Great Ideas of Philosophy

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Questions to Consider:1. If “association” acts in a manner akin to gravitational forces, summarize whether we have any power over theassociations we form mentally.2. Locke’s method is not experimental but introspective. Conclude whether this is “Newtonian,” and if so, in whatsense.14©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
Lecture ThirtyNo Matter? The Challenge of MaterialismScope: Locke’s corpuscular psychology fortified the radically materialistic psychologies of the neo-Epicureans(e.g., Gassendi); at the same time, it summoned others to significant critiques of the Lockean view. One ofthese was developed by Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646–1716), in which the limitations ofempiricism are examined: His New Essays on Human Understanding led to the conclusion that anorganizing and rationally functioning mind must be present for coherent experience to exist and thatnothing in the operation of the biological senses can constitute a thought or an idea.Another critic was George Berkeley (1685–1783), who carries empiricism to the end of its logical tetherand reaches nothing less than a radical critique of materialism itself. In A Theory Concerning the Principlesof Human Knowledge, he attempts to defeat materialism and the skepticism it spawns by establishing theessentially mental preconditions for a material world to exist at all!Berkeley, too—who would become Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland—was a scientist-philosopher, hisoriginality expressing itself chiefly in optics and in what might be called the biophysics of depthperception. He lived for a time in the American colonies, building a house in Newport, Rhode Island,which still stands and where one of his daughters was born. It was both his religious conviction and hisphilosophical hardheadedness that brought him into conflict with the now fashionable “materialism” of theworld of Anglo-continental thought.OutlineI. In a couple of words, we can find a number of positions on philosophy of the mind. In particular, these fewwords can express the two poles of materialism and rationalism.A. “No matter? Never mind.” This statement demonstrates the classic materialist position: Absent materialorganization, there could not be mental life.B. “No mind? Never matter.” This suggests that the material world, to have any kind of existence at all,presupposes a thinking entity or the realm of idea in which the material world might inhere.C. Locke’s Essay was widely understood to assert that “mind,” as such, is nothing but a collection of currentand stored experiences held together as a result of habitual encounters with objects in the internal world.To some influential philosophers of his time, Locke seemed to underestimate the activity, complexity, andcreative power of mind. His view seemed to be nothing more than the old tabula rasa theory.II. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646–1716) is one of the great figures in the history of philosophy.A. Leibniz was a statesman and an inventor of the calculus, along with Newton.B. Many of his writings were foundational for probability theory.C. Leibniz responded to Locke’s famous An Essay Concerning Human Understanding with an essay of hisown: New Essays on Human Understanding. He raised fundamental questions that constitute a formidablechallenge to the empiricist philosophy of mind.1. Leibniz takes Locke to be saying that nothing is in the mind at all, except what was first in the senses.2. Leibniz, in disputing Locke, offers the rationalist answer to empiricism, saying that nothing is in theintellect that was not first in the senses except the intellect itself (“nisi intellectus ipse”). Unless there isalready in place an organizing, self-reflecting power—the intellect—experience would count asnothing.3. Leibniz distinguishes between the sort of “nullity” that might be a useful concept in mathematics—such as a “point”—and anything that has real existence, such as a mind.4. Leibniz claims that knowledge is not just a collection of sensations pulled together to form elementaryideas, which are then pulled together to form complex ideas.D. He argues further that perception is inexplicable on mechanical or material grounds. To demonstrate this,he constructs an “ideal model.”1. Consider a machine that can think, feel, and have perception.©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 15
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Daniel N. Robinson, Ph.D.Philosophy
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Lecture OneFrom the Upanishads to H
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E. The Upanishads would merge us wi
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2. Despite their oracles, priests,
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4. Looking at geometry, we are told
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E. The contribution of pre-Socratic
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of the mystery of earth itself impe
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Lecture SixHerodotus and the Lamp o
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Lecture SevenSocrates on the Examin
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Xenophon. Memorabilia. Cornell Univ
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II. A philosopher is engaged in the
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Lecture NineCan Virtue Be Taught?Sc
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Lecture TenPlato’s Republic⎯Man
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Annas, J. “Classical Greek Philos
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III. The dominant school of Greek m
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1. Epistemonikon is a special featu
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Timeline800-600 B.C.E. ............
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1705...............................
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1873...............................
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Functionalism: The view that consci
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Tabula rasa: A blank slate. In the
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progress in one of its most summoni
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John Locke (1632-1704): Physician a
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The Great Ideas ofPhilosophy, 2 nd
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Table of ContentsThe Great Ideas of
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Lecture ThirteenAristotle on Friend
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C. Aristotle is recovering the Home
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III. The problem of conduct is then
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C. The Stoic account relies on the
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Lecture SixteenThe Stoic Bridge to
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Recommended Reading:Bede. A History
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III. Roman law successfully permitt
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Lecture EighteenThe Light Within⎯
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Page 76 and 77: Lecture TwentySecular Knowledge⎯T
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Page 82 and 83: Lecture Twenty-TwoScholasticism and
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Page 88 and 89: Lecture Twenty-FourLet Us Burn the
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Page 96 and 97: Apatheia: Freedom from pathos and s
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Page 100 and 101: Biographical NotesAeschylus (525-45
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Page 104 and 105: Socrates (c. 469-399 B.C.): Greek p
Page 107 and 108: Daniel N. Robinson, Ph.D.Philosophy
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Page 111 and 112: B. This expansion, however, does no
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Page 115 and 116: Lecture Twenty-SevenNewton⎯The Sa
Page 117 and 118: Lecture Twenty-EightHobbes and the
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Page 125 and 126: Lecture Thirty-OneHume and the Purs
Page 127 and 128: Lecture Thirty-TwoThomas Reid and t
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Page 133 and 134: Lecture Thirty-FourThe Federalist P
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Page 139 and 140: Lecture Thirty-SixMoral Science and
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Page 147 and 148: Apatheia: Freedom from pathos and s
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Page 151 and 152: Biographical NotesAeschylus (525-45
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Page 169 and 170: Lecture FortyThe Aesthetic Movement
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III. Nietzsche was an admirer and o
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B. In the final state, we’re all
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Lecture Forty-ThreeDarwin and Natur
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2. There is room for altruism but o
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1. He is a Hegelian who stands Hege
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Lecture Forty-FiveThe Freudian Worl
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B. How can repressed elements be un
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III. What figures in the human imag
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Lecture Forty-SevenWilliam James’
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Questions to Consider:1. Conclude w
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III. As long as we subscribe to a
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Timeline800-600 B.C.E. ............
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1705...............................
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1873...............................
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Functionalism: The view that consci
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Tabula rasa: A blank slate. In the
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progress in one of its most summoni
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John Locke (1632-1704): Physician a
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The Great Ideas ofPhilosophy, 2 nd
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Table of ContentsThe Great Ideas of
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Lecture Forty-NineAlan Turing in th
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C. Searle thinks that the missing i
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3. Even activities could be simulat
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B. The inclination to classify is a
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Lecture Fifty-TwoPhilosophy of Scie
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V. These debates illustrate a far l
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1. The two had in common the idea t
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Questions to Consider:1. What does
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C. Locke and others emphasized that
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Lecture Fifty-FiveWhat Makes a Prob
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B. Kant suggests that the moral law
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1. Proponents have argued that so m
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Lecture Fifty-SevenOn the Nature of
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2. So far as it can coexist with th
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3. Slavery is commonplace in all of
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3. Does the just-war theorist have
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B. The quadrivium comprised arithme
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2. He argues that the former is pre
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1. The objects of the knowable worl
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etween a world of beauty and one of
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⎯⎯⎯. On Free choice of Will.
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Herodotus. The Persian Wars. G. Raw
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———. Toward a Science of Huma
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