The Natural Philosophers - Angelfire



The Natural Philosophers

Earliest greeks—concerned with the natural (physical ) world and its processes.

Democritus

Said transformations in nature could not actually be due to change

There is an indivisible substance that makes up all living things—theses smallest units called atoms

Atoms are indivisible.

Natures blocks are eternal and can be reused

Said there are a number and variety of atoms that form different things.

Atoms are like legos

He is a materialist—believed in nothing but material things.

Sense perception determined by atoms—when we see something it is due to atoms moving in space.

Said everything in nature flows, however somethings are eternal and immutable—atoms

Socrates

Did not write anything but may have had greatest influence on Euro thought

Did not lecture, he discussed

Said only the understanding that comes from within leads to true insight

Valued conscience –and the truth—higer thanhis life

Caoncerned with man and his place in society

Called himslef a philosopher one who loves wisdom, not a sophist—learned person

Recognized his place in world and that he was little—a philosp

Said he was guided by his conscience

Concerned with finding clear definitions of right and wrong

Believed the ability to choose from right and wrong lies within a man not society

Plato philosophy governed by reason

Pupil of socrates

Founded academy that discussed phiosophu, math, an gymnastics

Concerned with what is eternal and immutable in nature and in morals and society

Believed everythig tangible in nature flows. Everything made in the material world in time can erode. But everything is made after a timeless form that is eternal and immutable

No basic substance

Platos Theory of Ideas

Said there must be a reality behind the material world—the world of ideas, it contains etedrnal and immutable patterns.

World of Senses

Nothing that exists in the world of senses is lasting

In the sensory world everything flows

We can only have opinions of things in constant change, perceptions are different

World of Ideas

True Knowledge is understood by our reason, reason is the same for everyone

Reason is eternal and universal it only expresses eternal and universal states

Also said soul existed before body

All natural phoenomena are shadows of the eternal form or ideas

Natural world is fuzzy in compariso to the clarity of the world of ideas.

Aristotle

Pupil of Plato

Concerned with natural processes—considered first great biologist

Organized and classified the different sciences

Highest degree of reality is that which we perceive with our senses

The form of something, is in the thing because it is the charachtereistics of the thing.

Things that are in the human soul are purely relections of natural objects.

Said nature is the real world

Nothing exist in consciousness that has not yet been experienced y the senses

All are thought come from our senses

We have no innate ideas, but an innate power of reason—mans ditinguishing charachteristic

Reality is made of

Form-set of charachteristics

Substance-what things are made of

4 different causes in nature

material cause-moisture in clouds when air cools

efficient cause—moisture cools

formal cause—the form of water is to come to the earth

final cause—Aristotle assign a life task or purpose

said there is a purpose behind everything in nature

found4ed the science of logic—used deduction

Said god exists at the top of nature’s scale –started all movement in natural world

Ethics

3 forms of enjoyment

pleasure; freedom; life as a thinker/philosopher

siad man is man because of socity’s effect

woman was unfinished man

Hellinism

300 years in which greek dominated culture prevailed in the 3 helenistic countries of Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt. Eventually conquered by Rome

borders between various countries erased and there was a merging of philosophy religion, and science

People had doubts about their beliefs

Philosophy was moving in the drection of salvation

Discover how mankind should best live an die

Concerned with ethics and finding true happiness.

Cynics—true happiness doesn’t lie in material thigs that many vanish. It lies in being independent of material things. Be happy with what you have

Stoics—everyone is part of the same common sesnse. There exists a natural law that governs man kind. Monism—only one nature. No difference between spirit and body

Epicureans—Pleasure ethic—highest good is pleasure. Sensual pleasure and other plesures like friendship, etc.

Neoplatonism—world is a span between two poles. One pole gives off light—god. The other end is in absolute darkness. Occasionally we are in divine mystery. Everything is one, everthing is god

Mysticism

Mystical exp.—merging with god

Medieval philosophy—Is there a contradiction between belief and erasn/knowledge

St. Augustine

Saw no contradiction between plato and christianity

Limits to how far reason goes in religious questions

God created the world out of void

Before god created the world the “ideas” were in the divine mind

City of god and city of man

2 groups—one groups is saved the other is dammed

St. thomas Aquinas—tried to make Aristotles philosophy compatible with Christianity.

Believed Chirstendom and philosophy were the samething. Used bible as a source of reason.

Created a synthesis between faith and knowledge.

Said there are natural theological truths—truths that can be reacehed through both Chiristian faith and innate reason

Tried to prove god’s existence of Aristotles philosophy. Everything has a formal cause. God has revealed himself to mankind through both reason and the bible.

Renissance—rebirth of views from the middle ages. Started in northern italy A new view of mankind

HUImanism—belief in man and his worth. Spread with printing

Rebirth of antiquity’s humanism

Individualism—we are unique individuals with talents

Man could delight and take pleasure in his gifts.

Pantheism—god is present in his creation and therefore is everywhere.

Empirical method—one bases their knowledge on their experiences.

New scientific methods

Francis Bacon—“Knowledge is power”

New world view—Copernicus. Earth goes around sun

Galileo, stuff with moons, inertia

The individuals relationship with god ws now more important than his relationship with the chuch

Reformation

Luther

People don’t need chuch to in order to receive god’s forgiveness

God’s forgiveness doesn’t have anything to do with buing indulgences from church

Wanted to return to Christianity as it was in the New Testament

Translated bible to german

Became his own priest

Man recieves salvation through faith alone not church rituals

Baroque

Irregularity typical of art

Rene Descartes born in 1596

Was convinced of his own ignorance

Knowledge is only available through reason. We can’t trust what old books tell us or what are senses tell us.

Traveled around Europe in search of knowledge.

Father of modern philosophy

After the renaissance there was a need to represent thought coherently

The first significant system (philosophy construted from the ground up that organizes thought) builder was Descarte then Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke and Berkely, Hume and Kant

Concerned with what we can know—certain knowledge and the relationship between mind and body.

Descatres did not accept skepticism. (either id socrates)

We cant accept anything as true unless we clearly perceive it. You must break down a compund problem into several factors. Philsosphy must go from the simple to the complex in order to shed new light. Then you must make sure nothing is left out.

Father of Anltyical Geometry

Wanted to use math method for philosophizing—math uses reasoning

Descarte worked forward from a zero point. He doubted everything, that is the only thing he took for certain. Said cotigo ergo sum. I think therefore I am.

He had an idea of a perfect entity in his mind. This he says must have come from GOD.

When are reason recognizes something clearly and distinctly--math (outer reality)--it must be so. God would not deceive us. Whatever we perceive with our reason is reality.

2 forms of outer reality--Descartes is a dualist

thought--mind

extension or matter

man is a dual creature, thinks and takes up space. Mind and body are linked.

Mind superior to body becase it has rationality.

Spinoza 1632-1677

Criticized estalbished religions of Judaism and catholicism

First to use historico-critical interpretation of Bible. Found inconsistincies in Bible.

"religion of reason" Spinoza interpreted it as lover for god and humanity.

Spoke out for free speech and tolerance

Viewed thing from the perspective of entity.

Said everything was nature, and identified nature with god. God is all and all is a god. God is the world. Spinoza is a pantheist.

Wanted his ethics to show human life is subject to the universal laws of nature. We must therefore free ourselves from our emotion.

Spinoza rejected split between thought and matter.

Said everything can be reduced to one thing, substance(at times he called it god, other times nature).

Nature is everything that exists including thought and extension. God is nature. This distanced him form Descartes and doctrines of Christianity and Judaism.

Humans recognize two of gods qualities or attributes, 'thought' and 'extension'

Different modes of an attribute. A mode is the way an attribute is expressed.

The laws of nature determine everytthing you do vbecause they set limits. God-or the laws of nature-is the inner cause that makes everything happen.

Only god or nature is truly free.

Our passions prevent us from happiness and haromony, but if we recognize everyhting has a necessity we can gain understanding of the world as a whole.

We have nothing in the mind that we hav enot expereinced through the senses--empiricism.

Locke, Berkely, and Hume were all British emps.

Locke

We have no innate ideas about the world we are brought into before we have seen it.

All thought and ideas come from what we have seen and taken in through the senses.

Before we perceive anything the mind is an empty state, then we begin to sense things, infants sdo this the best.

Locke said Simple ideas of sense arise.

The single sense ideas are worked on, -thought about, this is called reflection.

He distinguished between sensation and reflection. The mind does both these things.

Locke said we only get simple sensations. We receive a series of simple sensations. A series of simple sensations is a complex idea.

Knowledge that can't be traced back to simple sensations is false knowledge.

He asked Is the world the way we perceive it?

Primary Qualities-- extension, weight, number, etc. Senses reproduce these things objectively.

Everyone agrees on

Secondary Qualities-- Sensations like color, smell, taste, sound. Senses don't reproduce the real qualities of these things. They reproduce the effect of outer reality on the senses. Vary from person to person

Extended reality does have some qualities that man is unable to understand with reason.

Down with Ethics and natural rights and principles.

Said that it was inherent in human reason to know that god exists. Believed idea of god was born of human reason.

Hume--empiricist

Wrote Treatise of Human Nature

Hume proposed to return to the spontaneous experience of the world.

No philosopher will ever be able to take us behind the daily experiences or give us rules of conduct that are different from those we get through reflections on everyday life. We must tidy up our thoughts and ideas.

Ex Angel--You know there are wings and humans. But humans with wings is a complex idea. Two unrelated experiences not related, but associated in the human mind.

Man has

Impressions--immediate sensation of external reality

Ideas--recollection of such impressions. \

Impression is the direct cause of what is stored in the mind.

Simple and complex impressions and ideas.

Sometimes we form complex ideeas when there is no corresponding object in the physical world.

Wanted to investigate every idea to see if it was compunded in a way that did not correspond to reality.

Wanted to dimiss all nonsense

Mind is a theater where perceptions make their appearance

Did not believe or reject te existence of god--agonistic very open-minded.

Hume wanted people to sharpen there awareness. And not make nature a habit.

The force of habit

The law of Cuasation--everything that happens must have a cause.

Expectaion of something to happen lies in our mind, not in what is happening.

People expereince that one event comes from another but don't expereince that one event happens because of the other.

"The laws of Nature and Cuase and Effect" are expectations (associated with habit) .

Reason does not determine what we do, Sentiment does.

Hume said not to draw conclusions from is sentences to ought sentences.

Berkeley

Empiricist

1683-1685

Bishop

Felt that current philosophy was a threat to Christianity especially materialism. The only things that exist are those we perceive but we do not perceive matter. We do not perceive things as tangible objects. To assume that we perceive something has it's own substance is jumping to conclusions. We don't have any experience to base these claims.

Berkeley believed in spirit-- all ideas have a cause beyond consciousness. That cause is spiritual.

Everything is due to spirit which is the cause of everything and which all things consist in.

Berkeley spirit = god. God is present in our consciousness. Our world exists in God and we exist in God's mind.

Question time and space. Had any existence. Our perception of time and space are fragments of the mind.

Our sense perceptions proceed from God.

French Enlightenment

Opposition to Authority.

Many of the French enlightenment philosophers visited the liberal England and were intrigued by the natural sciences and were also inspired by British philosophy. Back in France they became opposed to the old authority. The idea began that the individual must find his own answer to every question. Then came the French Revolution.

Rationalism

Common sense.

Faith in human reason

Age of reason

Englightemnt Movement

Enlightening the masses was the basis of a better society. Attention was focused on education. Encyclopedia written.

Cultural Optimism

People thought that once reason and knowledge became widespread ignorance would go away

The Return to Nature Nature=reason

Nature is good, and by nature man s good

Natural Religion

Human Rights

Kant

Born in East Prussia. Taught philosophy at a university. Sought answers to philosophical questions and was an expert in the history of philosophy.

Thought the basis of human knowledge lay in the mind. That knowledge comes from the senses. And there are limits to perception. But he also thought that these views were partly wrong.

Sensing and Reason come into play in our conception of the world. Reason is not absolute and either are the senses. Decisive factors determine how we perceive the world. Time and space are forms of intuition that preceed every experience. We can know before we experience things and that we will perceive them as a phenomena in time and space. Time and space belong to human condition. They are modes of perception and not attributes of the physical world. The mind leaves it's imprint on the way we apprehend the world. The mind conforms to things and things conform to the mind.

Made a dividing line between things and themselves. Made a distinction between "the thing in itself" and the "thing for me."

We can't have sertain knowledge of things 'in themselves'. We can only know how things appear to us.

Because you are a human being you will look for the cause of everything because the law of causality is in your makeup.

2 elements that contribute to a man's knowledge of the world.

External conditions-that we can't know until we perceive them throught the senses. This we call material knowledge. This material must conform to reason.

Internal Conditions in man himself-- perception of events as happening in time and space as processes conforming to the law of causality. This is the form of knowledge.

Kant said there are clear limits to what you can know.

Reason operates beyond the limits of wwhat humans can comprehend. However there is a basic desire to pose these big questions.

Faith brought him to the conclusion that man has an immortal soul, God exists, and man has a free will.

Practical postulates -something assumed for the sake of practice

Difference between right and wrong is reason.

A moral law exists for all situations and is absolute.

This moral law is the conscience. We can't prove wat it ells us, but we know it exists.

When you do something purely out of duty it is a moral action. Good will determines if an action is good or bad.

As human beings we obey the law of causality. We are creatures of reason and material.

As material creatures we have no free will. But as creatures of reason we see the world as it exists in itself.

Importance of egos contribution to knowledge.

Romanticism is on the rise.

Romanticism Europe's last great cultural epoch late 18th to middle 19th

Exploited geniuses

Importance of art to human cognition.

Artists can provide something philosophers can't express. Artsit plays freely on his faculty of cognition.

Some claimed art could bring us closer to the "inexpressible"

Artist creates his own reality the way god created the world.

Romanticists had a yearning for something distant and unattainable.

Preoccupied with "the dark side of life"

Indolent, wanted to experience life

The theme of love was introduced

Goeth wrote "the songs of young worther"

Schelling wanted to unite mind and matter

All of nature, human soul and physical reality is the expression of one absolute like Spinoza

Help strengthen feeling of national identity

Hegel

Romantic

Evolved in germany

Professor

United and developed all ideas that surfaced in the romantic period

World spirit means world reason

Only man has a spirit

Truth is subjective

There is no truth beyond human reason

All knowledge is human knowledge

Teaches us to think productively

Hegel believed the basis of human cognition changed from generation to generation

There are no eternal truths

History is in a constant state of change

Reason is dynamic, it's a process as is truth

The study of history shows that humanity is moving towards greater rationality and freedom. History is a long chain of reflections. There are rules. As soon as one thought is proposed another thought contradicts it. But a third thought accommodates the best of both parts. This is the dialectic process.

Iliadics claimed change was impossible

Hegel called a standpoint a thesis. And the contradictory claim a negation.

3 Stages of Knowledge -- Thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

Finding flaws in something is negative thinking.

Sexist

Hegel was skeptical of the individual. He emphasized importance of the family, society and state.

Reason manifests itself in language.

The state is the sum of it's citizens.

The world spirit becomes conscious of itself in the individual-- the subjective spirit. It reaches a higher consciousness in the family, society and state. This is the objective spirit it appears as an interaction between different people. The world spirit reaches the highest form of realization in absolute spirit--art religion and philosophy.

Kierkegaard

Existentialist

Born in 1813 and religious sadness felt obliged to break off his engagement. Became an outcast.

Critical of society

Thought Christianity was irrational

Thought church and people had a noncommittal approach to religion.

Thought having a Christian faith meant living a Christian life.

Study theology at 17

Rather than searching for the truth, it is more important to find the truth for you. So he sets up the individual against the system.

Truth is subjective. Real important truths are personal.

Fundamental questions like religion can only approached through faith. Things we know through reason are unimportant.

8 + 4 = 12

Is religion real?

Religion is a question of faith.

There are three different forms/stages of life:

Aesthetic stage- lives for the moment. Lives in the world of senses. Typical Romantic

Ethical Stage- seriousness and consistency of moral choices. Have serious opinions of right or wrong.

Religious Stage--take faith over aesthetic pleasues--Christianity.

Marx

Historical materialist --

Philosophy of Action--EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY

Had a practical/political objective

Material factors in society determine the way we think.

Material changes affect history.

Material changes create spiritual relations

Material, social, and economic changes are the basis of society.

The way a society thinks, its actions, laws, etc. are its superstructure.

Material relations support the thoughts and ideas of society

There is an interaction betwenn society's basis and superstructure--Dialectical materialist.

3 levels of society

conditions of production- natural conditions or resources available to society (this is the foundation of any society)

means of production- various kninds of equipment tools, machineryt and raw materials

mode of production- determines which political and ideological conditions are to be found there.

What is morally right is a product of society.

Society's ruling calss sets the norms

History is a matter of who is to own the means of production.

In history there has always been a conflict between two major classes.

In slave society--slave vs. free citizen

In capitalist society-- capitalists vs. workers

Those who own the means of production vs. those who don't

Marx wanted to switch from capital gov. to communist gov

Concerende with work--said How we work affects are consciousness. Or consciousness also effects how we work. The way you think is related to the job you do.

Work was a positive thing to Marx.

Under capitalist system--you work for someone else and therefore you are detached from the work you do. A worker slaves for another social class, this is exploitation. Owner take profit, invests it somewhere else, modernizes facotry, need less wokers, more peepz unempl, increased social probs

If a captialist couldn't make ends meet, he would lower wages of workers, lose purchase power. On the eve of a revolution.

Marx Published Communist Manifesto, and the workers revolted against burghers.

Proletariats begin dictatorship bourgeoisie.

A classless society arises.

Labor now belongs to workers themselves

This led the way for socialist reforms and upheavlas.

Democracy

Leninism-

Darwin

Man is a result of evolution

Distanced himself from church

Went on HMS Beagle

Wrote the origin of Species

Evolution--slow graudual change. Overtime become adapted to an environment.

Lyell helped out by showing how old earth is

Geographic distrib. Of animals

Layers of fossils

Natural Selection--nature chooses best traits.

Must be variation in a population. ( through mutations)

Malthus' doctirne on population and struggle for survival helped Darwin

As did farmers with concept of artificial selection.

Descnet of Man

Man descneded from animals

Cell structure--how specialized it is.

Long ago

Cosmic raditaion caused chemical to combine into a macromolecule.

Evolution, DNA, cell division, photosynthesis, oxygen, etc.

Freud

Developed psychoanalysis--description of the human mind and how you fix it.

T4ension betwwen mans drives and needs and the demands of society.

Irrational impulses are drives.

These basic need may steer our actions without our being aware of it.

Searched peoples minds (their past) to find out the cause of there a psyuchological disorder and by surfacing it, healed them.

When we are born we don't get ashamed. We like to snuggle, this is our pleasure principle, or id.

We carry this id and overtime we learn to regulate our desires.

We learn to regulate the pleasure priniple into a 'reality principle'. Develop an regulating ego.

We may repress our desires.

We also have a superego--conscience is a component of te superego. Our superego tells us when our desires themselves are improper.

Conflict between desire and guilt.

Conscious contributes only a small part of the human mind.

Below the conscious is the subconscious or unconsciousness,

Unconscious is everything inside us that we have forgotten or repressed.

(some repressed thoughts are trying to fight their way to the top)

Unconscious actions often prompt our feelings or actions

We will project, force the feelings we repress onto other people.

There are several unconscious mechanisms.

Free association--let patient lie in a comfortable position and let them talk about whatever, unconsciously.

Interpretted dreams and said all dreams are wish fullfillments.

In adults, wishes in dreams are disguised.

Manifest dream--real stuff

Latent dream thoughts--deeper menaing of dream

Poets and painters began to ause power of unconscious in their work , esp surrealists.

Freud said ther is an artist in everyone. A dream is a work of art

Inspiration--seems as if your stuff is coming from an outside forse.

Automatic writing--letting yourself go

Your imagination gives you a grip of ideas, but it is you reason that chooses which ideas you will adopt. Reason and imagination interact together.

Nietzsche

Philosphy was departing from reality and directed toward heaven

Wanted a revaluation of values.

Be true to the world

Sarte

Existentialism is humanism. Existentialism departs from humanity.

Existence takes priority over essence.

Man doesn't have an innate essence, he must create it.

Man also has no such innate nature to fall back on. It is pointless to search for the menaing of life.

Man feels alien , in a world without meaning.

Man's freedom is a curse.

He did not create himself, but is free. Having been hurled into this world, he is responsible for everything he does.

There are no eternal values or norms, that makes our choices all the more significant.

Although Sarte thought the where was no eternal meaning to life, he still believed things mattered.

Consciuossness is nothing until it has perceived something.

Simone de Beauvoir

Didn't believe in male or female nature

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download