Man is the Measure - Chapter 1

Names Dropped:

Protagorus
St. Simeon (Stylites)
Cratylus
Aristotle
Kant
Hegel
Peirce
Schopenhauer
Plato
James
Croce
Socrates
Des Cartes
Leibniz - (with Newton) Calculus
Locke
Hume
Wittgenstein
Dewey
Russell

Metaphysics - Branch of philosophy that attempts to explain the universe as a whole.
What exists?

Materialism - Belief the entire universe can be explained by matter/motions of matter. “All is Matter”.

Idealism - Belief that everything is ideas.

Dualism - Belief that the universe is made of both matter and ideas (or two things).

Monoism (Monism) - Belief that the universe is made of only one thing ultimately.

Hylozonism - Inanimate objects are really “human” or “thinking” or everything has a spirit.

Solipsism - Belief that I and only I exist.

Reductionism - Attempt to reduce the universe down to a limited number of things.

Reductive Fallacy - (e.g. Humans are only worth a few dollars in chemicals).

Naturalism - Belief that only nature exists and everything that exists does so in nature.

Mechanism - Cause and effect, in Newton’s day clockwork, says everything that happens is determined.

Eternal Return - Anything that has ever happened will happen again; if it hasn’t happened it won’t.

Determinism vs. Chance - Cause and effect, mechanism assumes determinism.  Determinism says that everything has a reason and that cause comes before effect.

Concatenation - Chain of events

Man is the Measure - Chapter 2

I. Knowledge by acquaintance (superficial experiences)

II. Knowledge by description (couched in propositions, i.e. scientific, philosophical, and mathematical)

(I and II are Bertrand Russell)

III. Knowledge and experience
a. Can you know without experience? (Knowing how)
b. Can you experience without knowing? (Knowing that)

Knowledge is justified true belief

IV. Knowledge requires 4 conditions
a. Truth
b. Belief
c. Good reason for
d. No good reasons against

V. Good reasons
a. Sense perceptions
b. Logic
c. Intuition (Ancient Greeks, whispered by Muses)
d. Self-awareness
e. Memory
f. Authority
g. Consensus gentium
h. Revelation
i. Faith

Man is the Measure - Chapter 3: Sense Perception

Sight:

Photaic
Discontinuous
Frequency specific
Time lag
Color ability
Multi-stable pictures
Can be fooled
Seeing as cultured bias (flying gallop)

Sound:

Mechanical
Frequency specific
Time lag (delay)
Subject to misinterpretation
Declines after birth (loss of cilia)

Olfaction:

Chemical
Direct to brain (limbic system)
Limited vocabulary (smells like...)
Depends on memory
Least sensitive in animal world
Artificial flavors/scents

Gustatory:

Chemical
Density of fungiform
Pappilae varies widely
Related to smell (retro nasal)
Artificial flavors/scents

Tactile:

Delay
Varying sensitivity
Touch important for physical/psychological growth
Phantom pair/sensations

Senses are avenues by which the outside world can come into thought.

Limits:

Confusion between senses
Sense awareness varies among species (e.g. humans can’t sense radio waves)
Limits in range of stimuli.  Intensity of stimuli reg for awareness
Subjectivity
Deception/distortion.(e.g. optical illusions)
Discontinuity (e.g. seeing in intervals) (1/4 sec)
Time lag

Errors in perception are corrected by more discriminating perception, but the information our senses give us is never certain.

Primary vs. Secondary - Pointless

Man is the Measure: Chapter 4

Perception is active inquiry, not passive reception.

A. Seeing - as
1. All seeing is seeing-as
2. What enters the eye is not really seen until organized by the brain
3. To see "what is the case" requires: context, inference, concepts, experience, interpretation
4. No "innocent eye" no single act of seeing-as is the only one or the correct one. any one interpretation excludes all others.
5. Perception is "multi-stable"
6. No sharp line dividing perception form illusion

B. Perception as the solution of a problem
1. Selective nature of perception - we must filter stimuli
2. We usually receive what we expect, want, believe, or are used to.
3. To perceive is to solve a problem "find strands of permanence in the tumult of changing appearances"

C. Influence of Convention
1. Each society relies on its own visual schemata
2. Persistence of convention - "le galop volante"
3. Perspective drawing

D. Influence of belief
1. "believing is seeing"
2. Unconscious bias of researches in the social sciences affects their findings
3. Scientists tend to rely on entrenched paradigms which may predetermine their choice of data

E. Hearing - as
1. How a given vowel is pronounced varies considerably from speaker to speaker
2. Onomatopoeia varies from language to language

Man is the Measure: Chapter 5 "When do we attain certainty?"

A. Analytic and synthetic propositions
1. Analytic propositions: Statements of identity, Statements asserting the Inclusion of a subclass within a class, Definitions, Stipulations, Statements making implicit meanings explicit
2. Denial of analytic propositions is self-contradictory
3. Analytic propositions are certain - true in all possible worlds
4. Limiting case - gives zero information with 100% probability
5. Synthetic propositions: True by their meanings alone. Ambiguity is often intentional, and may always be removed by making explicit what is intended Classifications are often abandoned

B. Recent Attacks "Essential Predication" - determining what predicate or qualities are of the essence of a subject

C. Pragmatic Justification
1. The decision is based on our need to understand, predict, and control
2. Analytic/synthetic distinction serves to regulate our inquiries and to organize our knowledge.

D. No synthetic A Priori
1. Proposition: a statement which has truth value (T or F)
2. Analytic Proposition (priori) - a proposition which is T or F by virtue of its terms and/or structure
3. Synthetic proposition (posteriori) - propositions which are not analytic

Man is the Measure: Chapter 6 Logic, Mathematics, and Metaphysics

A. Aristotelian Logic
1. Proposition is the basic unit of knowledge
2. Asserts a connection between a subject and a predicate by a copula (the verb is or are)
3. Validity consists of following rules, regardless of what the propositions are about

B. Laws of Thought; Rules of Reasoning
1. Identity (x is x)
2. Contradiction - proposition cannot be true and false
3. Excluded middle - any middle ground between truth and falsity is excluded

Man is the Measure: Chapter 7 - Meaning and Naming: How Language Bites on to the World

1. Russell declared it meaningless to say that a class either is or is not a member of itself; But aren’t the words themselves clearly meaningful?
2. Mill and Frege: meaning of a sentence should depend only on the meaning of the words that constitute it
3. Russell showed that there may be grammatical sentences without meaning

The Meanings of "Meaning"

1. Eight senses of meaning: Indication, Cause, Effect, Intention, Explanation, Purpose, Implication and Significance
2. We can talk meaningfully about the world only if we take into account what the world is like.
3. Aristotle's only ways in which predicated may be meaningfully attributed to any subject: Substance, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Place, Time, Action, Passion, Situation or position, and State or condition

Names and Descriptions; Sense and Reference

1. Reference is how language bites on to the world. It is a distinctively human activity and public.
   • Naming is the direct application of a word to a thing; a name identifies.
     • In Plato's Cratylus, Socrates remarks, "the name-maker"
     • Nothing stands between a thing and its name.
   • Descriptions: We can use different phrases to refer to the same entity.
2. Frege: Sense (Sinn) and reference (Bedeutung) are 2 distinct aspects of meaning
   • Terms such as I, this, now, here have a fixed sense and a constantly changing reference.
   • These aspects are roughly parallel to the connotation & denotation of a term. Example:
     • C — bachelor is an "adult unmarried man" (intention)
     • D — All actual persons you can so designate to be bachelors (extension)
3. Some philosophers prefer sentences that are physical over propositions.
4. Words refer to both thoughts & things, because words have both sense and reference.

Problems of Naming and Meaning

1. It is a mistake to think that if a word purports to be a name, then something must exist which it names.
2. Referential opacity — There are certain linguistic contexts in which you cannot substitute one name for another name, or one description for another, even though they refer to the same particular thing.
3. Meinong: If we say there is no such thing as a golden mountain, then there is something to which we do refer.
4. Russell's Theory of Descriptions distinguished between descriptive phrases and names
5. The distinction between naming and describing corresponds generally to knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description.
6. You must have direct acquaintance with something in order to name it.
7. Words are conventional symbols used for the purpose of reference. However, there are also gestures and art.
8. Pierce: icon refers to something by looking a little like it; index is casually connected with what it refers to

Contemporary Theories of Meaning

1. A major impetus has been linguistic: to clarify thought by clarifying language.
2. Meanings are not the same things as operations or methods or uses.

Chapter 8: Truth and Belief

The goal is to explicate how or in what way a true proposition differs from a false one.

Theories of Truth

1. A proposition is true if it corresponds to a fact.
2. Hegel and his followers avoid comparing dissimilar entities by defining the truth of a proposition as its coherence with other propositions.
3. Pragmatic theories define truth in various ways.
   • A proposition becomes true only when acted upon.
   • A pragmatic theory associates truth with the satisfaction of the human need to understand, predict, and control phenomena; it explains what is meant by the truth of natural laws or scientific theories.

Pragmatism and Science

1. "Laws of nature" are descriptive and devised by man for the purpose of organizing his experience.
2. Einstein: The theory that interprets sense-experiences is hypothetical.
3. Scientifics theories seldom satisfy all our demands.
4. A scientific theory is true if it makes successful predictions, if it does not conflict with other theories, and if it makes no false prediction.
   • Osiander: It is important for hypotheses to yield calculations which agree with the observations.
5. Pierce defined the truth as that opinion “to which the community ultimately settles down.”
6. Knowledge must be justified by evidence or good reasons.

Belief

1. Philosophers refer to belief as a "propositional attitude" or as an inner state of mind which is directly evident through introspection.
   • St. Augustine - "thinking with assent"
   • Hume - a kind of feeling
   • Bain - a man believes that upon which he is prepared to act
   • Schiller - "a spiritual attitude of welcome which we assume towards what we take to be a truth"
   • Pierce - "different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise"
2. The requirement of action does not apply to all cases of belief.
3. It is not clear whether belief is a voluntary state of mind.
   • Pascal — if your faith is weak, you ought to behave as if you believed
   • Descartes — belief can be controlled by the will; Spinoza — disagreed
   • St. Thomas Aquinas — belief on matters of faith was voluntary
   • If belief is voluntary, can it also ever be obligatory?

MITM - Chapter 9 Science, Facts, Hypotheses

I. Science seeks to discover ... cause and effect
a. There is no single scientific method ... other than unremitting criticizing of evidence in every possible way
b. Science is a social and self-corrective enterprise

II. Facts -
a. Sense limits
b. Instruments
c. memory
d. biases “looking where the light is best”
e. language
f. hypothesis

d & f -- go together

III. Hypothesis
a. falsifiable (Popper)
b. true (for now) truth is always tentative
c. simple
d. beautiful “beauty is truth and vice versa”
e. general - T. O. E. (Theory of Everything)
f. non-statistical (?!)
g. analogies
h. metaphysical

Abel implies that science is similar to philosophy.
Science comes from word for knowledge (???)

Man is the Measure: Chapter 12 Space, Time, and Matter

Electron is an energy wave in a circular orbit
All chemical reactions occur between electrons and light
Special Relativity (uniform motion)
Good and beautiful theory is not necessarily true.
Evidence will ultimately justify it.

Chapter 15: The Study of History: What Is the Past?

1. History would be of limited philosophical interest were it not that men are what they have come to be.
2. The growth of human culture is continuous and cumulative.
3. To study our past is to understand better how we came to be as we are now.

1. History is being rewritten constantly because new facts are being discovered and because it is "always written wrong."
2. The process of choosing what is significant enough to be written down in history is influenced by a number of factors:
   1. Our interests change.
   2. Our conceptual apparatus changes.
   3. Our view of the basic historical segment changes.
   4. The "personal equation" of the historian changes.
   5. The audience for whom the historian writes changes.
3. Nothing could be more naïve than the "Baconian fallacy" that all the historian has to do is to collect the facts, or than Mach’s view that "the bare data confront us."
4. The past is inferred from present evidence.

1. The patterns that are found in past events are selected by the historian.
1. They may only be suggested by "the facts."
2. The metaphysics of absolute idealism regards all events as concatenated into a seamless web that cannot be analyzed into discrete events.
3. Maurice Mandelbaum: Historical pluralism denies that every event is related to every other event.
4. Just because we don’t have certainty about the past, it does not follow that anything goes.

1. It is an ancient idea that history is cyclical. Repetition is therefore likely.
2. A second group of philosophies of history may be called functional because of the way in which they isolate and stress certain causative factors, such as:
   1. Physicalistic and telluric factors
   2. Race
   3. Hereditary ability
   4. Psychological factors
   5. Class struggles
   6. Appearance of superior individuals
3. The idea of progress as a philosophy of history is relatively new.
4. History is a great drama of sin and redemption, according to the Christian view.
5. Organismic theories consider society to be a kind of living organism.
   1. Spengler: All civilizations grow, from infancy, through youth, maturity, and senility, to death.
6. There are theories that postulate a Zeitgeist, or spirit of the age, to account for cultural phenomena.
   1. Gothic cathedrals are explained as a manifestation of the "Gothic spirit."
      1. However, we can more accurately understand them as a solution to certain problems in engineering and economics.
   2. General concepts, such as this one, have no explanatory or predictive value; it is fallacious to assume that whatever events are produced in a given time period must have a common essence.

1. There is no evidence at all to support the view that human history has an overall plot.

1. Macaulay regards history as a branch of literature.