Great Ideas of Philosophy

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1. The objects of the knowable world are made more or less vivid by the process of selection, a reflectionof one’s interests and aims.2. Actions are then recruited in the service of these interests.B. The pragmatic warrant defended by James is expressed this way:1. A pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priorireasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins.2. He turns toward concreteness and adequacy, facts, action, and power.C. The fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes of philosophy are rejected because theycome to stand in the way of success in negotiating the challenges and facts of the world.1. Hume’s famous problem of induction says that we have no rational or logical warrant for assumingthat the future is obliged or necessitated to mimic the past.2. Thus, the faith we have in the continuing operation of the laws of science cannot be rationallyjustified.D. Though there is much to be said for the anti-realist philosophy of science, achievements such as visiting themoon and returning home safely have been predicated on the belief we have that the lawfulness of reality isneither chimerical nor episodic.E. We must find a position between infantile credulity and paralyzing skepticism, and the instrument we arelikely to use in locating that position is a pragmatic one, broadly conceived.III. Among are our most compelling interests are some reasonable understanding of our nature, of the nature of theworld in which we find ourselves, and of the very point of life itself.A. It would matter to know if it were, in fact, the case that the world is constituted as it is so that we couldforge decent and productive lives.B. It would matter to know if it were, in fact, the case that the laws of physical nature are reliable because thereality was constituted in such a way as to render it knowable and supportive of our form of life.C. Philosophy of science asserts the inference to the best explanation criterion: Consider an event, then askwhich, of all imaginable explanations that might account for it, is the best explanation. Two questionsarise:1. What is the standard by which to grade explanations as good, better, and best?2. What counts as an explanation?D. One explanation is in the form of probabilities.1. If there is an indefinite number of possible realities, including one law-governed as ours seems to be,the explanation may at some time be replaced by a less lawful one, the increase in entropy eliminatingthe structured predictability of a world of objects.2. The explanation may have been preceded by many abortive attempts to constitute a knowable cosmos,until one pattern just popped up and proved to be relatively stable.E. This, however, would not defeat the theory of a providential God; it would simply suggest some degree oftrial and error as an aspect of the creation. But it would be a weak warrant, because the proposition itselfmatches up with nothing else in our encounters with highly rule-governed, predictable, and complexsystems.F. We would, then, have a more defensible warrant for believing that the design features of reality suggest adesigner.IV. Thus do we turn to Thomas Aquinas and his famous “five ways” to prove the existence of God, as developed inthe Summa Theologiae.A. The first and plainest is the method that proceeds from the point of view of motion. Thomas’s first proof isbased on the concept of a prime mover, now understood as the result of an inference to the best explanationfor celestial dynamics.B. The second proof is from the nature of the efficient cause. From the fact that we can now see directly theeffects of causal chains originating in times remote from human experience, we are called upon to makeplausible inferences as to how the first efficient cause got the game started, and this, says Thomas, is that“which all call God.”38©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
C. The third proof is taken from the natures of the merely possible and necessary. Given that “nothing cancome from nothing” and that there are many things, there must have been something that was the source ofthe first thing.D. The fourth proof arises from degrees—of goodness, truth, nobility, and the like—that are found in things.There exists therefore something that is the truest, best, and noblest—the greatest being.E. Thomas gives as the fifth proof the natural order itself: “There is something intelligent by which all naturalthings are arranged in accordance with a plan—and this we call God.”V. Each of these and all of them together have invited powerful criticism over a course of centuries.A. Some theologians paradoxically reject the argument on the grounds that if the existence of God can beproved, there is no need for faith!B. Still others, taking a page from Hume, question the reality of causal powers and, in any case, relegate themto our modes of perception and cognition.C. It may also be said that Thomas has not given sufficient attention to the possibility of the “infinite regress,”meaning that there may be no “first cause” at all, only a limitless chain of effects back to and through stillother effects.1. Though this is a metaphysical possibility, it does not match any experience we have of causality.2. Thus, we would have a weaker warrant for assuming an infinite regress than for supposing an initialcausal agent.D. Still another forceful argument is that the “intelligibility” requirement Thomas asserts is a mere stipulation.1. One reply to the proposition that, absent an ordering intelligence, the cosmos would be unintelligible isthat the cosmos is unintelligible!2. But this calls us back to the Apollo program: How do we successfully shuttle about in an unintelligiblecosmos or even in the little sphere of it that is close to home?VI. There are other arguments against the existence of God apart from the alleged problems of the Thomistic “fiveways.” Two in particular arise from moral considerations—the “problem of evil” and the presumed threat posedby human freedom to the alleged omniscience of God.A. How could a God, at once omnipotent and beneficent, create a world so rife with evil? How could a justGod permit evil to go unpunished?1. In Providence and the Problem of Evil (1998), Richard Swinburne reasons that the choices madepossible by the very existence of evil are the basis on which God’s final judgments are made.2. One of the most authoritative replies to the problem-of-evil argument is that of Alvin Plantinga, in theform of the “free will” defense. As with the law—which does all that it must when it does all that itcan—God, too, has awsome power but is constrained by logical and even conceptual strictures.B. Such rebuttals are carefully crafted but, in the end, not entirely convincing. It certainly seems to be in therealm of possibility that an omnipotent and benficent loving God could create a reality in which there is noevil, no pain and suffering, no crime.1. A painless world of ceaseless joy and virtue strikes me as a gift beyond the imaginable; a prize withoutequal.2. I should think that, unless God is bound by John Rawls’s “difference principle,” this is a state ofaffairs that requires more to deserve it than the simple fact that one lacks it.C. As for freedom of the will defeating God’s claim to omniscience, I am again on shaky ground, not knowingmuch about omniscience and but a bit more about free will.1. If God is omniscient, then God knows everything that will ever occur, and this includes everything wewill do.2. If I grasp the sense of omniscience as it is acribed to God, I would expect it to include everything thatis actual and possible.3. Among the items that are actual and possible are all the actions that will ever have been freely taken.4. Thus, there is no incompatibility between our freedom and God’s omniscience.VII. In the previous lecture, I summarized G. E. Moore’s conception of beauty as a state of affairs we would wishto see established even if we knew we would not have access to it; the notion being that, were the choice©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 39
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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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B. Augustine approaches the problem
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B. Very early, the Islamic commitme
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Lecture TwentySecular Knowledge⎯T
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IV. The third great institutional c
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1. Scholasticism was an attempt to
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Lecture Twenty-TwoScholasticism and
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E. Further, to the intellectual vir
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historical volumes tell Florentines
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Lecture Twenty-FourLet Us Burn the
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1. First, the courts required a doc
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650-850 C.E. ......................
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1794...............................
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Apatheia: Freedom from pathos and s
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ut cannot know what it is. Ultimate
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Biographical NotesAeschylus (525-45
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Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771)
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Socrates (c. 469-399 B.C.): Greek p
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Scope:The Great Ideas of Philosophy
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B. This expansion, however, does no
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1. This standard essentially rules
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Lecture Twenty-SevenNewton⎯The Sa
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Lecture Twenty-EightHobbes and the
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Recommended Reading:Hobbes, T. Levi
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B. Other things can be known to be
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Lecture ThirtyNo Matter? The Challe
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Lecture Thirty-OneHume and the Purs
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Lecture Thirty-TwoThomas Reid and t
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efore him were not always faithful
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2. His Letters on the English makes
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Lecture Thirty-FourThe Federalist P
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VI. The Federalist Papers and the g
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III. Kant argues that there is some
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Lecture Thirty-SixMoral Science and
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Questions to Consider:1. A hypothet
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650-850 C.E. ......................
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1794...............................
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Apatheia: Freedom from pathos and s
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ut cannot know what it is. Ultimate
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Biographical NotesAeschylus (525-45
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Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771)
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Socrates (c. 469-399 B.C.): Greek p
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Scope:The Great Ideas of Philosophy
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C. Though his system would be mocke
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1. There is nothing in the physics
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F. To include Hegel within the trad
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Lecture FortyThe Aesthetic Movement
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insisted that our very character is
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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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Page 214 and 215: Lecture Forty-NineAlan Turing in th
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