Philosophy Quiz - Metaphysics Flashcards
1
Q
Metaphysics:
A
Metaphysics is the study of the basic structure of reality.
2
Q
Metaphysics is the study of the basic structure of ?
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Reality
3
Q
Metaphysics Wonderings?
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Being and Nothingness
Time
Freedom and Determinism
Mind and Body
Personhood
Nature and Supreme Beings
What is reality?
What are the building blocks of reality?
Are they mental, or physical?
What is a mind? What is matter?
Why is there something and not nothing?
What is a person?
Do I have free choices?
What is the meaning of life?
Does a supreme being exist? Do I have meaning if a supreme being DOESN’T exist?
4
Q
Science Versus Philosophy
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- Metaphysicians try to find general answers
- Using logic and rational thought - not scientific evidence.
- Durable general answers
5
Q
The Common Sense Realist
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- People find metaphysics “silly” - We know reality because we perceive it every day.
- “Reality”, they say, is only what we know with our senses.
- Philosophers say this idea is driven by ignorance/laziness
6
Q
Why this Matters? (Metaphysics Intro)
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People ask themselves metaphysical questions all the time.
7
Q
Does a Supreme Being Exist?
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- This question matters to literally billions of people.
- Gives them a sense of purpose, a set of values, and an answer to questions about death.
- No “God” = some people would say that everything is morally permissible. Others would find it liberating.
8
Q
What is a Person?
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- Silly question?
- 250 years ago, half that population were not considered persons (women) and another large group had no rights (non-whites).
- Today it enters into the legal debates regarding both abortion and euthanasia. When does something become person? When does it stop being a person?
- Should/Can animals be considered persons?
9
Q
Do You Have Free Will?
A
- Free will is the ability to make choices independently.
- We all like to think we have free will, but do we?
- The entire court system is built around this idea.
- Are your choices, really your own?
10
Q
Today….. - Metaphysics
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- Metaphysics is working on issues in the scientific realm as well as the traditional questions.
- The origins of the universe, the nature of time, superstrings, chaos theory etc…
11
Q
Socrates - Background
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- Central figure in western philosophy - what is known about him comes from Plato.
- Did not write anything down, believed that mass education was impossible.
- He lived (469-399) during the Golden Age of Athens.
- His father was a sculptor and stone-mason. His mother was a midwife = he wasn’t broke
12
Q
Socrates - Education
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- Athenian Crito - took him out of the stone-mason’s workshop, paid for his education.
- A pupil of Anaxagoras
- Attracted to the topics raised by the Sophists (a kind of travelling teacher)
13
Q
Socrates - Philosophical Mission
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- Chaerephon - went to the Delphic oracle asking if there was anyone who was wiser than Socrates, “there was not.”
- Not feeling wise, Socrates cross-examined the ‘wise’ men of society. (statesmen, poets, artisans, and others.) He did NOT find them wise.
- The pursuit of wisdom became Socrates’ full-time job
14
Q
Socratic Method
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- His method consisted of asking questions to his fellow Athenians, particularly in regard to moral questions.
- Argued that knowledge was virtue and believed that people were largely ignorant (not meant in a rude way)
- Question and answer system is still called “The Socratic Method”
15
Q
Socratic Method II
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- The goal of Socratic Method is to expose the weakness of someone else’s argument, by asking further questions, that eventually cannot be answered without exposing a contradiction.
- Socrates felt the mass schooling was impossible, and small group Socratic seminars were the only method that actually taught students anything of value in philosophy.
16
Q
Socratic Irony
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- Irony is a difficult term with many definitions – one similarity is that there are 2 audiences involved.
- The term given to the idea that during Socratic questioning, the student is unaware of Socrates’ methods, but the others know what is happening.
17
Q
The Peloponnesian War
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- Athens Vs Sparta (Athens doesn’t do well…at all)
- Socrates fought in this war and it defined him intellectually.
- He was critical of Athenian Democracy and Spartan Oligarchy.
- Three of his former students were leaders associated with the downfall of Athens.
18
Q
The Trial of Socrates
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- An Athenian Democrat, Anytus, who suffered under Spartan control of Athens (when a puppet government of ‘30 tyrants’ led by a former student of Socrates was in charge) brought charges against Socrates….
- “Socrates is guilty of not believing in the gods in which the state believes, but brings in other new divinities; he also wrongs by corrupting the youth .”
19
Q
Death of Socrates
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- In his defense Socrates gave a spontaneous speech relying on reason, refuting all the charges one by one .
- There were 501 men on the jury, and he was condemned by 60 votes.
- The prosecutors proposed the death penalty, and Socrates had the opportunity to offer an alternative but antagonized the jury.
- With his death from hemlock poison Socrates became the most famous of all philosophers
20
Q
Who is Plato?
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- One of the earliest ancient Greek philosophers
- Born in Athens, Greece in 427 BC
- He was a student of Socrates
- He served in the Peloponnesian War
- Formed what is the first known university, called “The Academy”
- Died in 347 BC
21
Q
What is an Allegory?
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- a representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning through concrete or material forms; figurative treatment of one subject under the guise of another.
22
Q
Symbolism Within the Story
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- Inside the cave – the world in which we live
- Objects casting shadows = Real things
- Shadows on the wall = Images mistakenly thought of as real
- Outside the cave = the ‘intelligible’ world – found through the use of reason
- Objects out of the cave = the forms (‘real’ things)
- The sun = The form of good (knowledge)
23
Q
What do the symbols mean?
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- Inside the cave, the prisoners mistake appearance for reality. They believe that the images they are seeing on the wall are actually real, they do not know that there are objects making these images.
- The prisoner thinks he is talking about a “book,” when really he is talking of a shadow.
24
Q
We are surrounded by things everyday that are largely meaningless.
A
- We convince ourselves (and others) that these things actually matter
- These things are imperfect copies of perfect forms (ideas)
- If we can stop focusing on the material world, we will be happier.
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Descartes’ Evil Genius
- Rene Descartes also had the same issues surrounding our world.
- In the seventeenth century, he wondered if it would be possible to know if his life was actually a dream-state created by an Evil Genius.
- Seeing as ALL of our perceptions are simply electrical impulses inside of our brains, “reality” may not exist at all.
- He could simply be a brain in a vat, with no physical body at all.
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Plato’s assertion is that perspective and reality are not aligned.
- Thus the things we perceive, in some way, are not truly reflective of reality.
- This affects the way we view the world, and our decisions.
- How might the following affect your perception of reality?: music industry, ads, tv news, tv shows, movies, school, gender, social networking
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Freed Vs Shackled
- Freed prisoners will never be understood by the shackled. Plato suggests that freed prisoners would be hated by those in the cave.
- Freeing oneself would be a difficult and painful process of unlearning = questioning everything that you thought was true and meaningful.
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PERSON VERSUS HUMAN
- Human is a biological term.
- It means a member of the genus Homo, and specifically Homo sapiens sapiens.
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PERSON?
- Person is a philosophical term.
- It is not a question of biology.
- Imagine we discover aliens one day, that are as intelligent as us, and they possess a language, and a culture.
- Would we consider it morally correct to own them, as we own animals today?
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So then, a person can be defined as:
- "any entity that has the moral right of self-determination.”
- The real question becomes not what is a person, but “What properties must an entity possess in order to be considered a ‘person’?
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JOHN LOCKE
- A person must have rationality, thought, consciousness, self-consciousness and self identity
- Being a human does not make one a person.
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DANIEL DENNETT - To be a person, a being must have:
Rationality
Conscious mental states
The ability to be regarded as a person
Capacity for verbal communication
Self-consciousness
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MARY ANN WARREN - When does Personhood begin?
Consciousness of objects
Ability to feel pain
Reasoning
Self-motivated activity
Self-awareness
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IMPLICATIONS OF THIS DEBATE
- Many humans have not always been considered persons under the law – ie. People of different races, ethnicities, women, the poor, slaves, children etc…
- The implications involve human rights, who we see as equals in society, and who/what we allow self-determination.
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ANIMAL RIGHTS
- Animal rights groups have proposed that many if not all animals would fall under some of our definitions of persons.
- Should animals have an inherent right to not be killed, tortured or eaten?
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ELEPHANTS
- They have been seen consoling family members, helping other species in times of need, playing in water and communicating with one another via vibrations sensed in their feet.
- A crowning achievement, some researchers say, was when this female Asian elephant named Happy recognized herself in the mirror. The complex behaviour is shared only with humans, great apes and dolphins.
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DOLPHINS
- These mammals have shown that they recognize themselves in a mirror.
- This is a behaviour that even human infants do not possess.
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CHIMPS
Experiments show chimps are capable of empathy, altruism and self-awareness. In the experiment pictured here, chimps performed better than humans on a number memory test.
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CROWS
The birds are born with the ability to use tools, but they hone their craft by watching their elders, a sign of higher intelligence.
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OCTOPUS
The cephalopod brain surrounds the esophagus, but shares with the human brain features of complexity such as folded lobes and distinct regions for processing visual and tactile information. The how-smart debate swirls around deciphering observations that the creatures have a seemingly irrepressible curiosity, a disdain for boredom, an ability to learn and the capacity to use tools.
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PIGS
Pigs were trained to move a cursor on a video screen with their snouts and used the cursor to distinguish between scribbles they knew and those they were seeing for the first time. They learned the task as quickly as chimpanzees.
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ARTIFICIAL ORGANS
- Cutting edge medical technology will make artificial organs commonplace in the next generation.
- How much of you can be replaced before you are no longer you?
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CORPORATIONS
- Under all international laws, a corporation is a legal entity with the same rights as human being.
- Do any problems exist with that?
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The Turing Test/The Imitation Game/Prediction
- “Could a machine fool the interrogator into thinking it was a person?”
- In 1950, Turing predicted that by 2000, a computer would have a 70% chance of fooling a human.
- He was right.
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John Searle’s Response
- The Chinese Room Analogy – an American in a room is given a series of Chinese symbols and chart that shows how to match them to appropriate responses.
- He doesn’t understand the Chinese, but if he follows the chart, his responses will make sense, even if he doesn’t understand it at all.
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The Analogy
- Computers are like the man in the Chinese room.
- They may perform tasks, but they will never UNDERSTAND what they are doing.
- They lack consciousness, and intentionality.
- They do not have a MIND, like we do.
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St Thomas Aquinas
- Animals are not ‘rational’ and have been given to humans, by God.
- They are instruments, and do not exist for their own sake, unlike humans.
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Immanuel Kant
- Only human beings can stand back and WILL to do something, and not something else.
- This means animals were not given free will, and they are not deserving of rights.
- They are not autonomous.
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Rene Descartes
- Rene Descartes argued that animals do not have a mind, and that they are biological machines, without thoughts or feelings.
- To him, a cry of pain was a mechanical response, like a steam whistle.
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Animals are like Machines
- According to Descartes, neither will ever be close to a person.
- They are not able to solve complex problems, think or speak like humans do.
- They simply respond to their environment.
- They have no MIND.
51
Modern Views
- Do not tend to agree with Descartes. At least, not regarding animals we like.
- But both Searle and Descartes have ended on a difficult point.
- Computers and animals do not have MINDS, they say.
- But what, exactly, is a mind............
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So, according to many philosophers from past days, animals are not like us, because:
1. They do not possess a soul given to them by God – which many don’t believe in anymore.
2. They do not have free will – which many believe CAN’T exist in a world that follows natural laws.
3. They do not have a ‘mind’ - which has yet to be fully described or understood by scientists, or philosophers. Additionally, even those philosophers that say there IS a mind, cannot logically prove that anyone ELSE has one
4. They exhibit all the same reactions to pain, suffering etc. , as people do, but they are somehow just robotic actions in them, and genuine expressions in us – but we don’t know why.
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The Mind/Brain (aka Mind/Body) Problem
- You have a 1.4 kg hunk of ‘meat’ inside your skull. We call it your brain. It is pretty big, containing millions or billions of neurons and glial cells. These neurons exist as either ‘on’ or ‘off’ - firing electrical signals, or not.
- Unlike your other pieces, your brain is aware of itself. It is sentient - that is, it is aware that it exists.
- Inside this piece of skull meat, lies every thought you’ve ever had, every emotion you’ve ever experienced and every memory of your past.
- How does your brain create non-physical events like emotions and feelings?
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#1 Monism
- There are no divisions in reality. - - All reality is one thing.
- Both your mind and your brain are just expressions of that one thing.
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Monoism - Physical monism
- all things are physical. Thoughts can be explained through what is happening in your head.
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Monoism - Idealism
- all things are mental and ONLY exist inside your head.
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Monosim - Solipsism
- only my thoughts exist. You don’t even exist outside of my head.
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#2 - Materialism - a kind of monism
- Nothing exists but matter and things that are made of matter.
- Thomas Hobbes - Your thoughts are just matter moving around inside your brain. Perception comes from matter in the world causing activity and motion inside your head.
- If your physical brain is destroyed, your mind is also destroyed and you cease to exist in any way that we would understand as ‘existence’.
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#3 - Identity Theory
- Developed in the 1950s. When we experience something, it has a corresponding neurological state in your brain. Emotions and feeling have simply been poetically mislabelled throughout human history.
- What we call love is simply brain activity at a certain point in the brain. Example - the feeling of ‘love’ would be better described as increased activity in the C-fibre neurons.
- Some have said that this does not explain HOW feelings actually feel to us. Others say that feelings are impossible to describe.
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#4 - Eliminative Materialism
- Daniel Dennett, John Searle, Paul and Patricia Churchland
- Once we fully understand how our brains work, we will stop using all this imprecise language.
In fact, terms like ‘love’, ‘belief’, ‘faith’, etc...are completely meaningless. Eventually we will learn enough to stop using these terms, just like we stopped believing in faith healing and demons.
- Others say that if you're going to say nothing exists but matter, you need a much more clear definition of what matter is.
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#5 Functionalism
- This is currently the most popular theory of the mind.
- Your brain is like a computer and the mind is like software inside that computer. All animals have the hardware, but the software may be different. Humans for example, would have the app “Consciousness 2.0” - but not all animals would.
- Programs cannot function without the computer, but the program is NOT the computer.
- Sensations are like the computer’s input.
- Thinking does not have to be conscious,
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#6 - Dualism
- Consciousness cannot be reduced to simple physical actions.
- Rene Descartes is the most well-known dualist. He didn’t know what the mind and brain were - but he said that they were distinctly different. He did think that they were connected somehow at the pineal gland.
- Nagel argued that consciousness is too subjective a thing to talk about they any real meaning.
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#7 - The New Mysterians
- Colin McGinn - the human mind was not built to solve all problems that exist. There will always be things that we cannot understand. - Your brain is big and smart and complicated, but it cannot understand everything.
- We know that sugar is sweet - but that doesn’t tell me how it tastes to you.
- Human being evolve traits that help us survive. If understand consciousness doesn’t help us survive, we wouldn’t need it.
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The Father of Existentialism
- Soren Kierkegaard 1813-1855
- The biggest danger one can face in life, is losing oneself. The reason for that, is because you can lose yourself without ever really knowing.
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Lost in the Finite/Lost in the Infinite
- At any given time 90% of people are lost.
- They are either lost in the finite - creating themselves by using what other people say is valuable. I need to look cool to random strangers, so I post junk on social media.
- Or they are lost in the infinite - stuck in a state of paralysis and never choosing anything at all. I cannot know what to do, so I do nothing.
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Dizziness
- “Dizziness” comes from the state of realizing that you have an infinite number of possible choices….but knowing that you must choose one eventually and live with it.
- What if I choose wrong? What if I make a mistake? How can live with this choice and its possible consequences?
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Anxiety
- May be compared with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his own eyes as in the abyss...anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
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Despair
- This dizziness of freedom causes DESPAIR. It is an attempt to rid yourself OF yourself. This is knowing that all choices are your own, but not wanting to make them.
- You may decide - “I’m going to be a firefighter. I will save lives and make my life meaningful by helping others!” Your despair subsides.
- Great. But then in a horrible accident you are injured. You can no longer work or save people. The despair is back.
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But Kierkegaard would say….
- The despair never left - you just did a good job of hiding it.
- This despair is ALWAYS there. But it’s like having a disease that is lying dormant.
- Or like herpes...it’s like having herpes of the spirit.
- Even the happiest person EVER still has this despair hiding in them.
- You need to be sufficiently self aware and honest enough with yourself to realize that you are in this condition.
- Even IF you have the best marks and the best university program...that despair is still there. - You are just masking it by attaching your worth to earthly activities.
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Embrace your freedom & your despair.
`- Do not undersell how hard this is. You need to constantly examine all your choices, and all your activities. Are you really an individual self? A fully realized human? Or are you just acting?
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Kierkegaard and Ethics
- Kierkegaard talks A LOT about choices and how important they are. We take action based on our choices and we will NEVER fully know if we are doing the right thing.
- But that is the important thing. Ultimately, our choices must be FREE choices and we must accept responsibility for the consequences. We must accept that we made the choice - so you cannot simply blame others for the choices that you made.
- You must always keep an inventory of yourself and make sure that you are the person you wish to be.
- You may not like it. But that doesn’t matter.
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Why does Soren Kierkegaard believe that people are lost? What is the finite and the infinite?
- People are lost because they are either stuck in the finite or the infinite.
- Finite - creating themselves by using what other people say is valuable. I need to look cool to random strangers, so I post junk on social media.
- Infinite - stuck in a state of paralysis and never choosing anything at all. I cannot know what to do, so I do nothing.
73
Describe the ‘dizziness’.
The dizziness happens when you realize you have an infinite number of choices and no choice (not picking is also a choice that will also guide your life) but to pick one and live it out knowing it could go wrong/other choices could’ve benefited you more.
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What is despair? What causes it according to SK?
Despair is knowing that all choices are your own, but not wanting to make them. It is caused by the dizziness of freedom.
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In what ways do we try to hide the despair?
Attaching our worth to earthly activities.
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Why is despair a part of being human?
Because it’s simply always there.
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Why must we constantly evaluate and assess ourselves?
Because we want to know we are doing the right thing.
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Given your age, is this a thing that you have experienced? Have you experienced a circumstance where you DIDN’T know what to do, and had to do something anyways? Do you think this will change in the future somehow?
This is something I experience constantly, I am a very indecisive person and the future, how my life will fall into place, what I end up doing, etc, are always worries of mine because of how nothing is promised. Thus, knowing that my choices impact all of that and ultimately how happy I will be feels exactly like that despair SK references. I’ve experienced many situations where I didn’t know what to do or I wasn’t inclined to an option and still had to rationalize my decision as much as I could before accepting that the choice just had to be made. I don’t really think this will change in the future because even once my life is as complete as it can be I’ll think about what I could’ve done differently or about smaller decisions that still impact what’s left of my life.
79
SK calls despair, choice and anxiety the “sickness unto death”. What does that mean?
I think it means that despair, choice, and anxiety, are uncomfortable feelings/things we have to put up with until we die, they never truly go away as long as we are human. Thus, we are left with this feeling of sickness until we die. We can distract ourselves they still won’t ever really go away though.
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Free Will Definition:
The supposed power or capacity of humans to make decisions or perform actions independently of any prior event or state in the universe.
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Why might we have free will argument:
Existentialism?
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Why we don’t have free will argument:
- Our subconscious makes decisions before “we” do - rubber ball tests
- Having the ability to create thought breaks the laws of physics
- No evolutionary reason to develop free will
- The vast majority of decisions we make on a daily basis are subconscious
- If “God” knows everything that will ever happen how would we be able to dictate our futures.
- Decisions we make are based off of exterior factors.
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Most modern versions of metaphysics…
...are actually much closer to theoretical physics - which makes it very difficult to understand. But we’ll try.
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Chaos Theory
- In the study of Chaos Theory, physicists and mathematicians attempt to describe the behaviour of dynamic, nonlinear systems.
- It is largely believed that control of giant, nonlinear systems is impossible.
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Initially begun by Lorentz,
- It shows how minor variations in massives systems can cause HUGE changes as the system progresses.
- The Butterfly Effect is one example of this.
- He discovered this idea when running climate simulations. He started the initially simulation with a rounded number - the end result was much different than it should have been .
86
Newtonian Physics…
...is very deterministic.
You measure things, and you can predict the outcome.
A---------- leads to ------------>B
ALWAYS.
But Chaos Theory says that minor variations will cause massive disruptions in the real world.
Essentially, it says that Newton is wrong.
A,B,C,D etc…------leads to --------->I have no idea (yet)...
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String Theory
- Newest stuff.
- Particle theory of Einstein is wrong, and the universe at the smallest level is actually composed to strings of vibrating energy.
- One of the string is called a graviton - which carries with it a gravitational energy….which can describe where gravity comes from.
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Extra Dimensions
- String theory also says that there are extra dimensions that exist in the universe.
- In Boson string theory, there are 26 dimensions.
- In Superstring theory, there are 10 dimensions.
- BTW - you live in 4 dimensions.
- 3D, plus time = 4 dimensions.
- You cannot experience the other dimensions….sorry.
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The Hadron Collider
- The Hadron Collider is the world’s largest collider. It takes protons and speeds them up and then smashes them together.
- It is a MASSIVE facility and uses some of the largest computers even built.
- It recently discovered BOSONS.
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As we end our Metaphysics unit
- It seems like not much will be discovered by ‘regular’ philosophers. The cutting edge of discovery would be coming from people that understand stuff that looks like this --->
- And that ain’t us….
- But remember OUR BIG QUESTIONS...What is a person? What is free will? What is consciousness? This chalkboard can’t answer that.
