Introduction to Philosophy

(Announcement: 15 copies of the textbook arrived late Friday afternoon.)

Aristotle.

His life.
Born in 384 BCE in Stagira, died at age 62 in 322, a year after the death of Alexaner the Great.
Entered Plato’s Academy at about your age, when he was about 18 (367). He remained in the Academy, which was the center of learning in the Mediterranean world, for 20 years, till the death of its founder Plato in 347. In the later years he himself lectured at the Academy, and was certainly the one to whom the direction of the Academy would naturally have been offered. But his philosophy was too much at variance by then with that of Plato, so Plato's nephew Speusippus was chosen instead. (Note from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Diogenes tells us (iv 1) that Speusippus “abided by the views of Plato”; from what little we can tell, this is simply false. In particular, Speusippus rejected the Theory of Forms.) Alexander left Athens, and eventually became the tutor of the 13 year old son of Philip of Macedonia, whose name was Alexander, to be know after his father’s death as Alexander the Great, the world conqueror. That job lasted from 342-335, about 7 years. He then returned to Athens and founded his own school, called the Lyceum (founded in 335).

When teaching at the Lyceum, he practiced peripatetics, meaning "to walk about." For the next thirteen years he devoted his energies to his teaching and composing his philosophical treatises. He is said to have given two kinds of lectures: the more detailed discussions in the morning for an inner circle of advanced students, and the popular discourses in the evening for the general body of lovers of knowledge. At the sudden death of Alexander in 323 BCE., the pro-Macedonian government in Athens was overthrown, and a general reaction occurred against anything Macedonian. A charge of impiety was trumped up against him. To escape prosecution he fled to Chalcis in Euboea so that (Aristotle says) "The Athenians might not have another opportunity of sinning against philosophy as they had already done in the person of Socrates." In the first year of his residence at Chalcis he complained of a stomach illness and died in 322 BCE.

His philosophy. Critique of Plato.
"Plato separated the forms," he said laconically. We must explore what is behind this critique. Form and matter are always conjoined. The form is the "whatness " of the thing. Its essence. (In Aristotle, this is related to the function of the thing--a questionable thesis for modern thought.)

An object' matter is its "thisness." The principle of individuation. An object with both form and matter is "substance." Substance is divided into essence and accident. Reality is for Aristotle composed of a number of substances: hence we speak of him as a pluralist rather than a dualist (which was the case with Plato). The individual substance is a self-contained teleological (goal-oriented) system. Substances are analyzed in terms of the four causes: material, formal, efficient, and final. The prime mover, the good toward which all things move. Perfection, hence pure actuality, pure activity. These are the main traits of Aristotle's metaphysics.

Aristotle's ethics.
All is performed for a purpose, the final purpose of which is happiness (eudaimonia). What is the function of the human being? To engage in "an activity of the soul which is in accordance with virtue," and "in conformity with reason." The material preconditions for happiness (cf. p. 76). Virtue is areté (= excellence). Two kinds of virtue: intellectual and moral (cf. figure on p. 77). The golden mean. Facing danger, one extreme is not enough fear (= foolhardiness), and the other is too much fear (cowardice); the proper amount of fear is courage.

Politics.
The three forms of government and their perversions: the monarchy (government by one person, the perversion of which is tyranny), governance by an elite group (government by an aristocracy, the perversion of which is the oligarchy), and the polity (governance by the body of citizens themselves, the perversion of which is the democracy (cf. p. 81. Aristotle's case for slavery.

Aesthetics.
His defense of rhetoric and poetry. You will remember that Plato’s Republic exiles poets and artists (Bk 10), for they deal in lesser realities, and they stir up the emotions, specifically terror and pity. Now in fact Plato’s prose is a poetic prose, full of metaphors and evocative similes. Tradition has it that Plato, obsessed with poetry in his youth, had written dithyrambs and tragedies, but destroyed them when he met Socrates. That affinity is still perceptible in the Symposium. Aristotle is a much dryer sort of writer, and nobody thinks he is much of a stylist. Yet he wrote a treatise called the Poetics, in which he says that poetry is more philosophical than history (because it says what is true by and large and for the most part—thus moving in the positive direction of abstraction.) In that work, which is really a set of lecture notes, Aristotle defends the right of poetry to be true to life in being emotive. The theory of catharsis. But he is a 4^th-century intellectual, and does not believe in the gods, as Homer did, and Sophocles, et al.

Logic. The syllogism. The science of valid inference.

Also an ardent explorer of the natural world, particularly sea creatures. A natural scientist.

Assignment due: Read to . 68. Plato (427-349)

Presentation of Plato'’s ideas. Founded the Academy some years after Socrates' death. First university. Plato tends to be more metaphysical than Socrates was.

The cave allegory (or myth of the cave: Republic VII) first as a story, then exploring the figurative significance. Prisoners chained for life, staring at the shadows on a wall and hearinechoesos of speech. One prisoner turned forcibly to the light of the fire in the cave, and then toward the entrance, and led out (“e-ducere)from the cave. His bedazzlement at first, his return and death.

The simile of the line. This is a good example of how the same material can be presented as mythos and logos, by the way. The simile of the line is also in the Republic. Explain picture on p. 59.

No one would willingly do wrong (p. 64). This is an important element of Platonic philosophy.

All knowledge is recollection. Anamnesis (not to be confused with amnesia!) is this ability to remember, if we are properly prompted, by the method of maieutics” (from midwifery, in Greek), to recall the knowledge we had before birth. The Meno dialog explores this problem: innate knowledge. A possible analogy with Freuds’ unconscious memory.

Plato'’s social philosophy. Health in the individual is justice in the state. P. 65 illustration a combination of psychology and political science. It is about political justice.

The British-American philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, the history of philosophy nothing but a series of footnotes to the Republic.

A propos of the Liar's Paradox, it strikes me that there could be even a shorter version. Suppose I say to you: "I'm lying." Is this true or false? If the statement that I am lying is true, then I am not lying about my lying, so the statement about my lying is false. In short, it is true on the condition that it is false. If, on the other hand the statement that I am lying is false, then I am lying about my lying, which makes the statement about my lying true. In short, it is false on the condition that it is true. The truth value of such statements is apparently undecidable.

One thing we might note is that this and similar paradoxes seem to have self-referentiality in common. In other words, they refer to themselves. Suppose you came into the classroom and saw the following statement on the blackboard: "This statement is false." If it is true, then it is false in what it asserts. If it is false in what it asserts, the only alternative is that it is true. This follows from the so-called law of the excluded midde: Either A or not-A, but not A and not-A.

What exactly is it that is paradoxical about self-referentiality? (Note that there is implied self-reflexivity in the paradoxical statement that "everything is relative," because the categorical term everything includes the statement itself, and there is self-reflexivity in the statement "This statement is false." I suspect there is a connection, too, with subjectivity. The demonstrative "this" implies a subjective observer located in the immediate vicinity.

It is also noteworthy that the Liar's paradox, as well as my version of it ("I am lying") and the statement "This statement is false" all have the motif of falsehood. "This statement is true" is clearly not paradoxical, or is "I am telling the truth." Could it be that the paradox is related to the fact that linguistic utterances are, at a fundamental level, assumed to be true. What we say in language seems tacitly to be accompanied by a certain positivity. We say "what is," and under normal circumstances there is an assumption of truth to the speaker's assertions.

Two biblical references came up in the last class, the precise references to which I am now in a position to furnish.
1. "the still small voice " (I Kings, 19:12)
2. The judgment of Solomon (I Kings 3: 16-28)

Notes for Philosophy 150A

Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2006 (Assignment for today: Read to p. 54.)

The Athenian Period. Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C.E. The Sophists: Protagoras, Gorgias, Thrasymachus, Callicles, Critas. Socrates.

General orientation. Winning the argument versus pursuit of truth per se. And they charged for their lessons. An indication of this is clearly to be found in this paradox attributed to Protagoras and his student.

It is said that Protagoras once agreed with one of his students that he could delay payment of his tuition until he had won his first case. The agreement seemed sound, until the student was sufficiently qualified to start offering his services professionally. He hung a sign outside his office, but no business came his way. Protagoras decided to sue his former student.
Protagoras reasoned that he was sure to win. He reflected that either he would win the case, in which case his student would be required to pay his tuition, or he would lose, in which case his former student would have won his first case and would therefore be required to pay his tuition under the terms of their original agreement.
But Protagoras’s student was a very good student. He reasoned that either he (the former student) would lose that case, in which case he would still never have won a case and would therefore not be required to pay under the terms of their original agreement, or he would win the case and the court would rule that he did not have to pay.
Who was right?
Here is another example of a Greek paradox, known as the crocodile paradox. “A woman was walking by the Nile when a crocodile seized her child. The crocodile promised to give the child back if she correctly predicted what he would do with it. She says that the crocodile will eat the child. If she is right the crocodile is bound to give the child back; in which case she is wrong, and the crocodile can eat it; in which case . . . . .”
One last paradox, perhaps the most famous of them all, and certainly the shortest. A man from the island of Crete said: “All Cretans are liars.” It would seem to be the case that he was lying, if it is true that all Cretans are liars. But if it is true that all Cretans are liars, then the man who told us that all Cretans are liars was him himself lying, in which case we should not believe that all Cretans are liars. So that if he was lying (about all Cretans being liars), then he was not lying, because he is a case in point, as we say. And if he was not lying, and all Cretans are in fact liars, then he too must have been lying, in which case we should not believe his statement that all Cretans are liars.

Protagoras (ca. 490—ca. 422 BCE). Prudent acceptance of tradicional customs. Expediency. Homo mensura. Everything is relative. (The traditional refutation of this: the status of the statement itself.) Everything relative to human subjectivity. Subjectivism, relativism and expediency = sophism.

Gorgias His arguments would fall under the category criticized by Socrates: arguments that makes the weaker argument appear the stronger. (Rhetoric).

Thrasymachus We know of his arguments through Plato’s dialogue The Republic. “Justice is in the interest of the stronger.” Gyges’ ring.

The positive side of the Sophists. They shifted the emphasis of philosophy away from the cosmos in general, and toward the human being. (Perhaps beginning the rift between science and philosophy (+psychology?).

Socrates (469-399). He never wrote anything (philosophical, at least). Written down by his student Plato. The spirit of Socratic inquiry. His life and death. Widely considered the greatest philosopher in the Western tradition. Why? Perhaps because of the sincerity of his quest for truth. Maeutic method.

Tuesday, January 10.

We will be using Donald Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, 3^rd Edition. (Fourth will be tolerated, but the pagination is off by 4 pages (subtract 4 from that edition’s pagination).

Distribution of syllabi.

The general approach of this course: A compromise between the purely conceptual and the purely historical, with a little more weight given to the historical. The textbook is titled “Looking at Philosophy.” Therefore it is somewhat focused on the history (or story) of philosophy itself, a bit narcissistic. (The various disciplines differ a bit on this score: the object of the study of history is “history” but the object of biology is not biology itself: it is the study of living entities. History can take itself as its own object: historiography, or the way history has been and/or is written.)

Notice also the importance of language in philosophy. Language is important in all varieties of philosophy, though in some varieties, e.g. linguistic philosophy, it is all there is so to speak. “Distinuo” (Latin was the language of Western philosophy throughout the Middle Ages and into the 17^th century even.), I distinguish. The making of distinctions, or classification, has been an important preoccupation of philosophy.

You will find at the end of your textbook a glossary of important philosophical terms. Words in bold type in your textbook are keyed to this glossary. For example, you will find the wordcosmogony (from kosmos world + gonos creation), theories and stories about the origin of universe, distinguished from cosmology, theories about the nature of the universe. Speaking of the importance of language in philosophy, etymology, or the study of the origins of words, has often been used by philosophers as well, since it is something like a record of the origins of thought: the way concepts and ideas evolved. Universe, uni-versum. Cosmos vs. chaos. (The Greeks by and large didn’t believe the universe had a beginning. It was always there.) The notion of the creation of the universe is widespread: mythical accounts of various types. The Popol Vuh, the ancient account of the Mayan Indians of what is now the Yucatán (Southern Mexico) and Guatemala. (Read short excerpts from the Popol Vuh, p. 23. “Ésta es la relacción de cómo todo estaba en suspenso, todo en calma, en silencio; todo inmóvil, callado, y vacía al extensión del cielo.” … el Corazón del Cielo,… el nombre de Dios. Asi contaban.” (This is the store of how all was in suspense, all in calm, in silence; all immobile, mute, and empty the expanse of the sky. The Heart of the Sky… the name of God. This is what they say.) After the creation of the animals, there were several unsuccessful attempts at making man. A parliament of gods discussed it. They tried earth, or mud (notice how closely this resembles the Hebrew account that begins the Torah, or Old Testament), but those people lacked the strength to survive and serve God. The first men were made of corn (maize).

Our own Judeo-Christian tradition has many obvious parallels. And even one that an Israeli women saw in her reading of Bereschit (Genesis): Man was created first and then woman, because He (She?) didn’t get it entirely right the first time.

Speaking of women, I would ask you not to neglect Palmer’s Preface to your textbook, as it will contribute to a future discussion on the changing role of women in the field of philosophy, and the reasons for their relative absence in the past.

What we have been discussing thus far would fall under what Donald Palmer, the author of the textbook we are using, calls Mythos. Traditional explanations of the way things are now, by means of a story of how they were. Often involving the supernatural. Logos comes a bit lator. The word is Greek, and means Word or logical disposition of things in Greek. (Whence, e.g. “bio-logy” and other –logies.) Logos develops in Greece, in the 6^th and 5^th centuries BCE.

With the help of my assistant Kenneth Wells you will be reading and discussing the Pre-Socratic philosophers in my absence (I return on Tuesday, Jan. 24, at which time we will take up the discussion with chapter 2, The Athenian Period (5^th and 4^th centuries).

My last remarks concern the traditional divisions of philosophy, into ontology (“first philosophy), axiology (including aesthetics and ethics) and logic (correct inference).

Another important topic that will be taken up from time to time during this course will be the relationship between science and philosophy (as well as between science and the Humanities).

Philosophy 150 A

Introduction to Philosophy

Instructor: Dr. Michael B. Smith

Spring 2006

Meeting times: T H 3:30-4:45

Room: EVA 119

Office: Eva 102A; Tel. 4068; Hours: M 8-8:50, 10-11:50; T 8-9:30, 11:00-11:50; W 8-8:50, 10-11:50; F 8:00-8:50; and by appt.

E-mail: msmith@berry.edu

TEXT

Donald Palmer, Looking at Philosophy: The Unbearable Heaviness of Philosophy Made Lighter (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing, 2001, 3rd Ed.)

OBJECTIVES FOR THE COURSE

1. To acquaint students with prominent historical and contemporary questions in philosophy.

2. To expose students to the writings of the most influential historical and contemporary

philosophers.

3. To engage students in discussion of the questions studied.

4. To encourage disciplined and reflective speculation and writing on philosophical problems.

5. To instruct students on the main schools, periods and tendencies in the development of Western philosophy from the sixth century B.C.E. to the present.

SCHEDULE OF ASSIGNMENTS

1. Tuesday, January 10. Introduction to the course. What is philosophy? The benefits you may reap from this course.

2. Thursday, Jan.12. Preface, Intro., The Pre-Socratics. Thales. Read to p. 15.

3. Tuesday, Jan. 17. Read to p. 29. Discussion of Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides.

4. Thursday, Jan. 19. Read to p. 43. Zeno, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, Democritus.

5. Tuesday, Jan. 24. Read to p. 54. The Athenian Period. The Sophists: Protagoras, Gorgias, Thrasymachus, Callicles, Critas. Socrates.

6. Thursday, Jan. 26. Read to p. 68. Plato.

7. Tuesday, Jan. 31. Read to p. 86. Aristotle.

8. Thursday, February 2. Read to p. 99. The Hellenistic and Roman Periods. Epicureanism, Stoicism, Neoplatonism.

9. Tuesday, . Feb. 7. Read to p. 117. Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy. (5^th through 15^th centuries.) Augustine, the Encyclopediasts, John Scotus Eriugena.

10. Thursday, Feb. 9. Read to p. 138. Muslim & Jewish philosophers, Faith and Reason, Universals, Thomas Aquinas.

11. Tuesday, Feb.14. Read to p. 149. Ockham, Renaissance Philosophers.

12. Thursday, Feb. 16. Read to p. 168. Continental Rationalism and British Empiricism. Descartes.

13. Tuesday, Feb. 21. Read to p. 184. Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz

14. Thursday, Feb. 23. Read to p. 206. Locke, Berkeley, Hume.

15. Tuesday, Feb. 28. Read to p. 222. Kant.

16. Thursday, March 2. Midterm.

17. Tuesday, Mar. 7. Post-Kantian British and Continental Philosophy. Hegel, Schopenhauer. Read to p. 242.

18. Thursday, Mar. 9. Kierkegaard, Marx. Read to p. 266.

(Spring Break)

19. Tuesday, Mar. 21. Read to p. 275. Nietzsche.

20. Thursday, Mar. 23. Read to p. 293. Bentham, Mill, Frege.

21.Tuesday, Mar. 28. Read to p. 308. Pragmatism, the Analytic Tradition, and the Phenomenological Tradition and its Aftermath. (The 20th century.) James, Dewey.

22. Thursday, Mar. 30. Read to p. 321. The Analytic Tradition: Moore, Russell.

23. Tuesday, April 4. Read to p. 339. Logical Positivism: Wittgenstein.

24. Thursday, Apr. 6. Read to p. 361. Quine. Husserl, Heidegger.

25. Tuesday, Apr. 11. Read to p. 375. Sartre.

26. Thursday, Apr. 13. Read to p. 390. Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, Lacan.

27. Tuesday, Apr. 18. Read to p. 398. Derrida, Irigaray.

28. Thursday, Apr. 20. (a) Discussion of final exam topics. (Final Exam to be held in science building computer lab)

BASIS FOR GRADING

1. 10% ----Attendance and oral participation (5% each).

2. 25% ----One 50-minute exam (midterm). It will be made up of 10 questions, of which you are to answer 7. The questions will draw on a combination of factual/historical information and a grasp of some of the more salient concepts discussed in class. (The Midterm exam date is Thursday, Mar. 2.)

3. 25%----Occasional daily quizzes. These quizzes are designed to check students’ comprehension of the daily reading assignments. They will be multiple choice or true/false questions, and will be given at the beginning of class. Approximately six quizzes will be given, and the lowest grade will be dropped.

4. 40% A final exam, covering the 19^th & 20^th centuries, essay in nature. You choose one out of three questions.

Final Exam: Tuesday, April 25, 8:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.

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