VCE Unit 1 & 2 PhilosophyName: _________________Homeroom: ____________

• Introduction to Logic and Reasoning

1. Why logic and reasoning?

We all know how to think – or at least we think we know how to think! But sometimes we may feel as if our minds are cluttered, that’s there’s no clarity about an issue and that there’s just too much information. We may feel like our brains are a ball of tangled rubberbands! Alternatively, we may think that everything is completely clear cut and that there’s no problem, no questions to ask and nothing to wonder about. If you’ve been studying philosophy a little while, you’ll probably recognise that this is rarely the case! Things are never quite how they seem and things we think are clear cut are not always so. The same applies to our thinking. We may have spent very little time in the past thinking about how we think – thinking about the methods we use to make judgements. (This is called metacognition - thinking about thinking). Nor may we have thought about how to improve our thinking, what tools we can use to make ourselves better thinkers. Being a good thinker is not just about being a better philosopher or getting good grades. A good thinker makes good judgements in all aspects of their lives. They untangle the mess in their heads and find clear structured patterns. Whether we wish to have some clarity of thought, be persuasive and effective in communicating ideas or just want to ensure we get the best results with the least effort, improving our reasoning skills is crucial.

Reasoning is utilising our human ability to analyse, judge and evaluate arguments. It means considering reasons, objections and evidence in order to make a correct judgement, or at least the best one we can. Reasoning is often contrasted to emotive thinking which is responding to situations based upon our emotional impulses without due consideration of reasons. Logic is the branch of philosophy which shows us the principles and method for good reasoning. It involves careful consideration of the structure of arguments and the best ways to make good conclusions. We use reasoning to make decisions, judgements, analyse and evaluate ideas. Just as a carpenter needs sharp tools to create well carved, fine furniture, we need to create sharp minds to become good thinkers. This unit is about understanding the methods and tools that sharpen our minds to aid our thinking.

Activity Task 1 • Write 1-2 sentences saying WHY you want to become a better thinker. • WHAT makes a person a good thinker? List four things.• Write 1-2 sentences saying HOW being a better thinker will help YOU.• Write down an example where better reasoning skills could have assisted you.

2. What will I learn in this unit?This unit of work is broken into 4 sections:

This section will consider why we need good reasoning skills, what they are, and how to get them. The second section will consider some key concepts and definitions, provide illustration of the traditional standard form structure and consider deductive and inductive reasoning. The third section will consider bad reasoning – common fallacies people make and why they are faulty. Finally, there is a listing of the top 25 concepts you need to know for good reasoning.

Activity Task 2

• Read this passage by the philosopher Francis Bacon.• Write down the characteristics of mind that Bacon suggests is required to study the

Truth. • Discuss his statements that “I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth”

and “I thought my nature had a kind of familiarity and relationship with Truth.” What does he mean? What is the Truth he is referring to? After discussing these ideas write down a paragraph to summarise your thoughts.

Francis Bacon, 1605

For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblances of things … and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their subtler differences; as being gifted by nature with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture. So I thought my nature had a kind of familiarity and relationship with Truth.

- from The Advancement of Learning

3. How do I become a good thinker?You may have already identified someone who you think is a good thinker. Think about this person. What do they do that makes them so good?

To become a good or critical thinker there are a number of steps we may take.

• Clarity about issue: We become clear about what it is we are considering. • Research topic: We gather information – from brainstorming, from the internet, from text books,

from discussion with people.• Organise information: We sort and consider this information into groups by locating key

categories and sub categories. • Structure reasoning: We consider how the ideas are related to each other. We think about the

sorts of claims there are and what these claims are arguing for. That is, we identify the contention, the reasons, the objections and rebuttals.

• Consider evidence: We consider the evidence that provides support for the reasoning. • Analyse assumptions: We look at the structure of the reasoning and consider whether it is

logical and whether there are hidden assumptions.

• Evaluate argument: We decide what reasons and objections are reasonable and whether an argument should be accepted or rejected, or true or false.

• Communicate a judgement: We formulate our judgement given the steps above and communicate this to other people, including advising them as to the steps we took to reach it.

Throughout this process we are thinking about our thinking. This metacognition involves being aware of the different stages of our contemplation by considering what decisions we are making (implicitly or explicitly) and the steps we are taking. There are many concepts involved in these steps and the next section will guide you through them.

Activity Task 3

• Role play or watch Monty Python’s “Argument Sketch” (You can access a transcript or the short video from the web).

• Write down a description of the argument they are having.• Write a sentence describing what an argument is.• Do you think both parties are equally good at reasoning? Why/not? Write down your reasons.

• Argument Components & Structures1. Becoming LogicalIn human reasoning we often need to be sure that we have thought things through in a way that is right and correct. We search for and expect certainty in our reasoning and we use arguments to explain and verify our conclusions. In everyday conversations we often hear how an argument is “illogical” and therefore not acceptable.

But what is it for something to be logical? How do we know? The branch of philosophy that deals with these sorts of questions is logic. You will come across many arguments in your philosophy course but how do you know what type of argument it is and how to evaluate it? The study of logic will give you the skills to identify, construct and evaluate arguments.

In this section we will consider key concepts which help us understand arguments, identify how they are constructed and determine whether they are good arguments.

2. Identifying argumentsAn

argument is a structured set of reasons or objections that support a conclusion. To identify arguments we first need to be able to recognise the different components of arguments. Here is a map of the key components and how the role they play in an argument.

3. Standard FormPutting prose sentences into standard form is a useful exercise for philosophers. When you read arguments, like the ones you are introduced to in VCE Philosophy, you need to be able to abstract the argument from the prose so as to judge the nature of the premises and conclusion and the relation between them.

For example, here is a simple argument in prose:

The chocolate is missing and I didn’t eat it. My sister likes chocolate and given there is no one else in the house, she must have eaten it.

Here is the argument above constructed in Standard Form:

P1. The chocolate is missingP2. I didn’t eat the chocolateP3. My sister likes chocolateP4 There is no one else in the house__________________________________C. My sister ate the chocolate

Note:• The premises are indicated numbered by P1, P2, P3. P4. • The conclusion is separated by a line and indicated by C or the therefore symbol.

Activity Task 4

Place the following arguments into standard form.

1. Argos is a dog and I know that dogs are colour blind so Argos is colour blind.2. If Leanne is taller than Maja she will reach the apple on the tree. Maja is not as tall as Tino and he is definitely not taller than Leanne so Leanne will reach the apple on the apple tree.

4. Deductive and Inductive argumentsWe will now look at two types of arguments: Deductive and Inductive arguments. They are the form in which most arguments are presented and once you understand each and you are able to distinguish between them you will be able to identify them in the philosophical readings you find and you will be in a better position to evaluate those arguments.

Deductive Arguments

“A deductive argument is one in which it is thought the premises provide a guarantee of the truth of the conclusion: if the premises are true it would be impossible for the conclusion to be false.” (Note that this does not mean that the premises are in fact true).

Here are two examples:

Example 1

P1. All men are mortal

P2. Socrates is a man

____________________

C. Socrates is mortal

Example Two:

P1. If Capital Punishment deters crime, then it is justifiable killing.

P2. Capital Punishment does in fact deter crime.

______________________________________

C. Capital Punishment is a justifiable killing.

Inductive Arguments“An inductive argument is one in which it is thought that the premises

provide reasons supporting the probable truth of the conclusion: if the premises are true it is unlikely that the conclusion is false.” The premises of an inductive argument offer a level of support to the conclusion that make it only probably or possibly true. In other words, the truth of the premises only gives probability of the truth of the conclusion.

Here are two examples:

Example One

The sun has always risen so it will rise tomorrow.

P1. The sun has always risen

________________________

C. The sun will rise tomorrow.

Example Two

Every time I've seen a red-sky at sunset, the next day's weather has been beautiful. Today had a red-sky at sunset, so tomorrow will be beautiful.

P1. Every time I've seen a red-sky at sunset, the next day's weather has been beautiful.

P2. Today had a red-sky at sunset.

C. Tomorrow will be beautiful

5. Validity and SoundnessValid Arguments

“A valid argument is one in which the form is such that it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false: if the premises are true they guarantee the truth of the conclusion. It’s important to note that the premises do not actually need to be true in order for the argument to be valid.”

Here are two examples:

Example One

P1. All men are mortal.

P2. Socrates is a man.

C. Socrates is mortal

Example Two

P1. All Australians are liars

P2. John is AustralianC. John is a liar

Sound Arguments

“A sound argument is one where the form is valid and the premises are true.”Here is one example:

Example One

P1. All whales are mammals.

P2. Orcas are whales.C. Orcas are mammals.

• Bad Reasoning

1. Fallacies - Patterns of Bad ReasoningSometimes we hear an argument and we just know something is not right! For example, take a look at this:

Source: http://venganza.org/Reading this example and assessing the graph, we may well ask ourselves- – could it be that there is a relationship between global warming and pirate numbers? Should we accept this argument and do what we can to increase pirate (arrrrgh) numbers so as to finally resolve this global problem? This solution

may not sit well with us – we may intuitively feel uneasy that increased pirate numbers will decrease global warming. Indeed, our intuition is right. There is a logical problem with this example. This section will consider how common patterns of reasoning are used to create fallacious reasoning, that is, bad reasoning that we often hear people use.

2. Typical Fallacies A fallacy is a common pattern of reasoning that is always or at least commonly bad.

When we pay attention to the structure of arguments we start to see that there are recurrent similarities. The similarity may have nothing to do with the content or the ideas expressed, but rather the pattern of the argument. In the previous section we saw how there are recurrent patterns of good reasoning. This means that the logical structure is valid. Fallacies do the opposite. They can be arguments used as a means to persuade others to accept a dubious position, or may be used by ourselves to reinforce poorly supported beliefs. We need to watch out for these. Accepting bad arguments may have very bad consequences – such as choosing the wrong mobile phone, making a bad decision about our future, or a country deciding to go to war.

So let’s begin our scrutiny of these dangerous argument patterns!

http://www.christianlogic.com/images/christianlogic_catalog_thefallacydetective_cartoon_eatingcake_1.png

a. Equivocation

The parking sign said “Fine for Parking here.” Since it was fine I parked there!

From Stephen’s Guide to the logical fallacies - http://www.datanation.com/fallacies

We can produce equivocal claims in arguments. This means that the same word is used in two different claims yet has a different meaning in each. The fallacy arises because while the word is the same, the meanings are different, yet the person offering the argument supposes that they are the same.

For example in standard form

P1 The Parking sign said “Fine for Parking here”P2 It was fine to park thereC I parked there

Alternatively we could map our argument like this:-

b. Begging the question (petitio principii)

“God exists because the Bible tells me so.”

P1 The Bible tells me that God existsP2 The Bible is the word of GodC God exists

Begging the question means that in order for the reason to be true, the conclusion must be true, but of course the conclusion is relying on the truth of the reason. Hence we end up with circular reasoning, otherwise known as begging the question.

“Begging the question occurs when people fail to get to the root of their disagreement…Getting to the root of a disagreement will often force you to scrutinize your fundamental assumptions, because that is often where the disagreement lies. But this can be an unpleasant business”

Source: Crimes Against Logic by Jamie Whyte, page 109.

c. Affirming the Consequent consequentP1 If P then QP2 QC P

If I SMS my parents then they’ll stop calling meMy parents will stop calling meTherefore I will SMS them.

This pattern may look familiar – it resembles modus ponens – however affirming the consequent is faulty reasoning. You can probably see that the causal relationship between premise 2 and the conclusion are around the wrong way. The conditional statement (if p then q) means that if p occurs then q will occur. It does not mean that if q occurs then p will occur. If the formulation was put in modus ponens form (as below), then the reasoning would be valid.

d. Denying the antecedent

antecedent

P1 If P then QP2 Not PC Not QExample: If I live in Melbourne then I live in Australia

I do not live in MelbourneTherefore I do not live in Australia

I could live in Geelong or Bendigo…or anywhere else in Australia.

Again, we need to be careful as this argument pattern may look familiar – this time like modus tollens - which is valid reasoning (see below). One way we could tell this was not right was because we could find counterexamples, that is, examples where the first two premises are true but the conclusion does not follow.

e. Argumentum ad hominem – attacking the person

In the everyday sense, we think of an argument as yelling at someone we don’t like. Arguments in the philosophic sense are opportunities to construct knowledge and form well founded opinions.. The ad hominem argument poses as philosophical argument to make a well founded judgement, and yet is nothing more than a personal attack on another person.

This form of fallacy is unfortunately very common – it involves making a negative assertion about a person because they have a different view. If the other view is not accepted or acceptable, then this view should be challenged. A personal attack does not resolve the real issue but fuels anger and hostility between people, such that the genuine argument often becomes forgotten.

Read this article and see what you think of the argument:Children of the Bono Walt Shawlee 3.0, Simon Fraser University

Politics is more a game now than it has ever been in the past. Increased media attention on all thing - from celebrity lifestyles to natural disasters - makes politics all about good PR. A politician in this day and age needs to look good on camera, have a sharp radio voice, and be decisive and passionate, though not necessarily smart.

There is a need for politics to be closer to the reality TV definition of reality than to actual reality. This is why people like Bono are now so prominent among the ranks of the politically active. These morons are taking their weak grasp of the universe, putting it to a steady bass line, and boiling a complicated but poorly comprehended political and economic issue into a terse slogan.

Recent offerings from politically active, yet entirely clueless, U2 rocker Bono have him flaying Canada for our poor record in foreign aid contributions. While Bono is correct that we have not met our 0.7 per cent of GDP target for foreign aid contribution, he entirely neglects that almost no other country on the face of the planet has met this requirement either. So while he busily mocks our incompetent and vile Prime Minister, he serves only to demonstrate how poorly developed the tumour he calls his brain is.

But what is more disconcerting than Bono reaching beyond his cerebral capacity to attempt to comment on a situation that is far beyond his grasp, are the large number of people who seem to take their political cues from him. Rockers are the people you look to when you need a hair style suggestion, or maybe some fashion cues. Looking to the musical elite for political pointers is like screwing a gopher to gain knowledge about what sex with a human being feels like.

Source: http://www.peak.sfu.ca/the-peak/2005-2/issue11/op-bono.html

The highlighted sections of the text demonstrate the ad hominem form. The author is “attacking the man” rather than focussing on the arguments that deal with the issue – which is Canada’s foreign aid contributions.

f. Post hoc ergo propter hoc

Sometimes people think that there is a direct causal link between two events because one happened straight after the other.

For instance read this article:

Islanders pray to Jesus image in potTuesday Nov 22 12:05 AEDTMexicans have set up a shrine at a plant pot on the grounds of a beach resort on the Caribbean island of Cozumel after an image said to depict Jesus appeared on it following Hurricane Wilma a month ago.

A receptionist at the Occidental Grand resort noticed the image likened to Jesus' face as shaken guests emerged from a storm shelter after huddling for three days while the hurricane hurled rain and debris.

Local media are calling it a miracle and draw a link between the apparition and the fact that none of the 200 guests had suffered so much as a bruise during the storm, which tore up other beach resorts on Cozumel, bit holes in concrete buildings, ripped up sections of highway and flattened trees.

The image stands out clearly as a Jesus-like face on the side of the enamelled terra cotta planter - whose plants also survived the storm despite being outside for its duration.

"The first person who saw it was a receptionist. Then the guests started coming to see it and before long people were praying and lighting candles," said a security guard near the pot, which is roped off with a crimson cord strung between brass poles and has a simple candle burning in front of it.

Source: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=73560

In this example there is the belief that the 200 guests (and the pot plant) were saved because a miracle was performed and this is substantiated by the image that appeared on the terracotta planter. (Though it is not entirely clear whether the image appeared before, during or after the storm). The argument is linking two events - the “saving” of the guests and the image’s appearance - and claiming that because of one (the image, i.e. Jesus’ presence) the other occurred (the guests were saved). This is a fallacy because it is taken as self evident that the two events are related and no other causal explanation has been sought. For instance, the guests may have been “saved” because the shelter they were in protected them.

This is how you could construct the argument:

Activity Task 5 • Look back at the first argument in this section – the one about pirates and global warming.

Identify and explain which sort of fallacy this argument presents and reconstruct the argument in a map or standard form.

• Look at the following example, construct the argument in a map or standard form and see if you can identify a fallacy.

“Cogito ergo sum or “I think therefore I am”

Source: Rene Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy.

• Look through a newspaper or magazine and see if you can find a fallacy. Construct the fallacy in a map or standard form present it to your class so you have a range of fallacy examples.

D. Definitions Antecedent

In a conditional statement of the form if P then Q, the antecedent is the part of a claim which comes first, or prior to the consequent. (e.g. if P then Q, the antecedent is P, also see consequent, modus ponens and modus tollens)

ArgumentAn argument is a structured set of reasons or objections that support a conclusion.

ClaimA claim is a statement that someone puts forward as true. It may be a position or contention, a reason, an objection or a rebuttal.

ConclusionThe belief which the premises support is the conclusion. A conclusion is what follows from an argument. The term is used in a number of ways, but it can be thought of as the evaluated contention; i.e., your conclusion is your final judgment about whether you accept or reject an argument's main contention (also

see position and contention).

Conditional statement A claim of the form if P then Q. This means that if P is the case then Q will be the consequence. It is a statement about the relationship between P and Q rather than a statement that P and Q are in fact the case (see also antecedent and consequent).

ConsequentIn a conditional statement of the form if P then Q, the consequent is the part of a claim which comes after, or as a consequence of the antecedent (e.g. if P then Q, the consequent is Q, also see antecedent, modus ponens and modus tollens).

ContentionA contention is the claim that is the central focus of an argument. It is the statement at the top of an argument map - the position for which reasons and objections are provided. You do not necessarily have to accept a contention when you map an argument; you may map the argument in order to determine whether or not the contention is true. e.g. in a scientific argument, the contention may be a hypothesis you are examining. (See conclusion and position).

Co-premiseA co-premise is any premise in a reason other than the main premise (the central and first claim).

Critical thinkingCritical thinking is applying those general principles and procedures of thinking which are most conducive to truth or accuracy in judgment.

Deductive argumentA deductive argument is one in which it is thought the premises provide a guarantee of the truth of the conclusion: if the premises are true it would be impossible for the conclusion to be false. (See also inductive argument, valid and sound arguments).

FallacyA fallacy is a common pattern of reasoning which is usually, or at least often, poor reasoning. Many fallacies have been identified and given names to identify their pattern.

Hidden premiseA hidden premise is part of a reason which is not explicitly stated when an argument is presented, such as an assumption. A hidden premise is also a co-premise.

Inductive argumentAn inductive argument is one in which it is thought that the premises provide reasons supporting the probable truth of the conclusion: if the premises are true it is unlikely that the conclusion is false. (See also, deductive, valid and sound arguments).

Inference objectionAn inference objection is an objection to an assumed or hidden claim that is not explicitly stated in a reason (e.g. a hidden premise).

Main premiseA main premise is the most important claim in a reason or objection.

Modus PonensModus Ponens is a valid argument pattern where the antecedent is

affirmed.P1. If P then QP2. Q-------------------C. Q

Modus TollensModus Tollens is a valid argument pattern where the consequent is denied.

P1. If P then QP2. Not Q-------------------C. Not P

ObjectionAn objection is a claim which provides evidence that another claim is false.

PositionA position is the main point being advocated or considered. It can also be called the contention, the conclusion or the issue, depending upon your context.

PremisesA premise is a reason we have for a belief. The reasons are expressed as statements or propositions.

ReasonA reason is a claim which provides evidence that another claim is true. (See also premise).

RebuttalA rebuttal is an objection to an objection. That is, it seeks to provide evidence that an objection posed by someone is actually false.

Sound argument

A sound argument is one where the form is valid and the premises are true. (See also valid argument).

Standard FormAn argument in standard form consists of numbered propositions which clearly state the arguments premises and then its conclusion. e.g.

Premise One = P1. Premise Two = P2. ------------------- -----Conclusion = C.

Valid argument

A valid argument is one in which the form is such that it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false: if the premises are true they guarantee the truth of the conclusion. It’s important to note that the premises do not actually need to be true in order for the argument to be valid.

EpistemologyThe branch of Epistemology involves the study of knowledge. Questions studied include:

• What is truth? Are there ‘absolutes’?

• What can we know – are there limits?

• Is it possible that there is neither truth nor a method of finding truth?

• What is the relationship between knowledge and belief?

• Is belief context dependent? Is there any way belief cannot be context dependent?

PlatoThe Analogy of the Cave In Plato’s Republic , he illustrates his ideas about human knowledge in relation to reality and so explains the Theory of the Forms.

Plato’s allegory of the Cave tells us to imagine a dark, large cave, connected to the outside world by a long passage. In the cave, with their backs to the entrance, is a row of prisoners, with their hands tied down, unable to move.

Behind them is a bright fire. People move to and fro, behind them, all day, so that their shadows are projected onto the wall of the cave and voices are echoed. Plato says that all the prisoners ever perceive or experience in their reality are the shadows and their echoes. It would seem reasonable for them to assume that the shadows and echoes constituted all of reality.

One day, a prisoner is released and he turns round. His movement is painful and the light of the fire dazzles his eyes. He finds himself confused and would want to turn back to the wall, to the reality that he understood.

If he was dragged out of the cave altogether, the sun light would blind him and he would be bewildered. Eventually, he would start to understand this upper world. If he were to return to the cave, he would again be blinded, this time by the darkness. Anything he said to the prisoners about his experiences outside the cave would be unintelligible to them, who only know of the shadows and echoes. In fact, the prisoners who had never seen the upper world would be hostile towards the returning prisoner, not understanding anything but the shadows.

• The Cave: The visible world, our universe. The cave creates a sense of being trapped in a different world, away from light and away from reality.

• 'The shadows on the wall': What we perceive as our whole reality, i.e. all our empirical knowledge• The Prisoners: The rest of humanity, who are unable to understand the words of men who are

enlightened.• People outside the cave: These people represent real life or reality. Plato understands reality as the eternal

and immutable world (true reality) of Ideas, which contain the perfect Forms.• the Journey Out: The struggle for knowledge and the battle against bodily desires. Through philosophical

understanding, people are able to see the real world of concepts or Forms and draw conclusions from it, which are true.

• The Sun: Enlightenment or the perfect Form of the Good; a knowledge of true, essential goodness allows the soul (the eye) to gain real understanding

Interpreting the Cave – using the Analogy of the Line:

Theory of the Forms

The Problems the theory was meant to solve:

• The Ethical Problem: How can humans live a fulfilling, happy life in a contingent, changing world where every thing they attach themselves to can be taken away?

• The Problem of Permanence and Change: How can the world appear to be both permanent and changing? The world we perceive through the senses seems to be always changing. The world that we perceive through the mind, using our concepts, seems to be permanent and unchanging. Which is most real and why does it appear both ways?

The general structure of the solution: Plato splits up existence into two realms: the material realm and the transcendent realm of forms.

Humans have access to the realm of forms through the mind, through reason, given Plato's theory of the subdivisions of the human soul. This gives them access to an unchanging world, invulnerable to the pains and changes of the material world. By detaching ourselves from the material world and our bodies and developing our ability to concern ourselves with the forms, we find a value which is not open to change or disintegration. This solves the first, ethical, problem.

Splitting existence up into two realms also solves the problem of permanence and change. We perceive a different world, with different objects, through our mind than we do through the senses. It is the material world, perceived through the senses, that is changing. It is the realm of forms, perceived through the mind, that is permanent and immutable. It is this world that is more real; the world of change is merely an imperfect image of this world.

Plato used the analogy of the cave to demonstrate his Theory of Forms and is the basis of Plato’s epistemology (theory of knowledge). The world of Forms is the world of Ideas. It is more real than the sensory world of appearances.

There is a difference between the ONE and the MANY. The ONE is the true reality (Form), the MANY are imperfect replicas that we see around us. We access knowledge of the Forms through intellectual reasoning.

The Forms are interconnected and arranged as a hierarchy. The most important form is the form of the good. Like the sun it illuminates other forms. Abstract concepts, such as Beauty and Justice have a Form, as well as concrete things like chairs and beds. The Forms are eternal, perfect, invisible and unchangeable.

The forms are:

• Transcendent - the forms are not located in space and time. For example, there is no particular place or time at which redness exists.

• Pure - the forms only exemplify one property. Material objects are impure; they combine a number of properties such as blackness, circularity, and hardness into one object. A form, such as circularity, only exemplifies one property.

• Archetypes - The forms are archetypes; that is, they are perfect examples of the property that they exemplify. The forms are the perfect models upon which all material objects are based. The form of redness, for example, is red, and all red objects are simply imperfect, impure copies of this perfect form of redness.

• Ultimately Real - The forms are the ultimately real entities, not material objects. All material objects are copies or images of some collection of forms; their reality comes only from the forms.

• Causes - The forms are the causes of all things. (1) They provide the explanation of why any thing is the way it is, and (2) they are the source or origin of the being of all things.

• Systematically Interconnected - The forms comprise a system leading down from the form of the Good moving from more general to more particular, from more objective to more subjective. This systematic structure is reflected in the structure of the dialectic process by which we come to knowledge of the forms.

Activity Task 8In your workbooks:

• In pairs, identify and analyse four scenes from the movie ‘The Matrix’ that raise Plato’s ideas and concepts of metaphysics that you have studied here. Prepare these findings in the form of a presentation to be given in class.

MetaphysicsMetaphysics is perhaps the most contentious subdivision of philosophy because it is supposed to be the most fundamental and therefore is always in danger of being the most pretentious. At various times in the history of modern philosophy ‘metaphysics’ has been widely regarded as a dirty word: the logical positivists influenced many philosophers with their view that metaphysical questions are meaningless because answers to them are not empirically verifiable; more recently, Quine has argued that the questions of metaphysics, though not meaningless, should be answered by science. However, at the moment metaphysics is again an area of lively debate.

Metaphysics is often described (following Aristotle) as the study of being qua being or being as such. In other words, metaphysics is the study of being or existence abstracted from this or that particular existing thing. For example, that there is a wooden table in my office is a rather mundane fact of geography; that there is a large estuary west of Bristol is a rather more significant one. But consideration of these different states of affairs raises the same metaphysical questions; what is it to be an object like a table or an estuary?, what is it to be a property like being wooden or large?, and what is it to be a relation like being in my office or West of Bristol? One important task of metaphysics is to give an account of these most basic categories of existing things, such as objects, properties, and relations.

The objects and properties just mentioned are part of the spatio-temporal or physical world. But do non-physical or abstract objects, like numbers (see The Philosophy of Mathematics) or ideas, exist in their own right? Does God exist? The things to which a philosophical or scientific theory refers constitute the ontology of the theory, and the study of ontology is fundamental to metaphysics. As well as worrying about whether abstract entities exist, metaphysicians are concerned with, among other things, the existence of seemingly more mundane things like events, facts, persons and colours. Many philosophers have wanted to have as little in their ontology as possible: hence, materialism is the view that only material things exist; idealism is the view that only mental things exist; on the other hand dualism is the view that we cannot do without committing ourselves to the existence of two types of thing, material and mental (see Philosophy of Mind). So metaphysicians aim to describe the fundamental structure of reality and answer very general questions about what there is and how the world works. Asking how the world works involves inquiring into the nature of space and time, causation and laws of nature. Obviously, since many philosophers take science, and especially physics, to be about the fundamental structure of reality and how the world works, there is a lot of overlap between philosophy of science and metaphysics (indeed, as mentioned above, some philosophers have thought that metaphysics has been replaced by science). There is also a lot of overlap between metaphysics and philosophical logic in contemporary philosophy especially when it comes to issues concerning necessity, truth, realism, essence, and identity.

Realism, Idealism and Antirealism Is the world independent of our experience of it? Realists think that it is; idealists, phenomenalists and other antirealists deny that it is. Most of us would prephilosophically think that realism is correct but thinking hard about the possibility of conceiving of a world independent of our conception of it, and the further problem of how we could know about such a world has driven many philosophers to some form of antirealism.

Subjectivity and Objectivity People often talk about seeking an objective opinion or deride someone else’s opinion for being merely subjective. To be objective is to be impartial or to see things from all perspectives at once. We talk about a bird’s eye point of view and then, by extension, about a God’s eye point of view. Some people talk as if what really exists is just what

is objective; they may add that all that is objectively real is what is described by physics, and that values are merely subjective and so unreal. But is it really possible to be purely objective? Does the notion of ultimate objectivity really make sense? Even if it does might there be subjective facts?

Universals and Particulars We classify objects by comparing and contrasting their properties. But when we say that two things have something in common, say that two tables have the same colour or shape, should we take that literally, in other words, is there a third thing, the shape or the colour, there? Realists about universals think that we can only answer this question by positing properties and relations as real existing things, called universals, distinct from particulars like ordinary individual objects. Nominalists disagree and think that only particular things exist. Nominalists have the problem of accounting for facts about sameness of properties without invoking universals. Even if we grant that universals exist there are disputes about whether only those corresponding to properties that are actually instantiated exist, and about how they should be individuated.

Identity, Substance and Ontology What is it for the table in my office to be the same as the one I used to have at home, or the same as the one that was in my office yesterday? Judgements that some entity A is identical to some entity B seem to be either trivial or false: if A really is the same as B then we are just saying that A is A which is analytically true and knowable a priori, since it is a law of logic that everything is identical to itself; on the other hand if we are saying that some entity A is identical to another entity B, then this is surely false for no two entities can be the same entity. The classic discussion of identity statements is Frege’s ‘Sense and Reference’.

Identity and necessity Saul Kripke, in Naming and Necessity, put forward the revolutionary view that identity statements can be necessary but knowable only a posteriori. He also argued that there exist truths which are contingent but knowable a priori Identity over Time What is it for the table in my office to be the same table as the one that was there yesterday? If I replace one of the legs, is it the same table? What if I replace all of them? In virtue of what can an entity be said to persist while its properties and parts change? There are two main theories of persistence, the endurance theory which says that ordinary objects are wholly present at moments in time and that we can see numerically identical objects at different times, and the perdurance theory which says that ordinary objects, like tables, are stretched out in time just as they are in space having 'temporal parts' just as they have spatial parts.

Substance Are objects mere bundles of properties or do the properties inhere in some substratum? Substance has been defined as that which does not depend for its existence on anything else.

Personal Identity See Philosophy of Mind

Events Events are things that happen, like lunch or the Russian revolution. Should we think of events as concrete particular entities (Davidson), or as facts (Kim)? Propositions and Facts Philosophers often talk about propositions as distinct from the sentences which refer to them; but do propositions exist? What about facts?

Modality The modalities are usually taken to be necessity, possibility, probability and potentiality. If I believe that the cat is on the mat, it is clear what would make my belief true or false, namely the presence or absence of the cat on the mat. But what if I say that it is possible for the cat to be on the mat? What are the truth conditions for such beliefs? If I believe that the cat is in fact not on the mat but that if it were it would be asleep, then I believe a counterfactual statement. The analysis of modal statements, including counterfactual ones, is an important part of

contemporary metaphysics. One influential programme interprets modal logic in terms of possible worlds: ‘necessarily p’ is true if and only if ‘p’ is true in all possible worlds; ‘possibly p’ is true if and only if ‘p’ is true in at least one possible world. We must then ask what a possible world is. Modal realists like David Lewis think that all possible worlds exist as concrete entities just like the actual world; others think that they exist but are abstract entities, another view is that they are fictions.

Causation and Laws The notions of cause and effect and fundamental to our understanding of the world, but what is it for something to cause something else? What is the relationship between causation and regularities (Hume), and between causation and explanation (Lewis, Owens)? Can causation be explained in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions (Mackie) or in terms of counterfactuals (Lewis)? Should we think of causes and effects as events (Davidson) or as facts (Mellor)? Probabilistic Causation Many scientific theories give causal explanations based on statistical relations, and some philosophers now believe that physics tells us that the world is fundamentally indeterministic. Hence, the traditional view of a cause as being sufficient for its effect may have to be abandoned and replaced by the idea that causes merely alter the probabilities of their effects. See also The Philosophy of Science and The Philosophy of Physics. Laws of Nature The notion of a law of nature is central in many philosophical accounts of causation and explanation. What is a law of nature and how do they differ from accidental generalisations like the fact that all US presidents of the Twentieth Century have been men? An important (Humean) view of laws (defended by Frank Ramsey and David Lewis) is that they are in fact just a particular sort of regularity. Others hold that laws of nature are relations between universals.

Space and Time Is the future real? What about the past? Is time itself real and does it flow? What is the relationship between space and time? Is time conceivable without change? We can move about in all three dimensions of space freely, but in time our movement seems to be one-way from the past to the future, that is time seems to have a direction. How do we explain this fact? What is the relationship between the direction of time and the direction of causation? Activity Task 7In your workbooks:

• Brainstorm a long list of items that come to mind that exist. Work in pairs to arrange these in some kind of mindmap, making appropriate groupings and connections, and justifying these to the class. • Examine Plato’s Theory of Forms, Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Berkeley’s metaphysics and present clear explanations of each, showing understanding of all relevant terms. • Create a chart or poster, showing different philosophical accounts of reality.

Philosophy of MindPhilosophy of mind - The branch of philosophy that is concerned with the nature of mental phenomena in general

and the role of consciousness, sensation, perception, concepts, action, reasoning, intention, belief, memory, etc. in particular. Standard problems include those of free will, personal identity, mind-body problem, other minds, computationalism, etc.

The philosophers of mind deal with metaphysics as it is concerned with the nature of mental phenomena, how mental phenomena are related to natural phenomena, and philosophical psychology broadly construed. Philosophy of psychology is sometimes considered as a subfield of philosophy of mind. However it is, perhaps, more closely related to philosophy of science.

In contrast to philosophy of psychology, philosophical psychology (and thus philosophy of mind) is concerned with investigations of folk psychology and focuses on discussions of such 'common sense' concepts as memory, sensation, perception, consciousness, belief, desire, intentions, action, reasoning, and so on. The more metaphysical problems include, first and foremost, the mind-body problem as well as the problems of free will, personal identity, and self-deception.

Recently, much of the work in philosophy of mind has become closely associated to the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science. As cognitive scientists, philosophers of mind have become interested in a number of new problems including the relation between computation and thought, representations in the brain, and functionalism as it relates to minds. mind-body problem - Most generally, the problem of describing the relationship between the mind and body (or brain). First explicitly raised by Descartes, it is, perhaps, the best know problem in the philosophy of mind. See dualism, epiphenomenalism, monism, and materialism.

Perhaps the oldest problem in the philosophy of mind, the mind-body problem dates back at least to Plato. By some counts, Plato was the first dualist, with the first materialist, Aristotle, close at hand. Plato contends that the soul is distinct from the body and is capable of maintaining a separate existence from it. Aristotle, in contrast, feels that body and soul are two aspects of the same underlying substance (form and matter). It should be noted that it is by no means unanimous that Aristotle was not a dualist.

Dualism has been the driving force behind the existence of the mind-body problem and has been by far the majority view until recently. Partially due to the influence of Descartes, the dualist position has reigned supreme. However, by espousing a distinct type of substance for the mind, dualists invite the question: What is it that makes it possible for two contraries (one spatially existing and the other not) to interact as our minds seem to with our brains?

In attempting to answer this question, Descartes claimed that the pineal gland was the interface between the mind and the rest of the brain; he considered it the seat of the soul. The causal interactions between mind and brain are two-way. In perception, the physical states of the world influence our bodies which influence our brains which, via the pineal gland, influence our soul. The reverse is true for deliberate action. However, even on this account, it remains a mystery how states of the non-spatial soul (or mind) are to causally interact with the states of the spatial brain.

Some ways of answering, or avoiding, this difficulty fall under the names of epiphenomenalism, monism, and materialism.

DUALISTSDualism is a time-honored philosophical position which is exemplified by:

• Pre-Socratics' appearance/reality distinction

• Plato's forms/world distinction

• Hume's fact/value distinction

• Kant's empirical phenomena/transcendental noumena distinction

• Heidegger's being/time distinction

• Russell's existence/subsistence distinction

• Descartes mind/matter distinction

The idea that the mind and body are two separate substances; it is possible to survive death, as the soul disembodies. Human beings consist of both physical bodies and non physical minds and that the mind is the essence of a person.

PlatoPlato’s 3 main ideas on the body and soul: • DUALISM – the theory that the body and mind exist separate from each other but linked in some way • MATERIALISM – the theory that our minds are inseparable from our bodies • IDEALISM – the theory that our bodies are unreal, and an illusion – our minds are the only reality

Plato was a dualist. He believed that the soul and the body are two separate substances that interact. The real identity of the person lies with the soul.

The Body and the mind are often in opposition. The body is interested in sense pleasures, such as eating and sleeping, which often get in the way of intellectual pursuits. Often the demands of the body take over completely. Plato saw the body as a nuisance and a bind. It is not the real person. We may say I have a body but not I am a body. Plato believed that the real person is separate and distinct from the body it inhabits.

The soul has existed prior to being in the present body and, on death, will leave the body. The soul is on a higher level of reality than the body, being immortal with understanding of the realm of ideas. The body is concerned with the senses, the soul with reason.

The soul is not always perfect however, the body corrupts it and drags it down Humans have the task of taking care of the soul but is easily corrupted.

Plato’s four arguments for the existence of a soulPlato’s four arguments for the existence of a soul are as follows:

• The Linguistic Argument: the fact that we use language about ourselves which suggests a distinction. I, we, me refers to an inner, separate reality.

• The Knowledge Argument: Somehow within the world of flux and change we can grasp these universals which are not affected by time and space; so there must be something within us that is equally unaffected by flux and change that has the ability to grasp them.

• The Argument from Recollection: Because we know the universals we must have seen them before.

• Cycle of Opposites: We know things by their opposites. Death must come from life and life from death. This suggests a perpetual recycling of human souls from the realm of the living to the realm of the dead and back.

Criticisms of Plato

Key Points to Remember:• According to Plato, people have no real freedom if their lives are concentrated on physical requirements.• Your soul can free itself and direct your life, both physical circumstances and intellectual pursuits.• Only after bodily existence can the soul rise to the world of ideas.• For Plato, body and soul are two different things. The soul is immortal – it inhabits the body temporarily.

• Plato held that the soul pre existed birth and continued after death.• Stephen Evans: “…Plato offers a rational argument for the existence of another reality, which can be read

off this world, even though not fully; this involves free choice.”

• Magee: “The theory that there is another world than this…gives value and meaning to our present world...”

Rene DescartesArgues that the body is extended (in time and space and subject to decay) and The mind is unextended. He identified the ‘mind’ as the root of all the feeling and sensations that he experienced but could not locate physically.

In theory we can doubt the existence of everything including the body but cannot doubt that I am thinking.

He saw the mind/body as existing in two different realms- the mental and the physical. The mind is non-spatial, and conscious. It experiences thought, feelings, desires and emotions. This is private and non-observable. The body is located in time and space. It is material. It is not conscious. It is publicly observable.

He is also an interactionist as he suggested that INTERACTIONISM. There are two ‘substances’ within a person which is the material and the non-material (self/mind/soul) and these interact. This is done through the pineal gland- a small part of the brain located between the right and left hemispheres, for which he could find no other purpose.

Criticisms of Descartes:

MonistsMonism is the metaphysical and theological view that all is one. Human beings are made up of one substance (not two, as in dualism) and that what it is to be human can be defined in material terms.

Gilbert Rye (Critique of Dualism/Supporter Of Monism)Gilbert Ryle formulates a materialist, psychological challenge to dualism, but to Cartesian dualism in particular.

In "The Concept of Mind" (1949), he argued that the idea of the soul, which he described as "The ghost in the machine" was “A category mistake". He argued that it was a mistake in incorrect use of language. It resulted to people speaking of the mind and body as different phenomena as if the soul was something identifiably extra within a person. He used the example of someone watching a cricket game and asking where the team spirit was.

In this way, Ryle argued that talk of the soul was talk about the way a person acted and integrated with others in the world. It was not separate and distinct. To describe someone as clever or happy did not require the existence of a separate thing called mind or soul. The mind or spirit does not exist hence the phrase there is no ghost in the machine

MaterialismMaterialism is the view that only that which we can come to knowledge of empirically (i.e. through the senses) is real and do not accept the existence of a separate soul as it cannot be verified. It is based on and understanding of the universe that has one substance only, that being material, and generally a belief that the universe is governed by cause and effect.

Richard DawkinsHe is a materialist who believed that Human beings are bytes of digital information. There is no soul or consciousness as we are the sum total of our genes. He concentrates of the idea that humans are merely carriers of

information and DNA.

For Dawkins, the only conceivable theory is that of evolution. We are as we are because of our genetic make up, not the efforts of our soul to guide us towards the realm of ideas each change is due to evolution. There is no soul which continues, there is only the survival of DNA, the function of life

While Dawkins does not deal with the concept of the soul he looks instead at the idea of consciousness. Dawkins addresses this feeling of individuality within each human by arguing that this is because our genes are working together. We cannot perceive ourselves as a colony but as a whole. This working together of our genes is based on the desire for survival of those genes.

The development of consciousness:

• If an act has bad results the animal will not repeat it

• If an act has good results the animal will repeat it

• Ultimately the colony of genes needs a central control in order for it to function so the colony develops the brain

• Animals evolve so behaviour is no longer trial and error but they develop the capacity to predict the results of certain action. This enables them to choose how to behave.

Dawkins claims that now that the consciousness has evolved, the genes’ need for replication is no longer the driving force behind contemporary evolution. There is a new replicator, a meme. The meme can be seen as a parasitic structure lodged in the brain

Criticisms of Dawkins:

Soft MaterialistThey believe that people are wholes, not divided as in dualism, but do not believe that all a person is, is a sum total of genes. Unlike Dawkins (a harsh materialist) soft materialists believe in life after death.

John HickHick’s view of personal identity, is that a person is more than the mental processes. A Person includes both the physical and the mental and the Human is therefore a psycho physical unity.

What lives after death is a replica or a duplicate. The replica comes to life in heaven as an exact copy of the person who lived and died on earth. God creates this replica to live on after death.

The important thing to remember about John Hick’s ‘Replica’ theory is the distinction he makes between logical possibility and factual possibility. He himself claims that his theory is not factually possible, but suggests that changes in the way matter functions could make it factually possible.

Hick sets up three scenarios through which he attempts to demonstrate that resurrection of the person is a logically possible hypothesis.

• A man is at a conference in London, and during the blinking of his eyes, he finds himself transported to a conference in New York. He has continuity of body, memory and personality (he’s the same person) which is verified by friends of his from London who travel to New York to see him.

• Instead of a sudden disappearance, there is a sudden death. The man at the conference in London dies and an exactly similar ‘replica’ of him appears in New York. There is continuity of memory, body and personality and a living counterpart of a dead man in another country.

• A person dies and is ‘replicated’ in another world which is populated with other dead persons who have been ‘replicated.’ It is God who brings this resurrection/’replication’ about.

Number 3 is Hick’s ‘replica’ theory. He suggests that it is logically possible for there to exist a separate world populated by resurrected persons (‘replicas’) who are brought back to life by God. He uses these three examples to show that logically (not factually) this can happen, but that being resurrected is quite different to merely being transported from say, London to New York.

Strengths• If you accept God’s omnipotent existence, this theory is plausible. Hick claims it is far more biblical. This

theory is totally reliant on the acceptance of God.

• He does not posit a soul and so does not have to verify one

• Hick’s theory challenges the conflicting claims argument because by it everyone goes to heaven: Buddhists as well as theists

• The theory does not depend upon dualism and is possibly acceptable to materialists.

• The theory is possible in terms of logic.

Criticisms• To some philosophers there is just too much suffering. As we saw in our criticisms of Irenaeus, the end can

never be worth the suffering of one innocent child. In Hick’s theodicy evil is a necessary thing, willed by God, as it the only way to achieve the aim of developing human souls.

• Vardy challenges Hick. Would John Smith be the same person? Hick argues that he would if he thought of himself and others thought of himself as the same person, but is this enough? It is a replica the same person?

• Perhaps the biggest critique of the is that he doesn't successfully get over the continuity problem. Vardy thinks that there is a break in continuity so much so that the replicated could not be the same person.

• Bernard Williams argues that Hick’s portrayal of an endless life of replications would be a meaningless life. It might prove a boring life.

• Hick’s basic argument is that this theory is logically coherent and there is no evidence to the contrary. However, this is a weak form of argument. Just because something could happen, doesn’t mean that it actually happens.

• Logical possibility does not equate to factual possibility.

IdealismIs a monist theory which holds that the most important element in the nature of reality is mind or spirit. Classic idealism tends towards the theory that there is no such entity as a physical world, all matter, in the sense of an independently existing object. They also posit that all mental events and processes are brain events. Bishop Berkley held this view.

We, robot: the future is hereMarch 14, 2005

Japanese society is embracing the new generation of robots to make people's lives easier at home and at work, writes Anthony Faiola.Saya, a perky receptionist in a smart canary-yellow suit, beamed a smile from behind the "May I Help You?" sign on her desk, offering greetings and answering questions posed by visitors at a local university.

But when she failed to welcome a workman who had just walked by, a professor stormed up to her and dished out a harsh reprimand.

"You're so stupid!" said the professor, Hiroshi Kobayashi, towering over her desk.

"Eh?" she responded, her face wrinkling into a scowl. "I tell you, I am not stupid!"

The truth is, Saya isn't even human. But in a country where robots are changing the way people live, work, play and even love, that doesn't stop Saya the cyber-receptionist from defending herself from men who are out of line. With voice recognition technology allowing 700 verbal responses and an almost infinite number of facial expressions from joy to despair, surprise to rage, Saya may not be biological - but she is nobody's fool.

"I almost feel like she's a real person," said Kobayashi, an associate professor at the Tokyo University of Science and Saya's inventor. Having worked at the university for almost two years now, she's an old hand at her job. "She has a temper ... and she sometimes makes mistakes, especially when she has low energy," the professor said.

Saya's wrath is the latest sign of the rise of the robot. Analysts say Japan is leading the world in a new generation of consumer robots. The latest models, such as Saya, will be demonstrated at the World Expo opening just outside Nagoya on March 25.

Some scientists are calling the wave a technological force poised to change human lifestyles more radically than the advent of the personal computer or the mobile phone.

Though perhaps years away in other countries, this long-awaited, as-seen-on-TV world - think The Jetsons or Blade Runner - is beginning to unfold in Japan, with robots now used as receptionists, night watchmen, hospital workers, guides, pets and more.

The onslaught of new robots led Japan's Government to establish a committee to draw up safety guidelines for the keeping of robots in homes and offices.

But Japan's NEDO institute, which co-ordinates national science research and development, found it too hard to set a single standard to cover the many types of robots, Daily Yomiuri newspaper reported. The panel did check the design of robots "to ensure they would not harm humans" at the World Expo, the newspaper reported.

Safety is becoming a focus for domestic robot makers as interaction between machines and humans in the household becomes more common.

Officials compiled a report in January predicting that every household in Japan will own at least one robot by 2015, perhaps sooner.

Scientists and government authorities have dubbed 2005 the unofficial "year of the robot", with humans set to interact with their electronic spawn as never before at the expo.

At the 175-hectare site, 15 million visitors are expected to mingle with some of the most highly developed examples of Japanese artificial intelligence, many of which are on sale or will be within a year.

Greeting visitors in four languages and guiding them to their desired destinations will be Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' yellow midget robot, Wakamaru. A trio of humanoid robots by Sony, Toyota and Honda will dance and play musical instruments at the opening ceremony. Parents can leave their children in the care of a robotic babysitter - NEC's PaPeRo - which recognises individual children's faces and can notify parents by mobile phone in case of emergency.

Also on display: a wheelchair robot, being deployed by the southern city of Kitakyushu, that navigates traffic crossings and footpaths using a global positioning and integrated circuit chip system. In June, expo visitors can enter a robot room - a more distant vision of the future where, by 2020, merely speaking a word from your couch will open the refrigerator door, allowing your personal robot assistant to deliver the cold beverage of your choice.

"We have reached the point in Japan of a major breakthrough in the use of robot technology and our society is changing as a result," said Kazuya Abe, an official at NEDO. "People are and will be living alongside robots, which are seen here as more than just machines. This is all about AI [artificial intelligence], this is about the creation of something that is not human, but can be a complement or companion to humans in society. That future is happening here now."

While employing a measure of new technology, many such robots are envisioned merely as new interfaces - more user-friendly means of combining existing ways of accessing the internet or reaching loved ones through mobile phone networks.

In the quest for artificial intelligence, the United States is perhaps just as advanced as Japan. But the focus in the US has been

largely on military applications. By contrast, the Japanese Government, academic institutions and corporations are investing billions of dollars on consumer robots aimed at altering everyday life, leading to an earlier dawn of what many in Japan call the "age of the robot".

But the robotic rush in Japan is also being driven by unique societal needs. Confronting a major depopulation problem due to a record low birthrate and its status as the nation with the longest lifespan on Earth, Japanese are fretting about who will staff the factory floors of the world's second-largest economy in the years ahead. Toyota, Japan's biggest car maker, has come up with one answer in moving to create a line of worker robots with human-like hands able to perform multiple sophisticated tasks.

With Japanese youth shying from so-called 3-K jobs - referring to the Japanese words for labor that is dirty, dangerous or physically taxing - Alsok, the nation's second-largest security guard company, has developed a line of robo-cops.

The guard robots, one version of which is being used by a client in southern Japan, can detect and thwart intruders using sensors and paint guns. They can also put out fires and spot water leaks.

It is perhaps no surprise that robots would find their first major foothold in Japan. Japanese dolls and toys, including a moving crab using clockwork technology dating to the 1800s, are considered by some to be among the first robots.

Rather than the monstrous Terminators of American movies, robots here are instead seen as gentle, even idealistic creatures epitomised by Astroboy, the 1960s Japanese cartoon about an electronic kid with a big heart.

"In Western countries, humanoid robots are still not very accepted, but they are in Japan," said Norihiro Hagita, director of the ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories in Keihanna Science City near Kyoto.

"One reason is religion. In Japanese [Shinto] religion, we believe that all things have gods within them. But in Western countries, most people believe in only one God. For us, however, a robot can have an energy all its own."

A case in point is the Paro - a robotic baby harp seal, developed with $12.6 million in government grants, that went on sale commercially this month for $4400 each. All 200 units sold out in less than 50 hours.

The seal is meant to provide therapy for the elderly who are filling Japanese nursing homes at an alarming rate while often falling prey to depression and loneliness.

With 30 sensors, the seal begins, over time, to recognise its master's voice and hand gestures. It coos and flaps its furry, white down in delight at gentle nuzzles, but squeals in anger when handled roughly.

Researchers have been testing the robot's effect on the elderly at a nursing home in Tsukuba, 65 kilometres from Tokyo. During a recent visit, the sad eyes of elderly residents lit up as the two resident robot seals were brought out.

Tests have shown the cute newcomers reduce stress and depression among the elderly. Just ask Sumi Kasuya, 89, who cradled a seal robot while singing it a lullaby on a recent afternoon.

"I have no grandchildren and my family does not come to see me very often," said Kasuya, clutching fast to the baby seal robot wiggling in her arms. "So I have her," she said, pointing to the seal. "She is so cute, and is always happy to see me."

with Akiko Yamamoto

The Washington Post

What are the Laws of Robotics, anyway?The Three Laws of Robotics are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

From Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D., as quoted in I, Robot.

In Robots and Empire (ch. 63), the "Zeroth Law" is extrapolated, and the other Three Laws modified accordingly:

0. A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. Unlike the Three Laws, however, the Zeroth Law is not a fundamental part of positronic robotic engineering, is not part of all positronic robots, and, in fact, requires a very sophisticated robot to even accept it.

Asimov claimed that the Three Laws were originated by John W. Campbell in a conversation they had on December 23, 1940. Campbell in turn maintained that he picked them out of Asimov's stories and discussions, and that his role was merely to state them explicitly.

AI & what it can tell us about the nature of ‘Mind’The philosophy of artificial intelligence considers the relationship between machines and thought and attempts to answer such question as:

• Can a machine act intelligently? Can it solve any problem that a person would solve by thinking?

• Can a machine have a mind, mental states and consciousness in the same sense humans do? Can it feel?

• Are human intelligence and machine intelligence the same? Is the human brain essentially a computer?

Can a machine display general intelligence?

The brain can be simulated. Marvin Minsky writes that "if the nervous system obeys the laws of physics and chemistry, which we have every reason to suppose it does, then .... we ... ought to be able to reproduce the behavior of the nervous system with some physical device." This argument, first introduced as early as 1943 and vividly described by Hans Moravec in 1988, is now associated with futurist Ray Kurzweil , who estimates that computer power will sufficient for a complete brain simulation by the year 2029.

Can a machine have a mind, consciousness and mental states?

This is a philosophical question, related to the problem of other minds and the hard problem of consciousness.

The words "mind" and "consciousness" are used by different communities in different ways. Some new age thinkers, for example, use the word "consciousness" to describe something similar to Bergson's "élan vital": an invisible, energetic fluid that permeates life and especially the mind. Science fiction writers use the word to describe some essential property that makes us human: a machine or alien that is "conscious" will be presented as a fully human character, with intelligence, desires, will, insight, pride and so on. (Science fiction writers also use the words "sentience", "sapience," "self-awareness" or "ghost" (as in the Ghost in the Shell manga and anime series) to describe this essential human property.) For others, the words "mind" or "consciousness" are used as a kind of secular synonym for the soul.

For philosophers, neuroscientists and cognitive scientists, the words are used in a way that is both more precise and more mundane: they refer to the familiar, everyday experience of having a "thought in your head", like a perception, a dream, an intention or a plan, and to the way we know something, or mean something or understand something. "It's not hard to give a commonsense definition of consciousness" observes philosopher John Searle.

What is mysterious is not so much what it is but how it is: how does a lump of fatty tissue and electricity give rise to this (familiar) experience of perceiving, meaning or thinking?

Philosophers call this the hard problem of consciousness. It is the latest version of a classic problem in the philosophy of mind called the "mind-body problem." A related problem is the problem of meaning or understanding (which philosophers call "intentionality"): what is the connection between our thoughts (i.e. patterns of neurons) and what we are thinking about (i.e. objects and situations out in the world)? A third issue is the problem of experience (or "phenomenology"): If two people see the same thing, do they have the same experience? Or are there things "inside their head" (called "qualia") that can be different from person to person?

Neurobiologists believe all these problems will be solved as we begin to identify the neural correlates of consciousness: the actual machinery in our heads that creates the mind, experience and understanding. Even the harshest critics of artificial intelligence agree that the brain is just a machine, and that consciousness and intelligence are the result of a physical processes in the brain. The difficult philosophical question is this: can a computer program, running on a digital machine that shuffles the binary digits of zero and one, duplicate the

ability of the neurons to create minds, with mental states (like understanding or perceiving), and ultimately, the experience of consciousness?

Arguments that a computer can't have a mind and mental states

John Searle asks us to consider a thought experiment: suppose we have written a computer program that passes the Turing Test and demonstrates "general intelligent action." Suppose, specifically that the program can converse in fluent Chinese. Write the program on 3x5 cards and give them to an ordinary person. Lock the person into a room and have him follow the instructions on the cards. He will copy out Chinese characters and pass them in and out of the room through a slot. From the outside, it will appear that the Chinese room contains a fully intelligent person who speaks Chinese. The question is this: is there anyone (or anything) in the room that understands Chinese? That is, is there anything that has the mental state of understanding, or which has conscious awareness of what is being discussed in Chinese? The man is clearly not aware. The room can't be aware. The cards certainly aren't aware. Searle concludes that the Chinese room, or any other physical symbol system, can not have a mind.

Searle goes on to argue that actual mental states and consciousness require (yet to be described) "actual physical-chemical properties of actual human brains." He argues there are special "causal properties" of brains and neurons that gives rise to minds: in his words "brains cause minds."

Can a machine have emotions?

Hans Moravec believes "I think robots in general will be quite emotional about being nice people" and describes emotions in terms of the behaviors they cause. Fear is a source of urgency. Empathy is a necessary component of good human computer interaction. He says robots "will try to please you in an apparently selfless manner because it will get a thrill out of this positive reinforcement. You can interpret this as a kind of love." Daniel Crevier writes "Moravec's point is that emotions are just devices for channeling behavior in a direction beneficial to the survival of one's species."

The question of whether the machine actually feels an emotion, or whether it merely acts as if feeling an emotion is the philosophical question, "can a machine be conscious?" in another form.

Can a machine be self aware?

"Self awareness", as noted above, is sometimes used by science fiction writers as a name for the essential human property that makes a character fully human. Turing strips away all other properties of human beings and reduces the question to "can a machine be the subject of it's own thought?" Can it think about itself? Viewed in this way, it is obvious that a program can be written that can report on its own internal states, such as a debugger.

Can a machine be original or creative?

Turing reduces this to the question of whether a machine can “take us by surprise" and argues that this is obviously true, as any programmer can attest.He notes that, with enough storage capacity, a computer can behave in an astronomical number of different ways. It must be possible, even trivial, for a computer that can represent ideas to combine them in new ways. (Douglas Lenat 's Automated Mathematician, as one example, combined ideas to discover new mathematical truths.)

Can a machine have a soul?

Finally, some (who believe in the existance of a soul)would argue that

• Thinking is a function of man’s immortal soul

Alan Turing called this “the theological objection” and writes

In attempting to construct such machines we should not be irreverently usurping His power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children: rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that he creates.

Basic Questions

Q. What is artificial intelligence?

A. It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable.

Q. Yes, but what is intelligence?

A. Intelligence is the computational part of the ability to achieve goals in the world. Varying kinds and degrees of intelligence occur in people, many animals and some machines.

Q. Isn't there a solid definition of intelligence that doesn't depend on relating it to human intelligence?

A. Not yet. The problem is that we cannot yet characterize in general what kinds of computational procedures we want to call intelligent. We understand some of the mechanisms of intelligence and not others.

Q. Is intelligence a single thing so that one can ask a yes or no question ``Is this machine intelligent or not?''?

A. No. Intelligence involves mechanisms, and AI research has discovered how to make computers carry out some of them and not others. If doing a task requires only mechanisms that are well understood today, computer programs can give very impressive performances on these tasks. Such programs should be considered ``somewhat intelligent''.

Q. Isn't AI about simulating human intelligence?

A. Sometimes but not always or even usually. On the one hand, we can learn something about how to make machines solve problems by observing other people or just by observing our own methods. On the other hand, most work in AI involves studying the problems the world presents to intelligence rather than studying people or animals. AI researchers are free to use methods that are not observed in people or that involve much more computing than people can do.

Q. What about IQ? Do computer programs have IQs?

A. No. IQ is based on the rates at which intelligence develops in children. It is the ratio of the age at which a child normally makes a certain score to the child's age. The scale is extended to adults in a suitable way. IQ correlates well with various measures of success or failure in life, but making computers that can score high on IQ tests would be weakly correlated with their usefulness. For example, the ability of a child to repeat back a long sequence of digits correlates well with other intellectual abilities, perhaps because it measures how much information the child can compute with at once. However, ``digit span'' is trivial for even extremely limited computers.

However, some of the problems on IQ tests are useful challenges for AI.

Q. What about other comparisons between human and computer intelligence?

Arthur R. Jensen a leading researcher in human intelligence, suggests that all normal humans have the same intellectual mechanisms and that differences in intelligence are related to ``quantitative biochemical and physiological conditions''. I see them as speed, short term memory, and the ability to form accurate and retrievable long term memories.

Whether or not Jensen is right about human intelligence, the situation in AI today is the reverse.

Computer programs have plenty of speed and memory but their abilities correspond to the intellectual mechanisms that program designers understand well enough to put in programs. Some abilities that children normally don't develop till they are teenagers may be in, and some abilities possessed by two year olds are still out. The matter is further complicated by the fact that the cognitive sciences still have not succeeded in determining exactly what the human abilities are. Very likely the organization of the intellectual mechanisms for AI can usefully be different from that in people.

Whenever people do better than computers on some task or computers use a lot of computation to do as well as people, this demonstrates that the program designers lack understanding of the intellectual mechanisms required to do the task efficiently.

Q. When did AI research start?

A. After WWII, a number of people independently started to work on intelligent machines. The English mathematician Alan Turing may have been the first. He gave a lecture on it in 1947. He also may have been the first to decide that AI was best researched by programming computers rather than by building machines. By the late 1950s, there were many researchers on AI, and most of them were basing their work on programming computers.

Q. Does AI aim to put the human mind into the computer?

A. Some researchers say they have that objective, but maybe they are using the phrase metaphorically. The human mind has a lot of peculiarities, and I'm not sure anyone is serious about imitating all of them.

Q. What is the Turing test?

A. Alan Turing's 1950 article Computing Machinery and Intelligence discussed conditions for considering a machine to be intelligent. He argued that if the machine could successfully pretend to be human to a knowledgeable observer then you certainly should consider it intelligent. This test would satisfy most people but not all philosophers. The observer could interact with the machine and a human by teletype (to avoid requiring that the machine imitate the appearance or voice of the person), and the human would try to persuade the observer that it was human and the machine would try to fool the observer.

The Turing test is a one-sided test. A machine that passes the test should certainly be considered intelligent, but a machine could still be considered intelligent without knowing enough about humans to imitate a human.

Q. Does AI aim at human-level intelligence?

A. Yes. The ultimate effort is to make computer programs that can solve problems and achieve goals in the world as well as humans. However, many people involved in particular research areas are much less ambitious.

Q. How far is AI from reaching human-level intelligence? When will it happen?

A. A few people think that human-level intelligence can be achieved by writing large numbers of programs of the kind people are now writing and assembling vast knowledge bases of facts in the languages now used for expressing knowledge.

However, most AI researchers believe that new fundamental ideas are required, and therefore it cannot be predicted when human-level intelligence will be achieved.

Q. Are computers the right kind of machine to be made intelligent?

A. Computers can be programmed to simulate any kind of machine.

Many researchers invented non-computer machines, hoping that they would be intelligent in different ways than the computer programs could be. However, they usually simulate their invented machines on a computer and come to doubt that the new machine is worth building. Because many billions of dollars that have been spent in making computers faster and faster, another kind of machine would have to be very fast to perform better than a program on a computer simulating the machine.

Q. Are computers fast enough to be intelligent?

A. Some people think much faster computers are required as well as new ideas. My own opinion is that the computers of 30 years ago were fast enough if only we knew how to program them. Of course, quite apart from the ambitions of AI researchers, computers will keep getting faster.

Q. What about making a ``child machine'' that could improve by reading and by learning from experience?

A. This idea has been proposed many times, starting in the 1940s. Eventually, it will be made to work. However, AI programs haven't yet reached the level of being able to learn much of what a child learns from physical experience. Nor do present programs understand language well enough to learn much by reading.

Q. Might an AI system be able to bootstrap itself to higher and higher level intelligence by thinking about AI?

A. I think yes, but we aren't yet at a level of AI at which this process can begin.

Q. What about chess?

A. Alexander Kronrod, a Russian AI researcher, said ``Chess is the Drosophila of AI.'' He was making an analogy with geneticists' use of that fruit fly to study inheritance. Playing chess requires certain intellectual mechanisms and not others. Chess programs now play at grandmaster level, but they do it with limited intellectual mechanisms compared to those used by a human chess player, substituting large amounts of computation for understanding. Once we understand these mechanisms better, we can build human-level chess programs that do far less computation than do present programs.

Unfortunately, the competitive and commercial aspects of making computers play chess have taken precedence over using chess as a scientific domain. It is as if the geneticists after 1910 had organized fruit fly races and concentrated their efforts on breeding fruit flies that could win these races.

Q. Don't some people say that AI is a bad idea?

A. The philosopher Hubert Dreyfus says that AI is impossible. The computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum says the idea is obscene, anti-human and immoral. Various people have said that since artificial intelligence hasn't reached human level by now, it must be impossible. Still other people are disappointed that companies they invested in went bankrupt.

Free Will and Determinism There are three theories of free will and determinism that you will need to be aware of:

• Hard Determinism is the theory that human behaviour and actions are wholly determined by external factors, and therefore humans do not have genuine free will or ethical accountability. There are several different supporting views for this belief, which incorporates philosophical determinism, psychological determinism, theological determinism and scientific determinism.

• Soft Determinism is the theory that human behaviour and actions are wholly determined by causal events, but human free will does exist when defined as the capacity to act according to one’s nature which is shaped by external factors such as heredity, society and upbringing).

• Libertarianism is the theory that humans do have genuine freedom to make a morally undetermined decision, although our behaviour may be partially determined by external factors.

You also need to understand that philosophers distinguish between two different definitions of freedom. This will invariably influence one’s views on free will and determinism:

• The liberty of indifference is a genuine freedom to act according to independent choices that are not wholly determined by eternal constraints such as heredity, background and education.

• The liberty of spontaneity is the freedom to act according to one’s nature, the ability to do what one wishes to do although what they wish to do is determined by their nature which, in turn, is shaped by external constraints such as heredity, background and education.

PHILOSOPHICAL DETERMINISMTHE THEORY OF UNIVERSAL CAUSATION Philosophical determinism, like all forms of hard determinism, is based on the theory of Universal Causation. This is the belief that everything in the universe including all human actions and choices has a cause. Thus all events are causally determined and theoretically predictable; you just need to know the effect of the causes (a mechanistic philosophy, put forward in the Cosmological argument, Aquinas).THE ILLUSION OF MORAL CHOICE The illusion of moral choice is a result of our ignorance of what causes these choices, leading us to believe they have no cause.

JOHN LOCKE - used an analogy in which a sleeping man is locked in a darkened room. On awakening he decides he will remain in the room, unaware that the room is locked. In reality the man has no freedom to choose, he cannot get out of the room. However, his ignorance of his true condition has led him to believe that he does have the

freedom to choose to remain in the room.

DAVID HUME - radical empiricist commented that we can observe patterns in the physical world that can also be found in the decisions we make. Our decisions thus, just like the physical world, are causally determined. Theoretically then, we could know the future if we were knowledgeable of all the causes in the universe and their effects.

BENEDICT SPINOZA “In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to will this or that by a cause, which has been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on until infinity.”Implication for moral responsibility We cannot be held morally responsible for our actions if they are causally determined and not a result of our own moral choice. The implication thus is that Adolf Hitler is no more culpable for his actions than the good-doing Christian church-goer. Furthermore, our right to punish “guilty” criminals is removed since they cannot be held accountable for their actions. Punishment therefore is reduced to a failed attempt at tackling the problem of injustice in the world.

PSYCHOLOGICAL DETERMINISM

NATURE-NURTURE Psychology is the study of human behaviour. According to psychological determinism, all human behaviour, thoughts and feelings are the inevitable outcome of complex psychological laws describing cause and effect relationships in human behaviour. Thus all decisions and actions can theoretically be predicted. There are many influencing factors on human behaviour:

• Hereditary• Society• Culture• Environment

IVAN PAVLOV (Physiologist) Pavlov studied the digestive process in dogs, especially the interaction between salivation and the action of the stomach. He discovered that the two are closely linked; without salivation the stomach doesn’t get the message to start digesting. He found that external stimuli could affect this process. By ringing a bell every time the dogs were presented with food, after a while they would begin to salivate with the ringing of the bell without the presence of food. This is the result of a conditioned reflex that has to be learned as supposed to an innate reflex. He also found that a conditioned reflex could also be repressed if the stimulus proves to be wrong, i.e. if the bell rings repeatedly and no food appears, the dog eventually stops salivating at the sound of the bell.Pavlov believed that conditioned reflexes could explain the behaviour of psychotic people. For example those who withdrew from the world may associate all stimuli with possible injury or threat.

THEOLOGICAL (DIVINE) DETERMINISMTheological determinism is the belief that the causal chain can be traced back to an uncaused causer (Cosmological argument, Aquinas), and this is God. If God is omniscient and omnipotent, we cannot have free-will and our actions must be pre-determined by him.

JUDAEO-CHRISTIAN TRADITION- humans are considered to be autonomous beings that are morally responsible to God. We can determine from the ‘Myth of the fall’ in Genesis that:

• Man is given responsibilities of caring for the world, for the animals and for choosing a suitable companion • Man and woman have the freedom to use all resources except the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge – they

have restricted free will • They are punished when they disobey – they must have had free will to decide to disobey God

• They are responsible for their decisions and must face the consequences of their choicesHowever, the more you stress God’s power and total knowledge the less room there is for the argument that we are self-governing and morally accountable beings. The paradox is; how can God be omnipotent and omniscient and humans be free and autonomous? If God is omniscient then he knows our every future freely made decision, the implication being that when we make a ‘free’ decision we are simply fulfilling a pre-determined action already mapped out for us by God. Various philosophers and theologians alike have attempted to tackle this problem.

ST. PAUL - believed that God chooses who will be saved. We shouldn’t question God’s right to choose since none of us deserve to be saved. People seek salvation and justification, which depend on faith and are available to all. However, although we may seek them only God can give them to us through his grace. For St. Paul, freedom is not being bound by the rules of the Old Testament, the ability to choose to accept God into your life and to overcome sin, death, flesh and darkness through Christ’s resurrection. Thus humans are free to choose how to live their lives but their final destination is determined by God alone. Parallels can be drawn between the thinking of St. Paul and his definition of freedom and the soft determinist’s view of freedom

ST. AUGUSTINE - argued that human will is so corrupt and depraved as a result of ‘The Fall’ that know human being is capable of performing a good action without the grace of God and the saving acts of Christ. Augustine believed in pre-destination, the belief that only those elected by God can achieve salvation. Since no one knows who has been chosen we should all lead God-fearing lives. Everyone is at God’s mercy. Just because God is omniscient does not mean that we do not have free-will. God has foreknowledge of our choices and the decisions we will make. This does not mean man doesn’t make decisions freely; rather it emphasizes God’s omnipotence. Augustine reasoned that there are three types of events:

• Those that appear to be caused by chance (the cause is hidden from us)• Those caused by God• Those caused by us

Some things are beyond our control such as death, while other things are within our control such as the decision whether or not to lead a good life. Parallels can be drawn between the thinking of Augustine and the different causes of events and soft determinism and their distinction between internal causes and eternal causes (see below).

CALVIN - argued that Paul was preaching pre-destination; that the destination of each human being is determined by God on the basis of his foreknowledge of everyone’s character and life. He said that there was nothing anybody could do to change their destiny and went further to say that only 5% of the human race were destined for salvation, the other 95% were damned from the start. Everyone deserves to be punished, but the measure of God’s goodness is that he saves some. God’s justice is beyond human comprehension and should not be questioned. According to Calvin, there is no free will. Calvin therefore takes a hard determinist approach.

SCIENTIFIC DETERMINISMScience is mechanistic; it is based upon the theory of Universal Causation. Science tells us that for every physical event there is a physical cause, and this causal chain can be traced back to the moment of the Big Bang. If we consider the mind to be material activity in the brain i.e. chemical impulses, then our thoughts and decisions are also pre-determined. We can explore the causes of human behaviour through the many different branches of science:

• Psychology• Sociology• Physiology• Anthropology

There are regularities in the way that nature behaves and scientific laws which enable us to predict how things will behave e.g. Newton’s Law of Gravity.

ALBERT EINSTEIN - was unhappy about the apparent randomness in nature ie. “God does not play dice”. He believed that the uncertainty in nature is only provisional and that there is an underlying reality in which particles have well defined positions and speeds according to deterministic laws, which may be known by God.

SOFT DETERMINISMSoft Determinism is the view that human freedom and moral responsibility are far from being incompatible with determinism; rather determinism is incomprehensible without it. The misconception that the two are incompatible comes from a considerable confusion over what we mean when we say we are free. Freedom is incompatible with fatalism, but not with determinism.All actions are wholly governed by causes but there are two types of causes:Internal Causes - Lead to voluntary actions of free will, the results of one’s own wishes or desires, for example when you leave your country freely because it is your desire to go abroad.

• External Causes - Lead to involuntary actions of compulsion, contrary to one’s wishes or desires, for example when you leave the country because you are forced out by the Government.

It is this distinction which explains why soft determinism requires free-will. According to soft determinists, when we say a person acted freely we mean they did not act under compulsion or external pressure - they acted as free agents, even though their actions were just as much caused as those that are not free. Soft determinists therefore define freedom as the liberty of spontaneity, the freedom to act according to one’s nature which is determined by external factors such as heredity, education and background.MORAL RESPONSIBILITY If one’s wishes and desires may be counted among the causes of one’s actions then freedom is also compatible with moral responsibility.If X could not have acted otherwise because of external constraints then X is not morally responsible. But if X could not have acted otherwise because of internal constraints then the action was a result of his doing and his character, and Y is not responsible for his action.

LIBERTARIANISMLibertarianism is the view that when faced with the choice between right and wrong we do act as free agents. Generally libertarianists agree that the inanimate world is mechanistic and that the determining causal chain of reactions may even effect the animate, but they do not believe that human behaviour is wholly determined by external factors. For example, physiological and psychological conditions may dispose the kleptomaniac to steal, but when left alone in a shop no one can be certain that he will because he has the capacity to choose to do otherwise; and therefore has free will. Three areas to consider:

• PERSONALITY - Libertarianists define personality as an empirical concept governed by causal laws which can be observed; formed by one’s heredity and environment. It limits our choices and makes us more inclined to choose certain kinds of actions rather than others.

• MORAL SELF - Our moral self however is an ethical concept operative when we are faced with moral choice. It is capable of overriding the personality and making a causally undetermined choice which satisfies our sense of moral duty. However, how can it be agreed that a person is free to choose between duty and desire but not free in other choices s/he makes? Determinists say that Libertarianists accept the existence of free will but have no evidence for it.

• PUNISHMENT - We do not punish inanimate objects when they fail to perform – this would be counter-intuitive. We do however punish people because we believe they are genuinely responsible for their actions and accept that their behaviour is deemed immoral. Free-will thus is fundamental to the objective of punishment.

Criticisms: • Free-will is an illusion – John Locke. • Benedict Spinoza commented that those who believe they make free choices are ignorant of their inability

to restrain their impulses to act. They “dream with their eyes open.”Libertarians respond by maintaining that there are two kinds of knowledge, and therefore two kinds of truth:

1. Those that are said to be necessarily true: • Cannot be thought of not being true• Their truth is established independently of sense experience

2. Those that are said to be contingently true:• Their truth requires empirical examination

• The possibility of error, therefore, always existsLibertarians concede that our experience of free will may deceive us and that this is not substantial evidence of human autonomy. But in world of contingent events the possibility of error always exists and a perfect knowledge is not obtainable. Therefore, if our experience of deliberation is not sufficient evidence for the existence of free-will then all evidence about anything must be rejected since we can never be certain that anything is true, even our perceptions of material objects. In conclusion, contingent truths may be fallible but libertarianists are justified in maintaining that our free-will is “beyond reasonable doubt.”

Essay Questions:1. "Unless we assume that everyone is free to make moral choices, we have no right to punish criminals". Discuss.

2. "It is impossible to reconcile any kind of determinism with the concept of free will". Discuss.

solipsism

a priori

a posteriori

Cosmology

utopia

Transcendant

Fatalism

Immortality

teleological

utilitarianismHobson’s

ChoiceAltruism

Idealism

Concept

Abstract

Rationalism

tabula rasa

Ontology

Empiriscism

Existentialism

Golden Rule

Humanism

MonismNaturalistic

fallacynihilism

argument

premise

conclusion

validity

soundness

epistemology

metaphysics

ethics

metaethics

morality

justify

belief

dogma

truth

senses

opinion

theory

juxtapose

dualism

materialism

PantheismOckham’s

RazorNatural Law

Pragmatic

Positivism

Syllogism

Deductive

inductive

Free Will

Determinism

Analogy

Allegory

agnoticism

absolutism

pluralism

relativism