Chapter 5: Freedom and Necessity (What is and What

Must Be)
Monday, October 22, 2018 3:07 PM

NECESSARY TRUTHS
➢ True no matter what and in all possible worlds
◦ Ex. Mathematics and Logic
➢ Nothing can be red all over and green all over at the same time
◦ Principle of Determinables
✓ Determinate - red & green
✓ Determinable - color
✓ Can't have more than one determinate at the same time under the same
determinable
✓ Metaphysical necessity
✓ There can't be any exceptions
➢ Two things can't be at the same place at the same time and one thing can't be in two
different places at the same time

KANT AND THE SYNTHETIC A PRIORI

➢ Analytic
◦ All A is A
✓ All bachelors are unmarried
◦ All AB is A
✓ Only a defining characteristic appears in predicate not the definition
✓ All triangles are three sided
✓ All fathers are male
◦ Predicate repeats all or part of what was in the subject
➢ Synthetic
◦ All A is B
✓ All bachelors are tall
◦ Predicate says something over and above what was in the subject
➢ A Priori
◦ Independent of experience
◦ Analytic statements
➢ A Posteriori
◦ Dependent of experience
◦ Laws of Nature
➢ Synthetic A Priori
◦ Synthetic statements independent of experience
◦ Knowledge outside parameters of the world
➢ Phenomenal World
◦ World of ordinary sense perception and science
◦ Spatial
✓ One thing bigger than another
✓ One thing in a certain distance removed from another
◦ Temporal

A.SANTOS
 ◦ Temporal
✓ One event occur before / after another
✓ One event occurs simultaneously w/ another
◦ Categories of Synthesizing Data Experience
✓ Substance
 Perception in terms of things and properties
✓ Causality
 Relation of cause and effect among things
✓ Number
 Count things
 Exists only in phenomenal world
➢ Noumenal World
◦ No access to it -> make no statements at all
◦ Neither spatial or temporal
◦ Not an observation but an inference

CAUSALITY
➢ Constant Conjunction
◦ David Hume
✓ Most influential who have discussed causality
◦ Temporal Precedence
✓ Cause precedes effect
✓ Ex. Crops planted before harvest; speech prepared before delivered
◦ Contiguity in Space and Time
✓ Something in between
✓ Ex. Light a fuse and gun powder explodes some yards away will only occur if there is
a fuse in between
✓ No action at a distance
◦ Necessary Connection
✓ Cause and effect are necessarily connected
✓ If cause occurs, then effect must occur
➢ Person to Person Causality
◦ People are the causes of their own inner states
◦ People have inner sense of power but have to try and see what actual power they have
◦ Experience will reveal what one can / can't do
◦ Negative Thesis (Hume)
✓ Nature presents us w/ no necessary connections
✓ Widely accepted
◦ Positive Thesis (Hume)
✓ What we have left are constant conjunctions
✓ Criticized
✓ Constant conjunctions that are not causality
 Day follows night and night follows day but they do not cause each other
 Hair growth in babies followed by growth of teeth aren't causes of each other
✓ Causality that are not constant conjunctions
 Heart attacks often cause death but there are heart attacks not leading to
death and many death are not caused by heart attacks
 Scratching the match caused it to light but scratched matches often fail to light

A.SANTOS
  Scratching the match caused it to light but scratched matches often fail to light
➢ Necessary and Sufficient Conditions
◦ John Stuart Mill
✓ Fleshed out Hume
✓ Many regularities are not causal
◦ Necessary Condition
✓ C is a necessary condition for E
✓ If C had not occurred, E would not have occurred
✓ Ex. Oxygen is a necessary condition for fire. Thus, fire cannot occur in the absence of
oxygen.
◦ Sufficient Condition
✓ For every event, there is a set of conditions sufficient to produce it, otherwise it
would not occur
✓ In defining causality -> Cause is the sum total of conditions, positive and negative
taken together, the whole of the contingencies of every description, which being
realized, the consequent invariably follows.
✓ To state the cause of occurrence is to enumerate the whole set of conditions
◦ Plurality of Causes
✓ Effect may occur from different sets of conditions

THE CAUSAL PRINCIPLE

➢ Determinism
◦ To believe that everything that happens in the universe has a cause is to believe in the
causal principle
◦ Doesn't say what cause there are
◦ Theological Determinism
✓ Everything is caused directly / indirectly by God
◦ Scientific Determinism
✓ Everything that happens is the result of prior causes in the natural world
✓ Opposed to supernatural determinism
◦ Mechanistic Determinism
✓ Caused by events and conditions in the physical world
✓ Denies mental causation
➢ Questions:
◦ Is the principle immune to refutation?
◦ A rule, not a proposition?
◦ Back to the empirical interpretation

DETERMINISM VS. FREEDOM

➢ People are worried about determinism because it is incompatible w/ freedom
➢ Freedom
◦ No one is 100% free but we all have freedom in various degrees and aspects
◦ One would be totally free when there are no obstacles in the course of action
✓ You just have to will it for it to happen
◦ Freedom - from (negative freedom)
◦ Freedom is an illusion
✓ According to some philosophers
✓ No one is ever free

A.SANTOS
 ✓ No one is ever free
✓ All actions are determined
➢ Fatalism
◦ Sometimes confused w/ determinism
◦ Whatever happens is fated
◦ People are seldom fatalists to immediate futures but fatalistic on long term outcomes
where they have no control
➢ Determinism
◦ Says nothing about fate or being fated
◦ Whatever happens has some cause
◦ Human beings are causes too of the events in the world
◦ Causality is presupposed every time we try to change anyone or anything
✓ To change -> to cause a change
➢ Indeterminism
◦ Not all events have causes
◦ In human affairs, what we do is not entirely the result of prior conditions
✓ Happens -> May be the result of prior conditions
✓ Do -> May be influenced by prior conditions but not determined
✓ Human actions transcend causality
◦ According to determinists;
✓ Indeterminism, devised to rescue freedom, is actually the enemy of freedom
✓ Freedom presupposes determinism and is inconceivable without it
✓ All our actions are caused by us
➢ Predictability
◦ Indeterminists
✓ Human actions are not entirely predictable
✓ Some human events are not caused by past conditions
◦ Determinists
✓ All events, including human actions, have causal roots in the past
➢ Chance
◦ Ambiguous
◦ Coincidence
✓ No causal relation between two events but each had its own cause for happening
◦ Ignorance of Causes
✓ Does not imply that there are no causes but that causes are unknown
◦ Mathematical Probability
✓ Enumerate possibilities
✓ Ignorance of relevant factors
◦ Statistical Probability
✓ Not the same w/ mathematical probability
✓ If the frequency had been different, the estimate of chances would be also different
◦ No Cause
✓ Chance does not mean no cause at all

THE THEORY OF AGENCY

➢ Attempt to reconcile determinism, indeterminism and freedom
➢ Self - Moving Being
◦ Genuine originator of actions

A.SANTOS
 ◦ Genuine originator of actions
◦ First cause of my actions
◦ Actions are caused by me but not the inevitable outcome of antecedent conditions
➢ Enables us to escape determinism and indeterminism
➢ Viewing human beings from the INSIDE
◦ We conceive ourselves as the genuine originators of our actions not a product of
outside forces
◦ There is no doubt that we are free to do this or not
➢ Viewing humans objectively from the OUTSIDE
◦ The more we discover about inner springs of human action
◦ We see how even our freest actions are the results of impulses and inner defenses
◦ We are not really originators of our actions

A.SANTOS
Chapter 6: Mind and Body (What Am I?)
Monday, November 19, 2018 3:42 PM

MIND
➢ Descartes
◦ Mind is a mental substance
➢ Materialism
◦ There is a matter but no mind
◦ There is no other realm
◦ Thoughts, feeling and sensations are physical
◦ Democritus believed that the universe consists only of matter and void

THE PHYSICAL AND THE MENTAL

➢ Physical
◦ Can always be located in space
◦ Publicly observable
◦ Have certain motions of molecules and states of consciousness
➢ Other Minds
◦ I feel only my pain and I can know you're in pain but not feel your pain
◦ Argument from Analogy
✓ When my finger is cut, I feel pain. Therefore, when your finger is cut, you feel pain.
✓ Weak argument
➢ Brain
◦ Seems to be a point of contact between the physical and mental
◦ Nothing enters consciousness except through the brain
◦ No mental event can have a physical consequence w/o the brain
◦ However, it is physical and gap between mental and physical cannot be bridged by
something that is physical
➢ Epiphenomenalism
◦ By Huxley
◦ Mental states never do any causing (causally impotent)
◦ Physical causes mental but never the opposite
◦ Mental is causally impotent (conscious automata)
◦ Brain State
✓ Does the causing
✓ Originate motions of the body (Ex. Walking out of room)
◦ Conscious Thought
✓ Represents the brain state
✓ Causally impotent
◦ Mental is a function of the physical
➢ Materialism
◦ Behaviorism
✓ Methodological
 Mode of procedure often used by psychologists
 Observing one's body language

A.SANTOS
  Observing one's body language
 Ex. One does not accurately report his experiences therefore, observe what
they do
✓ Metaphysical
 Doctrine about reality
 No inner episodes, only behavior
 Mental events -> complex tendencies to behave in certain ways
 Has certain dispositional characteristics
◦ Identity Theory
✓ Mental states are just identical w/ certain brain states
✓ Thoughts = brain states (identical in the strongest possible sense)
 Morning star and evening star are the same objects
✓ Contemporary version of materialism
✓ Logically possible for an experience to occur w/o brain state but not actually true
✓ Brain process is publicly observable and conscious state is not (pain, sense data)

PERSONAL IDENTITY
➢ Bundle Theory
◦ Bundle of experiences w/o any string to tie the bundle together
◦ Thoughts and feelings are not free floating (requires a haver)
◦ Thomas Reid
✓ Whether or not we can analyze it further, ownership of experience is a basic fact
which resists attempts to analyze it
✓ Personal identity implies continued existence of that indivisible thing which I call
myself
✓ Self
 Something that thinks, acts and suffers
 Permanent and has same relation to all succeeding thoughts
➢ When is it still you?
◦ Bodily Continuity
✓ I am the same person as long as I have the same body
✓ A body I was born w/ and exists continuously as long as I live
◦ Memory
✓ I recognize you
✓ Your mental features uniquely identify you
✓ Unifying Feature
 According to Locke and Reid memory is a unifying feature that makes you the
same person 10 years ago
 Proper evidence: remembrance
✓ Cannot be the sole criterion for becoming the same person
◦ Reincarnation
✓ Same person in a different body
✓ Remembrance of being someone a few years back but fails to remember anything as
soon as waking up
◦ Reconstitution
✓ Duplicating one's self w/o bodily continuity yet having the same physical and
mental features
◦ Immortality
✓ Most religions have some concept of immortality

A.SANTOS
✓ Most religions have some concept of immortality
✓ Same person continuing to live after bodily death
✓ Belief in immortality stands / falls with one's religious belief
✓ Survival in a new body
 Kind of survival that most people imagine
 Old body turns to dust in the grave thus, requiring a new body
 Obtaining a new body is a direction of God
 Body that is almost perfect yet still recognizable as similar to the old one
✓ Disembodied existence
 Surviving w/o a body
 Purely mentalistic existence
 There are still some hidden references to body
 Descartes: center of consciousness
 St. Augustine: body is only the external trapping discarded at death

A.SANTOS
Chapter 7: The Philosophy of Religion (What Else is There?)
Wednesday, November 21, 2018 9:10 PM

RELIGION
➢ Does not always carry the same meaning
➢ Some meanings are the ff:
◦ Belief in God
◦ Total commitment / dedication to something
✓ One's dedication to some humanitarian project
◦ Whatever one does w/ his leisure time
➢ Every person who believes in God isn't necessarily religious
◦ Pro forma assent to belief in God
✓ Believes in God yet belief occupies no space in one's life (never thinks / acts upon it)
➢ Philosophy is concerned w/ the justification of belief
◦ What arguments can religious belief be defended or attacked?
◦ What kind of belief is belief in God?
✓ Believers of God hold that in addition to the material by the physical sciences, there
is something else -> power that created and sustains the universe, laws of nature
and can even suspend these laws at will
◦ Is belief in god / gods justified?
✓ If I experience god, god must exist as the object of that experience
➢ Ancient Greek Religion
◦ Gods did not create the universe but only gave it new form
◦ Deism
✓ God does not sustain the universe but only created it and lets it run by itself
◦ Theism
✓ God both created, sustains and guides the universe
✓ Has human characteristics
 A personality w/ personalities such as benevolence, love and vengeance
✓ Supernatural powers
 Issue commands
 Punish disobedience
✓ Christianity, Mohammedanism, Judaism
◦ Cosmic Consciousness
✓ Something in reality other than the universe studied by the sciences
✓ Supernatural mind
✓ Power that exists in addition to the universe perceived w/ the senses
◦ Atheist
✓ Denial of any supernatural being's existence
◦ Agnostic
✓ Withholds judgement either way
◦ Monotheism
✓ Belief in one supreme power
◦ Polytheism
✓ Belief of many such powers

A.SANTOS
 ✓ Belief of many such powers
✓ Ex. Numerous gods of ancient Greeks

THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

➢ St. Anselm
◦ God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived
◦ Being the greatest possible being conceivable, must exist in order to be the greatest
◦ If God only existed in the understanding, like unicorns, He wouldn't be great as if he did
exist
◦ Meaning of greatest does not matter in the argument
◦ Greatest conceivable being requires existence, else it would lack one necessary
element of greatness not be the greatest after all
➢ Kant's Criticism
◦ Rejected the argument
◦ Existence is not a property
◦ Something's existence does not add to its properties

THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

➢ Existence of things in the universe, occurrence of events, operation of causes and all
requiring an explanation are provided by God
➢ Chief Proponents: St. Thomas Aquinas and Samuel Clarke
➢ St. Thomas Aquinas
◦ Five arguments for the existence of God
✓ First three are versions of the cosmological argument
✓ Rejected the ontological argument
◦ First Argument
✓ Attempts to explain the existence of motion
✓ How did anything in the universe get moving?
✓ Presupposes that natural state of things is rest
✓ Newton's view made this less acceptable today (natural state is motion)
◦ Causal Argument (Second)
✓ Most popular form of cosmological argument
✓ Everything that happens has a cause
✓ Universe must have a cause which is God
✓ God is not the first event but an enduring being who created the material universe
and caused its first event to occur
✓ Used to get to God and fails to think that if the argument is true then it applies to
God too
✓ Our knowledge of causes lies entirely on spatio - temporal things
✓ Kant: Principle of causality has no meaning and no criterion for its application save
only in the accessible world
✓ Gives us only a first cause
✓ Mill:
 Motions of matter are the result of will
 Will does not create matter, it only moves matter that exists
 Will does not originate from motion
 Volition did not come into being for countless ages (energy is eternal but
volition is not)
 We should posit God as an explanation of the fact that there is a series at all
A.SANTOS
  We should posit God as an explanation of the fact that there is a series at all
◦ Argument from Dependency
✓ Aquinas argues from contingency to necessity
✓ Contingent beings presupposes a necessary being
✓ Every being in the world is a dependent being (existence depends on something
else)
✓ An existence of a non - dependent being (self - existent) which is God
✓ Brute fact

ARGUMENT FROM MIRACLES

➢ Miracles have occurred at various times in human history
➢ Argument: Occurrence of miracles prove the existence of God
➢ However, existence of miracles cannot be proved

THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

➢ From Greek telos meaning "purpose" or argument from design
➢ Has the widest appeal
➢ Appeals to empirically observable features of the universe and attempts to infer from
these that God exists as a cosmic designer
➢ Design presupposes intelligence
➢ Certain features of the universe are taken as evidence for a designer
➢ Attempts to establish only the existence of a being w/ sufficient intelligence and power to
shape the materials of the universe in accordance w/ a plan
➢ Universe is orderly and order is the result of design
➢ Objections
◦ Word order is not very clear
✓ What seems to be orderly for one may not be for another
◦ Darwin's theory did not refute design but it appeared to refute belief in a benevolent
design

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

➢ Principal objection to the teleological argument if intended to prove the existence of a
benevolent designer
➢ Epicurus
◦ Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent
◦ Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent
◦ Is he both able and willing? Then whence evil?
➢ Hume
◦ Argued in a form of dilemma
◦ If evil in the world is from the intention of the deity, then he is not benevolent
◦ If evil in the world is contrary to his intention, then he is not omnipotent
◦ But it is either in accordance w/ his intention or contrary to it
◦ Either the deity is not benevolent or not omnipotent
◦ Not Omnipotent
✓ Doesn't desire evil but unable to prevent it
◦ Not Benevolent
✓ Evil can be prevented but he does not wish to
◦ Argument is valid

A.SANTOS
 ◦ Argument is valid
➢ There is no evil in this world
◦ People may not entirely agree on what things are evil
◦ Suffering
✓ Why many find it difficult to believe in a god that is all powerful and benevolent
✓ We would alleviate sufferings if we could but god fails to do so
➢ Evil is a negative thing
◦ Evil is not a positive thing but a lack, privation and negative one - St. Augustine
◦ No evil but only comparative absence of good (evil -> nonbeing)
◦ To be real is to be perfect -> only God can be wholly real
◦ Primarily a play on words
◦ Facts of reality are not changed by being classified as positive / negative (one is as real
as the other)
➢ Evil is necessary for the greatest good
◦ There has to be evil for it is the only way for the good to be achieved
◦ Evil is compatible w/ the goodness of God
◦ Evil is the least possible required to get the greatest possible good
◦ Not a perfect world, but the best of all possible worlds
➢ Good often comes out of evil
◦ Hardly sufficient to justify
◦ Complex causal order -> disaster to one may be advantage to another
◦ Most usual tendency
✓ Good producing good
✓ Evil producing evil
➢ The purpose of evil is not to make us happy but to make us virtuous
◦ Evils are put there to discipline and improve us rather than to punish us
◦ If mankind was willed to be virtuous, then designs are supposed to be baffled as if to
make everyone happy
➢ God's goodness is different from ours
◦ What we call evil may actually be good for goodness in everything is only seen by god
which is beyond our comprehension
◦ We may only think that good things are evil but this becomes an error and an error is
still evil
◦ Power of the deity is always interpreted in a completely human way
➢ Human freedom as the cause of evil
◦ Evil is caused by human wickedness
◦ Inevitable cause by human's freedom
◦ Natural Evils
✓ Occur w/o human intervention
✓ Ex. Earthquakes, floods, hurricanes
◦ Moral Evils
✓ Inflicted by people upon other people
✓ Ex. Mental / physical torture, plunder, killing
✓ Result of human freedom
◦ If god couldn't devise a system w/o evil where human beings are free, then god is not
omnipotent
◦ Freedom Argument

A.SANTOS
 ◦ Freedom Argument
✓ Most persistent attempt to circumvent the problem of evil
✓ Success will depend on how much value is given to the faculty of human choice

ALTERNATIVE DESIGN ARGUMENTS

➢ Other versions of teleological argument that circumvent the problem of evil
➢ An omnipotent being who is malevolent
◦ Not as popular as belief in benevolent being because it does not fulfill one's desire for
justice in the afterlife
✓ Critics of Christianity believe that god is like this who devised hell for nonbelievers
➢ A benevolent but not omnipotent designer
◦ Cosmic designer who was benevolent but limited in power
◦ There is no problem of evil because god has no control over it
➢ Ditheism
◦ Two cosmic intelligences, each planning and executing his plans in the world
◦ Neither is omnipotent but one is benevolent and one is not
◦ Evil is explained by the existence of the evil deity
➢ Polytheism
◦ Certain degree of cooperation among gods (Greek gods)
◦ Plan devised in crude form by one person, certain rough edges were removed by
someone else and further improvements made by a third
➢ A cosmic organism
◦ Organisms also exhibit teleological behavior
✓ Ex. Sunflower unconsciously faces the sun to preserve its existence
◦ Universe is the result of purposive activity on the part of a huge cosmic organism
◦ No data to establish any system of cosmogony
◦ Argument from Analogy
✓ All arguments in this group
✓ Analogy
 Comparison
 Argument from analogy -> argument from comparison
✓ Never conclusive
✓ Provides no basis for any conclusions concerning a designer or any system of
cosmogony - Hume

ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND MYSTICISM

➢ Anthropomorphism
◦ Anthropos (man) and morphe (form)
◦ Most people conceive god in the form of man
➢ Nonliteral use of terms
◦ When we call god benevolent, wise and powerful, we should not take it literally
➢ Mysticism
◦ No words to accurately describe god
◦ God is beyond any concept we can devise
➢ Religious Hypotheses
◦ Mystical experience establishes no divine source of experience
◦ We know god through his effects in the world
➢ The Utility of Religion

A.SANTOS
➢ The Utility of Religion
◦ (Mill) This argument is an appeal to the ff:
✓ Nonbelievers: To induce them to practice a well meant hypocrisy
✓ Semi believers: To avert their eyes from what may shake their unstable belief
✓ General: To abstain from expressing doubts they may feel

A.SANTOS
Chapter 8: Problems in Ethics (The Is and the Ought)
Sunday, November 25, 2018 7:43 PM

META - ETHICS
➢ Subject that deals w/ the meanings of ethical terms
➢ Ethical sentences w/ terms such as good and bad express no propositions
◦ Nothing could be true / false
◦ Expression of one's feelings towards something
➢ Emotive Theory of Ethics
◦ No moral truths
◦ Sentences containing moral terms like good express no proposition at all
◦ Same grammatical form as sentences that do express propositions
◦ Only registration of disapproval or antipathy
◦ Good
✓ Applied to different things on different occasions
✓ (Dictionary) Most general term of commendation / approbation
✓ No single cognitive meaning
✓ (Emotive meaning) Aura of feeling that hovers around a word
✓ Quality varies depending on speaker
➢ Defining Ethical Terms
◦ Greeks
✓ Thought of something / someone good when it fulfills a function (mechanical
object)
✓ Good X is an X that fulfills the function of X's
◦ When I say it's good, then I just mean that I like it
◦ When I say it's good, all I mean is that I approve of it
✓ Not expressing approval of it
✓ Stating the feeling of approval toward it
✓ Cognitive meaning stating the attitude of approval toward X
✓ All one has to do is introspect
◦ Good is the same as the desired
✓ X is desirable (ethical term)
 Doesn't mean that something is desired but it is ought to be desired
◦ X is good because most people approve of X
✓ Majority may be ignorant, mistaken or uninformed
◦ Good means what God commands
✓ Unbelievers could not have any views about good
✓ Different conceptions of gods -> good to one religion may be opposite to another
✓ Good is not because gods are pleased by they are pleased because it is good
✓ Good is logically independent of god's commands
◦ No definition of ethical terms entirely by means of non-ethical ones is possible
◦ Open Question Technique
✓ Moore
✓ Take whatever property you care to and say that's the meaning of good
✓ I grant that X has that property, but nevertheless, is X good?
✓ Of any property, one can always ask whether having that property is good

A.SANTOS
 ✓ Of any property, one can always ask whether having that property is good
✓ Good cannot be defined as possessing any non-ethical property
✓ To speak of something good is to speak of some further characteristics beyond
empirical ones
✓ Naturalistic Fallacy
 Defining ethical terms by means of non-ethical ones

NORMATIVE ETHICS
➢ Subject that deals w/ substantive issues such as what ends are good, what acts are right,
what policies are just and for what actions a person should be held responsible
➢ Good as Pro-Life
◦ Ethical concepts arise only in the context of actions required to sustain life
◦ To an indestructible entity, nothing can have value
◦ Only the living face the alternative of life / death
◦ Goals of human are not implanted by instinct (unlike plants); they have to be chosen
◦ Value
✓ Which one acts to gain and keep
◦ Virtue
✓ Action by which one gains and keeps it
◦ Life depends on a specific course of action; process of self - sustaining and self -
generating action
◦ Only concept of life make the concept of value possible
◦ Code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality
◦ Acting on impulses that are range of the moment often turn out to be destructive
◦ Morality
✓ Instruction manual to proper care
✓ Did not come w/ man
✓ Science of human self - preservation
◦ Living -> good promotes the survival and flourishing of the organism
➢ Good as Fulfillment
◦ Reason
✓ Tells what best means can be used to achieve ends (determined by will)
✓ What alternatives are and how to achieve them (will decides to do them)
◦ Good -> fulfillment
◦ Bad -> frustration / lack of fulfillment
◦ Some fulfillments get in the way of others
◦ Maximum possible happiness (ideal - should be goal of human action)
◦ Happiness and fulfillment are inextricably intertwined

THEORIES OF CONDUCT
➢ Egoism
◦ Live a life of placid contemplation and not interfere in world affairs / form close
relationships because we will be unhappy - Epicureans
✓ Close relationship -> person dies / leaves
◦ Most satisfactory life could come only through suppression of wants and desires -
Stoics
✓ If you kept your distance, you could never be hurt
✓ Happiness / wants

A.SANTOS
 ✓ Happiness / wants
✓ More wants -> unhappiness
✓ Keep wants at minimum
◦ Do what produces the greatest long - term happiness / fulfillment
➢ Altruism
◦ Do things that benefit others more than selves
◦ Actions to help others even at the result of one's great loss
◦ Concern for the welfare of others
◦ Opposite of egoism (own interests)
◦ Pure Altruist
✓ Doesn't consider self at all
✓ Selfless
✓ Would not remain alive for long
➢ Love Your Neighbor
◦ Love your neighbor as much as yourself
◦ Eros
✓ Erotic feeling
✓ Towards a very limited number of people
◦ Philein
✓ Friendship / fellow-feeling
✓ Few people you have come to know
✓ Share values
◦ Agape
✓ Total dedication
✓ Toward god
◦ Should be selective in helping others
➢ The Golden Rule
◦ As you would have others do unto you, so you should do unto them
◦ What we should do depends on what the other person wants
➢ Universalizability
◦ Kant was dissatisfied w/ golden rule because:
✓ It depends on what the others want
◦ Maxim
✓ Rule about what one should do
✓ Society would be better off if certain rules of behavior were practiced
✓ Universalization wouldn't be inconsistent but extremely undesirable
➢ Utilitarianism
◦ Aim at the achievement of greatest happiness possible for everyone
◦ Don't do something that produces less total good
◦ Right act can't be the one that does produce the most good but that probably will
produce the most good
◦ Quite demanding and very hard to apply everyday
➢ Human Rights
◦ Treat others as ends not as means - Kant
◦ Closely related to Kantian precept
◦ Having rights -> master of own fate
◦ Right takes precedence over utility

A.SANTOS
 ◦ Right takes precedence over utility
◦ Negative Rights
✓ Refraining from forcible interference
✓ Ex. Right to life, liberty and happiness
◦ Positive Rights
✓ Ex. Right to three meals a day, shelter and other necessities
➢ Justice
◦ Treatment in accordance w/ one's deserts
◦ Deserts
✓ Individual
◦ Collectivism
✓ Treating all group members as if they were alike
✓ Ex. Racism
◦ Individualism
✓ Taking into account individual differences
✓ Treating each on the basis of his own merits / demerits
◦ Punishment is always done in order to achieve some result
◦ Retributive Theory
✓ Deserts theory
✓ Punishments done because of act committed in the past
✓ Rejects all three utilitarian justifications for punishing
◦ Justice and Compensation
✓ For damages inflicted / work performed

A.SANTOS