28 July 2004 Lecture Summary

Philosophers Examined: David Hume, Lady Mary Shepherd.

Line of Thought: We continued our discussion of Hume's theory of causation by looking at Section VII, "Of the Idea of Necessary Connexion". The question at issue in this section is: "From what impression is our idea of causation derived?" Hume eliminates several possibilities:

a) Bodies: He uses Malebranche's ball argument to argue that all we find in impressions of bodies are sequences of events.

b) Our Own Will as Cause of Bodily Motion: In addition to other arguments, he uses Malebranche's anatomy argument to reject this view.

c) Our Own Will as Cause of Mental Change: He rejects this argument for similar reasons. One of the arguments used here, namely, the argument that this proposal would require us to attribute infinite or divine power to the will, is also Malebranchean in origin, although Malebranche uses it for a slightly different purpose.

d) God: This is Malebranche's own view, and Hume rejects it by claiming that 1) it forces us to go beyond the limits of human understanding, into fields about which we know nothing; and 2) we have no impression of God.

Hume's own view is that our idea of causal connection is not derived from any impressions of the objects themselves; rather it is an impression of the customary transition of the mind from cause to effect or vice versa. So objectively there is nothing more to causation than sequences of events; subjectively there is also inference to the mind. Causal necessity isn't in the objects; there is no such thing as causal power in this sense.

In order to get an additional view, which we could compare to Hume's in order to evaluate it better, we then discussed Lady Mary Shepherd's causal theory, which is a response and refutation to Hume (among other things). Shepherd thinks of causation as a mixture of qualities. It follows from this that 1) causes and effects are, properly speaking, simultaneous; 2) causes and effects are, in a sense, one thing; 3) contrary to Hume, given any beginning of existence it follows logically that there must be a cause: for a situation to be different, a difference must be introduced, and the introduction of a difference is what we call causation. This is a powerful, albeit underappreciated, alternative to the Humean paradigm which still to a great degree dominates philosophical discussions of causation.

Activity: review quiz

26 July 2004 Lecture Summary

Philosopher Examined: David Hume.

Line of Thought: Hume divides our knowledge into two types: that which concerns relations of ideas, and that which concerns matters of fact. An example of the former is mathematics. Hume mentions three cases of the latter:

1. Evidence of the senses
2. Records of the memory
3. Causal inference

The third turns out to be important because it means, essentially, that all reasoning about matters of fact, i.e., about whether things exist or not, is in some way causal. Hume takes care to argue that we discover causes and effects not by reasoning but by experience. The foundation of our reasoning from experience at all is, in turn, custom, which he calls "the great guide of human life." We then discussed, because of a question that was asked, different ways to interpret Hume's causal theory, the most important being the skeptical and the naturalistic.

We then discussed Hume's theory of belief, which is based on his notion of force or vivacity, and, after discussing several examples in light of this theory (the most notable being religion), used that to look at the types of causal inference, namely, proofs and probabilities.

Activities: Course evaluations; review quiz.

Excellent Hume Overview

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an excellent overview of Hume's philosophy here.

21 July 2004 Lecture Summary

Instead of an ordinary lecture, we did (after a brief introduction to Hume) a guided reading of Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Sections I - III. We devoted considerable attention to the following topics:

* The distinction, in Section I, between the two types of philosophy, how Hume thinks they are related to each other, and how they both relate to what he is doing in the Enquiry.

* The division of perceptions into ideas and impressions (according to force or vivacity), and why the missing shade of blue is not really a problem.

* The principle that all ideas are copies of impressions from which they derive, and what role this plays in Hume's method of philosophizing.

* The principles of association: Resemblance, Contiguity in time and place, and Cause/Effect.

Further Information: Here is another opinion on the missing shade of blue, that has some similarity to my own, although I don't agree with everything in the set up or the evaluation.

For Fun: Check out the Hume 'action figure' here.

Good Sites on Hume

One site that provides useful information about David Hume (1711-1776) is Ty's "David Hume Homepage," here. It is, however, getting a bit dated.

The Leeds Hume Project, run by Peter Millican, is probably one of the best scholarly places for information on Hume. It can be found here. It is still in the process of development, however (and looks like it will be for a while).

There is a really great commentary on Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding at "Hume's Enquiry: An Interactive Guide," which is here. It's still in development, but much of it is already up.

19 July 2004 Lecture Summary

Philosophers Examined: Butler, Paley.

Line of Thought: Last lecture we looked briefly at Butler's arguments for the future life and 'natural providence'. This lecture we looked at his arguments for moral providence. There are three of particular note. (1) Analogy with natural providence. (2) Our actual experience (sense of shame, sense of honor, tranquillity in virtue, fear and apprehension in vice, remorse, etc.). (3) Butler claims it is intrinsic to the notion of virtue that it tends to be rewarded, and it is intrinsic to the notion of vice that it tends to be punished. He doesn't claim to have strictly proved that God operates according to moral providence; but he does claim that he has provided strong confirmation of it, since his arguments show that nature is not indifferent to virtue and vice. Also, on the supposition of a future life, current rewards and punishments ground an expectation of the possible completion of the apparent moral system after death; and, on the same supposition, the inherent tendencies of virtue and vice give ground for hope of its actual completion.

We then looked at Butler's views on how human nature itself plays a role in moral providence, and, in particular, at the nature of conscience. Butler argues 1) that it is as natural to human nature to act out of love for others or benevolence as to act out of self-love; 2) the two, benevolence and self-love, if ordered properly coincide; 3) because human nature is an ordered system, there is a principle of reflection that organizes self-love and benevolence by distinguishing and judging our actions. This is conscience. We do, however, violate conscience often; so Butler makes a distinction between power and authority. Conscience has authority as a motivation; but other elements of our system often have more power as motivations. Since our system is in our power, vice consists in violation of the whole system of nature through violation of conscience's authority in favor of some more immediately powerful motivation.

He considers two possible major objections to his account of moral providence: determinism (doctrine of necessity) and the problem of evil (the imperfection of the moral system). After some discussion, he rejects both as irrelevant. We briefly looked at these, then at some of the objections that might be made against his entire approach (he has answers to most of them).

We then switched to look, very briefly, at Paley. First we looked at his argument from design for the existence of God, of which my rough, tentative interpretation can be found here. We finished by looking briefly at his theological utilitarianism, and discussed how it differs from Butler's ethical theory.

14 July 2004 Lecture Summary

 
Philosophers Examined: Jonathan Edwards, Joseph Butler
 
Activity: I divided several selections from Jonathan Edwards's works among groups. The groups read the passages aloud, then discussed and summarized them, presenting their summaries to the class. The selections were from "The Mind," The Freedom of the Will, and The True Nature of Virtue. The topics covered Edwards's immaterialism, determinism, and theory that true virtue is benevolence toward being in general.
 
I then began to lecture on Butler.
 
Line of Thought: We started with Butler's approach, what he calls "probability." This must be distinguished from other things we might call "probability." In essence, it is a form of presumptive reasoning. It is radically pragmatic in nature. The idea is this. For practical life, we can't wait for a strict demonstration of absolutely everything. So what we actually do, and what it is reasonable to do, for matters of great practical importance, is to take the evidence we have, however limited, and draw from it a conclusion, even if the inference is only a weak analogy,  and presume that conclusion to be true until we have good positive reason to think our conclusion needs to be changed. Butler applies this type of reasoning to religious and ethical matters, and does so with considerable acuity. We spent some time discussing Butler's strategic use of this type of reasoning - just as Berkeley does not merely present arguments, but coordinated arguments, whose coordination has to be recognized for accurate response, Butler presents not merely presumptive arguments but coordinated presumptive arguments, in which each element of his position tends to be undergirded by several independent evidences, each of which, in a pinch, would allow for the presumption in question.
 
I then looked in some detail at what Butler says, in the Analogy of Religion, on the future life, to clarify what he is doing.
 
The class ended with a brief look at Butler's views on moral providence, i.e., the moral system of nature. We only got so far, however, as discussing in general his views on the method of providence, with focus on what he calls natural providence, i.e, the natural system of rewards and punishments by which individuals and species are kept in being. Butler will use this as a basis for an analogical argument for moral providence, which we will examine more closely next class.

Hume's Counter-blast to Butler on Immortality

For those who were interested in my discussion in the lecture today of Butler's arguments for the future life, may also be interested in David Hume's attempt to make the argument go in the opposite direction. Taking the same sort of approach as Butler, Hume argues that on the evidence it is more reasonable to presume that there is no future life. Hume's use of arguments is more atomistic and less thorough than Butler's, which is a weakness in his approach; but if you want to see the beginnings of how the anti-immortality case might go, see his Essay on the Immortality of the Soul.

Excellent Site on Jonathan Edwards

The most convenient on-line resource for information about Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is Mark Trigsted's "JonathanEdwards.com," which is here. The perspective from which the site approaches Edwards is a Calvinist perspective very close to Edwards's own. The site has Edwards's collected works; the only complaint I have against it is that there are unnecessarily many typos in the transcriptions.

Excellent Site on Joseph Butler

The most convenient on-line resource on Joseph Butler (1692-1752) is David White's "Brush Up on Butler," which is here. The site contains bibliographies, historical information, and an excellent outline of Butler's arguments, as well as links to texts by and about Butler on the web.

12 July 2004 Lecture Summary

Philosophers Examined: Berkeley, Witherspoon, Shepherd, esp. Berkeley.

Line of Thought: Today's lecture was on the general force of Berkeley's critique of materialist theories. I argued that what Berkeley primarily criticizes in these theories is what he sees as an attempt to make an illicit - in fact, inconsistent - distinction between what seems to be the case and what really is the case. While Berkely does allow for some appearance/reality distinction, it is a distinction between two sorts of appearances (or, to put it another way, two sorts of realities). Berkeley's argument, therefore, has force against any philosophical account of the external world, bodies, or the universe, that denies the following proposition: The things that we actually see, hear, touch, taste, and smell are the very things that are real. It is common to make distinctions between the world we sense and the world that is really there; but if Berkeley's critique stands (no one has yet provided a solid refutation of it), all these are illegitimate. The example we used to elucidate this was the brain-in-a-vat argument for skepticism, which Berkeley's critique would eliminate along with most sources of skepticism about the external world.

We then looked briefly at two critiques, one by John Witherspoon, the other by Lady Mary Shepherd, and discussed how Berkeley would answer them. The Witherspoon critique can be found here. Lady Mary Shepherd's critique can be found in the Shepherd selection in Margaret Atherton's excellent little anthology, Women Philosophers of the Early Modern Period.

Activity: To review, students played a game of Berkeley Cards; the winning card for the class was the Succulent Ice Cream Cone card: A succulent ice cream cone is, for Berkeley, nothing but a patterned collection of sensible qualities (taste, smell, texture, etc.). While playing Berkeley Cards, we listened to the first half of Handel's Messiah, which was composed in Berkeley's lifetime and which he might have heard in its first performance in Dublin. Why? Just because we could.

Further Information: For more information about the brain-in-a-vat argument, plus a response to it that has similarities to Berkeley's response to materialism, see David Chalmers's readable paper, "The Matrix as Metaphysics". Chalmers says he disagrees with Berkeley's reasoning, but it seems to me he only considers one of Berkeley's lines of reasoning. Remember that Berkeley, as a Grand Master of philosophical argumentation, almost always runs more than one. The big difference between Berkeley and Chalmers is that Berkeley would think that Chalmers's response, if consistently applied, undermines all alternatives to immaterialism. But their proposals are very similar. The reason Chalmers diverges from Berkeley is that he (for unspecified reasons) doesn't find the view that "appearance is reality" plausible. I'm not sure what he means by this.

7 July 2004 Lecture Summary

Strictly speaking, there was no lecture today. Instead we went at a slow pace through much of the First Dialogue, with a special focus on the whole strategy of argumentation. (That is, we were concerned with avoiding the mistake of looking at only one argument at a time. Berkeley typically checkmates his opponents by bringing up several lines of argument together; the problem his opponents face is not any particular argument but the difficulty of consistently and relevantly dealing with two, or three, or four arguments together.)

5 July 2004 Lecture Summary

First day of the second term! After a brief look at the second-term requirements, we dived right into the philosophical work.

Philosopher Examined: Berkeley.

Line of Thought: The Lecture had three (very diverse) parts, each of which was intended to give students tools that will be helpful for understanding Berkeley's immaterialism.

1. The first part of the lecture gave a brief overview of Berkeley's life in order to argue that his philosophical work always has a practical purpose that needs to be kept in mind.

2. The second part of the lecture looked at Berkeley's theory of vision, particularly as it is found in New Theory of Vision and Alciphron. In essence, I went through Berkeley's visual language argument for the existence of God, which can be found summarized here. Knowing the elements of his theory of vision will prove useful for getting a clearer understanding of his immaterialism.

3. The third part of the lecture looked at Berkeley's investigations into tar-water. The primary point of this part of the lecture was not to learn Berkeley's views about the nature of tar, but to show what he believes to be the correct way to go about philosophical (and therefore scientific) inquiry.

Activity: Students broke into groups to examine Berkeley's poem, "On Tar," which can be found here.

What Berkeley Said in America

For my doggerel summary of Berkeley's visual language argument for the existence of God, as it is stated in Alciphron IV, see here.

Excellent Site on George Berkeley

Probably my favorite on-line resource for information on Berkeley (1685-1753) is David Hilbert's "Images of Berkeley" website, which is here. It has pictures and poems; and a philosophical website with pictures and poems is, as far as I am concerned, beauty in digital form.