Modern Philosophy

5


MODERN PHILOSOPY
Lecturer: Fr. Emmanuel Ogundele
March 11, 2010

Course Code: SS/PHL/210

Course Outline
What transpired during the Scholastic period – God centred Philosophy
Renaissance interlude – Age of science
Factors that led to the rise/birth of modern philosophy
What is modern philosophy

Major characters during the modern philosophy
Francis Bacon
Rene Descartes
John Locke
Berkeley
David Hume
Thomas Hobbes
Baruch Spinoza
Leibniz
Immanuel Kant
Hegel
Schopenhauer
Feuerbach
Karl Max
Nietzsche
Mill
Jean-Paul Sartre
Heidegger
Kierkegaard

Different Philosophical Schools and Systems during the modern period

Rationalism
Idealism
Realism
Positivism
Pragmatism
Empiricism

In the history of medieval philosophy, there is always a close bond between heaven and earth, between faith and reason. As a result of this, the sky hung so low during the middle Ages – This means there was a close connection between heaven and earth. The great achievement of the thirteenth century in the intellectual field was the realisation of a synthesis of reason and faith, philosophy and theology. Philosophy at this time was simply understood as the handmaid of theology because it supplied theology a reasoned account of its various doctrines. At this time, more questions were raised about the compatibility characteristic of Aristotle's non-theistic philosophy with the belief in the personal God of Christianity.
March 16, 2010
This problem of compatibility was one that Aquinas sought to resolve, though he never succeeded. There was therefore a gradual move as time went on to remove the garb of Christianity with which Aquinas has clothed Aristotle so that Aristotle can now be studied in its own right. The same could be said about Plato, St. Augustine and the Neo-Platonist. During the middle ages, there was a particular culture of understanding everything predominantly from the point of view of Christianity but towards the end of the Middle Ages, the separation between faith and reason became very wide and this is seen in Ockham's nominalism and his critique of the status of universal term because in his own understanding, human reason is limited to the world of individual things.
In addition Meister Eckhart also shifted the medieval emphasis from reason to feeling which led to a sort of mysticism. In order words, the element of feeling that was promoted in Eckhart's mysticism and the scientific empiricism of Ockham received a major boost during the Renaissance period. During the renaissance therefore, there was an effort to break new grounds – meaning that new efforts were made to read and study the old classic Greek philosophers in their own right without any explicit reference to Christianity. The separation between faith and reason brought a greater emphasis on the human dimension of life with artists paying more attention to the human body and form. As a result, nature became the object of fresh and free enquiry.
The new humanism and natural science at this time did not so much entail a total rejection of religion but felt that certain aspects of humanity should be studied with methods that are not derived from religion. Therefore, the approach of the renaissance to philosophy was different to that of medieval philosophy because the renaissance period was a time of great discovery and emancipation. For instance, some historical events are a clear confirmation of this fact:
The discovery of the new continent by Christopher Columbus the adventurist.
The poems and literatures of Dante which actually helped in the transition from medieval symbolism to the exaltation of nature.
Bocaccio for instance, was very frank in his account of human sensualities. Curiosity and desire for beauty led him and others to explore the structure of the human body.

March 18, 2010
Michelangelo who lived around 1475 to 1564 through the genius of his art served the church in an admirable way but also through the same process gave a strong expression of the humanism of his time. The painting of Adam and Eve, for instance was a striking description of physical beauty and strength.
Leonardo da Vinci who lived between 1452 and 1519 looked beyond beauty and took more interest in the minute ingredient of human anatomy and this gave William Hare, 1578 – 1657, the impetus to discover the circulation of blood. At this time also Erasmus was of great interest on classical literature which came to affect the entire world. Niccolo Machiavelli shifted the basis of political thought and authority away from the moral foundation of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Religion also took a sharp turn during this period and this was to encourage the reformation of Martin Luther. The freedom which came with a fresh impetus that encouraged man to lay more emphasis on nature and natural science gave a lot of encouragement to people like Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. With this interest in natural science, there was more emphasis on observation and mathematics. This encouragement of science brought about a fundamental alteration in the world of thought which changed the knowledge landscape altogether.
The Inquisition
In the middle ages, the ultimate authority was God and the Pope was his mouthpiece. Heresy was not encouraged and was not as common. Thus, those who commit fragrant acts of disobedience to the church be it in terms of doctrine, discipline were committed to different forms of punishments which includes excommunication, monastic imprisonment and death. The coming of death as a punishment became pronounced around 1215 with the grand inquisition.
In Spain, there was a man by the name of Torquemada, who was called the grand inquisitor who made the Spanish inquisition a household world. He sent many people to their grave and because Spain was a land of religious fanatics, his hands were always full. Inquisition therefore became a popular means of dealing with religious heretics within the church and then came Martin Luther who lived between 1483 and 1546. Luther was an Augustinian priest. His major crisis started when he pasted his 95 theses on the door of the Castle on Wittenberg. These theses are what he called his major disagreement on how the church was being carried on.
Luther's disagreement focused on the sales of indulgences among other things and he also denied the primacy of the Pope. He also emphasised the idea that we were born in sin and are lacking in freedom and therefore we relied on the absolute grace of God. Luther furthermore translated the Bible into German which was his own dialect and which later became the basis for standard literary German up to the present day. In addition, Luther wrote many other pretty nasty papers condemning peasants and the Jews.
John Calvin
Calvin was born between1509 and 1564. He was from northern France who later became a protestant. He was eventually forced to flee to Switzerland. While there, he preached the doctrine of unconditional obedience to God and the odd doctrine of predestination which says that since God is omniscient, he already knows those who will go to heaven and those who will go to hell no matter what they do. While in Switzerland, he also gained both political and spiritual powers and ruled Geneva as religious dictator. He banned drinking, dancing, gambling. No icons, no candles or incense. Coming to church is obligatory to everyone otherwise you die. Furthermore he did not allow any form of freedom from whatever is stipulated for belief.
He was said to have condemned a Spanish Unitarian Michael Servetus who came to him for protection and burnt him at the stake for heresy.
Zwingli
Zwingli lived between 1484 and 1531. He was a Swiss religious leader born at Wildans and educated in Vienna and Basel and ordained in 1506. Zwingli was humanistic in his outlook and also a good friend of Erasmus and Mirandola who were also humanists. He believed that the Bible is a sufficient revelation of God. He also attacked the abuses in the church that led to the protestant revolution and believed in democratic government but never subscribed to the idea of the separation of the church and the state.
Henry VIII
Henry VIII ruled England from 1509 to 1547. He had a very had time conceiving an heir and he divorced and executed one wife after another. When the Pope refused him an easy divorce from Catherine of Argon, he declared himself head of the English church and took all monastic properties for his treasury. However, the doctrine taught in this church was fundamentally Catholic. Nonetheless it was an assault on the authority of the church.
In the final analysis, the reformation led the Catholic Church to reform itself but this did not take place until the church has executed a lot of Protestants as heretics. Protestants equally executed many Catholics as well. Very clearly, those days were not very good days for Christianity in its outward face because what had happened was that the Catholic Church lost a lot of its moral grounds.
Nicolas Copernicus
Copernicus was from Poland and lived between 1473 and 1543. He was the one that introduced the heliocentric system which was to all intent and purposes very much against the way we understand the world. This clearly was also against the position of the church because the church did ask why did God not put us, his special creatures in the centre of creation and some other questions that agitated the church was 'how can this position be reconciled with the scriptures and the third question was that this position conflicts with direct experience. These were the three reasons why the church questioned Copernicus and condemned him.
Johannes Kepler

Kepler lived between 1571 and 1630 and he added a law of planetary motion namely that they have ecliptic not circular paths which implies in the mind of the church that it is also less than perfect and not something God will be associated even though he (God) put the sun in the centre.

Galileo Galilei
Galileo was born in Pisa Italy, and lived between 1564 and 1642. He was born in the same year as William Shakespeare. At 18, he discovered the principles of the pendulum. At 22, he invented the hydrostatic balance and he perfected his telescope and in 1510, he discovered 4 of the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn and the faces of Venus.
He is most famous also for the law of gravity by stating that two things of the same size and shape but of different weight will fall at the same speed through the same medium. Galileo also considered Copernicus; theory as a proven fact and taught it as such. The church however, most especially the Jesuits will not accept it as a proven fact but only as a hypothesis.
Galileo also remarked that the Bible should not be read literary because if you do so, you will end up in absurdities and contradictions rather he advised that it should be read metaphorically.



March 30, 2010

Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon lived between 1561 and 1626. He was born precisely on January 22nd 1561. His father was like a minister, Lord Keeper of the Royal Seal; therefore a minister in the Royal Court. Francis' father died without leaving any major inheritance. As a consequence, Francis decided to go and study law. At 23, he came into politics and was elected into the Parliament where he became a strong advocate for religious toleration. He served in different capacities from 1607; first, as solicitor general, then later attorney general, then as the Lord Keeper of the Royal Seal. Finally he became the Lord Chancellor. Bacon was regarded first of all as a philosophy, as an essayist and scientific methodologist. He championed the new empiricism resulting from the achievement from early modern science. He opposed alleged knowledge based on appeal to authority, and he taught that scholasticism was barren in its philosophical approach. He taught in his philosophy therefore, that what was needed was a new attitude or disposition and methodology based strictly on the best scientific practices.
According to him, the goal of acquiring knowledge is for the good of mankind and so man must acquire knowledge in order for him to realise himself. Hence his famous saying that knowledge is power; in order words, knowledge confers power and enlightenment on man. In his famous writing titled "The New Atlantis", written in 1627, he laid down the kind of social order which should result from applied science.
For him therefore, there is an intimate connection between the social order and science. Another work which was important for him was the "Novum Organum" which came out in 1620. There, he outlined a new art of logical thinking and proposed a new method for science which is a new method of induction. His position in this work is that his new logic will replace Aristotle's syllogism as well as induction by simple enumeration of instances. He concluded that neither of the old logics before him can produce the knowledge of actual laws. As a result, man needed to intervene in nature to manipulate it by means of experimental control in order to arrive at the invention of new technology.
Themes under Bacon's Philosophy

The hindrances of to human knowledge

Based on his belief that knowledge is power, Bacon felt that man needed to purge himself, his intellect, his mind, and his brain of some biases which are to a great extent known hindrances, impediments to the acquisition of causal laws. Such hindrances according to him anticipate nature rather than explain it. This was why he called them idols of the mind; that is, false opinions, biases, prejudices we have about things.

The idol of the tribe.

The first idol therefore is the idol of the tribe. In the first place, the tribe referred to here is the human tribe. Hence the idol of the human tribe are our natural tendencies towards bias, such as reading our own wishes into what we are supposed to see; looking for a pattern or a purpose for everything. In this also, there is an idol search for the purpose in nature even when there is none. In this respect, the functioning of the human mind has been skewed into directions of finding an end or the reason for a particular arrangement in the order of nature.

The idol of the cave (Idola Specus)
The second idol is the idol of the cave. The cave is a little box that we all live in as individuals. The idols of the cave therefore are the distortions and biases that we have as individuals such as those based on our peculiar background and education as well as the intellectual heroes we emulate. In order words, they are what we call pre-dispositions we have as individuals based on idiosyncrasies, sometimes of education, social relationships and even what we read.
April 19, 2010

The idol of the market place (Idola Fori)
This is regarded by Bacon as the most dangerous of all dispositions because this idol arises out of the common use of language and often results in verbal disputes. According to Bacon, the market place is society and the main threat to clear thinking from society is the use of language. The common uses of words are not necessarily fit for scientific and philosophical use and sometimes common sense or the logic we presume we are using when we speak are not that logical after all.
Therefore Bacon insists that words can exist and yet have references that did not exist and this will lead to a lot of confusion. In this regard, he says that definitions are quite capable of leading to even more confusion because words and concepts can be so poorly defined that the sense of signification is lost.
The idol of the theatre (Idola Theatri)
This idol has to do with the influence of received theories. The only authority that is possessed by this theory is that they are ingenious verbal construction. The aim of acquiring knowledge does not depend on superior skills in the use of words but rather on the discovery of natural laws. Beacon went on to state that we should take care not to idolise or dogmatise whatever theories that are presented to us no matter the authority or authorities behind such ideas – Aristotle said so, therefore, it is correct. In essence, ideas should be accepted in their own right because of their validity and not the authority behind such an idea.
Having mentioned the four idols, Bacon made this observation: "Until and unless these idols are eliminated, man will be unable to acquire true knowledge. It is when these idols are removed that man and the mind of man can seek knowledge of natural laws by experimentation". Bacon held further that nothing exists in nature except bodies, that is, material objects acting in conformity with fixed laws. These fixed laws are called "Forms". For example, Bacon thought that he form or the cause of heat is the motion of tiny particles making up a body. This form is that on which the existence of heat depends.
April 20, 2010

Even though Francis Bacon is not a scientist in the strict sense of the word, he had a conception of science which he thought could be useful in the process of acquiring true and reliable knowledge. He began therefore by rejecting Aristotle's logic which he felt was based on metaphysical theory and proposed as alternative a new logic that is purely empirical, experimental and uses inductive method. In this way Bacon could be regarded as an empiricist because he believed that by using the right scientific approach, anyone could discover the truth.

Human reason therefore must be free from all impediments to knowledge. And because the senses are not always trustworthy, perception for him was also faulty. He went further to say that in science, the need for an experimental method is very important because through this careful procedure, man is able to arrive at a reliable conclusion. In the process of the acquisition of reliable and true knowledge, he expounds a theory of induction in his Novum Organum. Induction here is regarded as the procedure by which general laws or principles are derived from a number of specific instances. The problem with Bacon however, is that a mere repetitive occurrence of an incident does not guarantee that that incident will happen again.

Bacon's solution therefore is that we must look for negative instances to disconfirm our hypothesis instead of looking for confirming instances. Bacon went further on the need to generate good inductive hypothesis out of the masses of data collected by observation. In this process, he is able to disregard what you might call inductive generalisation. He states that his own method should consist of this approach. That one should list all those things in which a property under investigation is present and also all those occasions in which the property under investigation is absent. Thirdly, all those cases admitting of varying degrees of the property being investigated

From this list, Bacon says that the natural hypothesis will present itself. "The greatest changes are introduced in the form of induction and the judgement made as a result of this induction which the logician speaks of that proceeds by simple enumeration is puerile and immature form of judgement. The changes are introduced in the form of induction which shall analyse experience and take it to pieces and by a due process of exclusion and rejection lead to an inevitable conclusion". In the final analysis, Bacon was interested in a thorough process of acquiring knowledge most especially scientific knowledge. And so his contributions have been useful in the philosophy of science and the process of scientific experimentation and conclusion.

April 26, 2010.

Rene Descartes
Descartes was born on March 31, 1596 and died in 1650. He was born in La Haye in France into a wealthy family. His father was a layer and a councillor of the Parliament of Brittany. Story had it that Descartes' mother died a few days after his birth due to tuberculosis and Descartes himself almost died of the same sickness. However, he remained a very weak person for the rest of his life.
He began his early education at the famous Jesuit school called La Fleche where the foundation of his interest in learning was laid. During his last years in this school, he devoted his attention mainly to the study of logic, philosophy and mathematics. He told us severally in many of his works of his ardent desire to acquire more and more knowledge and the Jesuits referred to him as an ardent student and a gifted pupil. After leaving La Fleche, Descartes was not satisfied with what he got from this college with the exception of mathematics but he spoke in lowing terms about his teachers, that is, the Jesuits and he had a great affection and admiration for them. He went further to say that the education he got from La Fleche is better than what is obtainable at that time because it is the best available education within the framework of tradition.
On his departure from La Fleche, he felt he needed to study more about the world and human existence. And in his own word, he said: "I realised that there is need for me to learn more from the book of the world so that I could gain more knowledge that is useful for the world". He later travelled round Europe gathering various experiences including serving in the Bavarian army during the reign of king Maximillian of Bavaria. He served also under Prince Maurice of Nassau and all this helped in the formation of Descartes as a person.
Descartes was said not to have married but he had a mistress through who he had a child though the child died at the age of five. On the 10th of November 1619, Descartes had three consecutive dreams which revealed to him that his mission was to seek truth by reason. After this dream he was said to have visited Our Lady of Loreto. This dream played a significant role in Descartes' philosophy. He lived his life in Paris and Holland. He was invited to Sweden by Queen Christina and it was with the aim of Descartes instructing her in his own philosophy. The cold in Sweden however, hampered his health in a very grave way and so he died in Sweden of a severe fever.
Descartes was generally described as a kind and generous person. He was also said to be a very clean, neat and thorough individual. He claims to be a very good Catholic till his death and avoided controversial issues especially in purely theological matters. Some of his popular works are:
Discourse on methods
Meditation
The rules for the direction of the mind
Reply to objection

Descartes' Philosophical Methods and Aims
Descartes' philosophical aim and method is to seek truth through the instrumentality of reason. His sole aim therefore can be said to be the attainment of certitude. He attempts to overcome in his philosophy the revived version of scepticism about the attainment of truth by way of traditional philosophy as propagated by the Renaissance. Descartes wants to achieve indubitable and unquestionable intellectual certitude about the nature of reality and all there is. For him, mathematics is a good means of attaining this end due to its method of clear indubitable reasoning. This clear reasoning helps man to attain intellectual certainty which is also possible through the rational faculty of man.
Mathematics for Descartes is different because in mathematics, truth is not achieved through any recourse to authority or tradition or even sense observation. Science and knowledge is therefore closely connected because they work for the same purpose. Descartes wanted an array of systems of indubitable and self-evident truth organically related to one another in such a way that the mind can move from one principle to another rationally and clearly as it is always possible in the field of mathematics.
Descartes proceeded in a meticulous way in his discourse on method by establishing 4 rules guiding any conceptual discourse:
One must not accept anything as truth that is not clearly and distinctly seen and recognise as such
Difficulties or concepts must be divided up and analysed into as many parts as are needed
In every process, one must move from simple and easier concepts to more complex ones
One must ensure that nothing is ever omitted in any rigorous endeavour of this kind. Everything must be done in a thorough, rigorous and painstaking way.

April 27, 2010.
The summary of the new Cartesian method is that it is the method of universal methodic doubt. In applying this method to a proposition, the inquirer will be able to see more clearly the dubitable from the indubitable. The application of this method to ideas of sense experience or human impression or statements about God's existence shows that these things can be doubted. Hence Descartes said that "May be God himself is such a powerful evil and dreadful genius who had deluded me into believing that things are true while they are not". This is an expression of possible doubt but Descartes went on to say that this God cannot deceive because God is a perfect being.
The four (4) rules can be applied to any situation in which a thinker is confronted with a problem. They form a kind of analytical device helping us to rigorously access every position before a conclusion is reached. And what is important at the end of this is the arrival of what we might call clear and self-evident truth.
The Cartesian method helps in enlarging our intuitive knowledge also because for Descartes, the human mind odes possess the mental power of intuition and deduction. These mental powers help us to arrive at the knowledge of things without and fear of illusion r delusion. It is by intuition that Descartes would say that I know, I think, I exist, I desire or that 2 +2 equals 4. Therefore in intuitive perception of this kind, there is an immediate knowledge of things without the mediation of other knowledge content. Intuition is a clear and distinctive vision of such clarity that it dispels all doubts.
April 29, 2010
Descartes felt that the ideas which are intuitively clear and distinct exist naturally in our soul and were implanted there by nature. In his own words: "these ideas are eternal truths; meaning that they are innate ideas". According to Descartes, in as much as one would want to think of everything as fault, it must necessarily be that I, who thought, was something; hence the conclusion that forms the basic fundamental of his philosophy – cogito ergo sum. According to Descartes this is the most solid principle of knowledge which the extravagant supposition of the sceptics cannot upset.
The Means of Attaining Truth.
Thinking in the Cartesian sense is sometimes used in a wider sense and therefore was translated to mean some of the following ranging from feelings to doubts, desire, etc. It means that the thinking subject is aware of the manifold contents in it. What Descartes is saying therefore is that in the very act of doubting, I am aware of myself as a doubting subject and so I must precede the very act of doubting therefore our intuit the necessary content between my existence and my awareness of my existence.
This idea was further developed in Descartes in a rather idealist and rationalist direction. Descartes holds that the more you doubt this new process of self-verification, the more aware you become of your being. It is therefore the needed criterion of truth. This was why he remarked in hi discourse on method: "We might assume as a general rule that the things we can conceive very clearly and distinctly are true and whenever we use the terms clear and distinct, we mean the ideas which are clear and apparent to the attentive mind.
Existence of God
Descartes was a believer and a Catholic. He also made attempts to discourse the existence of God and he started by saying that ordinarily we find within ourselves or within our range of consciousness clear and distinct ideas. We know for instance that 3x3 equals 9, that a triangle has three angles; even though these ideas are evident to us, are they true in themselves? If we apply the principle of universal methodic doubt today, can't we say we are being deceived? If we in turn apply this principle of universal methodic doubt to God, can't we say that God is an evil genius or deceiver that makes us believe that he exists? He went on to say that: if God exists and he is not a deceiver, then his goodness and veracity will be shown through the creatures who have received that knowledge from him.
His power as creator will be a guarantee of the truthfulness of his as the source of clear and distinct ideas. Therefore, it is necessary from the beginning to agree that God can't deceive, he exists and he is an absolutely perfect being. By the name God, "I mean a substance that is infinite, independent, all knowing and all powerful and by whose power I myself and everything else that exists have been created". He says that I am conscious of my imperfections because I posses an idea of the perfect.
The imperfect cannot produce the perfect since the actual perfection of this idea of the perfect cannot be produced by that which is imperfect, and effect of this type must be produced from a being that actually exists because only the perfect can cause the idea of the perfect. And so the perfect being (God) is the cause of such an idea thus he says that the cause which is also the cause of my powers and myself, must be the origin of my ideas of the perfect (God).
He went on to say that since the light of nature teaches us that fraud and deception proceed of frauds and deceit and defect of imperfection. Defect cannot be attributed to the divine being. Therefore my knowledge of perception derives its knowledge of the perfect; derives its being from God who cannot deceive.
2nd Argument (A modified rendition of the ontological argument of St. Anselm)
Anselm talked about God as the highest conceivable being. Descartes went further to develop this notion along his own thinking. This God for Descartes is a being who creates. In this sense, God is that which we clearly and distinctly understand to belong to the true and immutable nature of every thing. Its essence or form can truly be affirmed of that thing. Therefore we truly and distinctly understand that he must exist of necessity and perfect in being. In the final analysis, it is not within my power to think of the supremely perfect without supreme perfection not to think of God as non-existing. Therefore my knowledge of God as supreme perfection is a reliable knowledge because it is revealed by God himself.

4/5/10

Thomas Hobbes.
Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher who was born in Wespot and lived between 1588 and 1679. He was educated in Oxford and after his graduation; he became a tutor to Cavendish family. His philosophical development was shaped by his visit to the continent. And so he was deeply influenced by the new culture of science at the time. As a result, he was very friendly with some scientist and notable scholar some of whom are Ben Johnson, Herbert of Cherbury and Francis Bacon. In 1636, he met Galileo in Florence and spent 8 months in Paris in various discussions with scientists and philosophers most especially Mersenne and his disciples. When he returned to England, he worked out his new monarchist political theory. Soon after this, he went on an eleven years self-imposed exile in Paris because he had become a marked man.
While he was away in Paris, he wrote many other works such as his objection to Descartes' meditation and his popular book called De Cive (the citizen). He later returned to England and became fairly popular with the establishment but always seen in suspicious point of view because of his secularist views. In 1666, following the great fire of London, the house of Commons passed a law against atheism in which Thomas Hobbes was mentioned specifically after which he could not write again. Some of his notable works are:
De Cive, 1647
De Homine, 1658
Human nature in 1650
Leviathan in 1651
De Corpore Politico in 1650
His philosophy could be divided in three parts:
The nature of the body
The doctrine of man
His political philosophy.

The nature of the body
With regards to the body, Hobbes was of the view that all reality is corporeal (material) and controlled by rigid law. Causality therefore is to be explained in terms of the transmission pf motion from one body to another by means of contact. The idea of spirit or soul is contradiction in terms; it is like saying that something is immaterial material (everything is understood in terms of the most common denominator which is matter and motion.
His theory of man
Man, according to Thomas Hobbes, is a material being who is acted upon by the world. Therefore his activities must be in accord with the greatest force of experience. In his thinking, we are governed by appetites, passions, imaginations and emotions. However, since reality is causal, every event has its sufficient reason as part of a causally determined whole. In his thinking therefore, there is no room for freedom. Man therefore has no experience of freedom because his freedom is like water running freely to the sea. Therefore even though man will talk about sense of liberty, his actions are already determined. He talks about man's sense of perception and he says that the object of perception is at least motion which has gained entrance into our minds and so there is no conception in man's mind which did not come first into the sense organ (without Hobbes, there would be no Hume and Locke) after the object is removed and the eye is closed, the brain retains an image or what is seen even though in an obscure way. Memory and imagination are therefore very important in this process.
Hobbes believes that only the present has a being in nature while the past has a being in memory ad the future has no being at all. He talks about two types of memory which are: memories which are harmful and pleasurable.
Memories which are harmful are stimulated by a new sensation and so produce a feeling of aversion. Memories which are pleasurable produce a feeling of desire, happiness etc. in this way, he says that pleasure and pain emerge from philosophical forces of attraction and repulsion. Therefore desire and aversion are rooted in the instinct of man to survive. What is clear about man is that man is basically selfish, so he prefers himself to all others as a result, the underlining condition is the war for all man against all man, and so self interest is the universal rule. He says that man was born into a state of nature and in this state of nature; man's natural life is solitary, poor, brutish, nasty and short. In this state, man has a right to anything he can gain by force or any means possible, he has a right to transfer what he has, in order to avoid this, Hobbes saw the need for man that man had to contract each other with a man or an assembly to be their ruler.
10/5/10
The state of nature has its own law, which is the law of nature. The natural law therefore and what we shall later understand as the civil law were already contrasted in the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. While the natural law has a lot of disadvantages because in it, might is right, the civil law has its own advantages because reason has a role to play and also because it is written, while the natural law is unwritten.
Hobbes concluded that wherever you have civil law, there will be an ordered society because of the critical role played by reason. Concerning the social contract, Hobbes opines that the modern state is an artificial creation and its power lies in sovereignty and also in the sovereign and so he calls the state a Leviathan because in his own thinking, the state is an artificial man and a mortal god. He says therefore that democracy, tyranny and oligarchy are not additional forms of government but only names for monarchy or aristocracy. What this means is that in every form of government, there is still a dominant place for a single individual or sets of individuals.
In any case therefore, social contract involves the subordination of individual rights to a sovereign power. In the view of Hobbes, the most advantageous form of government is that in which society contracts its rights and privileges to an absolute sovereignty or absolute monarch. This is with the view of neutralising all individual powers so as to empower the sovereign. The sovereign therefore becomes an adjudicator over the entire populace; meaning that the sovereign canvases for the right of those who have been unjustly treated. As such, whenever there is any injustice, the sovereign is there to protect the rights of the weak. Now the power that is given to the sovereign within a social contract arraignment cannot revert back to the individual ordinarily. The only grounds on which it can revert back to him is when confidence is reduced to its lowest ebb in the sovereign.
May 11, 2010
Hobbes made these following points: one has no right to disobey the laws of society but one has the right to repel force by force in the defence of one's life. Man's right, according to him, is very important most especially the right to life. Protecting this life is a responsibility of the state since every individual has the right to himself yet he has given it to the society.
The right is protected in a visible form by the absolute monarch or sovereign. And since he possesses absolute power is above battle and so is the father of all who must judge in an impartial way. In conclusion, Hobbes' theory of social contract has been adopted in many ways and is today a point of reference in every major democracy. First of all with regards to the principle of equality and the role of the society vis-à-vis the individual within the state. the central place of the sovereign or the civilian ruler within every political arrangement cannot be over emphasised.
John Locke
John Locke is the first major empiricist. He was born in 1632 and died in 1704. He attended Oxford University where he studied medicine, philosophy and natural sciences. He worked at various ties as a civil servant, politician, teacher and medical practitioner. He lived in Holland and France as different times. Some of his works are the following:
Letter on toleration – 1689
Two treatises on government – 1689
Essays concerning understanding – 1690
Thoughts on education – 1693

Some of his other works was published posthumous. The first one is Conduct of the Understanding published in 1706. Another is On Miracles published in 1716.

His Philosophy

The Idea.
The origin for him, of knowledge is sense experience. He used the concept of idea in a very broad sense to include everything; that is, thinking, perceiving and also to mean the content of our consciousness. According to hi, ideas are not innate. Neither were they stored in our minds at birth. Man therefore begins his life in the world as black slate – a "tabula rasa" on which experience writes. Locke felt that man's initial condition as dark closet required a kind of furnishing from without/outside. For him therefore, man's knowledge is based on impression and nothing else. There is therefore no need to refer to anything else apart from this as a source of man's knowledge.
The origin of all ideas is traced to experience and experience is made up of sensation and reflection and this two sources form the basic principle of mental life of man. For Locke, there are two kinds of ideas – simple and complex ideas. Simple ideas results directly from a single sense of several senses simultaneously from reflection while complex ideas results from the activity of the mind which combines or associates simple idea. Although we are at liberty to produce an unlimited number of complex ideas, no one has the power to invent new simple idea because we are passive before experience in the respect. Furthermore, he says; 'all ideas that come into the mind are simple idea.
May 17, 2010
Locke distinguished among simple ideas those which have objective validity (primary quality) from those that have subjective validity (secondary quality). The primary qualities are made up of the following:
Number
Figure
Extension
Motion
Solidity etc.
These belong to the body and cannot be separated from it; while the secondary qualities are the following:
Colour
Ordure
Taste
Temperate etc.

These are in region of what he calls the subjective sensation of man. Memory he says, is the bases on which complex ideas are formed. It links the past to the present. Simple ideas are not instantaneous rather they leave an impression on the mind; thus they can be combined or associated with other ideas. Thus in the final instance, all these ideas, including the idea of substance and the very idea of God proceed from experience through the means of successive abstraction. Finally, Locke's empiricism units the possibility of knowledge most especially when it comes to the great themes of metaphysics in traditional philosophy.

With Locke, there began a distrust of the cognitive faculty of man which culminated I Hume's scepticism and which would oblige Kant to formulate his new theory of knowledge. Lock therefore laid the foundation on which all the sceptics in history of philosophy built.

The theory of ethics and the state.
There are few inconsistencies in the ethics of Locke. In general, Locke was a determinist and did not agree that the human will is free. However, at a point he did allow a certain freedom of indifference which means that man can also to some extent decide. This was why he said that man though free in his own thinking, is driven by sheer necessity.
Morality for Locke is independent of religion and it is all about accommodating oneself to a norm. This norm can be the divine law, the law of the state or the norm or law of common opinion. When it comes to his theory of the state, Locke rejected the divine right and absolute power of a king. In this regard, Locke could be regarded as a liberal because he did not admit the need for any patriarchal institution. He also talked about the theory of the natural state. This for him has a lot to do with equality and liberty and so there is no aggressive tone as we find it in Hobbes. For Locke, obligation is borne out in liberty. Men, in his own thinking therefore, should not break the natural law. In his thinking, the king has no absolute authority but receives his authority from the people. Men according to him are not born in a state of liberty but they are born for liberty and in the process must be trained by their parents. The natural law therefore, according to him, is the rule of common reason and equity which God has set in the world among men for their own natural security.
Berkeley

Berkeley was an immaterialist. He was born in 1685 and died in 1756. He was an Irish philosopher, a bishop and a philosophical idealist. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin. He later became a missionary in the Bermudas and then later the Anglican bishop of Cloyne. He died in oxford in 1753 after retirement.

Works
Among his important works are:
A new theory of vision – 1709
Treatise concerning the principles of human knowledge – 1713
The minute philosopher – 1733

His philosophy
Central to his philosophy is the whole theory of ideas. Berkeley began his philosophy with a quotation which goes thus: "We have first raised a dust and then complain that we cannot see". Berkeley made this famous statement to refer to the attitude of philosophers concerning their perception of reality and human experience. Philosophers have created a lot of artificial problems for themselves and as a result, he thought the solution was to design a kind of idealist metaphysics in order to defend the Christian faith.
He therefore transited from the earlier epistemological concerns to rather metaphysical ones. This new metaphysical concern centred on the identification of being and perception and this brings us to his whole idea of "esse es precipi" to be is to be perceived. This view by him is called immaterialism because according to him, nothing material exists (this is an extreme position). He agreed with Locke that all ideas originate in sense experience. However, we have no immediate perception of a three dimensional world. Instead we perceive our sensations and through our experience by means of the cooperation of several senses. Perception therefore is a more complex process than we assume it to be. He agreed with Locke also on the origin of our ideas but he disagreed with his theory of abstraction. Berkeley's idea goes beyond philosophical realities to metaphysical theory. For him spiritual elements are more relevant to our being than philosophical realities.
Berkeley disagreed with Locke on his theory of abstraction because Locke has said we can have the idea of man in general, triangle in general; table in general, cars in general. Berkeley thought differently. For him, it is not possible to be aware of a man with colour with no particular or stature with no particular stature. Therefore the ideas that are derived from abstraction are not ideas of the world. In replacement for Locke's abstract ideas, Berkeley talks about a group of particular ideas joined together by principles of association and a name.
Resemblance of similarity is the most importance of this principle. It is as a result of this that particular ideas are ranked depending on their kinds, types and their source and given names which have become general names. He concludes therefore that generality is possible without abstract ideas.
Being and my consciousness of my ideas.

The next point Berkeley emphasised is the issue of being and consciousness. According to him, to be is to be perceived…………………………………….because in my process of perception, I experience certain ideas that are unwelcome to me or some ideas to which I am very hostile. By this, Berkeley meant that in the process of experience, man is some times a passive receiver and ideas impinge themselves on man's consciousness and all these ideas are not his own. What one has to do in this sensation of chaos is to commit oneself to sense of order which comes from the fact that we live in a world that fades away. Meaning that you need a mind to put order into your sensation but also to deal with the seriousness of your sensation. Therefore the human mind is very important but more than this is the divine mind. As a result he says that reality is made up of the following: ideas, finite spirit and infinite spirit. It follows then that the bases of all our ideas is spiritual not material.

David Hume

David Hume was the one who carried to the ultimate conclusion the empiricist's position which was already initiated by Francis Bacon and carried on by John Locke. He was born in Edinburgh in 1711 and died in 1776
David Hume studied law and philosophy and he lived in France at various times and this brought him into contact with the encyclopaedists and also scholars within the enlightenment circles. At a point in his life, Hume discovered that his heart was more with literature than law. Consequently he took a major interest in classics and read most of Cicero's philosophical works. This led him to the conviction that existing philosophical works contained nothing more that endless disputes. As a result he wanted a new philosophy through which truth will be established.
His primary concern therefore focused on different aspects of philosophy; most especially logic, morals, criticism, politics, science and religion. He was also deeply interested in human nature. He was famous for his scepticism regarding metaphysics. His concern in philosophy was to expose the limitation of reason and to explain how we make most of our judgements. Our moral judgements are based according to him, on sentiments. Hence reason has only an illusionary role to play in our judgement.
Works

Essay titled Moral and politics 1741
Essay concerning human understanding 1784
An inquiry concerning human understanding 1758
Enquiry concerning the principles of moral 1751
Dialogue concerning natural religion 1751


His philosophy
We shall treat two aspect of his philosophy namely
Causation and Personal identity

On the theory of causation, Hume began by inquiring on how we acquire beliefs about what we are not currently experiencing. For instance, he says that we see a flame and we conclude instantly that it is hot. Meaning that we start from the present impression – that you are seeing a flame, and then we make a leap to the causal relation between flame and heat. What therefore is the concept of causal relation?

Causal relation according to him is not produced by reason and reason alone cannot tell us that flames are hot. As a result, he said that it is conceivable that fire might be cold and therefore possible. Reason and experience he says, cannot produce this belief either. Our experience therefore has been confined to a certain understanding and limitation of space and time. Within this limitation, we have always found flame to be hot. But he says that there is a gap between observed flames that have been hot and that all flames are hot. This implies a conclusion from a particular experience to the generalisation that all flames are hot.

To reach the second, we would need to add the principle that nature is uniform and that the future resembles the past. But it is evident that this cannot be easily established. Hume says that there are only two kinds of reasoning:

Demonstrative reasoning and
Probable reasoning.

Demonstrative reasoning according to him, such as deduction cannot establish the uniformity of nature since non-uniformity is conceivable and therefore possible. Probable reason or causal reasoning is form the observed to the unobserved and this cannot re-establish the uniformity of nature. He re-echoed the words of Bertrand Russell who had said that "even experience has told us that past futures resemble past pasts, we cannot conclude that future futures will resemble future pasts unless we already assume that the future resembles the past"

Reason therefore, according to Hume, does not give us a belief about the unobserved. What gives us a belief about the unobserved is custom or habit. What this means is that repeated experience of the conjunction of flame and heat creates an association of ideas. So if and when we see flames, by sheer habit our idea of heat automatically comes up in our mind. Our beliefs therefore, he says, are not products of reason but imagination. Hume was very sceptical about induction. Hence he says that we have no reason to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow. Our causal conclusions therefore are not based on any credible foundation but only formed as a result of a habit of constant conjunction and casual relations. Hume therefore did not see any necessary connection between cause and effect.





Personal Identity
Hume rejects very clearly the view of personal identity which was shared by many philosophers before him and regarded this idea as vulgar and gullible. His opinion about this is that we have no conscious self, simple in itself, and identical from one time to another.
May 24, 2010

He rejects the notion that we have an impression of a simple identical self; as a result, we have no idea of any such thing. Hume's view I that mankind is nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity and that in perpetual flux and movement.
The common mistake Hume thinks that we make is that we have the tendency to confuse related perception with identical experiences. In other words, we take one perception we have to be the same as what we see within another experience (encounter), which is that our experiences are identical with the past, that is, there is a meeting point between our past and present experience. His scepticism about the external world brought about his scepticism about the self. If all of these were to be taken, knowledge would be totally impossible.
Self in pieces
Bundle of perceptions
In flux, therefore no identical (nothing perdures)
What you call a self is created by you and so there is nothing like the self. Hume disagrees with our knowledge of the world and our knowledge of self.
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was born in Konisberg which used to be in Prussia but now in Germany. He died in the city. He was from a modest family and he grew up in an atmosphere of honest artisanship and pietistic religiosity. He studied at the University of Konisberg where he became a professor and taught all his life. He was said to be punctual, methodical and had a serene composure of an uncommon kind. His whole life was that of a perpetual and passionate quest for truth. Kant's philosophy was said to be divided into two epochs:
The pre-critical period
The critical period
His works are divided along these two lines. Some of his popular works are the following:
Critic of pure reason
Critic of practical reason
Fundamental principles of morals
Critique of judgement
Prolegomena to any future metaphycist
Religion within the boundaries of reason and many other works.
His life was very strict, he did not marry. He had a servant who always helped him.
His Philosophy
The principal source of his philosophy is to be found in Cartesianism or Cartesian philosophy. And consequently in rationalisation up to Leibniz and christen Wolff. Kant also alluded to David Hume as the one who woke him from his dogmatic slumber. He is the father of German idealism since he influenced every other major philosopher after him. His philosophy represents an essential revolution in the history of German philosophy. This was why he called his philosophy a kind of Copernican revolution and the popular concepts he used in his philosophy was the concept "Transcendental" which means that his philosophy exceeds the normal and goes beyond the normal level of experience – "ding un sich" (you know something as it appears to you)
What is transcendental knowledge?
Kant's notion of experience did not admit the regular explanation that has been given before him. So he rejected the rational explanation of transcendental knowledge. This rejection of the older knowledge is based on the fact that knowledge cannot be explained simply by interpreting being as transcendental being. It is necessary to create a transcendental theory of knowledge and this knowledge will form a bridge between the 'ego' and the 'thing'.
NOTE:
Things force themselves on our sense data "what is received is determined by the mode of the receiver (Aquinas). This means that we are critical to knowledge.
This implies the act of creating order in what is in chaos. What is this order?
Is there a universal order?
Space and time are not concrete entities but pure intuition.
Kant went on to say that if knowledge were transcendental, it will know external things. If it were immanent, it will know what is in me. For Kant therefore, the things in themselves (numena) are inaccessible, which means we cannot know them as they are in themselves. He calls this the "ding un sich" (the thing in itself). I can only therefore know things as they appear to me. He went on to that the thing in itself is in me and therefore is affected by my subjectivity.
These things are neither spatial nor temporal since I cannot conceive anything that is outside time and space. The distinction here therefore is between the things as they are in themselves and as they appear to me. Kant distinguishes two elements of knowledge:
What is given and
What is posited by the thinking subject

Something comes to me in my experience and that is what he calls a chaos of sensation and then I posit something using the space-time reference and the categories of understanding from the combination of these two elements, there arises the known entity or the phenomenon. When thought order of the chaos of sensation it makes the thing we see in the world. Consequently Kant says that thought does not adapt itself to things, rather the things adapt themselves to thought. This is what he calls the Copernican Revolution.

Since thought does not create the things all by itself, it makes use of the given materials. Therefore the things which are distinct from the unknowable or inaccessible things in themselves arise out of the act of transcendental knowledge (Phenomenon arises as a result of transcendental knowledge).

Kant distinguishes three modes of knowing:

Sensibility
Reflection and understanding
Reason
To the concept of reason, he added "Pure", so he called reason "Pure Reason" and this is based on a priori principles and is independent of experience. Apart from the concept "pure" being known in Kant as a priori, it also mean rational condition of all rational beings in general. The philosophy of Kant has four major characteristics, namely:
The denial of metaphysics in any form
A pronounce tendency to become a theory knowledge
A great interest in the positive sciences
The tendency to understand philosophy as a theory of positive science.

Time and Space.
What is space and time? Space and time according to Kant is pure intuition. They are what he calls a priori forms of sensibility because for him, sensibility is not only receptive but also active. It leaves its imprint on everything it apprehends while processing; it forms in an a priori way.
Space and time are forms which sensibility gives to things occurring to it from the outside. These forms are necessary conditions if I am to perceive and posit these conditions. A priori knowledge therefore, is the knowledge I have of space and time because I do not know them from experience but rather the opposite. As a result, they are indispensable. It is in these forms that my perception resides. As a result, these forms are a priori to the things and belong to the realm of the pure subject. For Kant therefore, I know space and time in an absolute a priori way and without it, knowledge is impossible.

Space and time – pure intuition
Space and time - A priori forms

Without space and time; pure intuition; and a priori form, knowledge is impossible.





31/5/10

Kant

Space and time are forms which sensibility gives to the things occurring to it from outside. These forms are necessary condition if I am to perceive and posit these conditions. A priori knowledge therefore is the knowledge I have of space and time because I do not know them from experience but rather the opposite. As a result, they are indispensable. It is in these forms that my perception resides. As a result, these forms are a priori to the things and belong to the realm of the pure subject. For Kant therefore, I know space and time in absolutely a priori way and without it, knowledge is impossible






Two types of knowledge in Kant: Things as they are in themselves called numena and things as they appeared called phenomena