CSS Philosophy key facts

Introduction and ancient philosophy

Nature and branches of philosophy

• Metaphysics: the nature of reality; ontology is the part that studies being and existence as such
• Epistemology: the nature, sources and limits of knowledge
• Ethics: moral right and wrong, and the good life
• Logic: the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning
• Aesthetics: beauty, art and taste
• Axiology: the theory of value, covering ethics and aesthetics together
• Uses: critical thinking, clear concepts, and examining the assumptions behind science, law and politics

Pre-Socratic and Socratic philosophy

• Thales of Miletus: water is the arche; usually counted the first Western philosopher
• Heraclitus: everything flows; one cannot step into the same river twice; fire as the symbol of change
• Parmenides: being is one, eternal and unchanging; trust reason, not the senses
• Democritus (following Leucippus): indivisible atoms and the void
• Protagoras the Sophist: 'Man is the measure of all things' (relativism)
• Socratic method (elenchus): question, answer, counter-example, improved answer; he likened it to a midwife's work
• Socrates: 'virtue is knowledge', so no one does wrong willingly; tried for impiety and corrupting the young; our sources are Plato and Xenophon

Plato and Aristotle

• Divided line, lowest to highest: imagination (eikasia), belief (pistis), thought (dianoia), reason or understanding (noesis); the first two are opinion, the last two knowledge
• Soul and state: reason ↔ rulers (wisdom), spirit ↔ auxiliaries or soldiers (courage), appetite ↔ producers (temperance); justice is each part doing its own work
• Four causes: material (what it is made of), formal (its form or shape), efficient (what made it), final (its purpose)
• Aristotle's logical works are the Organon; the syllogism draws a conclusion from two premises
• Golden mean: courage lies between cowardice and rashness; the mean is relative to the person and situation, fixed by practical wisdom
• Highest human good: eudaimonia (happiness or flourishing), activity of the soul in accordance with virtue
• Plato founded the Academy; Aristotle founded the Lyceum

Medieval and Muslim philosophy

Medieval Christian philosophy

• Augustine's works: Confessions (his conversion) and The City of God
• Augustine on time: past, present and future are measured in the mind as memory, attention and expectation
• Aquinas's five ways (in the Summa Theologiae): motion (unmoved mover), efficient cause (first cause), contingency (a necessary being), degrees of perfection, governance of the world (things without knowledge act for ends)
• The ontological argument belongs to Anselm, not Aquinas, who rejected it
• Realism: universals really exist. Nominalism (William of Ockham): only individuals exist and universals are names
• Moderate realism (Aquinas): universals exist in individual things and are abstracted by the mind
• A Summa article: question, objections, 'on the contrary', the author's answer, replies to the objections

Muslim philosophers

• Al-Kindi: 'the philosopher of the Arabs'; brought Greek philosophy into Arabic thought
• Al-Farabi: 'the Second Teacher' (after Aristotle); Al-Madina al-Fadila, modelled on Plato's Republic
• Ibn Sina (Avicenna): Kitab al-Shifa and the Canon of Medicine; the 'floating man' argument for self-awareness without the body; God as the Necessary Being
• Al-Ghazali: attacked the eternity of the world and the denial of God's knowledge of particulars and of bodily resurrection; denied necessary causation (fire and cotton); Al-Munqidh min al-Dalal; Ihya Ulum al-Din
• Ibn Rushd (Averroes): 'the Commentator' on Aristotle; Tahafut al-Tahafut
• Ibn Khaldun: asabiyyah (group solidarity) raises dynasties; luxury weakens it and they decline in a cycle
• Ibn Tufayl: Hayy ibn Yaqzan; reason and revelation reach the same truth

Modern philosophy

Rationalism

• Descartes (1596 to 1650): Discourse on Method; Meditations on First Philosophy (1641)
• Criterion of truth: clear and distinct perception, guaranteed by a God who does not deceive
• Descartes's proofs of God: the trademark argument (the idea of a perfect being must come from a perfect being) and an ontological argument (existence belongs to God's perfection)
• Dualism: mind and body interact, Descartes suggested, through the pineal gland
• Spinoza: Ethics, set out in geometrical order; monism; mind and body are one and the same thing, conceived under two attributes (thought and extension) of the one substance
• Leibniz: Monadology; monads are simple, non-material and 'windowless'
• Pre-established harmony: God set all monads at creation so that their states agree without acting on one another

Empiricism

• Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding; primary qualities (shape, size, motion, number) are in bodies; secondary qualities (colour, taste, smell, sound) depend on the perceiver
• Berkeley: idealism (immaterialism); only minds and their ideas exist
• Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature; ideas are faint copies of impressions
• Hume's fork: relations of ideas (certain, but say nothing about the world) and matters of fact (known only by experience)
• Hume on causation: constant conjunction plus habit, not observed necessity; this leads to the problem of induction
• Rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz): reason and innate ideas. Empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume): experience
• Leibniz's reply to 'nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses': 'except the intellect itself'

Kant and German idealism

• Kant: Critique of Pure Reason (1781)
• Analytic judgement: the predicate is contained in the subject ('All bodies are extended'). Synthetic: the predicate adds something ('All bodies are heavy')
• A priori: known independently of experience, necessary and universal. A posteriori: known from experience
• Synthetic a priori judgements, for Kant: mathematics (7 + 5 = 12) and principles such as 'every event has a cause'
• There are twelve categories; sensibility gives intuitions, understanding gives concepts, and knowledge needs both
• Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit; thesis, antithesis, synthesis is the usual textbook summary; history is the progress of the consciousness of freedom
• Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Representation; pessimism

Pragmatism, existentialism and analytic philosophy

• Peirce's pragmatic maxim: the meaning of a concept is the sum of the practical effects we conceive it to have; no difference in practice means no difference in meaning.
• James, 'Pragmatism' (1907): truth is what works. Dewey: instrumentalism, learning by doing, 'Democracy and Education' (1916).
• Kierkegaard (1813 to 1855), Danish, called the father of existentialism: three stages of life, the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious; faith is a leap.
• Nietzsche (1844 to 1900): 'God is dead', the will to power, the Übermensch who creates his own values.
• Sartre, 'Being and Nothingness' (1943): existence precedes essence; bad faith is self-deception that denies one's freedom.
• Logical positivism (Vienna Circle, 1920s; Ayer's 'Language, Truth and Logic', 1936): the verification principle.
• Russell: logical atomism and the theory of descriptions. Wittgenstein: picture theory in the 'Tractatus' (1921); meaning as use and language games in the 'Philosophical Investigations' (1953).

Logic, ethics and special topics

Logic: terms, propositions and syllogism

• A: All S are P. E: No S is P. I: Some S are P. O: Some S are not P.
• Distribution: A distributes the subject only; E both terms; I neither; O the predicate only.
• Square of opposition: A and O, and E and I, are contradictories (one true, one false). A and E are contraries (cannot both be true, may both be false). I and O are subcontraries (cannot both be false, may both be true). I follows from A, and O from E (subalternation).
• Rules of the syllogism: exactly three terms; the middle term distributed at least once; no term distributed in the conclusion unless distributed in its premise; no conclusion from two negative premises; a negative premise gives a negative conclusion; no conclusion from two particular premises.
• Fallacies: undistributed middle; illicit major; illicit minor; four terms.
• Figure = position of the middle term. First: M–P, S–M. Second: P–M, S–M. Third: M–P, M–S. Fourth: P–M, M–S.
• Mood = the letters of major premise, minor premise and conclusion in that order. Valid moods of the first figure: AAA, EAE, AII, EIO.

Fallacies and scientific method

• Formal fallacies: affirming the consequent (If P then Q; Q; so P) and denying the antecedent (If P then Q; not P; so not Q).
• Ad hominem: attacking the person, not the argument. Ad ignorantiam: 'not disproved, so true'. Appeal to inappropriate authority: citing someone who is not an expert in the field.
• Begging the question (petitio principii): the conclusion is assumed in the premises; circular reasoning.
• Equivocation: a word changes its meaning within the argument. Post hoc ergo propter hoc: 'after this, therefore because of this'. Hasty generalisation: a general claim from too small a sample.
• Mill's methods: agreement (the one factor common to all cases); difference (the one factor that differs between two cases); the joint method of agreement and difference; residues (take away what known causes explain; the rest is due to the remaining factor); concomitant variations (two things vary together).
• Scientific method: observation, hypothesis, experiment, conclusion. A scientific hypothesis must be testable.

Ethics

• Bentham: pleasures differ only in quantity, measured by the hedonic calculus. Mill, 'Utilitarianism': pleasures also differ in quality (higher and lower pleasures).
• Kant, 'Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals' (1785): only a good will is good without qualification. A hypothetical imperative says 'if you want X, do Y'; the categorical imperative commands without condition.
• Formula of universal law: act only on a maxim you can will to become a universal law. Formula of humanity: treat humanity always as an end, never merely as a means.
• Aristotle, 'Nicomachean Ethics': the aim is eudaimonia (flourishing); virtue is a mean between excess and deficiency, e.g. courage between rashness and cowardice.
• Psychological egoism: people always do act from self-interest (a claim of fact). Ethical egoism: people ought to (a claim of value).
• Meta-ethics: Moore's naturalistic fallacy ('Principia Ethica', 1903); emotivism (Ayer, Stevenson): moral statements express attitudes; Hume: no 'ought' from an 'is'.
• Intrinsic good is good in itself; instrumental good is good as a means. 'Ought implies can.' Free will: libertarianism, hard determinism, compatibilism.

Epistemology and metaphysics

• Correspondence: true = agrees with the facts. Coherence: true = fits consistently into a system of beliefs. Pragmatic: true = works in practice.
• A priori knowledge is independent of experience (e.g. mathematics); a posteriori knowledge depends on experience.
• Pyrrho: scepticism as a final position, suspending judgement. Descartes: doubt as a method to reach certainty ('I think, therefore I am').
• Mind and body: interactionism (Descartes); occasionalism (Malebranche); pre-established harmony (Leibniz); epiphenomenalism (mind is a by-product with no causal power).
• Materialists: Democritus, Hobbes. Idealists: Berkeley ('to be is to be perceived'), Hegel.
• Hume on causality: we observe only the constant conjunction of events, never a necessary connection; the idea of necessity comes from habit.
• Determinism: every event is fixed by earlier events and the laws of nature. Fatalism: events will happen whatever we do. The two are not the same.

Philosophy of religion and Iqbal

• Ontological: Anselm ('Proslogion'), God as the being than which none greater can be conceived; Descartes gave a later version. Critics: Gaunilo (the perfect island), Kant (existence is not a predicate).
• Cosmological: Aristotle's unmoved mover; the first three of Aquinas's Five Ways; the kalam argument defended by al-Ghazali; Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason.
• Teleological (design): Paley's watch, 'Natural Theology' (1802). Chief critic: Hume, 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion' (1779).
• Evil: moral evil comes from human choices; natural evil from events in nature such as earthquakes. Replies (theodicies): the free-will defence; the soul-making view (Hick).
• Iqbal (1877 to 1938): 'Asrar-e-Khudi' (Secrets of the Self, 1915) on the individual; 'Rumuz-e-Bekhudi' (Mysteries of Selflessness, 1918) on the individual in the community.
• Stages in the growth of khudi: obedience to the law, self-control, divine vicegerency (niyabat-e-Ilahi).
• 'Reconstruction': lectures in English, first published in 1930; ijtihad is 'the principle of movement in the structure of Islam'.

Philosophy of science

• Popper, 'The Logic of Scientific Discovery' (German 1934, English 1959): falsifiability is the line of demarcation between science and non-science.
• Asymmetry: no number of favourable cases can prove a universal statement, but one true contrary case can refute it.
• A theory that fits every possible observation forbids nothing and is not scientific in Popper's sense.
• Kuhn, 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' (1962): normal science → anomalies → crisis → revolution (paradigm shift) → new normal science. Example: the change from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican system.
• Hume: induction assumes the uniformity of nature, and that assumption can itself be supported only by induction.
• Law = a statement of a general regularity; theory = an explanation of why the regularity holds.
• Deductive-nomological model (Hempel and Oppenheim, 1948): an event is explained when it is deduced from laws of nature together with initial conditions.