metaphysics.ppt | |
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Readings
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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation/
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What is metaphysics?
It's the study of what exists and the structure within which the objects that make up the world operate.
Key Questions:
- What are the ultimate constituents of reality?
- What is Being?
- What is the relation of mind to matter?
- What is the self?
- What is personal identity?
- Are human actions free?
- What is the meaning of life?
- What is time?
- What does it mean for one event to cause another event?
- Could everything exist in my own mind?
- Do I have a soul? Or, am I just a material body?
- What is the mind?
- How an I the same person today that I was yesterday, or 7 years ago?
- What makes something alive?
- Is there a God ( The God Stone Paradox)
Movies to watch:
The Matrix
Bicentennial Man
Short Circuit
Ex Machina
Blade Runner
Inception
Being John Malkovich
Waking Life
Stranger than Fiction
Fight Club
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2001: A Space Odyssey
Memento (also good for logic / epistemology)
The 6th Sense
Pi (Also good for logic / epistemology)
The Truman Show
Groundhog Day
What Dreams May Come
What the Bleep?!: Down the Rabbit Hole
The Seventh Seal
Cloud Atlas
Great Thinkers To Read:
- Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
- Anaximenes
- Heraclitus
- Democritus
- Bishop George Berkeley
- Bertrand Russell
- Parmenides
- Sir Isaac Newton
- Albert Einstein
- Thomas Hobbes
- Plotinus
- Voltaire
- David Lewis
- Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica
- Aristotle: Physics; Metaphysics
- A.J. Ayer: Language, Truth, And Logic
- F.H. Bradley: Appearance And Reality
- R.G. Collingwood: An Essay On Metaphysics
- Georg Friedrich Hegel: Phenomenology Of Mind
- David Hume: A Treatise Of Human Nature
- Immanuel Kant: Prolegomena To Every Future Metaphysics; Critique of Pure Reason
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: The Monadology And Other Philosophical Writings
- Arthur Lovejoy: The Great Chain of Being
- Friedrich Nietzsche: The Will To Power
- Plato: Phaedo; Parmenides; Timaeus
- Plotinus: Enneads
- George Santayana: Realms of Being
- Arthur Schopenhauer: World As Will And Idea
- Baruch Spinoza: Ethics
- Alfred North Whitehead: Science And The Modern World
- Sam Harris
Websites for research
Philosophy Basics - Metaphysics
Standford Encyclopedia - Metaphysics
New Scientist - Metaphysics Special
Emporia State University
David Hume - A Treatise on Human Nature - Project Gutenberg
David Hume.org
Philosophical Society - metaphysics
Summary of thoughts, copied/paraphrased from philosophicalsociety.com
Parmenides: challenges the theory of Forms. Parmenides put forth a monistic view of reality, emphasizing "the One". If all things are made of some basic stuff, he reasoned, there cannot be empty space. "Being is; non-being is not." Truth is static and unchanging and should be distinguished from the emphemeral reality of everyday life."
Plato: "Two realities: one material, which is the everyday world we experience and perceive; the other is idealistic and transcendental, a perfect world of unchanging Forms or Ideas. Human souls had a pre-life; incarnation is the process by which souls are collapsed into bodies and become veritable prisoners. The goal of life is to know the Truth, to purify the soul, to transcend ephemeral life.
Aristotle: God is the primum mobile, the first mover, the "uncaused cause" of the universe, but a being that does intervene in history. Reality consists of form and matter. The "form" of a person is his/her soul; the matter is the body. Four causes of all things: efficient, final, formal, and material. (Example: a can of gasoline exploding when a lit match is tossed into it. The can is the material cause; its position to the match is the formal, or necessary, cause; the falling match is the efficient cause; and the admixture of gas and oxygen is the final cause.)
Spinoza: God is "in" all things; the world, so to speak, is God's body: pantheism. He also rejected the immortality of the soul and free will and was a devout determinist.
Leibnitz: World consists of unique, indivisible, eternal substances, what he calls monads; each is a "spiritual" substance. Leibnitz famously said -- i.e., monads don't act externally on other monads. The world is harmonious, the best possible of all worlds, designed by God. Basically, we are all one, moving as one.
Kant: Knowledge can't pass beyond the limits of everyday experience. The "thing-in-itself" cannot be known, only as a reference point in time and space. The existence of God is presupposed by art and ethics and religion. Kant endorsed the so-called "moral argument" for God's existence: moral laws have a governor, an author; the author is God. Believed that world like "should" and "ought" implied that free will existed.
Important Concepts:
Epiphenomenalism: The view that mental processes (thoughts, ideas, feelings) are the effects of physical/bodily processes; mind and body do not "interact"; there is rather a causal relationship between the two. Epiphenomenalism is a version of materialism.
Logical Positivism: Denies the possibility of metaphysical knowledge; it sees metaphysical statements as meaningless, as linguistic sleights of hand (most famous exponent of this view is A.J. Ayer).
Materialism: The view that only matter exists; emotions, sensations, dreams, hallucinations are seen as effects of a material process.
Naturalism: The view that phenomena can be explained by reference to cause and effect and other "laws" of nature. It is vehemently opposed to theistic or literalist metaphysical views.
Nihilism: The denial of moral truth, of fundamental religious claims, and of popular value systems in general. The view also that life has no aim or meaning, and that any such perceived meanings are constructions of the human will. The most famous philosophical exponent of this view was Friedrich Nietzsche.
Occasionalism: The view that mind and body function independently, but that divine intercession allows mental events to be the "occasion" for different bodily movements.
Pantheism: The doctrine that God inheres in all things; that the things of the world are manifestations, in some sense, of God. God, on this view, does not stand apart from, or outside of, the universe.
Panentheism: The view that only one part or aspect of God inheres in the things of the world, but that God as Creator also transcends created being. So God is both "in" and "not in" existents.
Solipsism: The belief that only I as subject exists; an opposing view is pluralism.
Voluntaristic Idealism: The world is my idea of it. The object of perception is the appearance of a thing-in-itself. One's body is an objectification of one's Will. The Will is the dominant force in nature. This doctrine was propounded most famously by Schopenhauer.
Parmenides: challenges the theory of Forms. Parmenides put forth a monistic view of reality, emphasizing "the One". If all things are made of some basic stuff, he reasoned, there cannot be empty space. "Being is; non-being is not." Truth is static and unchanging and should be distinguished from the emphemeral reality of everyday life."
Plato: "Two realities: one material, which is the everyday world we experience and perceive; the other is idealistic and transcendental, a perfect world of unchanging Forms or Ideas. Human souls had a pre-life; incarnation is the process by which souls are collapsed into bodies and become veritable prisoners. The goal of life is to know the Truth, to purify the soul, to transcend ephemeral life.
Aristotle: God is the primum mobile, the first mover, the "uncaused cause" of the universe, but a being that does intervene in history. Reality consists of form and matter. The "form" of a person is his/her soul; the matter is the body. Four causes of all things: efficient, final, formal, and material. (Example: a can of gasoline exploding when a lit match is tossed into it. The can is the material cause; its position to the match is the formal, or necessary, cause; the falling match is the efficient cause; and the admixture of gas and oxygen is the final cause.)
Spinoza: God is "in" all things; the world, so to speak, is God's body: pantheism. He also rejected the immortality of the soul and free will and was a devout determinist.
Leibnitz: World consists of unique, indivisible, eternal substances, what he calls monads; each is a "spiritual" substance. Leibnitz famously said -- i.e., monads don't act externally on other monads. The world is harmonious, the best possible of all worlds, designed by God. Basically, we are all one, moving as one.
Kant: Knowledge can't pass beyond the limits of everyday experience. The "thing-in-itself" cannot be known, only as a reference point in time and space. The existence of God is presupposed by art and ethics and religion. Kant endorsed the so-called "moral argument" for God's existence: moral laws have a governor, an author; the author is God. Believed that world like "should" and "ought" implied that free will existed.
Important Concepts:
Epiphenomenalism: The view that mental processes (thoughts, ideas, feelings) are the effects of physical/bodily processes; mind and body do not "interact"; there is rather a causal relationship between the two. Epiphenomenalism is a version of materialism.
Logical Positivism: Denies the possibility of metaphysical knowledge; it sees metaphysical statements as meaningless, as linguistic sleights of hand (most famous exponent of this view is A.J. Ayer).
Materialism: The view that only matter exists; emotions, sensations, dreams, hallucinations are seen as effects of a material process.
Naturalism: The view that phenomena can be explained by reference to cause and effect and other "laws" of nature. It is vehemently opposed to theistic or literalist metaphysical views.
Nihilism: The denial of moral truth, of fundamental religious claims, and of popular value systems in general. The view also that life has no aim or meaning, and that any such perceived meanings are constructions of the human will. The most famous philosophical exponent of this view was Friedrich Nietzsche.
Occasionalism: The view that mind and body function independently, but that divine intercession allows mental events to be the "occasion" for different bodily movements.
Pantheism: The doctrine that God inheres in all things; that the things of the world are manifestations, in some sense, of God. God, on this view, does not stand apart from, or outside of, the universe.
Panentheism: The view that only one part or aspect of God inheres in the things of the world, but that God as Creator also transcends created being. So God is both "in" and "not in" existents.
Solipsism: The belief that only I as subject exists; an opposing view is pluralism.
Voluntaristic Idealism: The world is my idea of it. The object of perception is the appearance of a thing-in-itself. One's body is an objectification of one's Will. The Will is the dominant force in nature. This doctrine was propounded most famously by Schopenhauer.
Fate and Free Will
How is this video an argument against Sam Smith?
Places to look for current issues:
Philosophy News
Huffington Post - Metaphysics
Possible topics discussed:
1) The treatment of reality in movies / music / art
2) Can we trust our eyes? Eye witness testimony?
3) How far has science come in helping us understand the "constituents of reality"? As in, what is our world/universe/existence made of?
4) Is there free will? If yes, or no, how do we deal with the concept responsibility for our actions? What are the moral / legal implications?
5) What does it mean to be alive? What about artificial intelligence? Will a robot ever be considered alive? Human? What would it take?
6) How much of you is you? What makes a heap? And what if we uploaded your consciousness to the cloud?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2344398/Google-futurist-claims-uploading-entire-MINDS-computers-2045-bodies-replaced-machines-90-years.html
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-free-will-an-illusion/
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2014/01/15/261716096/the-choice-is-yours-the-fate-of-free-will
Huffington Post - Metaphysics
Possible topics discussed:
1) The treatment of reality in movies / music / art
2) Can we trust our eyes? Eye witness testimony?
3) How far has science come in helping us understand the "constituents of reality"? As in, what is our world/universe/existence made of?
4) Is there free will? If yes, or no, how do we deal with the concept responsibility for our actions? What are the moral / legal implications?
5) What does it mean to be alive? What about artificial intelligence? Will a robot ever be considered alive? Human? What would it take?
6) How much of you is you? What makes a heap? And what if we uploaded your consciousness to the cloud?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2344398/Google-futurist-claims-uploading-entire-MINDS-computers-2045-bodies-replaced-machines-90-years.html
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-free-will-an-illusion/
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2014/01/15/261716096/the-choice-is-yours-the-fate-of-free-will