Introduction to Philosophy

profilebabygirl07
metaphysics.ppt
Home>Psychology homework help>Introduction to Philosophy

PHIL 201 – Introduction to Philosophy

Nicole Zeger

METAPHYSICS

What is Metaphysics?

  • The study of the most fundamental principles of the nature of things.
  • Comprehensive view of the universe.
  • Considers the nature of Reality.
  • Cosmology – how ‘real’ things have come into being
  • Ontology – the study of ‘what is’ or ‘being’.

What is truly Real?

  • Materialism
  • Physical objects are all that exist
  • Idealism
  • Mind or Spirit are all that exist
  • Dualism
  • Also known as the ‘Mind-Body Theory’
  • Two different kinds of things exist: Mind and Body
  • Cannot be reduced into each other – completely separate
  • How do they communicate with each other?

Three Theories

Dualism

Early Metaphysics - Materialism

  • Thales
  • Water is the ultimate reality
  • It exists in all things
  • Also argued that magnets have souls?
  • Anaximander
  • Everything made of apeiron (basic ‘stuff’)
  • Cannot see apeiron, can only know it through its manifestations
  • Anaximenes
  • Everything made up of air
  • Heraclitus
  • Everything made up of fire
  • It is all-consuming and always changing
  • Democritus
  • Everything made of Atoms

Early Metaphysics – Ancient Immaterialism

  • Immaterialism later known as Idealism
  • Pythagoras
  • Ultimate reality is numbers
  • Parmenides
  • Our everyday world is unreal
  • Reality is unchanging and unknown to us
  • Heraclitus
  • Reality is change, but with unifying Logos

Plato

  • Forms
  • World of Becoming
  • World of Being
  • Tried to reconcile Materialism and Immaterialism
  • Allegory of the Cave

Image: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/11/uncertainty-for-mere-mortals/

Aristotle

  • Term ‘Metaphysics’ came from Aristotle
  • He didn’t use it – it was derived from an early description of his set of essays, titled “First Philosophy”.
  • “First Philosophy” came after ‘Physics’ in an edition of his works – hence “Meta-Physics”.
  • Rejected Plato’s Forms
  • Everyday reality is Reality
  • Difference between Reality and Appearances
  • Substances are Ultimate Reality – the building blocks of all things
  • Forms of things are in the things themselves.
  • We may be familiar with a thing but that does not mean we completely understand it.
  • We know people, but we may not know what it means to be human.

Idealism

  • Only the mind (or spirit) is real or
  • What is real is dependent on the mind

  • Bodies are a collection of ideas
  • The only things we can know are those that we have experienced
  • We know through experience (which is mind, not body)

Image: http://www.forgetthebox.net/mag/flag-day-reflections.php

Berkeley

  • Subjective Idealism
  • “To be is to be perceived”
  • An empiricist in terms of epistemology
  • We only know things in relationship to our experiences
  • We know there is a ‘Mind’ because an ‘Idea’ presupposes a Mind
  • No world outside our knowledge (or God’s knowledge)

Image: http://www.unc.edu/~megw/TheoriesofPerception.html

Kant, Schopenhauer, and Hegel

THE GERMAN IDEALISTS

Kant

  • Everything we know is based on experience
  • Reality is organized through Categories
  • We cannot understand our experience outside our mental categories
  • Categories based on universal principles (so we can communicate with each other)
  • Categories are rational
  • World of Nature and World of Action/Belief are both rational

Image: http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=1924401&imageID=ps_prn_cd23_330&total=1&e=w&k=0&print=small

Schopenhauer

  • Agreed with Kant that there are two worlds and
  • We can only know through experience
  • But, argued that both realms/worlds were IRRATIONAL
  • The Will in us was all that is real
  • Will is a violent force operating outside of us
  • Goal is to escape from the
  • power of the Will

Image: http://www.schopenhauer.net/

Hegel

  • Only Spirit is real
  • Focused on spirit instead of mind, experience or will
  • Still Idealism, as the Spirit is not material
  • Spirit
  • Cosmic, universal Mind
  • Full of constant internal conflict
  • Almost a cosmic consciousness
  • Always trying to understand itself
  • Teleological
  • Always moving

Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_idealism

Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz

DUALISM

Descartes

  • Sometimes considered a pluralist
  • Mind and Body both exist as substances
  • They are distinct substances and therefore
  • They cannot communicate with one another
  • Also considered God a separate substance from Mind and Body
  • Never solved the problem of interaction between the substances of Mind and Body

Image: http://www.artnetherlands.com/artgallery.htm

Can Dualism work?

  • Descartes offered a more pragmatic understanding – that both mind and body are real
  • Interaction – only remaining options:

Mind and Body are not two different substances; they are parts of the same substance (Spinoza)

Mind and body are separate substances, but they do not interact (Leibniz)

Image: http://paradigm-shift-21st-century.nl/the-mind-body-problem.html

Spinoza

  • Mind and body are different aspects of the same substance
  • “Attributes”
  • Monism
  • Only one substance in the universe
  • God is the only substance
  • We are all one – part of the same substance
  • No individuality; no freedom
  • We are all part of God
  • In many ways, not a Dualist
  • But not an idealist or materialist either
  • Mind and body are both real (dualism)
  • Part of a single unity (monism)
  • Many things are real, as they are all part of God (pluralism)

Image: http://ha-historion.blogspot.com/2009/12/curious-case-of-benedict-spinoza.html

Leibniz

  • Pluralist – there are many substances (monads, not physical substances)
  • Substances cannot interact
  • Monads
  • Simple substance, like a mind
  • Do not interact
  • They only appear to do these things
  • We do not see each other or the world as it is
  • We only perceive reality – pre-established harmony set up by God
  • Not really a dualist either
  • Not a materialist or an idealist – although closer to idealism

Image: http://en.nkfu.com/gottfried-leibniz-quotes/

References

Solomon, R.C. & Higgins, K.M. (2010). The Big Questions: A short introduction to philosophy (8th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Retrieved from https://mycampus.aiu-online.com/pages/MainFrame.aspx?ContentFrame=/Home/Pages/Default.aspx.

Wolff, R. P. (2012). About Philosophy (11th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Images

  • http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/11/uncertainty-for-mere-mortals/
  • http://msbarruseng9.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/platos-allegory-of-the
  • -cave
  • http://www.forgetthebox.net/mag/flag-day-reflections.php
  • http://www.unc.edu/~megw/TheoriesofPerception.html
  • http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=1924401&imageID=ps_prn_cd23_330&total=1&e=w&k=0&print=small
  • http://www.schopenhauer.net

Images (cont.)

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_idealism
  • http://www.artnetherlands.com/artgallery.htm
  • http://paradigm-shift-21st-century.nl/the-mind-body-problem.html
  • http://ha-historion.blogspot.com/2009/12/curious-case-of-benedict-spinoza.html
  • http://en.nkfu.com/gottfried-leibniz-quotes/