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Plato ! - Academy
Study #geometry before #philosophy
Story of the #cave - a simile for philosophical education - what Plato called #dialectic
#Dualism - a transcendental non-natural realm that rules over the natural one
Historical evidence that Plato studied #Bhudism
What are we? ... a persistent question.
Pre-socratic philosophers were naturalists
Wanted to locate human beings within the natural world
Thales, Anaximander, Democritus,
Aristotle - Lyceum - Biologist
Functionalist - not a dualist
The functioning of the body somehow produces consciousness
Retained a lot of platonism, despite his determination to move towards #naturalism
Tried to return to the pre-socratic #naturalist tradition, but didn't quite succeed ... eg. believed in final causes, and purposes
Aristotle's sucessors at the Lyceum
#Theophrastus - attempted to #remove #purpose from understanding of nature
#Strato - experimentalist
Everything can be explained naturally - even if we don't yet have that explanation
#Archimedes - does he belong here?
Aside thought - Dreyfus
Understanding =|= explanation
Galileo provided challenges to Aristotelian physics
Descartes needed alternative to Aristotle, so adopted Platonism
Cartesian Dualistic Compromise
Physics and Physiology
Human mind and human soul could not be explained naturally
Copernican #Revolution - not for nothing was it called a revolution - revolution around the sun - speed of revolution and rotation
Descartes wanted to refute scepticism in respect of "the external world" (he had inherited a sceptical tradition which he wanted to over-throw)
#Pineal gland - only structure in the brain that Descartes could find that #wasn't #duplicated in left and right hemispheres
Spinoza Leibniz - took up the path of Strato - rather than the mistaken dualism of Descartes
Later #Wittgenstein - Plato had not led philosophy out of the #cave , but rather led philosophy into a #fly-bottle
Trying to #get #out of the fly-bottle of representationalist sceptism about the existence of "the external world"
Claim that everything we perceive is in fact a representation in our minds of the thing... not the thing itself ... hence "scepticism"
Contrast Pyrhonian scepticism with Philosophical scepticism - doubt in respect of "the external world"
The soul has a representation of the tree in the mind - we are not directly aware of the tree
Locke's #representalism
According to Plato they can all be criticised because it is difficult to get out of the cave.
Wittgenstein responds that they can all be criticised because they are trying to do something impossible (and not useful) ... trying to get out of amfly-bottle of their own creation.
Locke Hume Berkeley Descartes Kant Neitsche
"Philosophy leaves everything as it is."
The open society and its enemies. The open society and one of its enemies.
#Popper meeting with #Wittgenstein . Fire poker. Name a genuine philosophical problem. Induction.
Philosophical puzzles, not problems.
The puzzles arise because we are bewitched by ways of describing things that we should not use to describe them.
Return to the same place, and know it for the first time.
Pass me the yellow oil. How do I know you see yellow the same as I do. Shut up and pass memthe oil.
Colin thinks Locke leads straight to Wittgenstein's fly-bottle. And that Spinoza manages to aboid it.
The #inaccuracy of perception is a different issue than scepticism.
The mistake is thinking we are inside our nervous system. whereas in fact our nervous system is inside us.
Someone said.
Colin thinks this immediately breaks the spell of the fly bottle.
Colin's drawing of a tree and a person looking at the tree and having a representation of a tree in their mind.
Colin always says that common sense tells us that if asked how we know something exists we respond: I can touch it, see it, smell it, hear it etc.
A key critical missing piece is: I can take effective action in respect of it. That's how i know it exists, and that's what is mostly meant by saying something exists.
Sundry notes in respect of end chat.
2 roads diverged in a yellow wood
Aristotle
Went away from platonic dualism soul inside the body
Moved towards naturalism
Did not ultimately free himself from Platonic dualism
Plato
Anachronistically we could say: Philosophy rather than science would lead us to true knowledge
Philosophy has its own subject matter
Can tell us things about ourselves that we couldn't find out by doing science
Descartes
Was steeped in both Plato and Aristotle
Descates dispenses with his Aristotelianism but keeps his Platonism and its dualism
"Cartesian compromise" ... body as a natural mechanism, soul as super-natural ... Cartesian dualism
Personal identity - changes through time
Different person now from 22 ... but not the way the law sees it
Split ... Locke accepted Descartes representational theoery of perception whereas Spinoza tried to refute this
The split !
Locke
Spinoza
Cave exit?
Fly bottle?
Later Wittgenstein denies that philosophy has any meaningful subject matter
Cure us of our philosophical tendencies
Philosophy leaves everything as it is
Contrast with watson and crick discovery of DNA
Wittgenstein
G.E. Moore
Once you accept the representational theory of perception you are condemned to the fly bottle (trying to escape from the cave)
The public meaning of words
Is philosophy leading us to the cave exit, or into the fly bottle?
Scientific revolution
Copernicus
Heliocentric replaced terra-centric
Galileo
Newton
Aristotle and Plato come down to us protected by islam
Church's philosophers that banned Gallileos books. The church and religion itself has no dispute with science.
What do all reds or all numbers or all twos have in common?
What *is* a number, vs what is a *number* ... don't give me examples, tell me what number *is*
Form of triangle, vs. drawn instances of triangle
What *is* red etcetera
Wittgenstein: they have nothing in common - only family resemblances
Questions that assume the existence of forms... but we don't have to do that... we could just accept the variety of reds, or twos, or numbers, or triangles
The Cave could be thought of as the body, with the sould trapped inside it, later to be freed by death.
Human soul is inside the body looking out
"Socrates: We must be free of the body, ...
Phaedo
Aprehended by reason
Need to think in a way that is un-infected by the body
Plato anti-naturalistic anti-"scientific"
Philosophy can be used to remember the forms - that are implanted in our souls
We can talk about a tree, but is there such a thing as treeness? We can talk about tables but is there such a thing as tableness
Later Wittgenstein - meaning of a word is its use
We have no direct contact with the world - only a mediated experience of the world - representational theory of perception
Inner and outer
Representational theory of perception: What we are immediately aware of is ideas in our minds
"Windows by which light is let into this dark room."
Immediate in the sense of instantaneous vs. in the sense of un-mediated
Locke did accept representative theory of perception, and developed it.
Descartes had a platonic idea of inate ideas, whereas Locke thought we are a tabula rasa.
Not aware of objects directly... aware of ideas of objects.
Objects in the world have powers to produce ideas in our minds... eg. a snowball produces in our minds white, cold and round.
Primary and secondary qualities
Some aspects of our perception are more valid (primary), whereas some are less valid (secondary)
Locke was an empiricist ...
Einstein: "the belief in the external world ..."
From the point of view of science representational theory of perception has been very useful.
Science is given the job of identity which of our sense data are valid and which are not.
From point of view of philosophy, Colin thinks this has been an unmitigated disaster
"The world as I see it"
Alfred North Whitehead
"Thus nature gets credit which in truth should be reserved for ourselves... "
Principia Mathematica with Russell deriving Mathematics from Logic.
"We live in a simulated matrix of our own making..."
Once you accept Locke's and Descartes representational theory of perception
What are words then?
Words can only be referents to our own thoughts.
Words stand for ideas... words stand for ideas in the minds of those who use them
"That then words are the marks of..."
Brings about the idea of a private language... something which Wittgenstein disputes
How can we be sure that the words I am using stand for the same ideas in the minds of others?
When we speak we are referring to ideas in our own minds. So words refer to hidden contents of our own minds.
Impossible theory of meaning
Impossible theory of perception
But what about public words for private pains?