking to its logical conclusion and in doing so showed that it is not as straightforward as it at first seems. Principally he argued that if
Empiricism is true, then science can never know the truth about anything with any certainty and the scientific method can only provide us with provisional or contingent accounts, never final truths. This argument is known as the Problem of Induction and is one of the great controversies of modern philosophy and science. The lecture will lay out Hume’s arguments against Induction and explore whether his claims hold up. We will also look briefly at how modern philosophy sees the problem.
Preparatory reading
Hume, D. An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, sections 2, 3 and 4
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Supplementary reading
Bennett, J. Locke, Berkeley & Hume; Central Themes ( induction) pp. 122–125 On the problem of
SCRUTON pp. 120–134
RUSSELL pp. 624–650
HOSPERS pp. 122–127
Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, available in:
BOWIE chapter 3 (excerpts)
(Full text available at http://cla.calpoly.edu/~fotoole/321.1/popper.html
Also several copies in the library (read pp.33-9))
Hume’s insights were famously ignored by his contemporaries, all except for Immanuel Kant, who immediately saw the importance of what Hume was saying and set about trying to save science and knowledge from Humean sceptcism. In his masterpiece The Critique of Pure
Reason , Kant turns traditional philosophy on its head and formulates a view that still dominates much modern thinking. In brief, he claims that neither the Rationalist nor the
Empiricists were totally correct, but neither were they both totally wrong. The truth, for Kant, lay somewhere between the two, as we shall see. In order to arrive at these claims Kant has to develop a whole new way of doing philosophy and a whole new type of philosophical argument, the show how Kant used it to redraw the map of philosophy and knowledge and to lay down a metaphysical viewpoint that many of you still probably find perfectly natural and obvious.
Preparatory reading
SCRUTON, pp. 137–148 (pdf available on Blackboard)
Supplementary reading
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason (This a vastly complex work written in a very difficult style, but the introduction is a useful place to, as it is here that Kant attempts to summarise the key arguments of the book and is at his least obscure).
(Available in library and at: http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/cpr/toc.html
)
Scruton, R. (1982)
Guyer (ed.) (1992), The Cambridge Companion to Kant Cambridge, CUP ( Various essays in this volume will be of interest to you, but essays 2, 3, 4 and 5 are the ones most pertinent to the first critique)
HOSPERS, ch 2 on knowledge. Plus, chs 3 & 4 might well be helpful
THINK ch. 7
RUSSELL, pp675-690
(There has been an almost endless amount of material written about Kant and this argument, so use the above sources as staring points to guide you through the copious literature that exists on the topic)
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Moving away slightly from purely epistemological issues of truth and knowledge, we will now begin to explore some of the implications of the new metaphysical views that have grown out of the post 17 th century revolutions in philosophy. One of the key issues that Descartes focuses upon is the nature of the human being and the relation between our thinking self
(mind) and our physically embodied self (body). As we shall see, Rationalism along the lines of Descartes encourages us to see mind and body as at least in principle separate entities (a position known as Dualism) , while Empiricism encourages us to think of mind as something
Monism) . However, each of these positions has its own problems and inconsistencies, and Kantianism can be used to support either position. So, although modern debates are no longer couched in the terminology of
Rationalism and Empiricism, these problems still remain unresolved and there is a huge literature on the questions surrounding what has become known as the Mind/Body Problem.
The question of what a mind is and what a body is, and whether they are separate and how the two interact is still one of the biggest problems in philosophy. As we shall see, many modern scientific, psychological and sociological issues depend upon finding some sort of resolution to this problem, so it is important we know the structure of the arguments involved and what possible positions are available to us.
Preparatory reading
HOSPERS, chapter 6 is a good introduction to the issues around mind and body and is a good starting point. (Pdf available on Blackboard)
Supplementary reading
THINK, ch. 2
Kim, J. . This is slightly more advanced and will give a more detailed treatment of a variety of relevant issues.
For good discussion of Descartes’ dualism see Cottingham as usual.
Ryle, G. The concept of Mind is where he outlines his attack of the idea of mind.
Scruton, R. (1996), Modern Philosophy: an introduction and survey, Birkenhead, Mandarin pp34-45 (pdf available on Blackboard)
Stich, S. & Warfield, T. (eds) (2003) The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind.
Bodmin,
Cornwall, Blackwell Publishing. Chapters 1 & 2
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As we have seen, the mind/body problem is more than a merely academic question, and much hangs on what solution we come up with. In this lecture we will focus on just two of these related issues, both of which revolve around the question ‘what is consciousness?’
The problem of other minds asks the question of how it is that we can be sure that other human beings are conscious at all and are not simply what has become known in the trade as ‘zombies’ (i.e. beings that look and act as I do, but which are dead inside and are not conscious). This question leads us naturally onto the debate about the possibility of artificial intelligence. The AI project is the attempt to build a machine that is conscious, but obviously we cannot do this unless we have some idea about what consciousness is. The lecture will look at some of the key arguments in the AI debate.
Preparatory reading
Searle, J. The Chinese Room (there is a copy of this on WebCT/Blackboard along with several links to sites containing articles that sites discuss his views).
Supplementary reading
Rene Descartes, Meditation 6
Available in library and at http://www.wright.edu/cola/descartes/mede.html
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/d/descarte.htm
HOSPERS, ch. 6
Malcolm, N. Thinking Brutes (pdf available on Blackboard)
Malcolm, N. (1972), Problems of Mind.
London, Allen & Unwin
Lafollette (ed.) The Blackwell Companion to Mind (various entries)
Stich & Warfield (2003) The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy of Mind.
Bodmin, Cornwall,
Blackwell Publishing. Various entries, but particularly ch. 13 (pp. 309–322)
Philosophers Magazine (various articles) issue 28, 4 th quarter 2004 (These will be posted on
WebCT/Blackboard.)
Up to this point we have explored traditional philosophy and the problems it has dealt with. In the 20 th century, however, two (quite controversial) philosophers in particular have challenged the assumptions upon which that tradition is founded, and in doing so they have given us good grounds to think that many of the questions that philosophy has grappled with are the product of a misguided metaphysics that stem ultimately from some basic mistakes made by Plato and Aristotle right at the beginning of western thought. The first of these is
Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein’s work is complex and has implications for many philosophical issues, so we obviously cannot look at his work in great detail, but in this lecture we focus on how his work has impacted particularly upon questions about consciousness and the human subject/self. More specifically, we will look at his later work, the Philosophical Investigations (1951), and what has become known as the ‘private language argument’. In short, this argument suggests that as an isolated being it would be impossible for one to formulate a workable language, and this is because there would be no
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way to know whether one was using that language correctly or not; we would only have our memory to rely on and so whatever I remembered a concept as meaning, then that is what it means, so I could never know whether I am using it differently to how I have used it before.
This implies that we couldn’t form complex concepts with which to think about the world, because such complex concepts could never become fixed and would always be fluctuating in their meaning. Consequently it seems that language is a communal, social, collective creation, with all of us correcting each other in such a way as to keep concepts stable. The question that then arises is what is the relation between consciousness and language? Can a creature that has no language be conscious? If not, then this suggests that as isolated beings we could not be conscious, and this, as we shall see, has huge implications across a broad range of philosophical issues. In the lecture, however, we shall focus on its implications for the problem of other minds and the AI debate.
Preparatory reading
Wittgenstein, L. (1953), Philosophical Investigations)
(Versions of the text also available online at:
Wittgenstein-Philosophical-Investigations
, G.E.M. Anscombe and R. Rhees
(eds.), G.E.M. Anscombe (trans.), Oxford: Blackwell. (§243–275) http://www.scribd.com/doc/2916793/Ludwigor on Google books .
English translation.)
(NB the texts always include both the original German that Wittgenstein wrote in, plus the
Supplementary reading
Mcginn, M. (1997) Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations.
London, Routledge
(this is an excellent commentary on the text. See ch4 specifically on the private language argument)
Glendinning, S. (1998) On Being With Others; Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Derrida.
London,
Routledge (this book is specifically about the problem of other minds)
Pears, D. (1971) Wittgenstein (past Masters).
Glasgow, Fontana.
The second of our radical challenges comes from the German Philosopher Martin
Heidegger. In his masterpiece Being and Time (1927) assumption that our primary mode of engagement with the world is through rationalisation and that we first engage with the world as a collection of objects derived from sensory perception. Heidegger argues persuasively that our first engagement with the world is with it as what he calls By this he means that we first use the world, as physical beings operating in a physical world, and that this embodied engagement with the world is a type of understanding that is pre-linguistic. For Heidegger, our linguistic, rational understanding of the world is a secondary step that grows out of our embodied understanding. Heidegger’s work, like Wittgenstein’s, is extremely difficult and complex, but if he is right, then many implications follow. Most particularly it implies that the categories of mind and body may well be mistaken and that the human being is a much more holistic entity. If this is so, then it has massive implications for the self and its relation to others, as well as for the AI debate, since it suggests that consciousness is the consequence of embodied activity in the world. This in turn challenges the AI assumption that we can build a conscious machine merely by mimicking our mental ‘programme’, in that it suggests that reason, thought, rationality (call it what you will) is as much about action as it is about thought. Indeed, the Heidegger scholar
Hubert Dreyfus has written extensively about this subject. In the lecture we will try to gain an overview of Heidegger’s work and how it challenges the Cartesian tradition and will then try
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to draw out some of the implications that may follow in regard to the topics we have explored during the course.
Preparatory reading
Heidegger, M. (1995) ‘Being & Time’
Division 1, ch 2
(MacQuarrie & Robinson, trans) Oxford, Blackwell,
Supplementary reading
Mulhall, S. Heidegger’s Being and Time. Introduction and chapters 1 & 2
Steiner, G. Heidegger (Past Masters series)
Guignon, C. (ed) Cambridge Companion to Heidegger .
Taylor, C. ‘Lichtung and Liebensform; parallels in Wittgenstein and Heidegger’ in
Philosophical Arguments (Available on Blackboard)
Dreyfus on Heidegger (you tube): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaGk6S1qhz0
Dreyfus on AI and Heidegger: http://cid.nada.kth.se/en/HeideggerianAI.pdf
Related to questions about the mind and the self is a problem that straddles the divide between moral philosophy and Epistemology, the question of free-will. This is a different question to the political issue of how much freedom we ought to allow each other in the social world. It deals instead with the much deeper metaphysical issue of whether we are free to choose our own actions at all or whether all our actions are determined for us by powers outside our control, such as God or physical causation. This question is crucial to ethics in that moral blame or praise presupposes that the person one is blaming or praising actually had the choice to do other than they did. If they had no choice then it isn’t clear that we can either blame or praise them in any coherent way. Hence with the development of deterministic theories in science there is always the threat that we could discover that everything we do is simply the consequence of causal chains over which we have no control.
If this is the case then it seems that we are not free and morality is just a delusion, or error, because it assumes we are in control when we are not. The lecture will explore the various claims that have been made regarding this issue.
Preparatory reading
Introduction to Philosophical Analysis , Ch 5
Supplementary reading
THINK ch. 3
Solomon (1997)
Westphal, J. (1998) Philosophical Propositions.
Routledge, Chapter 9
The French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre developed a distorted version of Heidegger’s ideas in his book Being and Nothingness.
In this work he argues that it is determinism that is the
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illusion and that actually we are totally free to live as we choose. Even the prisoner in her cell has the choice as to whether she gives in or fights back, and in this sense Sartre is saying that there is always choice, no matter how constrained we appear to be. For him, the reason we came up with theories such as determinism is simply because the thought that we are totally free is actually quite a scary one that causes us to feel ‘angst’ or ‘anxiety’, so we developed a whole metaphysics that saved us from this horror by reassuring us that life is not our fault. This, for Sartre is no more than an act of what he calls ‘Bad Faith’. We are just hiding from the awful truth of our own freedom. Sartre’s work is a radical and powerful challenge to our comfortable view of ourselves and forces us to face some very difficult issues. The question, of course, is ‘is he right?’
Preparatory reading
Sartre, J-P. ch18)
(excerpts in ‘Freedom and responsibility’ in BOWIE
Supplementary reading
Sartre’s Existentialism is a Humanism . Available in library and at: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm
Jones, W. T. (1975) and Sartre. Florida,
History of Western Philosophy; The Twentieth Century to Wittgenstein
Harcourt Brace. Chapter 10
In the first two lectures we looked at the moral theories of Plato and Aristotle. Then in lectures 12 and 13 we saw how views about free-will have an impact upon our ideas about morality. In the remaining 3 lectures we will explore some of the most prominent moral theories that inform western ethical thinking. The first is Utilitarianism, which basically amounts to the claim that an action is good if it leads to ‘good’ (i.e. desirable) consequences.
The question, of course, is what do we mean by ‘desirable’ here? What sort of consequences make one act good and another bad? The major consequentialist theory is
Utilitarianism , which argues that an action is good if it is useful (has utility), to society at large, and is often summarised as saying that an action is good if it produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number. At first glance this appears a reasonable proposition, but, like all theories it has its problems. The lecture will look at the work of two of the most famous and most coherent Utilitarians, David Hume and John Stuart Mill.
Preparatory reading
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, chapters 1–4, available in:
Supplementary reading
BOWIE chapter 15
PERRY part V.A http://www.utilitarianism.com/mill1.htm
Kant rejected the idea that the consequences of an action determine whether it is good or bad. For him embracing consequentialism means that getting what you want is the same as being good, which he felt was clearly not what morality is about. Often one is called upon to go against what is good for oneself in order to do the right thing e.g. I might want your laptop
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and might therefore want to steal it, and it may indeed make me and others happy to do so, but I resist my urge to satisfy my desires. This resistance to ones desires is, for Kant, the mark of a moral action, so he sets about trying to build a moral theory that captures this basic point. The theory he comes up with is known as a Deontological theory of ethics and, not surprisingly for Kant, he grounds our moral sense not in our desires and emotions, but in our ‘reason’. For him, it is our ability to be rational that allows us also to be moral. The lecture will look in detail at his theory and ask just how workable such an approach is.
Preparatory reading
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals , ch.1 & 2
Available in:
BOWIE ch15
PERRY part V.B http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdfbits/kgw.html
Supplementary reading
Stich & Warfield (eds) (2000) Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory.
Massachusetts, Blackwell.
Chs 9,10 & 12
MacIntyre, .A. (1993), A Short History of Ethics.
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London, Routledge,& Keagan Paul. Chapter
Guyer, P. (ed.) (1993)
Finally we will look at the ‘bad boy’ of western philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche. Writing at the end of the 19th century, Nietzsche put forward the radical proposal that the Judeo-Christian morality of western societies was merely the product of power relations between different groups in society. Most particularly he suggests that the Christian morality of meekness, humility and resistance to ones natural urges was the invention of the weak. Those who were physically weak and humble could not dominate the strong by force and so were forced to overcome those more powerful than themselves by inventing a moral code that made all the attributes of the weak into virtue. That way they could revel in their weakness as if they had chosen it themselves for moral reasons. Also, if they could convince the strong that this moral code was in fact the essence of morality and came from some divine otherworldly source, then the strong would hate themselves for being strong and rich and powerful and full of boldness and life, because these attributes would be seen as sins under the new morality. Thus the weak would appear virtuous and the powerful would appear sinful and this would give the weak power over the strong because they could claim morality was on their side. This ‘invention’ of what Nietzsche calls the slave morality occurred during the time of the Greeks and the Old Testament, and was then spread around the world with the growth of
Christianity. But, he argues, it is just one form of morality, it is not the morality. Hence
Nietzsche puts a good case for the old idea that the moral code one has depends entirely upon the perspective from which one is looking and that morality is, therefore relative to one’s cultural and historical background. It is here that he has had a massive impact on the modern world. However, relativism, despite being so popular in the modern mind, is a highly controversial theory and it isn’t clear just how coherently a case can be made for it. The lecture will look at how Nietzsche builds his case. More importantly, we will ask what alternative morality Nietzsche suggests we adopt.
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Preparatory reading
Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morality
Available in Library and at
First Essay ‘Good and Evil’ http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/nietzsche/genealogy1.htm
Supplementary reading
Magnus, B. & Higgins, K. (eds) (1996) Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche.
New York, CUP. chs 1 & 6
Clarke, M. (1994) Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy.
New York, CUP. Ch 5
Essays must be no more than 1500 words long and must be submitted via the
Blackboard portal before 5 pm on Friday 13 December 2013. Choose one of the following topics.
1. To what extent does Aristotle accept Plato’s theory of forms?
2.
3.
4.
Relate a difference between Plato and Aristotle to a problem of modern philosophy.
Does the difference clarify or obscure the problem?
Why doe Descartes need to prove the existence of God? In the light of its role in the
Meditations, assess the proof of Meditation III.
‘Whatever is, is.’ Is this principle innate or learnt? Is ANY principle innate?
5.
6.
Is Hume sceptical about science? Discuss with reference to his analysis of the idea of causation.
What is Kant’s basic objection to Hume’s analysis of the idea of causation? What are the philosophical implications of the objection?
7.
8.
Do YOU have a self?
Is the mind–body problem of only historical interest or do we still need to solve it?
Titles for the topics we will cover in the second term will be posted on Blackboard after the
Christmas break.
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