10.00 – 11.00

The Ancient Philosophers: What is

philosophy?

2

The Pre-Socratics

6th and 5th century BC thinkers

the first philosophers and the first

scientists no appeal to the supernatural

we have only ‘fragments’ of their work, and

‘testimonia’ concerned with physical and cosmological

speculation

3

The Milesians

Thales – water is the fundamental principle

Anaximander - the orderly nature of the universe is internal rather

than imposed from outside

Anaximenes - the natural mechanism for change is the

condensation and rarefaction of air

Heraclitus – everything is flux

Parmenides – humans can acquire knowledge

Pythagoras – nature is a structured system ordered by number

Democritus – the void is real

4

Socrates

• 469–399 B.C.E.

• Never wrote anything

• Concerned with morality and the best

way to live

• Hugely influenced Plato

• Put to death by the Athenian state

5

Plato

• 427—347 B.C.E

• wrote in dialogue form

• has been said the whole history of philosophy

is a ‘series of footnotes to Plato’

• famous for the theories of Forms and Anamnesis

• founded the first university – The Academy

6

Aristotle

• 384—322 B.C.E.

• Pupil of Plato

• Teacher of Alexander

• Polymath – from logic to ethics

• first to classify human knowledge into

disciplines

• founded the Lyceum

7

Further Reading:

Barnes, J., 1982, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd edition, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Graham, D. W. (ed.), 2010, The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics, two volumes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Morrison, Donald R., 2010, The Cambridge Companion to Socrates, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kraut, Richard (ed.), 1992, The Cambridge Companion to Plato, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Barnes, J., The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

My romp through the history of philosophy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16TegBGFTn8

Peter Adamson’s History of Philosophy without any gaps: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL44393CFE83CAE3C3

Documentary of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGOX6Mg-1vE

8

11.30 – 12.30

The Enlightenment: The birth of

scientific method and questions

about knowledge

9

Scholasticism

Aristotle’s Organum

Knowledge attainable only by using deductive logic

everything is constituted of some combination of earth, air, fire and water

1620 Bacon’s Novum Organum

inductive logic

experiment and experience

10

Descartes

Rene Descartes (1596–1650)

the quest for knowledge

innate ideas

scepticism

11

The British Empiricists

Locke, Berkeley and Hume

the theory of ideas

the problem of induction

idealism

12

Further Reading:

The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy on Aristotle’s logic:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-logic/

Bacon, F., 1620. The New Organon (Novum Organum), ed. by Lisa Jardine and Michael Silverthorne, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy on Rationalism and Empiricism:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/

The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy on Descartes: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-works/

The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy on Hume:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/

Bernard Williams and Bryan McGee on Descartes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44h9QuWcJYk

Peter Millican’s lectures on Hume: www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6SYJpPNty8

13

1.30 -2.30

Modern Philosophy: Frege, Russell

and Wittgenstein and the birth of

computing

14

Gottlob Frege (1848-1925)

Frege’s Begriffsschrift revolutionised logic when it was published in 1879

This was because it introduced quantifiers and enables logic to add ‘all’

and ‘some’ to the existing logical connectives (every good girl loves a

sailor)

In 1893 he published his Grundgesetze der Arithmetik Frege attempted to

reduce arithmetic to logic using the symbols he had himself introduced

In 1903 Russell wrote to Frege showing that it is possible to derive

‘Russell’s paradox’ from Frege’s ‘basic law’

15

Some classes (or sets) seem to be members of themselves, while some do not.

The class of all classes is itself a class and so is a member of itself.

The null or empty class is not a member of itself.

However, suppose that we can form a class of all classes that, like the null class, are not included in themselves.

Question: is this class a member of itself?

Consider a group of barbers who shave only those men who do not shave themselves. Suppose there is a barber in this collection who does not shave himself; then by the definition of the collection, he must shave himself. But no barber in the collection can shave himself. (If so, he would be a man who does shave men who shave themselves.)

16

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

• Wrote on many topics but best known for his mathematical logic and analytic philosophy

• Very politically active

• Invented ‘neutral monism’

• http://www.openculture.com/2013/03/bertrand_russell_on_his_student_ludwig_wittgenstein_man_of_genius_or_merely_an_eccentric.html

17

Ludwig Wittenstein (1889 – 1951)

• Early and late Wittgenstein

• Philosophy of Language (mind and logic)

• Published only one book in his lifetime

• The ‘private language’ argument

18

Further Reading:

Bryan McGee talks to A.J.Ayer about Frege and Russell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WnkGaLHhy0

The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy on Frege: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frege/

A Guardian article on Russell:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2013/nov/18/bertrand-russell-philosopher-religion-ethics-life

The Internet Encyclopaedia on Russell’s paradox: http://www.iep.utm.edu/par-russ/

The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy on Wittgenstein: http://www.iep.utm.edu/wittgens/

Bryan McGee talks to Anthony Quinton about Russell and Wittgenstein: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwNdgnC9uUI&list=PLmKUmS9HJkE6F7OSjk6q2D0Sjtf78hHmx&index=2

19

3.00 – 4.00

Cutting Edge Philosophy: a

very modern philosophical

problem

20

Our attempts to show that

mental states are physical states

have failed repeatedly.

In 1975 the philosopher

Hilary Putnam offered a possible

explanation of such failures.

Could it be, he asked, that the

mental states simply aren’t in the

head?

21

To understand Putnam’s

argument we should first

understand ‘Internalism’.

Internalism is the view that

mental states are states of the

sort that are inside us.

So the mind and all its mental

states are intrinsic properties of

a person.

22

Intrinsic (non-relational)

properties:

Physical properties (including

neural properties)

Phenomenological properties

Behavioural dispositions

23

Descartes was an Internalist.

He believed that all our beliefs about

the external world could be false

because he believed our beliefs

would be the same even if the world

was entirely other than we take it to

be.

This assumes that our thoughts are

the thoughts they are solely

because of properties intrinsic to us

24

25 25

INTERNALISM

World One in which our thoughts about the external world are (mainly) true

World Two in which our thought about the external world are all false

Putnam’s thought experiment questions

Internalism by asking us to imagine:

Our planet Earth

a person, Oscar

Another planet, Twin Earth

Oscar’s doppelganger OscarTE

26

Two important things to note:

1. Twin Earth is exactly like Earth except

the stuff that runs in rivers, that they

drink and shower in, has the chemical

composition XYZ instead of H20 (we’ll

call this waterTE

)

2. OscarTE

is identical to Oscar with

respect to his physical properties, his

phenomenological properties and his

behavioural dispositions (i.e. all his

intrinsic properties)

27

28 28

XYZ

H20

Twin Earth

Earth

That’s water

That’s water

OscarTE

Oscar

29

The next thing we have to imagine is that

Oscar is overnight transported to Twin Earth.

He finds himself in the same room with

OscarTE

…

…both of them are looking at a glass of

waterTE

…

…and both of them are thinking that’s

water

The question we must answer is ‘are the

twins thinking the same thought?’

30 30

XYZ

Twin Earth

That’s water

That’s water

OscarTE

Oscar

Question: Are the twins

thinking the same thought?

If you are an Internalist you have to say

that the twins are thinking the same

thought.

The twins are identical with respect to

all their intrinsic states (ex hypothesi).

As an Internalist you believe that the

twins’ thoughts are wholly and solely

determined by these intrinsic states.

So the twins must be thinking the same

thoughts.

31

But we might want to insist that

the twins’ thought are different.

One reason for thinking this is that

Oscar’s thought is false.

Yet OscarTE

’s thought is true

32

When Oscar thinks about water after

all Oscar is thinking about H20.

But the liquid he is thinking about on

Twin Earth is not H20, it is XYZ.

So his thought that’s water is a

thought about something that is not

water.

It is therefore false.

33

But when OscarTE

thinks that’s

water he is thinking about

waterTE

.

And waterTE

is XYZ.

When both the twins are on Twin

Earth OscarTE

’s thought that’s

water is a thought about

something that is waterTE

.

It is therefore true.

34

But if their thoughts were the same

thoughts…

… entertained in the same

circumstances…

…then their thoughts would have to

have the same truth value.

35

It is the content of a thought that…

…relative to a specific context…

…determines its truth value…

…for example the content of the

thought it’s a cat…

…entertained whilst looking at a

dog

…would generate the truth value

false

36

37 37

So if the twins’ thoughts differ in their truth value…

…then this can only be because their contexts differ…

…or because the contents of their thoughts differ…

…and ex hypothesi they are embedded in the

same context…

…so it must be the contents of their thoughts

that differ.

This means they are not thinking the same thought

38 38

Putnam argues that the twins’ thoughts do differ in

content…

…and that as they are identical with respect to

their intrinsic properties…

…i.e. in respect to all their internal properties…

…this means that ‘thoughts ain’t in the

head’…

…they must instead be determined by

the environment, or rather by the

subject’s relations to things in his

environment

Internalism, therefore, is false…

…says Putnam…

…and Externalism is true

39

40 40

EXTERNALISM

World One

World Two

41 41

If Externalism is true…

…then mental states that have contents…

…are not ‘inside the head’…

…they are not determined by states

intrinsic to the subject…

…but by the subject’s relational

states

42

Perhaps the relation between the mind and

the body is so intractable because…

…whilst physical states are the sort of

states that are inside us….

….mental states are the sort of states

we get into….

…in which case it is not surprising

that we cannot prove that they are

identical!

43

Resources:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/content-narrow/

Stanford entry on ‘intentionality’ (mental states that

have content)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/content-

externalism/ (Stanford entry on externalism)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/content-narrow/

(Stanford’s entry on Internalism (also known as

‘narrow content’)

Podcast: Rupert Sheldrake on Empirical Evidence

on the ‘Extended Mind’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnA8GUtXpXY

For reading check out the reading list

44

Where to go from here:

Online courses

There are ten online courses in philosophy run by OUDCE. You can find them here:

http://onlinecourses.conted.ox.ac.uk/subjects/philosophy.php

Podcasts

If you have enjoyed this course you might enjoy listening to my podcasts You’ll find

them on my website: www.mariannetalbot.co.uk or on the Oxford site of iTunesU

along with all sorts of other podcasts made by Oxford philosophers, and other Oxford

academics:

http://itunes.ox.ac.uk

Marianne on twitter (@oxphil_marianne) and Facebook (Marianne Talbot Philosophy)

The Philosophical Society

OUDCE’s thriving Philosophical Society currently has nearly 450 members.

Membership currently costs £12 a year. If you can’t get to Oxford as a member you

can use the discussion forums on the society’s website to discuss all sorts of issues

with other members. You will find details of benefits and of how to apply for

membership on the website: http://oxfordphilsoc.org/