---
Author: Simon Blackburn
pdate: 1999
rdate: Sep 2024
Rating: 8
subject: Philosophy
Genre: Textbook
---
#nonfiction #books #modernbook #philosophy

## Rating
This book provides a great introduction to philosophy both ancient and contemporary. Simon Blackburn skillfully explains the intricacies of the subject, especially in the first half of the book. Unfortunately, though, it becomes a bit more monotonous and boring towards the end, particularly the last chapter about ethics

## Detailed summary
### Introduction
Philosophical question require more self-reflection rather than empirical knowledge.

Why study philosophy:
1) for the sake of it (like videogames, art, history, science, music, culture, anything else) - pleasure in mental exercise
2) because reflection is continuous with practice: our practice can go worse or better according to the value of our reflections
3) because reflection may show us the error of our convictions

> Imagination abandoned by reason produces monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the source of her wonders
>    Francesco Goya

### Chapter One: Knowledge ([[Epistemology]])
In 1641 [[Rene Descartes]] wrote a philosophical treatise titled "[[Meditations on First Philosophy]]". In it, he establishes 6 "meditations".

The first mediation introduces the "method of doubt". Descartes resolves that he must demolish all his ordinary opinions if he is to make anything in the sciences that is "stable and likely to last", as even our senses can deceive us (dreams are realistic yet far from reality, madmen, etc.) Descartes also introduces the notion of the Evil Demon, a malignant entity "who has employed all his energies in order to deceive me, %all% things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgment".

The second meditation begins in fear that if his senses are not real, then Descartes itself is not real too. However, he finds solace in the famous ''[[Cogito ergo sum]]": "I think, therefore, I am". He follows up this by defining who he is: "For it could be, that were I totally to cease from thinking, I should totally ceaste to exist... I am, then, in the strict sense only a thing that thinks".
Then, Descartes realises that the notion of being an embodied thing in a spatial world of objects will eventually come back. So he considers a ball of wax that has a set of properties. If you heat it by the fire, it loses that set of properties and obtains another. But it is still, ultimately, a ball of wax. Therefore, bodies are perceived not by senses but by being understood. Therefore, one can't grasp anything more easily or plainly than one's mind.

Descartes is 1) aware that humans don't usually bother themselves with the Evil Demon case; 2) Descartes is not asking you to *believe* in the possibility of the Evil Demon, he is only asking you to consider it.
Descartes' argument of "Sometimes senses deceive us, therefore, they always deceive us" is invalid, as senses tend to be self-corrective: you're able to learn whether your senses are deceiving you or not. However, Descartes is prepared for such criticism: dreams. Any feeling outside of thinking might not be true, merely a delusion by the Demon. However, the Demon logically cannot deceive him into thinking that he is real when he is not, it is simply absurd. Therefore, even if external experiences and senses are indeed delusions, it is Descartes who is being deluded, it is he who thinks and exists.

The wax argument is there to inform us that: all we can understand by the wax is that is some elusive "thing" that can take on different bodily properties, and we understand, by the self, the "I", just some equally elusive "thing" that at different times thinks different things. So perhaps selves are no harder to understand than bodies, and we only think otherwise because of some kind of prejudice.

[[Rationalism]] is the ideal that pure unaided reason reigns supreme.

Descartes introduces the notion of "clear and distinct ideas", i.e. like the fact that wax, when heated up and turned into a visually very different thing, is still wax.

The third meditation begins with Descartes discovering that he has an idea of perfection. He argues that such an idea implies a cause. A cause must be at least as perfect as its effect, according to him. Therefore, something at least as perfect as my idea exists. But that thing must be perfect, that is, God. Hence Descartes arrives at the existence of some god who is perfect, which allows him to be a bit less restrictive in deciding what is and is not "demon-proof". However, his reasoning is shaped by the idea that a cause must resemble its effect, which is not always true. For the very least, Descartes' idea of perfection might be the result of the Demon's machinations.

This logical fallacy is known as the [[Cartesian circle]]:
1) Descartes concludes that clear and distinct notions are reliable because of a non-deceiving God
2) Descartes' proofs of God's existence presuppose the reliability of clear and distinct notions.

Descartes' had many opposing philosophers. For one, [[David Hume]] believes that cartesian doubt would inevtably fail: "no reasoning could ever bring us to a state of assurance and conviction upon any subject". Hume and his peers believed that using our senses was better than merely using our reason: [[Empiricism|empiricism]].
Other argue that there is no need for human knowledge to have any foundation at all. It's as if our knowledge is a web: every part of it support every other one. This approach is known as [[Coherentism|coherentism]].
[[Scepticism]], however, can be applied only to specific areas, unlike Descartes' Evil Demon.

### Chapter Two: Mind
Descartes held a view that is nowadays known as either [[Substance dualism]] or Cartesian dualism, or mind-body dualism: it is the belief that mental events are strictly distinct from physical events, even though the two are interconnected and some mental event may cause a physical event and vice versa. This view is aptly summarized by the British philosopher [[Gilbert Ryle]], who coined the phrase "ghost in the machine" to critique Cartesian dualism.

> [!Illustration of Cartesian dualism]-
> Descartes believed that sensory input is transferred to the **pineal gland**, from where it is directed to the human spirit.
> ![[Pasted image 20240829014939.png]]

Others adhere to the belief system of [[Property dualism]], which states that although everything is made out of physical matter, objects may have mental and physical properties.

Cartesian dualism technically allows for two harrowing possibilities: Zombies and Mutants. Zombies act just like humans, but aren't conscious, while mutants act like humans, are conscious, but have different experiences. For example, a mutant may feel intense pain when hearing a middle C note on a clarinet, while regular humans don't. Such possibilities exist because we only have ourselves as a case to generalize the entirety of humanity.
Philosophers come up with such highly unlikely possibilities only to test whether a certain set of beliefs is likely to be false or not. Because cartesian dualism allows for such possibilities, it is thought of as false.

Subdoctrine of property dualism is known as [[Epiphenomenalism|epiphenomalism]], which states that mental events exist but do not influence the real world. Major argument against it is that if mental states have no power over the real world, there'd be no reason for humans to evolve to have those in the first place.

[[John Locke]] was a proponent of the idea that it was due to "God's good pleasure" who "annexes" (affixes) particular modifications of consciousness to particular physical events. In Descartes' terms, Locke believes that we have no "clear and distinct" why consciousness exists where it does. It's just a brute fact. Locke, however, was very clear that "it takes a mind to make a mind", and that God couldn't just make a rock or any similar object sentient for no reason.
Locke's beliefs are not far from a system called [[Occasionalism|occasionalism]], a doctrine embraced by his contemporary [[Nicolas Malebranche]], according to which physical events do not strictly cause or bring about mental events at all. Rather, they provide the occasions upon which God inserts mental events of appropriate nature into our biographies.
For Locke, God intervenes at his good pleasure to make it that "the dividing of the flesh by the steel" brings about a sensation of steel, and for Malebranche, it is God directly injecting a sensation of pain into the soul whenever there is a dividing of the flesh by the steel.

[[Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz]] disagrees with Locke and insists there must be a rational connection: the events in the soul must bear some quasi-mathematical relationship to the "motions" in the brain and body that bring them about. Leibniz was a proponent of the [[Principle of sufficient reason|principle of sufficient reason]]: everything must have a reason or a cause
For Leibniz, God by fixing the physical state of the universe at all times, he fixes *everything* at all times. This rules out the Zombie/Mutant possibilities.
For Locke, God first creates the physical state of the universe, and then decides how to "annex" mental events to physical events.

A doctrine called "[[Behaviourism|logical behaviourism]]" considers mental states not as some private, intimate experiences, but rather asserts that mental states should be classified and analyzed based on how individuals behave in various situations. For example, saying "I am in pain" can be understood as "I will say "ouch" if I touch something hot".

Similar ideology known as "[[Functionalism|functionalism]]" defines mental states not by "what they are made of", but rather by what they do. Just like a computer can run different programs, our minds can have different mental states that serve various functions

Diffirent doctrine known as "[[Psycho-physical identity theory|psycho-physical identity theory]]" proposes that a reduction of the mental to the physical is always possible. For example, we have learned that a sensation of pain is indicated by our C-fibers firing. Therefore, according to this theory, C-fibers being fired IS pain.

Another critique of Cartesian dualism is that the Zombie/Mutant possibilities can apply to ourselves, as there is no guarantee that our memories of our mental life are constant if mental life is completely divorced from the physical realm.

### Chapter Three: Free Will
	[[Determinism]] is the doctrine that states that the past controls the present and the future. Hard determinism, also known as [[Incompatibilism|incompatibilism]], states that you can't control the past, the way the past controls the present and the future, and thus, you can't control the present and the future (i.e. human freedom and determinism are incompatible)

Hereby rises the dilemma of determinism: 
If determinism holds, then humans have neither freedom nor responsibility for their actions.
If determinism doesn't hold, then some events "just happen", and humans also have neither freedom nor responsibility for their actions.

It is generally thought that it is our consciousness reveals our freedom to us.

Schopenhauer used the following parable to criticize the argument that, if I don't know the causal background for doing X, I sometimes do X, therefore, I am conscious there is no causal background for me to do X:
![[Pasted image 20240901121230.png]]
Being unconscious of something cannot be parlayed into being conscious of its absence.

Some try to escape this dilemma by introducing the Real Me: sometimes the Real Me sends commands to my body, but sometimes it is "sleeping" and my body acts instinctively. However, the Real Me is still subject to the same questions Cartesian dualism is, and more.

Ancient atomists, notably Epicurus and Lucretius, believed the spirit itself must be understood in mechanical terms: the mind or spirit, they held, is composed of particularly fine, small, and exceedingly mobile particles.

The argument for hard determinism doesn't talk about the *kinds* of causal influences in play as an agent performs a given actions.
For example, think of the mind as a computer: it has different modules. One ("a scanner") takes in info about a situation, another ("a tree producer") lists different options available to the agent, a third (an "evaluator") ranks the available options and a fourth ("a producer") fixes on the option ranked best and sets the mechanism for carrying out the said option.
Thus, some decisions are indeed ours, they are not forced on us like drowning is to a swimmer trapped underwater.

This is known as [[Compatibilism]], or "soft" determinism, a belief that acknowledges determinism at large, but still maintains that humans are in control because we are PART of the causal chain and can influence it.

Some thinkers, notably Baruch Spinoza, believed that the more we know, the more free will we have.

The fully revised compatibilist definition of acting freely:
![[Pasted image 20240901131141.png]]

1) would have done otherwise if they had chosen differently
2) would have done otherwise if, under the impact of other true and available thoughts or considerations
3) true and available thoughts or considerations are those that represent their situation accurately, and are ones that they could reasonably be expected to have taken into account

These conditions are necessary to avoid loopholes, for example, the "Twinkie Defence" of 1978, when Dan White, an ex-employee of San Francisco, entered the City Hall with a gun throught the basement and murdered Mayor George Moscone and his supervisor Harvey Milk. In court a defence psychiatrist, Martin Blinder, argued that Dan was depressed, which led to his eating of Twinkies and other sugary products, which worsened his depression because he was an athlete. Dan White was acquitted of first-degree murder and charged with voluntary manslaughter instead.

It is still important to think of humans as of active agents with vast internal worlds rather an biological machines.

The "Lazy Sophism" is often a major defensive point for [[Fatalism|fatalism]]. For example, a smoker might say that if they were to get cancer, they'd get cancer anyways, so there's no point in quitting smoking. However, they don't exactly know whether they'd get cancer in the first place.

### Chapter Four: The Self
David Hume pointed out that the self is elusive, it is unobservable, for if you "look inside your own mind" to try to catch it, you miss it because all you stumble upon are what he calls particular perceptions, or experiences and emotions. This gave rise to the "bundle" theory: the self was nothing but an aggregate of its "perceptions": "it thinks", or "thoughts go on", but there is no "I" to be found.

Major criticism to Hume in that aspect is that "experiences" are "parasitic" on persons: you cannot imagine pain, for instance, as a "thing" floating around waiting to be caught up in a bundle of other experiences.

Another property of the self, according to many other philosophers, is that the self is simple. not composite. Consider the following statement by [[Thomas Reid]]:
![[Pasted image 20240903202225.png]]

From this point comes the notion that the self, or the soul, is unaffected by change or decay (since change/decay only affects composite objects)

John Locke points out that it does not matter whether the bits of an object remain the same, so long as the unity of function is maintained: a carrot that is 5 days old and a carrot that is 10 days old are technically different (chemical composition is different), while it's still considered to be the same carrot.

Similar issue: [[Ship of Theseus|ship of Theseus]] or [[Teletransportation paradox|teletransportation paradox]].

[[Immanuel Kant]] used an analogy with elastic balls to point out that we don't know anything about "immaterial substances" and there's nothing in our thinking that gives credence to the veracity of the said idea: if an elastic ball strikes another elastic ball, it communicated to the latter its motion and therefore its whole state. Some have, however, said that just as with real life friction, these metaphoric balls lose some of their momentum after receiving it.

John Locke believed that a person A at a time is the same person as person B at an earlier time inasmuch as A is conscious of B. But from there arises a paradox, pointed out by Thomas Reid and now known as the "brave officer objection":
![[Pasted image 20240903205736.png]]
The point is whether "same person" means "same human being" or not.

Reid particularly disliked Locke's stance because it complicates responbility for criminal actions and such.

Peprhaps the problem was that Locke believed the soul was complex, while Reid thought it was simple.

Consider a robot in a room. If you make it capable of collecting data about the location of objects near it, it could report to you "There is a table 3 m away from *me*" while not technically being aware of its own appearance. It appears that thinking in terms of an "I" is merely a formal-ish structural experience on interpreting experiences in the way we do.

Others, notably Kant, believed that the self originates from delusions of imagination: you can, theoretically, imagine yourself as the Genghis Khan or any other historical figure. This does not mean, however, that you were Genghis Khan. Hence, it is wrong to take such imaginings as supporting any "real distinction", in the words of Descartes, between you as subject, as self or soul, and the animal that in fact you are.

### Chapter Five: God

Religion perhaps should be treated not as an objective fact, but rather as a state of mind. Accepting it may be more like enjoying a poem, or following the football. Similarly, you don't ponder whether Keats' ode to a Grecian urn is true. Because of this, religion in this particular definition is immune from criticism as true or false. We at best might scrutinize the states of mind involved, and try to see whether they're admirable or not.

However, religion is not commonly understood this way. Therefore, it should be in general discussed in terms of argument, reason, and evidence. 

You can define a concept, but it is quite another question whether anything answers to the concept you define.

The first generally well known argument *for* the existence of a God is known as the **[[Ontological argument|ontological argument]]**. It was first postulated by Anselm of Canterbury in 10th century CE, and was later reimagined by Descartes' Third Meditation. It goes like that:
- God is defined as a being than which nothing greater can be conceived
- The concept of God is understood
- Whatever is understood, exists in the understanding
- Therefore, God exists in the understanding

He follows up with:
- Suppose God exists only in the understanding, and not in reality
- Therefore, a greater being than God could be conceived: one that exists in reality
- But God is defined as a being than which nothing greater can be conceived
- This leads to a contradiction, therefore, the supposition is false

![[Pasted image 20240907162059.png]]

However, this [[Structure of an argument#^3d8591|reductio ad absurdum]] argument is false, even in Anselm's times a monk named Gaunilo attacked the argument claiming that, if it were good, it could be used to prove all sorts of weird conclusions, such as that there exists a perfect island which none greater can be conceived.

The crucial problem lies in an ambiguity lurking in the comparison of "reality" and "conception".

The second argument for the existence of a God is known as the *cosmological argument*. It was first postulated by St. [[Thomas Aquinas]] because he did not accept the ontological argument. He preferred to argue that God is needed in order to explain the world or cosmos as we apprehend it. 
The most popular version of it is known as the "first cause argument": whatever exists must have a cause or reason of its existence, therefore, there must be something that "is a cause of its own", God, that caused the world as we know to come into existence.

However, [[Bertrand Russell]] pointed out that this is a *particularly* bad argument, as its conclusion is contrary to its premise. 
The problem is that the issue goes on forever: who created God, then? What happened before the big bang? And so on. You either have to ask what caused God, or cut off the regress by arbitrary flat.

Another argument for the existence of a God is the **design** **argument**: the view that heaven and earth declare the glory of its creator. This argument was the showpiece of 18th-century theology. It goes like that:
- The world resembles the objects of human design
- Therefore, it would be just as reasonable, coming across a watch, to postulate a human designer, so it is reasonable, coming across the entire frame of nature, to postulate a godly designer.

This argument is an a posteriori argument, argues from empirical experience.
Darwinism offered an alternative to how biological systems adapt to each other without the need for some designer. Cosmological chances, on the other hands, suggest that it might have taken an intelligent designer to adjust the possibility of life springing up on Earth.

However, argument from analogy requires the bases of analogy to be extremely similar, and we should have experience covering the likely explanations. For example, a faulty argument from analogy would infer from the fact that a hole in a human being would kill it the conclusion that a hole in a tree would kill it as well.

Even if the universe resembles a clock, still more it resembles a vegetable.

Experience shows how fragile the existence of intelligence is. "Generation", that is, animal or vegetable growth, is extremely common.

Humans like to prefer the intelligence option because we too think of ourselves as an "uncaused mental event": the two images of God as supernatural, and of our "selves" as equally outside nature, feed off each other.

Another argument against intelligent design is that the design is fucking shitty: the problem of evil in theology, [[Theodicy|theodicy]].

The so-called [[Epicurean paradox]]:
- God is supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent
- However, the existence of evil means: 1) he is not omnipotent; 2) he is not omniscient; 3) he is not omnibenevolent

Theist options against it:
1) take refuge in the "God works in mysterious ways"
2) the "free will defence": God created this world perfect but gave us free will and we fucking ruined it, however:
	1) not all human ills are caused by humans
	2) in an incompatibilist fashion it's all God's fault anyways

The problem then becomes one of explaining how it should have any consequences whether we believe in an incomprehensible God: 
> a nothing will serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said

Religious belief, reduced to its respectable core, is inert. It has no consequences. We have no *usable* comprehension, no real understanding of how it affects our life.

Miracles are pretty obviously caused by human delusion rather than divine intervention.

[[Pascal's wager]] - Blaise Pascal's take on the matter:
- if God exists and you believe in him, you gain a blissful eternity in heaven
- if God exists and you don't believe in him, you gain a nightmarish eternity in hell
- if God doesn't exist, you lose nothing

However, the wager doesn't account for the fact that there might be different gods, or that the "real" God is Amon Ra of the Egyptians or something.

A doctrine known as [[Fideism|fideism]] claims that faith is above reason.

### Chapter Six: Reasoning
[[Structure of an argument]]
[[Fallacies]]
A **tautology** is a formula that is always true, regardless of the interpretation of its individual terms.

$\LARGE \exists$ is the **existential quantifier**, $\LARGE \forall$ is the **universal quantifier**.

[[Bayes's theorem]]

### Chapter Seven: The World
[[Primary-secondary quality distinction]]:
Galileo thought that **secondary qualities** of objects, such as colour, smell, feel, are, unlike **primary qualities**, such as motion, shape, size, exist only in the mind.

Descartes held a similar view: he believed that sensory perceptions are simply there to inform us what is beneficial or harmful to the human body (pain in the foot - move it from harm's way) due to God's good pleasure (similar to Locke) - this is also a denial of **epiphenomenalism**
But Descartes insists that it is we who are at fault if we misinterpret sensory inputs, uncorrected by use of intelligence.

A belief known as **relativism** states that our experiences are not objective and are relative to the observer.
However, it is important to remember that there is no *right* interpretation of the world: for example, different animals view the world in the way that's best for their survival (due to evolution).

If a TV displays a snowstorm instead of a program, it's not cause the program isn't there in the first place. But different TVs may show a program from the same signal in a slightly different way.

Galileo's doctrine on the matter is known as "**secondary quality [[Idealism|idealism]]**": those qualities are the product of the mind.

Locke was also a proponent of this view.

Some philosophers had problems with this doctrine: if God was a kind of deceiver in terms of secondary qualities, might he also be one with primary ones?

We should, according to Locke, view the world in terms of items or things that occupy physical space, not physical space itself. He defines one of the major properties of items - solidity - "that which thus hinders the approach of two bodies, when they are moved one towards another" (basically the fact you can't just phase one thing into another). It seems clear to Locke that we know about solidity by what we feel.

Philosophers like [[Pierre Bayle]] and [[George Berkeley]] rejected Locke's notions: since solidity is pretty much just like colours or smells or feels - we FEEL it - can you truly say it's a primary quality, not a secondary one? Berkeley, for example, retreates entirely into his own mind - "**subjective idealism**"

Berkeley's God seemed to many philosophers as playing the same role as Descartes' Evil Demon.

We have little to no conception of what it is for a law of nature to hold.

Kant didn't like what he called "transendental realism" of Locke and others (realism cuz it insists on a real world of independent objects siutated in space and time, transcendental cuz this world transcends our experience)

Kant revolutionised this area by inventing "**transcendental idealism**": 
![[Pasted image 20240910000848.png]]

While it seems that Kant is suggesting that we "create" a world that must conform to our experiences, but he actually intends to understand the way concepts like those of things, [[Сила|forces]], space, time, causation determine the way we think (and have to think) about the world - he wants to explain how those elements hang together in our thought.
Kant did not, however, think that ALL sensory experience somehow "creates" a world: for him, space, unlike colour and such, is a "condition" under which alone objects can be objects of the senses.
Kant's view here is similar to how some view the self as a requirement to being able to live in a spatial world.

Whatever you think of Berkeley, he reminds us of the universal influence of our own perspective on what we imagine or comprehend

[[Universals|A universal]] is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. From here arises the [[Problem of universals|problem of universals]]:
"Should the properties an object has in common with other objects, such as colour and shape, be considered to exist beyond those objects?"
There are several major views on the problem of universals:
- Realism ([[Platonic realism]]): universals have a real, objective existence
- [[Conceptualism]]: universals exist, but they arise from the human mind
- [[Nominalism]]: universals do not exist, they aren't necessary to explain attribute agreement

![[Pasted image 20240910002725.png]]

### Chapter Eight: [[Ethics]]

Some say that our goals are fixed by our desires, however, the difference between acting from some concern or acting because you want to do it is important. Consider yourself mowing grass: while you may in actuality want to sail on a boat, you *have* to mow grass.

There is **[[Descriptive ethics|descriptive ethics]]**, which studies what people think is right, and there is **[[Normative ethics|normative ethics]]**, which studies *how* people should act.

![[Pasted image 20240915113011.png]]