Modern Qual

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Descartes on substance:

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2 substances: extended substance and thought (mind and body)

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Spinoza on substance (3)

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1 substance: god/nature. Self-caused. Mind/body are 2 attributes of infinite substance.

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Spinoza: all that exists is...

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necessary

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leibniz on substance (7)

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Monads: infinitude of infinitesimal, non-extended, absolutely simple substance, each of which are completely self-contained, has every predicate true of it contained within itself. Immaterial, outside space and time, each containing a force placed there by God, each is unique but mirrors the whole world. Their properties do not change

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Leibniz- thesis of spontaneity

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everything that happens to a substance is a consequence of its idea or being, nothing determines it except God alone (applies this to mind and body)

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Leibniz: principle of conceptual containment

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each monad has within itself everything, monads mirror each other, each reflects the whole universe

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Locke on Substance

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Material substratum: "I know not what" (Substance is a type of complex idea)

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Locke: complex ideas

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all complex ideas have a nominal essence (abstract ideas) and a real essence (the very being of the thing)

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Locke: primary qualities

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(figure, motion, all spatio-temporal) which are contained in the substratum

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Locke: secondary qualities:

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formed by the interaction of our sensory faculties with the insensible corpuscles (minute particles) which emanate from the substratum.

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Locke: insensible corpuscles: (causal theory of perception)

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(minute particles): their arrangement/rearrangement is how the observable properties of a substance are to be explained or understood. The differences in qualities of different substances stem from the difference in arrangement and motion of these corpuscles that make up their "real constitution."

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Descartes on Mind/Body

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mind and body are separate substances; problem of interactionism

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Spinoza on Mind/Body

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dual aspect theory: all one substance; mind and body reduced to attributes

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Leibniz on Mind/Body

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No mind/body problem: There is no extended substance, all is unextended

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Locke on Mind/Body

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soul/mind may possibly be im/material but we have no way to determine this (no theory on the mind and its relation to the body)

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Berkeley on Substance

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"esse est percipi" (to be is to be perceived). Immaterialism: there are only ideas/mental substances. Matter is an abstract idea that cannot provide a credible account of reality. There is no external, mind-independent reality. For sensible objects to have a natural or real existence distinct from their being perceived is a "manifest contradiction."

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Berkeley on Mind/Body

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no body, only mind

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Hume on substance:

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it is an illusion, nonsensical. Everything is just a collection of perceptions (bundle theory of perception)

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Hume on Mind/Body

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No substance, just two kinds of mental content: impressions (involve direct experience) and ideas (involve thinking of something rather than directly experiencing it).

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Kant on Substance: PCP

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Substance= APPEARANCES. It is a permanent, enduring substratum in appearances that persists throughout change; it is the condition for the possibility of experience; it is presupposed in order to account for changes in objects over time; the "mode in which we represent to ourselves the existence of the the thing in the field of appearances."

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Kant on Mind/Body

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Mind/Body are just two species of appearances. They differ not inwardly but in how they appear

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Kant: Transcendental theory of experience:

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Mind is related to matter in the way that the thinking subject is related to outer objects.

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Descartes on Causation

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God is the efficient cause of the idea of God in me: he is the ultimate source of all causation (the 1st cause of everything). Causation is an innate idea that we come to know through reason and reflection (presupposes that everything must have a cause). Causation is an a priori truth (self evident): there has to be a rule to governing the reality that every time I do A, B will follow.

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efficient cause

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primary source of change or rest

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Descartes Ontological proof

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A priori: God's existence comes from his perfections

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Descartes Teleological/Cosmological proof:

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1.) God has more objective and formal reality that I do so I cannot be the cause of the idea of him. 2.) I cannot be self-caused, nor can I perpetuate my own existence

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Descartes on God

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God is guarantor of all clear & distinct ideas which are the building blocks of knowledge (which then guarantees knowledge of extended substance). God is perfect, places all ideas in Descartes head, is not a deceiver, is the source of all knowledge (synthetic and analytic) and is not the source of our error.

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Spinoza on causation

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No causation: all is God, God has no will

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Spinoza on God

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Pantheism: God/nature alone exists. God/nature is necessary. God has an infinite number of attributes, but we only know 2 (thought and extension). Finite things are mere mode/"regions"/aspects of God. God is timeless, indivisible and self caused. God is immanent, not transcendent since transcendence implies alterity, otherness (god other than myself). If God is immanent, I an not separate from him, I am apart of him.

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Leibniz on Causation

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Monads don't cause changes in one another. They seem to interact with each other because God keeps them in constant harmony. Related, minds also don't cause changes in body, they just appear to because God keeps them harmonized. All the predicates that will ever be true of a particular mond are contained in it essentially from the beginning, and it seems like a particular mental state of a monad (or time-state) lead necessarily to the next one. God is the source of extrasubstantial causation. Causation is an innate idea in the mind of God. Causation is known through logic, from mathematical proof.

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God is the cause of the reality of possible things that actually do exist, and is the cause of both the existence and essence of real things.

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Leibniz on God

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God is transcendent (contra Spinoza), perfect, absolutely infinite, and his essence involved existence. He is all powerful and absolutely good. He does have free will and is benevolent, therefore he chooses the best possible world among those available to him. He ensures harmony among the monads. His existence is derivable from logical proof (argument from design). God is one of an infinite number of monads.

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Locke on cause

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causal theory of perception: External objects cause us to have (some of) the ideas we have. Ideas of primary qualities resemble their causes.

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Berkeley on cause

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No causation: all secondary qualities (color, sound, tastes, etc) and primary qualities (extension, solidity, motion) are all intramental (contra locke). We can't have causation among extended substance if there's no material world.

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Berkeley on God

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God is transcendent, the source of all ideas. He is the guarantor of the external world through his divine perception. Master perceiver argument: sensible objects are mind dependent, yet exhibit a persistence that transcends our perception of them: it follows that there must be a master perceiver and that this master perceiver is God.

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Hume on causation

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Causation is not a necessary connection (contra Descartes) and is an illusion. It is based on the constant conjuction of objects ("from causes we expect similar effects." But in reality effects are totally distinct from their causes ("the mind can never possibly find the effect in the supposed cause.")

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We make inductive inferences- but this is not intuitive (not based on insight into the nature of the object) but neither is it based on reasoning. It is clearly not a kind of demonstrative reasoning for at best its only probably. No argument from experience can be used to prove that the future will conform to the pas because we cannot see into the nature of things.

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Hume on God

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Our idea of God ("as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise, and good Being") is complex and derived from simple ideas based on reflection on the operations of our own minds, which we “augment without limit those qualities of goodness and wisdom”.

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Kant on causation

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Causation is a synthetic truth (a claim we make about our experience of the world). Causation is part of the category of relation which is a necessary and universal, or a priori, condition for the possibility of experience. The only way for a knowing subject to determine alterations in substances over time is through a notion of causation. Causal relations are a necessary and irreversible succession. We determine alterations in substances over time only as they appear to us, not as they are in themselves. Causation is necessary because it is part of the way we experience changes in appearances (phenomena).

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(Kant is making no claims at all about things in themselves, only about appearances, which are the only things we can know). Contra Hume, Kant says that causation is not a chimera, not an illusion, it is a priori and a condition for the possibility of knowledge. Causation is not merely probabilistic in nature, not something we get through habit or custom of conjoining one event to another. Instead, it is a necessary and universal condition for the possibility of determining alterations in substances in time as they appear to us. Causation only works because Kant limits the sphere of knowledge to appearances.

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Kant on God

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unknowable. God cannot be proved because God is not an object of experience. All arguments, to prove the existence of God must, in order to be theoretically valid, start from specifically and exclusively sensible or phenomenal data, must employ only the conceptions of pure physical science, and must end with demonstrating in sensible experience an object congruous with, or corresponding to, the idea of God.

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Critiques Ontological (Descartes/Anselm argument): existence is not a predicate, the argument is a mere tautology. Cosmological (Aquinas, Descartes): this argument only states that there must be a first cause. It does not say the first cause has to be God. The only way to make the leap from first cause to God is to use the ontological argument, which is flawed. Argument from Design (Leibniz): same with Cosmological: all this says is that there must be a designer, doesn't say that the designer is God unless the ontological argument is used. God is transcendent (like with Descartes, Leibniz, Berkeley but not Spinoza).

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Descartes on Knowledge

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(In Discourse on Method) Descartes argues that all things are mutually connected and that there is nothing so far removed from us, nothing we cannot discover, provided only that we abstain from accepting the false for the true and always preserve in our thoughts the order necessary for the deduction of one truth from another. He is saying that all truths are necessary truths. If this is so, then our knowledge of them derives not from our knowledge of things in the world but from our ability to reason logically.

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Descartes of Freedom

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Freedom/free will: the ability to do or not do something. The will is by its nature so free that it could never be constrained. The will the source of our error (when it exceeds our judgment)

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Spinoza on Knowledge

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We can't even have adequate knowledge of our own bodies. (don't have access to our innards.) Absolute knowing is god's knowledge of god. Three kinds of knowledge: opinion/imagination, scientific/rational, intuition.

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1st: opinion or imagination: knowledge that is produced when bodies combine with bodies, everyday knowledge.
2nd: scientific/rational: relations of bodies via the mind. The idea that there are extended things. Can see things in motion, but we can step back and analyze it.
Not compound knowledge, but simple. It's abstract, not complete. Only deals with general laws (can know there's cause and effect, but don't know how it works). Always related to the body, but knowledge deduced from laws. Same as adequate ideas. Mathematical knowledge. 3rd: intuition- God's eye view of knowledge. The knowledge God would have of a specific thing. The general law rendered specific. Seeing something the same way god sees it, perfectly, no confusion. Pure knowledge of things. Increasing the knowledge of individuals makes you better know God. Unless we have the 3rd order of knowledge you don't have knowledge of bodies.

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Spinoza on free will

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everything is determined by the universal, indifferent laws of nature. There is no divine providence or free will, even for God. God has no will.

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Leibniz on knowledge

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all knowledge is innate. All facts about the universe are reflected in each monad, but it is not within the individual's power to perceive them all distinctly at any given time. Knowledge of extended substance qua extended substance is not possible, since there is no extended substance.

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contra Locke: The Tabula rasa conception of the mind violates the principle of identity of indiscernibles (each monad is unique but mirrors the entire universe). Experience and the senses cannot provide the mind with ideas because the monads have no windows (cannot take in info).

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Locke on knowledge

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everything of the mind comes to be there by way of experience; Tabula Rasa: at birth our minds are completely empty, only as experience marks the slate do we begin to form ideas. No innate ideas (children and idiots are proof). Everything we know is made up of two types of ideas: sensation and reflection. Ideas of sensation come from experience and are simple ideas. We process simple ideas to make complex ideas: modes (ex. triangles), substances (ex- gold) and relations (causation).

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Leibniz on free will

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determinist: monads are self-contained, could not have been any other way than that willed by God. God is free/able to do otherwise, yet cannot fail to will the best possible world.

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Locke on free will

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"free will" makes no sense. The truth of determinism is irrelevant. Free will as volunutary actions depending on the power to reflect or deliberate.

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Berkeley on Knowledge

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we have no knowledge of extended substances because there are no extended substances.

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Berkeley's theory of knowledge thus reduces all reality to phenomena: The material world exists only as a cognitive act, produced and existing in a mental act, and hence is subjective and not objective.

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Hume on Knowledge

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No innate ideas. impressions cause our ideas (all ideas are ultimately copied from impressions and differ only by being less lively or vivacious.

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Hume's fork

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Relations of ideas (analytic, a priori, do not tell us anything about the world) vs matters of fact which are based on sense impressions (from experience)

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Kant on knowledge

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Knowledge is something generated between the external world and the knowing subject. Everything we know of is appearances, not of the things in themselves. While all our knowledge may begin with sensible impressions or experience there is an element in it which does not rise from this source, but transcends it. That knowledge is transcendental which is occupied not so much with mere outward objects as with our manner of knowing those objects, that is to say, with a priori concepts of them. All our knowledge is either a priori or a posteriori. Our knowledge is derived from two fundamental sources of the consciousness. The first is the faculty of receptivity of impressions; the second, the faculty of cognition of an object by means of these impressions or representations, this second power being sometimes styled spontaneity of concepts. By the first, an object is given to us; by the second it is thought of in the mind. Thus intuition and concepts constitute the elements of our entire knowledge, for neither intuition without concepts, nor concepts without intuition can yield any knowledge whatever. Hence arise two branches of science, 'aesthetic' and logic, the former being the science of the rules of sensibility; the latter, the science of the rules of understanding.

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That is a posteriori knowledge which is derived from sensible experience as including sensible impressions or states; while a priori knowledge is that which is not thus gained, but consists of whatever is universal or necessary.

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Kant on the other philosophers

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Both rationalists and empiricists conceive of knowledge as a kind of relationship between reason and the external world, between the human faculty of knowledge and nature. Knowledge exists when our mental idea of the world corresponds to the way the world really is. Kant believe that both are partly correct, but both are also guilty of the same concealed error: They imagine that the mind and the world (that is, reason and nature/ mind and body) exist separately, side by side, that the mind and the world exist in such a way as what's in the mind (concepts/ideas) can be compared to what's in the world (natural objects). Once this dualistic picture is accepted, it is easy to see the problem in finding out under what conditions ideas, on one side, and objects, on the other side, correspond. But for Kant, this picture is an illusion and what we see in it is false. We are so used to the idea that there is a difference between what goes inside our own heads and what goes on in the external world that we don't catch the illusion in the philosophical picture. In fact, to distinguish between our private thoughts (located inside our heads) and external thoughts (located in nature outside the mind) is actually to distinguish between various thoughts and perceptions within our consciousness. We are not aware of anything completely outside our consciousness.

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Kant on freedom

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Agrees with Hume in saying that causal necessity governs human actions insofar as we are part of the natural world, yet humans are still free. Disagrees in that moral action can't be viewed as part of a single chain of causes

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For Kant, freedom and determinism are compatible because of the 2 worlds: in the phenomenal world our actions are determined by natural laws. In the noumenal world we are free/independent from causal/natural laws and subject to our own laws. When we act morally, we participate in a higher order of existence. (categorical imperative: what ought to be done)