Introduction to Philosophy: March 2006

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Notes for Thursday, March 30

Read to p. 321. The Analytic Tradition: Moore, Russell

G. E. Moore (1873-1958)
The annoying undergraduate. Skepticism, philosophy's legitimate son. Things are exactly as they seem. His refrain: "What exactly do you mean?" Truth, he held, is usually boring. But truth (and especially Truth) is not the goal of philosophy anyhow, but just the clarification of meaning. The revenge of common sense.

(Sir) Bertrand Russell (1872-1970!)
Great mathematical talent and penchant, meets Peano and Frege. Collaborates with Alfred North Whitehead to write Principia Mathematica in 1910-13. Russell champions Frege's idea that mathematics is an extension of the basic priniciples of logic. He develops a powerful symbolic logic. Philosophy is, in his view, subordinate to science. His own philosophy went through numerous changes. As an analytic philosopher, he felt the main function of philosophy was the clarification of vague terms like mind, matter, consciousness, knowledge, will, time, etc. The application of the question of existence to three problems (pp. 317-320). 1. The golden mountain, or unicorn problem. 2. Scott is the author of Waverly problem (which we can assimilate no doubt to Frege's Morning Star/Evening Star/Venus problem). 3. The present King of France problem. Russell believed he had solved these problems by a proposition central to his Theory of Descriptions, namely:

There is an entity C, such that the sentence "X is Y" is true if and only if X = C.

(C is an entity, Y is a characteristic written in the form of an adjective, and X is the subject of which the adjective is predicated, i.e. to which the adjective is attributed.) Existence has been neatly excised from (= cut out of) the proposition.

Russell's very active (and seemingly unrelated) life as a politically concerned citizen and sometime activist. Spent part of WWI in jail as a pacifist. Protested the presence of American atomic weapons in Britain. Opposed the Vietnam war when in his 90s!

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Saturday, March 25, 2006

Notes for Tuesday, March 28

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

William James (1848-1910)

Brother of well-know American (but oh so British) novelist Henry James. Pragmatism, a development of the thinking of the logician and semiologist Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced "purse"). Three theories of truth: coherence, correspondence, and pragmatic. The latter tends to equate truth with what makes a difference, and "works." The "tough-minded" vs. the "tender-minded."

James Dewey (1859-1952)

His thought developed in the context of politics, education and morality. The role of consciousness in the evolution of animal life. Habit vs. thought. Thought is a "response to the doubtful as such." Thinking as deferred action. Critique of traditional epistemologies: "spectator theory of knowledge." Knowledge should be instrumental: problem-solving. Dewey's influence on education in the United States. Learning through doing. Art as experience is perhaps his finest work.

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Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Read to p. 293.

Bentham, Mill, Frege

Jeremy Bentham (The first Utilitarian) 1748-1832

Hedonism ("Hee-dun-izm"), or the pleasure principle, ultimately stemming from Epicurus. Bentham's great innovation is his claim that hedonism doesn't necessarily have to be egostic (egotistic?). It can be social. "The greatest happiness of the greatest number." To determine whether a specific act produces happiness one must (among other things) consider the consequences. Consequentialism, as opposed to Kant's view that it is the intention of the agent that determines the moral value of the act. (In Kant's case it was the sense of duty and reason that determined the morality of an act.) Consider the pros and cons of these two theories on the basis of the examples given on p. 278-9. Bentham's Calculus of Felicity, with its seven parameters.

John Stuart Mill (1808-1873)

Mill transgresses the Benthamite committment to absolute democracy in the area of aesthetic and perhaps moral judgments as well. Some pleasures are qualitatively better than others: more lofty or elevated. Elitism? Mills "laissez-faire" policy. Hands off (of the lives of the citizens). No such thing as a victimless crime. (But can we draw the line in modern society between personal health (e.g. smoking or obesity) and public policy? Then a liberal, now a moderate or even conservative, politically. The role of education in a democracy.

Gottlob Frege (1848-1925)

Important pioneer of what is now called analytic philosophy. Realism vs. idealism (and metaphysics). The analysis of meaning. Natural languages vs. artificial logical language ("behind" the natural languages?); influence on Russell and Wittgenstein. 1789, the publication of Frege's Begriffschrift. Read through pages 287-291 in class.

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Sunday, March 19, 2006

Notes for Tuesday, March 21

Read to p. 275.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Our textbook covers quite a lot of the life of Nietzsche, his works and influence. But I would like to stress two aspects of his work that deserve more emphasis. The first is the distinction Nietzsche makes between the Dionysian and the Apollonian principles. He makes it in his first work, titled The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music.

We will have achieved much for the study of aesthetics when we come, not merely to a logical understanding, but also to the immediately certain apprehension of the fact that the further development of art is bound up with the duality of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, just as reproduction depends upon the duality of the sexes, their continuing strife and only periodically occurring reconciliation. We take these names from the Greeks who gave a clear voice to the profound secret teachings of their contemplative art, not in ideas, but in the powerfully clear forms of their divine world.

With those two gods of art, Apollo and Dionysus, we link our recognition that in the Greek world there exists a huge contrast, in origins and purposes, between visual (plastic) arts, the Apollonian, and the non-visual art of music, the Dionysian. Both very different drives go hand in hand, for the most part in open conflict with each other and simultaneously provoking each other all the time to new and more powerful offspring, in order to perpetuate for themselves the contest of opposites which the common word "Art" only seems to bridge, until they finally, through a marvelous metaphysical act, seem to pair up with each other and, as this pair, produce Attic tragedy, just as much a Dionysian as an Apollonian work of art.

In order to get closer to these two instinctual drives, let us think of them next as the separate artistic worlds of dreams and of intoxication, physiological phenomena between which we can observe an opposition corresponding to the one between the Apollonian and the Dionysian.
(Trans. by Ian C. Johnston of Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC, Canada.)

These two principles set up dynamics of Nietzsche's entire philosophical thought. It underlies his critique of Christianity.

Have I been understood?— What defines me, what sets me apart from the whole rest of humanity is that I uncovered Christian morality. That is why I needed a word that had the meaning of a provocation for everybody. That they did not open their eyes earlier at this point, I regard as the greatest uncleanliness that humanity has on its conscience; as self-deception become instinctive; as a fundamental will not to see any event, any causality, any reality; as counterfeiting in psychologicis to the point of criminality. Blindness to Christianity is the crime par excellence—the crime against life.

[....] The Christian has so far been the "moral being"—a matchless curiosity—and as the "moral being" he was more absurd, mendacious, vain, frivolous, and more disadvantageous for himself than even the greatest despiser of humanity could imagine in his dreams. Christian morality—the most malignant form of the will to lie, the real Circe of humanity—that which corrupted humanity. It is not error as error that horrifies me at this sight—not the lack, for thousands of years, of "good will," discipline, decency, courage in matters of the spirit, revealed by its victory: it is the lack of nature, it is the utterly gruesome fact that antinature itself received the highest honors as morality and was fixed over humanity as law and categorical imperative.— To blunder to such an extent, not as individuals, not as a people, but as humanity!— That one taught men to despise the very first instincts of life, sexuality, as something unclean; that one looks for the evil principle in what is most profoundly necessary for growth, in severe self-love [Selbstsucht: the word is pejorative, like "selfishness."] (this very word constitutes slander); that, conversely, one regards the typical signs of decline and contradiction of the instincts, the "selfless," the loss of a center of gravity, "depersonalization" and "neighbor love" (addiction to the neighbor) as the higher value—what am I saying?—the absolute value!

What? Is humanity itself decadent? Was it always?— What is certain is that it has been taught only decadence values as supreme values. The morality that would un-self man is the morality of decline par excellence—the fact, "I am declining," transposed into the imperative, "all of you ought to decline"—and not only into the imperative.— This only morality that has been taught so far, that of un-selfing, reveals a will to the end; fundamentally, it negates life.

This would still leave open the possibility that not humanity is degenerating but only that parasitical type of man—that of the priest—which has used morality to raise itself mendaciously to the position of determining human values—finding in Christian morality the means to come to power.— Indeed, this is my insight: the teachers, the leaders of humanity, theologians all of them, were also, all of them, decadents: hence the revaluation of all values into hostility to life, hence morality—

Definition of morality: Morality—the idiosyncrasy of decadents, with the ulterior motive of revenging oneself against life—successfully. I attach value to this definition.
(From the posthumously published Ecce Homo)

Thus Christianity fosters what Nietzsche calls a "slave morality."
Just as Marxism may have value as a critique of capitalism, could it be that Nietzsche's philosophy has some value as a critique of Christianity? This would bear discussion.

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Wednesday, March 08, 2006

A Student Question about Kant (by W. Kilgore)

Question:
According to Kant, there are some synthetic propositions that are a priori. These include time and space. Why did Kant consider these propositions to be synthetic? Kant says that these propositions are a priori becuase they are an innate feature of our mind. Their function is to organize the information we percieve from the world. I understand why he considers them a priori, but I am confused about why he considers them synthetic propositions. By definition, a synthetic proposition is a posteriori and known by experience, while an analytic proposition is a priori and known before experience. Why aren't the a priori synthetic statements just considered analytic statements? They are innately known and do not require experience, so they should be, by definition, analytic.

Answer:
Kant said one of the difficutlies with human reason is that it leads us to ask questions that it cannot answer. The same may be said, mutatis mutandis, of our textbook. Your question is an important one. Space and time, in themselves, of course, are not propositons at all, since they are not assertions. They are what Kant called the a priori forms under which objects of the senses can be intuited. All our external intuitions ( = perceptions, more or less) require the form of space, and our internal intuitions (memory, thought) require the form of time.

Analytic propositions do not require the perception of external objects, and therefore they do not require the a priori form (or format, of you like) of spatiality. Neither do the supply us with any new information about the world, as synthetic propositions do. Analytic propositions are so called because they ana-lyse (separate or break down) the information already contained in the subject, but expressing an aspect of it as a predicate (Bachelors are men). Synthetic propositions (syn = together) bring together a subject with a predicate that contains new information not implicit in the subject (The table is green). Now since we must perceive an object in order to predicate anything about it, such synthetic propositions are a posteriori. One the other hand, since the perception of external objects is only possible in the form of spatiality, and that form of spatiality is a priori, i.e. brought to the world by the mind of the perceiver, it may also be said that such propositions have an a priori basis or prior condition. As Kant says: "What we can know a priori--before all real intuition, are the forms of space and time, which are therefore called pure intuition, while sensation is that which causes our knowledge to be called a posteriori knowledge, i.e. empirical intuition." (Critique of Pure Reason, Müller translation, p. 36) Now this obviously does not solve all our problems, because it would seem that we are left with propositions that would have to be classified as both a priori and a posteriori, which would leave us with a glaring contradiction (A and not-A). I am not enough of a Kantian to lead you any further with the requisite degree of certainty on this question, Whitney, but I have a feeling that Kant's solution would be to introduce two layers here, the pure intuition (which does not have real objects as its focus) and the empirical intuition, that does have real objects (and hence sensations as well). The former sort of proposition would constitute a precondition of the latter, and be implied in the latter. But do not take my hypothesis for more than what it is. To make matters more complex, Kant wrote a second version of his Critique of Pure Reason, so that both would have to be considered carefully before a definitive answer to your question could be given.

Dr. Michael Papazian said...

This is an interesting and important question. If I understand the question correctly, you are asking why Kant considers propositions about space and time to be synthetic, since synthetic propositions are a posteriori and known by experience. But Kant doesn't think that synthetic propositions are a posteriori by definition (Hume did, but that's a point on which the two disagreed). As Dr. Smith pointed out, synthetic propositions are simply those whose predicate terms add information not contained in the meaning of the subject ("Bachelors are unhappy" vs. "Bachelors are men.")

Now when Kant says that propositions about space and time are synthetic a priori, he is talking about specific kinds of such propositions, especially those that are used in arithmetic and geometry, such as 7+5=12. One way of thinking about this is that you can have the concept of 7 and 5 but not 12 (supposedly some primitive socieites only count up to a certain number; everything after 10, let's say, is called "many"). So 12 is adding something to the concept of 7+5 that presupposes we're counting on a linear open-ended number line (as opposed to, say, a clock, where 7+6 =1, not 13, since there is no 13 o'clock). So we need to have an idea of an infinite number line to be able to add as we do. Where does that come from? From our a priori conception of time as linear. Hence, 7+5=12 is a priori--we don't need any particular experience of the world to know it is true. But it is also synthetic because it depends on the way in which we conceptualize and understand time in order to be known. By contrast, 7+5=7+5 is analytic, because that is true whether we're using "line" arithmetic or "clock" arithmetic or whatever arithmetic there may exist.

I hope that this helps out in understanding an extremely complex but fascinating aspect of Kant's philosophy.

5:42 AM, March 09, 2006

Dr. Smith said:

Some further reflections on Kilgore's question (or more precisely, my answer to Kilgore's question). I was not too happy with the way I left the question, since I leave certain propositions as being both a priori and aposteriori. This is obviously not satisfactory. I therefore enlisted Dr. Papazian's help once more. He quotes the first part of my response, above, namely:

"Synthetic propositions (syn = together) bring together a subject with a predicate that contains new information not implicit in the subject (The table is green). Now since we must perceive an object in order to predicate anything about it, such synthetic propositions are a posteriori. One the other hand, since the perception of external objects is only possible in the form of spatiality, and that form of spatiality is a priori, i.e. brought to the world by the mind of the perceiver, it may also be said that such propositions have an a priori basis or prior condition."

Notes for Thursday, March 9

Kierkegaard, Marx. Read to p. 266.

Soren Kierkegaard ("Keark-a-gore;"1813-1855; died aged 42)
A Danish preacher, an anti-philosopher, putative father of existentialism.
Opposed Hegel's philosophy. His main opposition: Hegel's rejection and revision of Aristotelian logic, viz. the principles of:
1. Identity. A = A
2. Contradiction.Not (A and not A)
3. The excluded middle. Either A or not A

Hegel's logic, in which everything also contains its opposite (which is what spurs on, through opposition, the dialectic movement of history) was viewed by Kierkegaard as a denial of the necessity of making choices, a suppression of the either/or that is, in the latter's estimation, an indispensable moment in our moral life. Another way of putting it is to say that K. denied the possibility of the synthesis. He also denied the Hegelian collapsing of epistemology and ontology. "The rational is the real and the real is the rational."

Kierkegaard sees a dichotomy between the inescapable abstraction of language, on one hand, and the unthinkable and inexpressible existence on the other. What is new, here, is the use of the term existence to designate the human way of being. What "is" for me is not matter, but whatever "matters." Existence is concrete, thought abstract. Existence is human life, the concrete individual life. Life is passion, decision and action. What is a decision? Is it really like weighing something? On some occasions I apply a set of criteria to make a decision in an objective way, and sometimes this is appropriate. But sometimes this is inappropriate or impossible. Sometimes the application of criteria and "decision science" is a way of avoiding making a decision. Action requires decisions, but life thrusts situations upon us in such a way that we never have sufficient data, we don't have time; then we must "decide" in the existential sense. There are "existential" decisions that we are called upon to make not only without a firm basis, but as if suspended over an abyss. We decide, and our decision is us. Or we do not decide, and our indecision is us. At such times we are in the domain of commitment and faith.
Faith implies a domain of the uncertain. This seems paradoxical, since faith is often understood as the opposite of uncertainty. If we look more closely, we see that (in Kierkegaard's words) doubt is the shadow of faith.

In Fear and Trembling, K. examines the story of Abraham, who is asked by God to sacrifice his son Isaac. Kierkegaard actually gives several interpretations, but concludes that there is a leap of faith that goes beyond the ethical. Is there a spiritual level beyond the ethical? He is stopped at the last minute by an angel, and a lamb is sacrificed instead. Introduction of the category of the absurd.

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

The Hegelian Left, or "young Hegelians." Feuerbach's critique of Christianity. The alienation of ideals into another world, to the detriment of this one. Marx becomes a materialist. The world is not just to be understood, but changed. Don't revise the vision of the holy family, but reform the real family, and the holy or heavenly one (religion, the opium of the masses) will wither away of its own accord.

Homo faber, not homo sapiens. The concept of alienated labor. Critique of capitalism. Materialism not via physics, but via economics. Material foundations (natural resources, means of production and distribution), legal and political superstructures, upon which rest art, religion, morality, poetry and philosophy. False-consciousness, ideologies. But "he who pays the piper calls the tune," or in Marxist language: "The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class." The haves against the have nots, class struggle. The bourgeoisie against the proletariat or working class. The internal contradictions of capitalism would (in a Hegelian dialectic movement) result in imperialistic wars, inflation, unemployment, and eventually lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat, which would in turn wither away when no longer needed.

Historically, the dictatorship did not wither away (in the Soviet Union). There was a certain optimism in the founder's thinking. Private property and the division of labor would disappear. Marx was particularly the early Marx) a humanist, and to some degree an idealist. Did he seriously misunderstand human nature, or a visionary who wanted to hasten the realization of an ideal in a perpetual future? One of apparent contradictions within his doctrine was that the downfall of capitalism was inevitable, and yet it was the moral duty of his followers to bring it about.

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Monday, March 06, 2006

Notes for Tuesday, March 7, 2006

Post-Kantian British and Continental Philosophy. Hegel, Schopenhauer. Read to p. 242.

Hegel (1770-1831) Main work: Phenomenology of Spirt (1807)
Classified as a German Idealist, he called himself an absolute idealist (as opposed to a subjective idealist), in the sense that he equated reality with mind or idea, but not just the human mind--rather God's mind. There is an evolution of spirit or "Geist," as it is called in German, which constitutes history. History will play a greater role in Hegel's philosophy than it had in any previous philosophy. There is an immanent law of development or unfolding of reality in such a way that spirit moves in the direction of self-realization. In the beginning, being and nothingness are identical. But as the process of universal self-realization gets underway, the subject (the thinker) thinks the object. This is God's (or the Universe's) self-alienation.

The movement of history is a dialectical advance, from thesis to antithesis to synthesis. The thesis then functions as a new (simple) thesis, which then engenders its opposite, an antithesis, which eventually generates a new synthesis, and so on.

Brief discussion on Hegel's system.

I. The Idea-in-itself (= logic). Being, Nothingness, Becoming.
II. The Idea-outside -itself (= nature, i.e. material being, the opposite of spirit, but potentially destined to become spirit).
III. The Idea for itself ( = spirit); the idea recovered from its loss into its opposite. Subjective and objective spirit.
(See p. 230 for rest of system.)

Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
Rivalry with Hegel. Influence of Indian philosophy. Schopenhauer the pessimist. The dark side of mankind is thinly veiled. We are nature's playthings, in the grip of an impersonal will, that can only say "more"! Thematized the drives (sex, violence). Influenced Sigmund Freud, notion of the id. Civilization is the sublimation of drives, delayed gratification. Baroque music and nirvana. Schopenhauer was a good writer and became relatively popular in Germany. Influenced Nietzsche, whose idea of the "will to power" appears to owe something to Schopenhauer.

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Model Answers for Midterm

Phi150 A

MIDTERM

Answer any ten of the fifteen questions below.

1. Explain the difference between Mythos and Logos in early Greek thought.

Mythos is narrative stories about gods to account for the way things are today. They tend to be conservative. Mythos did not imply, as it does in most cases today, a lack of validity or truth. Logos, which meant both word and logic, explained things without recourse to divine intervention, and attempted to give natural causes to explain natural phenomena. It eventually became science.

2. What were Zeno's paradoxes originally intended to show?

They were intended to show that movement is impossible; for the benefit of Parmenides, Zeno of Elias's teacher. The larger issue involved is ontological: if movement is possible, that would imply that there is such a thing as nothingness (since a moving arrow moves from where it was to where it is now, which would indicate that there is nothing where it was the moment before. Movement, like change, is a mixture of being and nothingness. Stability has more being than change.

3. Although we now know Thales' theory that everything is water to be false, there are certain underlying affinities between Thales's theory and the manner in which
modern science proceeds. Point out those affinities.

a) There must be some one underlying thing (substance, element) that is common to all things, otherwise it would be impossible to explain change.

b) It separates the multiplicity of appearances from some underlying sameness.

c) It presents a reasonable hypothesis, based on inductive reasoning.

Comment: The status of this "Urstoff" is different from that of a "thing." It is more like an element. This level of reflection has not yet attained the ability of abstraction necessary to posit some entity (such as "matter") that had no qualities itself. It is the "emblematic" reuse of an object to explain all objects.

4. Why did the oracle at Delphi say Socrates was the wisest of men?

Because he knew that he didn't know, whereas most men think they do know. This first step (the recognition of one's ignorance) is a vital first step in the Socratic road to knowledge.

5. Explain Plato's Myth of the Cave in your own words.

Prisoners are chained in a cave so that they can only face the wall, can't see the source of the figures that are projected in front of them. These figures are actually produced by the light from a fire, in front of which people are carrying objects on their heads. The bodies of the people carrying the objects are hidden by a low wall. The prisoners take "appearances" for "reality." One prisoner is forced to go to out of the cave, and along the entrance path that goes upward toward the light of the sun. His eyes are so bedazzled by the light of reality that he returns. When he tells the other prisoners of their delusion, they become angry and kill him. The cave shows that we must make the journey to the upper realm of true reality, the world of ideal forms.

6. Explain what was at stake in the late medieval controversy between the realists and the nominalists.

The realists thought that universals really exist, while realists thought they were just convenient names of categories, valid only for subjective human beings. The Catholic church eventually opted for the realist position.

7. What is the role of teleology in the philosophy of Aristotle?

Teleology, the notion that things tend toward the realization of a an innate purpose, is vital to Aristotle's entire system. Things move toward their realization, attaining their potential. This sort of thinking today is confined to the explanation of human behavior (and that of animals; possible of life forms); Aristotle thought heavy things sought the lower levels because it was part of their nature to do so.

8. Give any version of the ontological argument for the existence of God.

a) (Anselm) God is that than which nothing greater can be imagined. If we imagine God as existing in the human mind only, a god that would exist both within and without the human mind would be greater. Therefore God exists both within and without the human mind.

b) God is perfect. Therefore he cannot lack any quality. If He lacked existence, He would lack a quality. Therefore God exists. (This is a somewhat stream-lined version of the preceding.

c) (Descartes) I am imperfect. I can only know that I am imperfect if I have the idea of perfection. My idea of perfection must be caused by something perfect. Nothing can be more perfect than its cause, and nothing in my experience is perfect enough to have caused the idea of perfection in my mind. Therefore a perfect being (God) put the idea of perfection in my mind. Therefore God exists.

Comment: Kant subsequently refutes the logic of (a) and (b) by arguing that existence is not a quality to be predicated of a subject, but implied in their being a subject.

9. Explain the significance of Galileo's discovery that Jupiter had four moons.

The church still held the notion that the universe was geocentric, for dogmatic reasons. The Garden of Eden was at the center of the universe. But it drew some reassurance from the fact that the moon rotates around the earth, thus showing its obeisance to earth. Galileo's discovery of Jupiter's four moons tended to weaken the Church's already lame argument for a geocentric universe.

10. What is the meaning of "I think, therefore I am," and why is it central to Descartes project?

Descartes set out to arrive at an Archimedean point, a point of absolute certainty. He proceeded therefore to doubt everything he could: "De omnibus dubitandum," everthing is to be doubted. But as he was doubting it occurred to him that he was thinking, and if he was thinking he must exist.

11. Give as accurate an account as you can of Cartesian dualism. What are its strengths and weaknesses?

Descartes divided the world into two finite substances: res cogitans, or mind, and res extensa or the world of extended physical objects. Although he did not originate this distinction, he formalized it. It does seem to explain two basic sorts of being, but it raises the problem of interaction. How could mind influence body or body mind (as they seem to do, when, e.g., a physical accident can end the life of the mind, or a mental state affects our physical state)? Descartes surmised that the two met in the pineal gland, located in his estimation at the center of the brain. But since this is a physical organ, it seems unlikely that this could work, even in principle.

12. Specify the difference between analytic and synthetic statements (i.e. between what Hume called "relations of ideas" versus "matters of fact"), and give two examples of each.

Analytic statements are relations of ideas, they are a priori, i.e. before experience, and they are true by definition. They tend to be tautological. They are necessary, and their negations are contradictions. Synthetic statements or matters of fact are statements about the world, the truth of which can only be established by experience with the real world. They are therefore a posteriori and contingent. Their negations are not contradictory. Examples of the former are: All triangles have three angles, all brothers are siblings, circles are round, either it is Monday or it is not Monday, etc. All mathematical truths are analytic. Examples of the latter are: George is late this morning, it is chilly in this room, the cat is on the mat, Clinton is the present president of the United States, and the American Revolution broke out in 1776.

13. Explain the following terms in your own words: (a) solipsism, (b) tautology, (c) epistemology, (d) intersubjectivity, (e) ontology. [If you choose to answer question 13, you will be given partial credit for each element answered correctly.

Solipsism: I am the only one who exists. Tautology: a truism, something that is obviously the case. Epistemology, theory of knowledge. Intersubjectivity, the collectivity of subjectivities. Ontology, the study of being.

14. Explain how Kant was able to assert that there are such things as synthetic a priori truths.

Kant propounded that the forms of intuition, temporality and spatiality, are a priori because we do not discover these in the outer world, and yet synthetic because they do pertain to the real world. The categories of the understanding (causality, necessity, substance, etc.) were considered a priori synthetic truths as well. These were not exactly the same as "innate ideas" however, because they were considered as preconditions of all experience.

15. Explain, with examples, Kant's notion of the categorical imperative.

The categorical imperative is the basis of Kant's ethical philosophy, which he develops in the second critique (The Critique of Practical Reason). It posits that we should act in such a way that we could wish this were a universal maxim for all people. If, for example, I were to steal something, I could only do so if I wanted all people to steal. But stealing is tributary to (dependent on) the existence of private property, because without it there would be nothing to steal. If stealing were a universal practice, there would be no private property, hence no stealing. A universal maxim to kill one's neighbor would end up in the same contradiction, and is therefore prohibited by Kant's categorical imperative.

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Introduction to Philosophy