I have only 4 philosophy questions! ASAP
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introphilonotes.pptxPre-Socratics Thales
Problem: The One and the Many/What is the fundamental building block of all reality.
The Pre-Socratic philosophers were interested in questions about nature of things/ ontology: the study of Being.
-Some things change from time to time into something else and also resemble each other.
Thales 1st philosopher’s unique contribution to philo. thought was the notion that though there are many different kinds of things, (water in the lake, evaporation, clouds, rain) there is a basic unity/similarity between them all.
*The many are related to each other by the one. The one according to Thales is water.
Pre-Socratics Anaximander
The problem: still the one and the many/fundamental building block of reality.
Anaximander rejects Thales notion that water is the foundation of all reality.
He calls the one: indefinite/boundless realm. (poetic/mystical)
-Creation was a mistake, but the good news is that the universe will end and a kind of injustice, existence, will be made right.
-He also said that all life comes from the sea and that in the course of time, living things came out of the sea to dry land.
Pre-Socratics Pythagoras
The problem, like the song, remains the same: one/many.
-For the Pythagoreans, ultimate reality was abstract and relational. Pythagoras says that all things consist of Numbers, and the study of mathematics is the best purifier of the soul.
Pythagoras divided society into three different kinds of lives:
1. The ‘merchant class’ (the lowest) activity of buying and selling.
2. The ‘athletic class’(2nd) those that compete, to gain honors.
3. The ‘spectators’ (highest), who reflect upon and analyze what is happening. The implication is that the soul is also divided into three: (1)The appetites(rep. merch.) (2) The will (rep. athl.) (3) Reason (rep. spect.) To look on is one of the meanings of the Greek word for ‘theory’.
Pythagoras
-Math then is the tool that moves the individual from the particular things (appearance) towards the permanent and ordered world of numbers.(reality)
The Pythag. also begin to divide reality into two kinds of things(Dualism): even/odd, female/male, good/evil; thus we begin to have a duality of reality.
*The most significant contribution to philos; namely, the concept of form: means limit or to measure.
Unlimited- Matter/stuff out of which everything was constituted.
Limit-Form/principle of limit. The Pythagorean principle of Harmony: Medicine analogy and the cookie dough and cutter.
*Massive impact on Plato’s theory of the Forms.
Pre-Socratics Heraclitus
The problem shifts from the one/many to the problem of explaining change.
-Heraclitus says that all reality is in “Flux: you cannot step twice in the same river”. (This concept applies to everything).
-He says that reality(one and many) is ultimately comprised of “fire”- this can be interpreted metaphorically.
-Flux/Fire: fire is the chief operational principle of change.
Reason as the Universal Law:
-The process of change is not a haphazard movement.
-Rather, it is a product of ‘God’s universal reason or with change there is a unity(logos) in the diversity(Flux/Fire). Think of the water ever-changing as (Flux/Fire) and the river bank that gives order(Logos).
Heraclitus
Logos
We derive our word for logic from the Logos. It can also mean word( The Gospel of John) and reason.
-For Hercl, the most real thing of all is the soul, and the soul’s chief attribute is wisdom.
The text mentions “Monism”, which is the ontological notion that all reality is untimely reducible to one fundamental thing.
-Remember, ontology is the study of Being. A things Being can defined as the essential attribute that makes a thing what it is and with out it would cease to exist(as we know it).
-Also, Heraclitus notion of “God” is not the same as the Judeo-Christian understanding.
Heraclitus
His concept of the “One” is purely rational and pantheistic: pan derived from the Greek meaning everywhere i.e. pandemic v. epidemic.
He says, because God is reason and since God is the One, permeating all things *God, as reason, is therefore, the Universal Law immanent in all things.
This notion of the Logos will lay the foundation for Natural Law Theory, which will have a continuous impact upon Western thought: Plato, Stoics, Christian Church and even the Founding Fathers.
Pre-Socrates Parmenides
-Rejects Heraclitus concept of change: logos as unity of diversity.
1. He accepts that reality is ultimately comprise of one substance(thing); however, whether exists (Being), “Must be absolute, or not at all”.
2. This means the concept of change is logically absurd;
3. Thus, change is a illusion.
-He calls being or reality “It is” as a self-evident truth. This is not an empirical claim, something that is known thru the senses; rather, truth of reason.(think of mathematical truths).
-Further, to that “It is not” nothing exists is self referentially incoherent: it cannot be said without self-contradiction.
Parmenides
-That is, nothing cannot be thought without thinking of something.
Thus Being is:
1. uncreated 2. Indestructible 3. Eternal 4. Immutable.
-This notion of being will have an impact on Plato’s theory of the Forms. An the claim that “It is” as a self-evident truth will latter be used by Descartes.
Zeno, a student of Parmenides gives us the paradoxes of change e.g. Achilles/tortoise, the arrow.
The curial point is that if space is infinitely divisible, then motion is logically absurd; thus, change is an illusion.
Pre-Socrates Atomist
*Atomism originates in an attempt to overcome the consequences of Parmenides denial of change. They we interested in giving a coherent theory of motion and space.
-Democritus claimed that all things consisted of Atoms, and Atoms are:
Indivisible 2. Eternal (Parmenides’ Being)
Their ontology held that nature consists of two things/states:
Space/vacuum (allows for motion and change)
Atoms( the object we exper.)
Atoms move around and eventually collide giving form to the things we experiences.
Atomist
This leads to a Mechanical Concept of Nature that has metaphysical implications:
Determinism is the theory that ever fact or even the universe is determined(Follows strict laws of causation) by pervious facts or events. (Human behavior/history)
If Determinism is true, then (some philosophers argue that) human beings do not posses freedom of will or the power to originate independent or genuine choices.
