PHIL 110 A – FIRST EXAM

NAME: Write on paper provided by instructor ONLY! June 30, 2004

I. Identify briefly in one sentence any TEN out of fifteen people for 15% of the grade: William James, Friedrich Nietzsche, Socrates, Anselm of Canterbury, Baruch or Benedictus Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, Augustine, Sigmund Freud, Voltaire, Aristotle, Albert Camus, David Hume, Martin Luther, Blaise Pascal, Karl Marx, Henry James, Soren Kierkegaard, John Locke, Fyodor Dostoevsky, René Descartes, Thomas Acquinas, Plato, George Berkeley.

II. Define in three or less sentences any FIVE out of ten concepts for 25% of the grade: nihilism, transcendent, theist, stoicism, ontology, Hinduism, induction, Existentialism, Deism, Leap of Faith, analytic, a priori, metaphysics, immanent, mysticism, polytheism, Rationalism, Skepticism, Realism, materialism, induction, Rationality, anthropomorphic, Buddhism, dualism, pantheism, deduction, agnostic, paradox, dialectic, pluralism, Zen Buddhism, a posteriori, Innate ideas, an internal sense proposition, synthetic, induction, Empiricism, Hume's Fork.

III. DISCUSS any FIVE of the following ten questions for 60 per cent of the grade. Provide DISCUSSIONS, not just answers.

1. Was Socrates the wisest person on earth? What made him think so?

Socrates was one of the so-called Sophists: something like debating coaches who taught logical tricks to win legal cases in court. He lived in Athens, Greece, around 420 B.B., and in Ancient Greece people believed in oracles: places with people who served as a mouthpiece for a God or Goddess who would answer various questions from us mortals. One day someone went to the oracle of the Greek God Apollo in the town of Delphi and asked who was the wisest person on earth. The oracle answered: "Socrates." When Socrates heard this, he at first did not believe it, and went to ask the question himself. He got the same answer. He still could not believe it, since he knew that he was just an average guy. As he was walking around the temple trying to understand the oracle's answer, he noticed that on the temple for the God Apollo was written: "Know yourself." This very probably meant originally that whoever was reading it, should realize that (s)he was nothing in comparison with the god Apollo or his priests. But Socrates came up with a different and literal interpretation and concluded that the god Apollo wanted people to know themselves, that is, he wanted people to know what their weak and strong points were. Then he reasoned that if Apollo's oracle said Socrates was the wisest, that was probably true since Apollo was such an important god, and that Apollo probably thought that was true because Socrates knew himself very well. Then he realized that he did indeed know himself. All his fellow-Sophists went around proclaiming that they were the greatest and most successful coaches while in reality they were just average. He, Socrates, also was just average, but he at least knew he was average, so he knew himself while his colleagues had an inflated idea of themselves. And, he reasoned, if Apollo wants us to know ourselves, then it is logical to assume that Apollo thinks that wisdom consists in knowing oneself, and then I am wise because I know myself. To be wise, Socrates reasoned, used to be defined as knowing a lot of facts, having a lot of experience, or having a lot of degrees. But now, he realized, wisdom is having a realistic idea of yourself and knowing your weak and strong points. In short: now anybody could be wise. A genius would be wise if (s)he knew (s)he was a genius, but a moron could also be wise if (s)he knew (s)he was a moron.

2. Discuss the Ontological Argument for the existence of God. What was Kant's opinion of such proofs?

This argument, first formulated by Anselm of Canterbury, runs as follows:

Premise 1: I can think of something that is more perfect than anything else, and I call that: ‘God.’ So, premise 1 states: God is perfect. (S)He may or may not exist; for the time being (S)He exists only in my mind. But (S)He is perfect.

Premise 2: Whatever is perfect, has to exist, otherwise it would not be perfect.

Conclusion: God is perfect (from premise 1) and therefore exists (from premise 2).

Objections:

1) perfect things do not HAVE to exist. Some things can be “too good to be true." Ideals don't have to exist, except in people's mind. Also:

2) whatever is most perfect, does not have to be perfect (the reverse of the Dinner Plate or Brussels Sprouts Argument), just like whatever is best in certain situations is the lesser evil and does not have to be good. Additionally,

3) can something be 'more perfect' than something else? An object or person is either perfect or not, just as a person is dead or alive. People may be 'closer to perfection,' but that does not make them 'more perfect.' And lastly:

4) Kant's formulation: perfection is a predicate, but existence is not.

This means that a predicate, for example "… is perfect," tells us something new or important about something's make-up or composition. For example, when I tell you: “your neighbor (the subject) is nice (the predicate),” I am adding to the description of your neighbor something you did not know or did not realize. But saying: “your neighbor exists” does not change anything in the description of the neighbor: (s)he is a skinny Eskimo who loves raw fish, throws wild fish parties and smells like fish, whether (s)he exists or I am merely imagining her or him. Now, an existing wild neighbor is a nuisance, but (s)he is so because (s)he is wild, because she does something to us. This is like, for example, a knife or a gun. They are not evil in themselves but can be used as tools to hurt us. If existing made the neighbor a nuisance, then all existing neighbors would be nuisances. But they are not; some are and others aren’t, depending on whether they throw wild fish parties or not.

In an argument we work with predicates—qualities that add something new or overlooked to the description--and 'exists' is not a predicate, and therefore does not fit in the argument. In premise 2 Anselm mixes apples and oranges: saying that "whoever is perfect, exists" is like talking about apples and then switch to oranges and pretend that we are still talking about the same thing. This is like saying: 1) Des Moines is in Iowa, 2) Iowa is a battleship, therefore: Des Moines is in a battleship. This argument is not valid because we changed categories: we started out with geographical units and then changed to ships, and you can’t change categories in an argument; you have to stay in the same category.

Of course premise 2 has psychological, though not logical, packing power. A hundred dollars may be the same as any other hundred dollars, but a hundred dollars we have is better than a hundred dollars we don't have. Or, an existing hundred dollars is preferable to a non-existing hundred dollars, but that is because of the existing, not because of the hundred dollars. And Anselm is saying that an existing hundred-dollar bill is not just preferable to a non-existing one, he says it is qualitatively different. And that is logically not defensible.

Kant said that looking for a proof for God's existence was pointless: we need God to make sense out of life; God's existence is a moral necessity.

3. Discuss Marx' explanation of Religion.

Marx had concluded that all our spiritual activity originates from the economic structure of our society and that, for example, in a capitalist economy people would have capitalist spiritual life and, especially, a capitalist religion that condoned injustice by promising rewards for injustice in the Afterlife. Capitalists exploit people, Marx said, and they use religion to justify exploitation and keep the exploited happy with promises. This is only partly supported by facts: many religions stress the need for justice for the poor and the exploited and a justice here on earth, not in the Afterlife. The fact that some people misuse religion tells us something about those people, not about religion.

4. Explain and discuss Pascal’s “Wager” or “Bet”.

Pascal reasoned that if one believed in God, one would be rewarded if (S)He existed, and if (S)He did not exist, one would have lived soberly and honestly for no religious reason but that would not be much of a loss, since it would have been a healthy life all the same. If one did not believe in God, one would go to Hell if God existed and one would live merely a short and unhealthy life of evil if (S)He did not exist. It would therefore be safer to assume God existed, because we would thereby avoid going to Hell, and if God did not exist, the healthy and lawful life would be a reward in itself.

There is no problem if there is only one God, but how do we know that? If there are many Gods, then the problem is: in which God do we have to believe to avoid Hell? Can we play it safe and believe in all Gods? What if Gods have contradictory commands: sacrifice your oldest child (the Phoenician God Baal in the Old Testament) or don't sacrifice anyone (Yahweh)?

5. Which natural disaster triggered the discussion of the existence of Evil? Why is the existence of Evil a problem?

In 1755 an earthquake destroyed the Portuguese capital Lisbon on the morning of Easter Sunday, when most God-fearing people were in church and all the bums were in bars. The churches collapsed and killed all worshippers while bums crawled out of the bars alive. This had an enormous impact in Europe since it seemed as if God had inflicted punishment on people who did not seem to deserve it. Previously people had noticed that good people suffer: the Old Testament Book of Job is about the suffering of a good person: Job. But the Lisbon earthquake was the first time that good people died on a large scale, and also the first time everybody in Europe could read about it in the newspapers. It also happened during a time when the natural sciences were flourishing, and when people started noticing cause-and-result relations everywhere, especially in the sciences. Newton had presented a model of a universe where everything is caused and everything is predictable centuries before it would happen, and consequently people assumed that the earthquake must have had a cause, and they started to ask what the causes or cause was for this and for other examples of undeserved suffering. So, after Newton people started to assume that everything had a cause, and that the result was predictable from and in agreement with the cause. Or, that serious transgressions would result in serious disasters and light transgressions in light disasters. But people saw something completely different: life was unpredictable—just think of the stock market and the economy—and punishment or rewards were not in proportion with their causes: people who went to church on Easter morning where punished by being crushed in church; people who got drunk on Easter morning just were frightened but otherwise survived. Evil is when people suffer for no good reason; evil is when it seems as if there is something or somebody who makes us suffer just because something or somebody enjoys making us suffer. How come there is undeserved suffering? That is the problem of Evil.

6. Discuss Pantheism and explain why the Abrahamic religions reject it in Spinoza’s formulation.

The Abrahamic religions--Islam, Judaism and Christianity--focus on a contradiction in our religious experience, which makes us realize that God is immanent but also transcendent. God is immanent means that God is a part of this world: we feel that at certain moments God is with us. That agrees with Spinoza's pantheism. But we also feel that God is better that the world and not part of it, and that is the meaning of transcendent. In our world, for example, meaningless earthquakes kill thousands of innocent people but we believe that that is not God, since God is outside our world and better. Spinoza's pantheism would equate God with the universe, and in the universe senseless events occur which we do not want to ascribe to God. There is much evil in the world, and identifying God with the universe would mean identifying Him or Her with that evil. Spinoza denies that God is transcendent, and the Abrahamic religions assume (S)He is transcendent indeed so that (S)He is not blamed for the evil that is in our world.

Additionally: Abrahamic scholars believe that God created the universe and therefore must have existed before there was a universe. Spinoza assumed that God and the universe were the same, and in that case God could not have created the universe.

7. Discuss Augustine’s argument against the existence of Evil. Which philosopher provided the basis for this argument?

Augustine took an idea of the Greek philosopher Parmenides, who claimed that whatever really exists, exists forever. All that exists only for some time, even a few centuries, does not really exist, said Parmenides. This made him conclude that actually very few things existed, since most things disappear sooner or later. The only things that really existed, Parmenides thought, were mathematical formulas.

Augustine decided that Parmenides had a good argument, even though Parmenides was a pagan Greek philosopher. So Augustine reasoned that Evil does not exist forever. For example, in Paradise, right after the creation of the world, there was no Evil. Also, when Christ returns to earth and the Thousand-Year Kingdom will begin, there will be no Evil. So, Augustine claimed, Evil does not last, therefore it does not exist. The problem is, of course, that nobody ascribes to Parmenides' philosophy anymore. Additionally, it is of no help to someone who is tortured by the Des Moines Mafia if we tell the tortured person that the evil done to him doesn't exist. The pain that is caused by Evil shows that Evil does indeed exist and claiming that it does not exist is wishful thinking.

8. Discuss Kierkegaard's attitude toward religion. Is religion rational? Does it matter? What is the importance of religion, according to Kierkegaard?

Kierkegaard thought that we create our own personality by our commitments. These commitments can be to varying items: a sports team, a job, our family, and our 'significant other.' When we declare that those items are for us most important, we identify ourselves as a Green Sox fan, or Pat's spouse, child, or employee. But sports, jobs and people have only a limited range, and our commitment to them creates only a part of our personality. God, however, has an unlimited range and covers all of creation, and by committing ourselves to God we create our maximal and total personality.

This commitment is not rational, Kierkegaard said. If it were rational, everybody would figure out which one God to believe in, and there would be no risk in our faith. If faith in God were rational, we would figure out on our adding machines whom to believe in, and then we would be like machines that blindly follow instructions or animals that follow instincts. What makes us the personalities which we are, Kierkegaard said, is that we make investments and take risks, can make mistakes, but have the courage to make a leap of faith and only in that way we create our personality. Sure, we make mistakes but God is merciful and forgives us. Without such a leap, we are machines or dumb animals.

9. Discuss the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God.

The Cosmological Argument claims that everything has to go back to a common beginning, a kind of 'Big Bang,' and that beginning means that there was a 'Beginner,' and that is God. This originated with Aristotle, who claimed that everything had to have a cause, and that cause had to have a cause too, and so on. But nothing goes on forever, Aristotle claimed, "there is no infinite regress," and there has to be a First Cause that caused everything. This First Cause he called God. Christian philosophers then took this argument over from Aristotle. But nowadays people are not so sure everything has to have a cause. In some areas of physics events happen without a cause. Also, we are not sure that there has to be a first cause. It is possible that life and time are endless, and that everything goes on without end and has been going on forever without a beginning, even though that is difficult to imagine for us. Lastly, it may be that Life is circular, and that events repeat themselves endlessly, maybe with some variations.

10. Discuss the Argument from Design for the existence of God. What did David Hume think about this proof?

The Argument from Design states that the Universe is a perfectly constructed machine that has to have been constructed by a Perfect Being, or God. David Hume was the first to criticize this and say that the universe is sloppily constructed and more like the job of a "beginning God." The movement of the stars may seem perfect but in other areas there is room for improvement, especially as far as justice is concerned. And that is very important since the Abrahamic God is a God of justice, of which there is not enough in this world.

11. Explain the Hindu and Buddhist idea of Karma.

Hinduism believes in re-incarnation: it teaches that when we die, we are reborn and have another go at life. Initially we start out with a soul, atman, which is not personal but is a part of the universal spirit, the Brahman. Throughout our lives we do things that form additions to our atman and those additions personalize our atman and tend to influence our actions and steer us into certain directions. These additions that try to influence us are called ‘karma.’ For example, when I smoke, I become addicted and in this and the following lives I will tend to smoke. But, Hinduism teaches, we have a free will and can ignore what our karma wants us to do. We have a choice between being directed by our karma or following ‘dharma,’ the divine law that tells us what is good and what isn’t. When we follow our karma, we are punished by being re-born as a less attractive being, for example a mosquito but when we follow dharma we are born as a better human being, e.g. the child of nice and funny parents.

Buddhism differs from Hinduism in that Buddhism does not think we have souls. But, like Hinduism, Buddhism teaches that we decide by our actions whether we are going to be born ‘up’ or ‘down’ in our next life. The same applies to fortunes and misfortunes in our life: when we do good, we are rewarded in this life or the next; when we do wrong we are punished. There is no Evil in Buddhism: we always get what we deserve, if not in this life, then in the next.

12. Discuss Freud's explanation of religion.

Freud proposed that when we are about three years old, we believe that our parents are omnipotent and omniscient, like God. This belief is a comforting idea: someone will always be in charge and care for us, just like our parents. Then, as we grow older, Freud claims we change our minds about our parents, but we still keep the same idea of God that is typical for a three year old child. But there is no reason why that idea should stay the same because as we grow older, our ideas about the world change, and then why not our idea of God. Some people will indeed need safety, but they may find this safety in jobs, towns, families, companies. Others will enjoy the feeling of growing more independent and assume responsibilities and care for others as their parents had cared for them. There is no reason to assume that everybody will stay stuck in the idea of God they had in their first few years of life.

13. Are good people going to be happy, if not today then at least sometime in the future?

The problem with good people and happiness is that, if good people are not going to be happy, then what is the point of being good? In other words, is life fair? Jimmy Carter said it isn't, but in that case: what are we being good for? We expect a reward for being good. But if we are rewarded for being good, is that then really being good? Don't we think that we should be good just for the sake of being good, even if there is no reward? But many philosophers and religious thinkers have pointed out that happiness is a funny thing: you get it only when you are not trying to get it. Happiness is a by-product of some actions, and the problem is now to figure out exactly which actions have happiness as a by-product. When a person decides: "Now I am going to be happy," that rarely works. Mostly, people are happy when they dedicate themselves to a cause and lose themselves in that cause. This means that in life we have to find a goal that will give all or most aspects of our life meaning, because these aspects are used in reaching that goal, and then we are happy. A person may be a good person, but if (s)he does not see most of her or his life as parts of one unified process aimed at reaching a certain goal, they will be good people that are confused and unhappy. Evil people may seem to reach a certain degree of happiness. For example: if I am the hit man for the Des Moines Mafia and the members of my gang love and appreciate me, then I'll be happy. But we think of happiness as something that is not dependent on any location or group of people. A really happy person will be happy no matter where or with whom. The Mafia hit man will only be happy with a small number of people, her/his Mafia colleagues, and in a limited number of circumstances. But a really good person, Mother Theresa for example, will be happy among the Mafia and among good people as well. Knowing that there are people who disagree with him will make the Mafia hit man insecure, defensive, and therefore unhappy in some situations. Happy people have a degree of wisdom--see question 1--and they have a realistic view of their purpose, and evil people do not have this wisdom.

14. Does life have a meaning?

Existentialists claim that Life is a mess and has no meaning. They express that by saying: "Existence precedes essence." That is: people and things first of all exist, and that is basically it. Once they exist, then their essence, meaning, or importance comes later, when they give life meaning. Life may be a mess, existentialists say, but that is good because then we can give life a meaning and get all the credit. If life already had a meaning, then there would not be much for us to do, and then we would feel superfluous, bored, rebellious or wasted. Now there is a big job waiting for us, and the bigger the job--and the less meaning life already has--the more credits we get for it.

15. Discuss George Berkeley’s claim that objects exist only when they are perceived: esse est percipi.

Berkeley’s claim that object exist only when perceived seems to be based on a game that children played in the time before television: they would turn their back on an object and then quickly turn, hoping that the object had been spirited away while they were not looking at it and hoping to catch the object in being put back just before they looked at it again.

It is of course entirely possible that Berkeley was right, that objects disappear into nothingness or are carried off by spirits while we are not looking only to materialize again or being replaced just before we look at them again. But, it is much simpler to suppose that the object stay than to suppose that they evaporate or are carried away. So, when faced with several explanations e.g. 1) the object stays where it is, even if we don’t see it, 2) spirits carry it off and return it just before we look at it again, or 3) the objects evaporate when we don’t look and materialize when we look, we go for the most simple explanation: the objects stays where it is, even if we don’t see it. The medieval scholar William of Ockham or Occam proposed that when there are several explanations for the same event, we take the most simple explanation. He put his explanation in Latin but nowadays we still stick to his proposal: KISS or Keep It Simple. This is known as Occam’s Razor; the rule is like a razor that cuts away everything that is not necessary. The interesting thing about Occam’s Razor is that apparently when reality is made, it is made in the simplest way conceivable. Does that mean that God is efficient? We don’t know.

So is Berkeley’s philosophy just a childish game? Philosophers don’t think so. John Locke said that when we are born, we have no ideas in our mind, except for the idea of God of course, perceptions then bundle together to put ideas in our mind, and those perceptions originate from objects. So Locke said perceptions are more basic than ideas, but Descartes said that ideas are more important. And now Berkeley said that perceptions are most important and, what is more, they are the only thing. We have access to things and people only through our perceptions, and things are only our interpretations of perceptions. We never have direct access to things, only through our perceptions, and they can be wrong.

Berkeley saw us as in a glass cage: we see the world outside of the cage but never can access it and whatever we see may be distorted or discolored by the glass of our cage.

An object, person, or thing is only a group of perceptions. And all the perception of an object look alike, so we can define an object as a family of perceptions.

How do we know there is an object? Because we have a group of perceptions that all look like, for example, a chair with a desk attached. And the more diverse the perceptions, the better. If I see the chair several times that is good, but it is better that I feel and smell the chair and hear it scratching over the floor. How do I know there is no object and I am hallucinating? If, for example, I see a leprechaun sitting in class I can have visual perceptions of him and auditory perceptions as well when I talk with him, but when I try to touch him my hand goes straight through him. When perceptions conflict, therefore, the object may not exist.

More practically: I get a good job offer from New York. How do I know there is a good job waiting for me? Get as many perceptions as possible and watch out for conflicting perceptions. I will want a job description, a report on the company by the NYC Better Business Bureau, the Chamber of Commerce and Standard and Poor or any other company that rates other companies. I will want information about their benefits, how long they have been in business, and some information about how they treat their employees. I also need information about housing, rents, transportation and grocery prices in NYC. If all my information adds up to a good job, then I can be rather sure the job is good. But if, for example, all the information about the job is good except the information about rents, then the job is probably not good.

16. What problems are connected with Induction and Deduction?

Induction and Deduction are our basic logical operations, and it is not encouraging to hear that there is something wrong with them.

Induction is proceeding from several individual observations and then arriving at a general conclusion. For instance, I look at all the students in my philosophy classes, I find you are all brilliant, and I conclude that all DMACC students are brilliant. The problem may be that I don't know whether my sample has been sufficient. I may go the some other classes, and if I search long enough, I may find a student who is not brilliant, and that invalidates my conclusion. The problem with induction is then: "How long do I continue to make individual observations before I make a sound general conclusion?" All the same, no matter how long I make individual observations, I am never 100 % certain that my conclusion will be correct.

Deduction is proceeding from a general statement and then arriving at a conclusion about one individual. For example: all people are mortal, therefore Socrates is mortal. There is no problem here, except for the fact that the general statements are arrived at by induction. Therefore, no general statements can be trusted 100 %. To be sure, we can practically be 100 % sure that everybody will die sooner or later, but theoretically we never know, because one of these days there may be a mutation or a machine that results in one person living forever.

So we are caught in a vicious circle: induction does not lead to 100 % certainty, and deduction is based on induction, and therefore is not 100 % sure either. Still, we have to work with induction and deduction. George Bernard Shaw said: we are damned if we do, and damned if we don't. I don't know what he was talking about, but I am almost 100 % sure he must have been talking about induction and deduction…

17. Is Life Desire?

Seeing Life as based on desire comes close to the Buddhists or Hindus who claim that our personalities are created by desiring or wanting something. We all know stories about actors who stopped playing Shakespeare and made a living acting in soap operas on TV, or the other way around. These actors decided what they desired or wanted--money, fame with a particular audience, a good life for their family--and in making this decision they created their personality. We see this as something good: we all have to decide for ourselves what is best for us, what we desire, what our goal is in our life. So: ‘goal’ and ‘desire’ actually mean the same thing but when we approve of something, we call it ‘goal’ and when we don’t, it is ‘desire.’ Buddhists and Hindus stress that these choices result in a lot of anxiety, insecurity, and stress. They see or goals or desires therefore as something negative. We see it as an opportunity to make our mark in the world, to contribute something, no matter how small, or: to create our life. We are what we desire, we make ourselves when we define something as our goal. Good people ‘desire’ good things like help for the homeless, conversations with friends, or doing something useful. Bad people desire bad things such as fights, hurting people, or destroying property. We are in control of our goals or ‘desires,’ and therefore can create ourselves with what we desire.

18. Discuss how many substances there are.

Aristotle first introduced the idea that most things and people have a substance, some essence that makes them unique. He defined substance as something that makes us “stand alone.” He meant by that that substance defines us and things as items completely independent on anything else. A person, Aristotle claimed, has substance, as did a tree, but not a chair made from a tree, because the chair depended on the tree.

Complications arose around 1500. Philosophers were impressed by Aristotle’s philosophy, especially since during the Crusades they had been getting new texts of Aristotle either from the Greeks or from the Arabs in an Arab translation. But, although Aristotle thought there was a God, he did not know the idea of a Judaic or Christian God who is intimately involved in the creation and ruling of the world. And there was the problem: if God created the world, then everything depends on God and nothing “stands alone.” Still, Aristotle’s philosophy had so much prestige that philosophers were very reluctant to discard the idea of substance.

Rene Descartes tried a rescue operation. He said that there are three substances: Mind, Matter and God, and the word ‘substance’ does not apply in the same way, does not apply univocally to all three. God has a substance alright, he said, but in the case of Mind and Matter ‘substance’ has a slightly different meaning: they are created substances, and God isn’t, God is pure substance.

Descartes did introduce some improvements: we know that we don’t stand alone because our body and its food and maintenance depend on our parents, and our mind depends on our parents, teachers, and friends, so it made sense not to give each of us a separate substance but just show that our minds influence each other so that there is only one mind substance, and that all our bodies are related so that there is only one body substance. In Descartes’ time people thought we all descended from Adam and Eve. But people still didn’t buy his three substances.

First, again, Matter and Mind depended on God and in no way could be called ‘substances,’ and certainly not ‘created substances.’ A ‘created substance’ is a contradiction or an oxymoron, as they say nowadays.

Second, Matter influences Mind by creating in our Minds ideas that correspond to Matter. Mind sometimes also influences Matter: when we design, for example, a chair and the chair is produced, our Mind has influenced Matter.

It is therefore clear that only God can be a substance, but nobody dared to say so because of Aristotle’s prestige, even though he had been dead two thousand years. Finally Spinoza said so: there is only one substance, and that of course has to be God. Spinoza also proved it: suppose there are only two substances in the Universe. Two substances, and together they fill up the whole Universe. Then where one substance stops, the other substance begins. But then they don’t “stand alone” because they each define one another: where one substance stops, the other begins and the other way around. So there can’t be more than one substance, Spinoza said, and that is God.

19. Discuss Descartes' statement: "I think, therefore I exist." What does it prove? Is that what Descartes thought it did? Why?

Descartes decided that he could not trust his senses: he could suppose that he was sitting by the fireplace, while in reality he was lying in bed and dreaming that he sat by the fireplace. But then he decided that he could be sure that he was thinking, even if he were only dreaming that he was thinking. Sitting by the fireplace and dreaming that one is sitting by the fireplace are two different activities: when I sit I sit, but when I dream that I am sitting I am actually lying. But whether one thinks: "Philosophy is for the birds" or one is dreaming that one is thinking: "Philosophy is for the birds," there is the same thinking going on in both cases. In one case one is thinking and dreaming, in the other merely thinking, but still there is thinking in each case. Similarly, when I think that 2 + 2 =4 or whether I dream that I think 2 + 2 = 4, in both cases I am thinking.

Descartes reasoning applies actually to all 'internal sense propositions.' For example, he could have said: "I am sick and tired of this subject, therefore I am;" "I hate, therefore I am;" or "I suffer, therefore I am." Most of our activities are incompatible with dreaming: we can not dream and write a book at the same time, although we can dream THAT we are writing a book. But some activities are compatible with dreaming: the activities we refer to in ‘internal sense propositions,’ propositions that report on what is going on inside us, like hating, thinking, feeling sick, having a headache.

Philosophers have also pointed out the circularity in Descartes' reasoning. He proved that he existed by saying: "I think" and he was sure that he thought, since thinking is an internal process that one cannot be mistaken about--at least that is what everybody thought before Freud. But by using the word "I" in "I think" he assumed as true what he was trying to prove: that there exists an "I." It would be logically more defensible to say: "There is a thought" than to say: "I think." And such a position is not altogether strange: the thoughts that we have are sometimes unique but most other thoughts we often share with others: "The earth is round," "Gas prices are rising," or "This has been a wild winter."

It is interesting that Descartes thought that thinking makes us exist. Kierkegaard thought that believing in God makes us exist, Nietzsche thought that feeling passionately makes us exist. Note, that in each case we are dealing with internal sense propositions: thinking, believing, feeling, and we are the authority on internal sense propositions, philosophers think.

20. Discuss Hume's understanding of Causality.

Hume claims that we never have good reason to say, for example, that we cause a piece of chalk to fall by releasing it. Even though we have done so countless times in the past, we still have no good reason to say that it will happen in the future. First of all, Hume says, because induction never proves definitively that something will happen. It only shows that there is a certain probability. Then, we may object that we are absolutely sure we will cause the piece to fall; moreover, we can predict the speed with which it will fall. Not only do many examples tell us that the piece will fall, but even the Law of Gravity does so. But, Hume will answer, there is nothing magic about the Law of Gravity. That is only physics shorthand for many observations of falling objects, and these observations were summarized in the Law of Gravity. We are too lazy or too efficient to repeat all these observations and thus summarize them in the Law of Gravity. But there is no such law, we just call it that way. Remember the joke about the person walking a dog? “I just call it ‘Mike’.” We could say that the rain falls, that bricks fall from a dilapidated building, that I fall on the sidewalk but we summarize all that by referring to the Law of Gravity. But there is no Law of Gravity, there are only many examples of something falling and we call that the Law of Gravity but that does not mean there is such a law. Hume claims there are absolute truths that are also analytic. "It is raining or it isn't" is an example of such an absolute truth. All other truths are synthetic, they can be made probable by induction, but induction never shows that something is absolutely true; it only shows that there is a certain probability that something will happen. "There is causality" is not an absolute or analytic truth; therefore, if it is true, it must be a synthetic truth that is never one hundred per cent true.

We can predict events, Hume admits, but that doesn’t mean anything because all we do when we predict is stating that the future will be like the past, and that is not necessarily true. All we do when we predict is that we project the past onto the future. That may work sometime but not always.

Hume should have said 1) "It is difficult to prove that there is causality," and 2) "There are some areas, for example NASA, astronomy or space exploration, where there is a very high degree of probability that something will happen, and other areas, such as economics, where there is a low degree."

5. Discuss Descartes' proof for his existence.

Descartes’ proof is based on the following reasoning: if I am doing something, then there must be somebody who is doing what I am doing. So, why didn’t he then say: “I am kicking my dog, therefore I must exist,” or “I am sitting by the fireplace, therefore I must exist.” His problem was that he wasn’t sure whether he was kicking the dog or just dreaming that he was kicking his dog; sitting by his fireplace or dreaming that he sat by the fireplace. But then he decided that he could be sure that he was thinking, even if he were just dreaming that he was thinking. Sitting by the fireplace and dreaming that one is sitting by the fireplace are two different activities. But whether one thinks: "Philosophy is for the birds" or one is dreaming that one is thinking: "Philosophy is for the birds," there is the same thinking going on in both cases. In one case one is thinking and dreaming, in the other merely thinking, but still there is thinking in each case.

Descartes reasoning applies to all 'internal sense propositions.' For example, he could have said: "I am sick and tired of this subject, therefore I am;" "I hate, therefore I am;" or "I suffer, therefore I am."

Philosophers have also pointed out the circularity in Descartes' reasoning. He proved that he existed by saying: "I think". But by using the word "I" in "I think" he assumed as true what he was trying to prove: that there exists an "I." It would be logically more defensible to say: "There is a thought" than to say: "I think." And such a position is not altogether strange: the thoughts that we have are sometimes unique but most other thoughts we often share with others: "The earth is round," "Gas prices are rising," or "This has been a wild winter."

6. Discuss Hume's understanding of Causality.

Hume claims that we never have good reason to say, for example, that we cause a piece of chalk to fall by releasing it. Even though we have done so countless times in the past, we still have no good reason to say that it will happen in the future. First of all, Hume says, because induction never proves definitively that something will happen. It only shows that there is a certain probability. We may object that we are absolutely sure we will cause the piece to fall; moreover, we can predict the speed with which it will fall. Not only do many examples tell us that the piece will fall, but even the Law of Gravity does so. But, Hume will answer, there is nothing magic about the Law of Gravity. That is only physics shorthand for many observations of falling objects, and these observations were summarized in the Law of Gravity. We are too lazy or too efficient to repeat all these observations and thus summarize them in the Law of Gravity. But there is no such law, we just call it that way. Remember the joke about the person walking a dog? “I just call it ‘Mike’.” Hume claims there are absolute truths that are also analytic. "It is raining or it isn't" is an example of such an absolute truth. All other truths are synthetic, they can be made probable by induction, but induction never shows that something is absolutely true; it only shows that there is a certain probability that something will happen. "There is causality" is not an absolute or analytic truth; therefore, if it is true, it must be a synthetic truth that is never one hundred per cent true.

Hume should have said 1) "It is difficult to prove that there is causality," and 2) "There are some areas, for example astronomy or space exploration, where there is a very high degree of probability that something will happen, and other areas, such as economics, where there is a low degree."