University of Jordan

Department of Philosophy

Introduction to Philosophy
And Critical Thinking

Dr Hamed Ahmad Dababseh

2023
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 Contents

Introduction ………………………………………...………….………………………….. 5

1 Philosophy: General View …………………………….……….7

I what is Philosophy? ………………………………..…………………9

II The main characteristics of philosophy …13
Readings: No. 1: the Value of Philosophy
By Bertrand Russell ……………....…………………………………..….…………19

2 A brief History of Philosophy…………….…………..…25

I Eastern Philosophy …………………………………………………27
II Western Philosophy ………………………………………..……39
A. Greek Philosophy …………………………………….…………….…….…….39
B. Modern Philosophy ……………………………………………...…….………60
C. Twentieth Century Philosophy …………………………..………..…….62

III Islamic Philosophy ……………………………………………….64

Readings: No. 2 Directing Attention to the way to happiness by Abu
Nasr Al Farabi…………………………………………..…………………..………….77

3 The main Philosophical Areas…….…………..……..81

I Epistemology ……………………………………….…..…………………….83
A. Rationalism ………………………………………….….……….…………..92
Readings: No.3 Meditation no.1 by Rene Descartes …….……….….104

B. The Empiricism ……………………………..…..…………..…………109

C. Critical Philosophy ……….………….………………..……………..119
D. Pragmatism ………………………………….……………….……..……..125

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II Logic …………………………………………………………………..….………….129

- Logic: the definition ………..…………………………………………129

- History of logic ………………………………………………………….130
- Why We study Logic …………………………………………………..133
- Types of Logic with Example ……………………………………....136
- What is an Argument? ……………………………………………..…147
- The judgement and the proposition ……………………………..151

III Critical Thinking ………………………………………..…..………161

IV Ethics ………………………………………………………….………….……….175
- What is Maoral Philosophy? ………………………………………..175
- The Branches of Ethics ……………………………………………....176
- Moral or Ethics ………………………………………….………………180

Readings: No.4 Morality and Law by Philip A. Pecorino…….…..…188

Further Readings …………………………………………….….….……………191

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Introduction

What is philosophy? This is a notoriously difficult question. One

of the easiest ways of answering it is to say that philosophy is
what philosophers do, and then point to the writings of Plato,
Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Russell, Wittgenstein, Sartre,
Ibn rushd, Al Farabi, Ibn Sina and other famous philosophers.
However, this answer is unlikely to be of much use to you if you
are just beginning the subject, as you probably won’t have read
anything by these Philosophers. Even if you have, it may still be
difficult to say what they have in common, if indeed there is a
relevant characteristic, which they all share. Another approach to
the question is to point out that philosophy is derived from the
Greek word meaning ‘love of wisdom’. However, this is rather
vague and even less helpful than saying that philosophy is what
philosophers do. So, some very general comments about what
philosophy is are needed.
Philosophy is an activity: it is a way of thinking about certain
sorts of question. Its most distinctive feature is its use of logical
argument. Philosophers typically deal in arguments: they either
invent them, criticize other peoples, or do both. They also analyse
and clarify concepts. The word ‘philosophy’ is often used in a
much broader sense than this to mean one’s general outlook on
life, or else to refer to some forms of mysticism. We will not be
using the word in this broader sense here: The aim is to illuminate
some of the key areas of discussion in a tradition of thought which
began with the Ancient Greeks and flourished in the twentieth
century, predominantly in Europe, North America, Australia, and
New Zealand, Asia and the Islamic Culture. This tradition looks
set to continue well into the present century. What kind of things
do philosophers working in this tradition argue about? They often
examine beliefs that most of us take for granted most of the time.

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They are concerned with questions; about what could loosely be
called ‘the meaning of life’: questions about religion, right and
wrong, politics, the nature of reality, the mind, science, art, and
numerous other topics. For instance, most people live their lives
without questioning their fundamental beliefs, such as that killing
is wrong. But why is it wrong? What justification is there for
saying that killing is wrong? Is it wrong in every circumstance?
What about killing in self-defence? What about killing animals
painlessly? And what do I mean by ‘wrong’ anyway? These are
philosophical questions. Many of our beliefs, when examined,
turn out to have firm foundations, but some do not. The study of
philosophy not only helps us to think clearly about our
prejudices, but also helps to clarify precisely what we do believe.
In the process it develops an ability to argue coherently on a wide
range of issues – a useful transferable skill.
In this session We seek to have an idea about Philosophy, its
history, the main parts, The most important Philosophers, and
why should we study philosophy nowadays. What is Logic, and
how we should use it in our daily life?

Dr Hamed Ahmad Dababseh

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1

Philosophy:
General View

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I. What is philosophy?1

Many answers have been

offered in reply to this
question and most are angling
at something similar. My
favourite answer is that
philosophy is all of rational
inquiry except for science.
Perhaps you think science exhausts inquiry. About a hundred
years ago, many philosophers, especially the Logical Positivists,
thought there was nothing we could intelligibly inquire into
except for scientific matters. But this view is probably not right.
What branch of science addresses the question of whether or not
science covers all of rational inquiry? If the question strikes you
as puzzling, this might be because you already recognize that
whether or not science can answer every question is not itself a
scientific issue. Questions about the limits of human inquiry and
knowledge are philosophical questions.
We can get a better understanding of philosophy by considering
what sorts of things other than scientific issues humans might
inquire into. Philosophical issues are as diverse and far ranging as
those we find in the sciences, but a great many of them fall into
one of three big topic areas, metaphysics, epistemology, and
ethics.

Metaphysics
Metaphysical issues are concerned with the nature of reality.
Traditional metaphysical issues include the:

1
An Introduction to Philosophy, by W. Russ Payne, Bellevue College,
2015, pp. 5-10.

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Existence of God
And the nature of human free will (assuming we have any).
Here are a few metaphysical questions of interest to contemporary
philosophers:
What is a thing?
How are space and time related?
Does the past exist? How about the future?
How many dimensions does the world have?
Are there any entities beyond physical objects (like numbers,
properties, and relations)? If so, how are they related to physical
objects? Historically, many philosophers have proposed and
defended specific metaphysical positions, often as part of
systematic and comprehensive metaphysical views. But attempts
to establish systematic metaphysical world views have been
notoriously unsuccessful.
Since the 19th century, many philosophers and scientists have
been understandably suspicious of metaphysics, and it has
frequently been dismissed as a waste of time, or worse, as
meaningless. But in just the past few decades metaphysics has
returned to vitality. As difficult as they are to resolve,
metaphysical issues are also difficult to ignore for long.
Contemporary analytic metaphysics is typically taken to have
more modest aims than definitively settling on the final and
complete truth about the underlying nature of reality. A better
way to understand metaphysics as it is currently practiced is as
aiming at better understanding how various claims about the
reality logically hang together or conflict. Metaphysicians
analyse metaphysical puzzles and problems with the goal of better
understanding how things could or could not be. Metaphysicians
are in the business of exploring the realm of possibility and
necessity. They are explorers of logical space.

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Epistemology
Epistemology is concerned with the nature of knowledge and
justified belief. What is knowledge?
Can we have any knowledge at all?
Can we have knowledge about the laws of nature, the laws or
morality, or the existence of other minds? The view that we can’t
have knowledge is called skepticism. An extreme form of
skepticism denies that we can have any knowledge whatsoever.
But we might grant that we can have knowledge about some
things and remain skeptics concerning other issues. Many people,
for instance, are not skeptics about scientific knowledge, but are
skeptics when it comes to knowledge of morality. Later in this
course, we will entertain some skeptical worries about science
and we will consider whether ethics is really in a more precarious
position. Some critical attention reveals that scientific knowledge
and moral knowledge face many of the same skeptical challenges
and share some similar resources in addressing those challenges.
Many of the popular reasons for being more skeptical about
morality than science turn on philosophical confusions we will
address and attempt to clear up.
Even if we lack absolute and certain knowledge of many things,
our beliefs about those things might yet be more or less
reasonable or more or less likely to be true given the limited
evidence we have. Epistemology is also concerned with what it is
for a belief to be rationally justified. Even if we cannot have
certain knowledge of anything (or much), questions about what
we ought to believe remain relevant.

Ethics
While epistemology is concerned with what we ought to believe
and how we ought to reason, Ethics is concerned with what we

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ought to do, how we ought to live, and how we ought to organize
our communities. Sadly, it comes as a surprise to many new
philosophy students that you can reason about such things.
Religiously inspired views about morality often take right and
wrong to be simply a matter of what is commanded by a divine
being. Moral Relativism, perhaps the most popular opinion
among people who have rejected faith, simply substitutes the
commands of society for the commands of God. Commands are
simply to be obeyed, they are not to be inquired into, assessed for
reasonableness, or tested against the evidence. Thinking of
morality in terms of whose commands are authoritative leaves no
room for rational inquiry into how we ought to live, how we ought
to treat others, or how we ought to structure our communities.
Philosophy, on the other hand, takes seriously the possibility of
rational inquiry into these matters. If philosophy has not
succeeded in coming up with absolutely certain and definitive
answer in ethics, this is in part because philosophers take the
answers to moral questions to be things we need to discover, not
simply matters of somebody’s say so. The long and difficult
history of science should give us some humble recognition of how
difficult and frustrating careful inquiry and investigation can be.
So, we don’t know for certain what the laws of morality are. We
also don’t have a unified field theory in physics. Why expect
morality to be any easier?
So, we might think of metaphysics as concerned with “What is
it?” questions, epistemology as concerned with “How do we
know?” questions, and ethics as concerned with “What should we
do about it?” questions. Many interesting lines of inquiry cut
across these three kinds of questions. The philosophy of science,
for instance, is concerned with metaphysical issues about what
science is, but also with epistemological questions about how we
can know scientific truths. The philosophy of love is similarly

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concerned with metaphysical questions about what love is. But it
also concerned with questions about the value of love that are
more ethical in character.
Assorted tangled vines of inquiry branch off from the three major
trunks of philosophy intermingle between them, and ultimately
with scientific issues as well. The notion that some branches of
human inquiry can proceed entirely independent of others
ultimately becomes difficult to sustain. The scientist who neglects
philosophy runs the same risk of ignorance as the philosopher
who neglects science.

II. The main characteristics of philosophy

1 Universality
For this reason, philosophy makes use of various areas of study
in order to complement this concept in a reasonable way so that it
can promote its subsequent criticism. For this reason, mysticisms
or superstitions are not taken into account.

2 Critical knowledge
Based on reasoning, people move away from ignorance and
approach knowledge and the search for truth, which must be
verified with the application of various methods to prevent
absolute truths from being asserted.
In other words, questions are asked and problems are raised. In
this sense, philosophy invites the exercise of thought and
reasoning in order to rethink the knowledge that one has and to
question those that lack a solid base of veracity.
Therefore, philosophy always starts from the criticism and
analysis of knowledge so that human beings can understand the
world where they live and everything around them, since
knowledge frees people from ignorance.

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3 Certainty
Philosophy is not satisfied with a simple answer, that is why it
emphasizes the search for the most logical and true answers about
the universe, existence and everything that surrounds us, even in
those areas whose bases are more abstract, such as metaphysics.
The answers must usually be forceful and lead to a deep reasoning
of the knowledge one possesses.

4 Systematicness
Philosophy is a doctrine in which ideas and truths are organized
on the basis of a model, principle or truth, so that a series of ideas
about a particular subject are presented in a coherent and united
way.

5 Methodology
In philosophy, it is very important to define the methodology to
be used when making a logical reasoning or an empirical activity
about a particular subject. This means that philosophy is
concerned both with knowing the nature of things and existence,
and with the method to be applied in order to arrive at the truth of
these things.

6 World view
The philosophical doctrine has a rather particular perception of
the world because it is interested in reaching the principle and
truth of things, of existence and of everything, that surrounds us,
that is, the totality of the universe.
However, to reach this knowledge, man must make a series of
logical reasonings that make it possible to analyze, question,
interpret, argue or experience certain situations to ensure the
veracity of the information.

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7 Transversality
The philosophy covers various areas of study that are part of the
basis of human knowledge and behavior. Hence, the branches of
philosophy are both humanistic and scientific.
Among the branches of philosophy that can be mentioned are
metaphysics, gnoseology, logic, ethics, politics, art, aesthetics,
language, religion, among others. The philosophy is based on a
critical vision through which it seeks solid and rational arguments
that respond to an endless number of unknowns related to the life
and development of the human being. For this reason, the
philosophy comprises different areas of study and research.

What is the value of philosophy?

Philosophy is a branch of human inquiry and as such it aims at

knowledge and understanding. We might expect that the value of
philosophy lies in the value of the ends that it seeks, the
knowledge and understanding it reveals. But philosophy is rather
notorious for failing to establish definitive knowledge on the
matters it investigates. I am not so sure this reputation is well
deserved. We do learn much from doing philosophy. Philosophy
often clearly reveals why some initially attractive answers to big
philosophical questions are deeply problematic, for instance. But
granted, philosophy often frustrates our craving for
straightforward convictions. In our first reading, Bertrand Russell
argues that there is great value in doing philosophy precisely
because it frustrates our desire for quick easy answers. In denying
us easy answers to big questions and undermining complacent
convictions, philosophy liberates us from narrow minded
conventional thinking and opens our minds to new possibilities.
Philosophy often provides an antidote to prejudice not by settling
big questions, but by revealing just how hard it is to settle those

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questions. It can lead us to question our comfortably complacent
conventional opinions.

The Value of Philosophy

We humans are very prone to suffer from a psychological

predicament we might call “the security blanket paradox.” We
know the world is full of hazards, and like passengers after a
shipwreck, we tend to latch on to something for a sense of safety.
We might cling to a possession, another person, our beliefs, or
any combination of these. The American pragmatist philosopher
Charles Sanders Peirce speaks of doubt and uncertainty as
uncomfortable anxiety-producing states. This would help explain
why we tend to cling, even desperately, to beliefs we find
comforting. This clinging strategy, however, leads us into a
predicament that becomes clear once we notice that having a
security blanket just gives us one more thing to worry about. In
addition to worrying about our own safety, we now are anxious
about our security blanket getting lost or damaged. The asset
becomes a liability. The clinging strategy for dealing with
uncertainty and fear becomes counterproductive.
While not calling it by this name, Russell describes the
intellectual consequences of the security blanket paradox vividly:
The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life
imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from
the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions,
which have grown up in his mind without the cooperation or
consent of his deliberate reason. . . The life of the instinctive man
is shut up within the circle of his private interests. . . In such a life
there is something feverish and confined, in comparison with
which the philosophic life is calm and free. The private world of

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instinctive interests is a small one, set in the midst of a great and
powerful world, which must, sooner or later, lay our private world
in ruins.
The primary value of philosophy according to Russell is that it
loosens the grip of uncritically held opinion and opens the mind
to a liberating range of new possibilities to explore.
Here we are faced with a stark choice between the feeling of
safety we might derive from clinging to opinions we are
accustomed to and the liberation that comes with loosening our
grip on these in order to explore new ideas. The paradox of the
security blanket should make it clear what choice we should
consider rational. Russell, of course, compellingly affirms
choosing the liberty of free and open inquiry.
Must we remain forever uncertain about
philosophical matters? Russell does hold
that some philosophical questions appear to
be unanswerable (at least by us). But he
doesn’t say this about every philosophical
issue. In fact, he gives credit to
philosophical successes for the birth of various branches of the
sciences. Many of the philosophical questions we care most
deeply about, however - like whether our lives are significant,
whether there is objective value that transcends our subjective
interests - sometimes seem to be unsolvable and so remain
perennial philosophical concerns. But we shouldn’t be too certain
about this either. Russell is hardly the final authority on what in
philosophy is or isn’t resolvable. Keep in mind that Russell was
writing 100 years ago and a lot has happened in philosophy in the
meantime (not in small part thanks to Russell’s own definitive
contributions). Problems that looked unsolvable to the best
experts a hundred years ago often look quite solvable by current

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experts. The sciences are no different in this regard. The structure
of DNA would not have been considered knowable fairly
recently. That there was such a structure to discover could not
even have been conceivable prior to Mendel and Darwin (and
here we are only talking 150 years ago).
Even where philosophy can’t settle an issue, it’s not quite correct
to conclude that there is no right answer. When we can’t settle an
issue this usually just tells us something about our own
limitations. There may still be a specific right answer; we just
can’t tell conclusively what it is. It is easy to appreciate this point
with a non-philosophical issue. Perhaps we can’t know whether
or not there is intelligent life on other planets. But surely there is
or there isn’t intelligent life on other planets. Similarly, we may
never establish that humans do or don’t have free will, but it still
seems that there must be some fact of the matter. It would be
intellectually arrogant of us to think that a question has no right
answer just because we aren’t able to figure out what that answer
is.

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Readings: No. 1

Bertrand Russell
Problems of Philosophy
CHAPTER XV
The Value of Philosophy
Having now come to the end of our brief and very incomplete review
of the problems of philosophy, it will be well to consider, in conclusion,
what is the value of philosophy and why it ought to be studied. It is the
more necessary to consider this question, in view of the fact that many
men, under the influence of science or of practical affairs, are inclined to
doubt whether philosophy is anything better than innocent but useless
trifling, hair-splitting distinctions, and controversies on matters
concerning which knowledge is impossible.
This view of philosophy appears to result, partly from a wrong
conception of the ends of life, partly from a wrong conception of the kind
of goods which philosophy strives to achieve. Physical science, through
the medium of inventions, is useful to innumerable people who are
wholly ignorant of it; thus, the study of physical science is to be
recommended, not only, or primarily, because of the effect on the
student, but rather because of the effect on mankind in general. Thus,
utility does not belong to philosophy. If the study of philosophy has any
value at all for others than students of philosophy, it must be only
indirectly, through its effects upon the lives of those who study it. It is in
these effects, therefore, if anywhere, that the value of philosophy must be
primarily sought.
But further, if we are not to fail in our endeavour to determine the
value of philosophy, we must first free our minds from the prejudices of
what are wrongly called 'practical' men. The 'practical' man, as this word
is often used, is one who recognizes only material needs, who realizes
that men must have food for the body, but is oblivious of the necessity of
providing food for the mind. If all men were well off, if poverty and
disease had been reduced to their lowest possible point, there would still
remain much to be done to produce a valuable society; and even in the
existing world the goods of the mind are at least as important as the goods
of the body. It is exclusively among the goods of the mind that the value

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of philosophy is to be found; and only those who are not indifferent to
these goods can be persuaded that the study of philosophy is not a waste
of time.
Philosophy, like all other studies, aims primarily at knowledge. The
knowledge it aims at is the kind of knowledge which gives unity and
system to the body of the sciences, and the kind which results from a
critical examination of the grounds of our convictions, prejudices, and
beliefs. But it cannot be maintained that philosophy has had any very
great measure of success in its attempts to provide definite answers to its
questions. If you ask a mathematician, a mineralogist, a historian, or any
other man of learning, what definite body of truths has been ascertained
by his science, his answer will last as long as you are willing to listen. But
if you put the same question to a philosopher, he will, if he is candid,
have to confess that his study has not achieved positive results such as
have been achieved by other sciences. It is true that this is partly
accounted for by the fact that, as soon as definite knowledge concerning
any subject becomes possible, this subject cease to be called philosophy,
and becomes a separate science. The whole study of the heavens, which
now belongs to astronomy, was once included in philosophy; Newton's
great work was called 'the mathematical principles of natural philosophy'.
Similarly, the study of the human mind, which was a part of philosophy,
has now been separated from philosophy and has become the science of
psychology. Thus, to a great extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more
apparent than real: those questions which are already capable of definite
answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present,
no definite answer can be given, remain to form the residue which is
called philosophy.
This is, however, only a part of the truth concerning the uncertainty
of philosophy. There are many questions—and among them those that
are of the profoundest interest to our spiritual life—which, so far as we
can see, must remain insoluble to the human intellect unless its powers
become of quite a different order from what they are now. Has the
universe any unity of plan or purpose, or is it a fortuitous concourse of
atoms? Is consciousness a permanent part of the universe, giving hope of
indefinite growth in wisdom, or is it a transitory accident on a small planet
on which life must ultimately become impossible? Are good and evil of
importance to the universe or only to man? Such questions are asked by

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philosophy, and variously answered by various philosophers. But it
would seem that, whether answers be otherwise discoverable or not, the
answers suggested by philosophy are none of them demonstrably true.
Yet, however slight may be the hope of discovering an answer, it is part
of the business of philosophy to continue the consideration of such
questions, to make us aware of their importance, to examine all the
approaches to them, and to keep alive that speculative interest in the
universe which is apt to be killed by confining ourselves to definitely
ascertainable knowledge.
Many philosophers, it is true, have held that philosophy could
establish the truth of certain answers to such fundamental questions.
They have supposed that what is of most importance in religious beliefs
could be proved by strict demonstration to be true. In order to judge of
such attempts, it is necessary to take a survey of human knowledge, and
to form an opinion as to its methods and its limitations. On such a subject
it would be unwise to pronounce dogmatically; but if the investigations of
our previous chapters have not led us astray, we shall be compelled to
renounce the hope of finding philosophical proofs of religious beliefs.
We cannot, therefore, include as part of the value of philosophy any
definite set of answers to such questions. Hence, once more, the value of
philosophy must not depend upon any supposed body of definitely
ascertainable knowledge to be acquired by those who study it.
The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very
uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through
life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the
habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have
grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his
deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite,
finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar
possibilities are contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to
philosophize, on the contrary, we find, as we saw in our opening chapters,
that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very
incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us
with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able
to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them
from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of
certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to

21
what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those
who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps
alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar
aspect.
Apart from its utility in showing unsuspected possibilities, philosophy
has a value—perhaps its chief value—through the greatness of the objects
which it contemplates, and the freedom from narrow and personal aims
resulting from this contemplation. The life of the instinctive man is shut
up within the circle of his private interests: family and friends may be
included, but the outer world is not regarded except as it may help or
hinder what comes within the circle of instinctive wishes. In such a life
there is something feverish and confined, in comparison with which the
philosophic life is calm and free. The private world of instinctive interests
is a small one, set in the midst of a great and powerful world which must,
sooner or later, lay our private world in ruins. Unless we can so enlarge
our interests as to include the whole outer world, we remain like a
garrison in a beleaguered fortress, knowing that the enemy prevents
escape and that ultimate surrender is inevitable. In such a life, there is no
peace, but a constant strife between the insistence of desire and the
powerlessness of will. In one way or another, if our life is to be great and
free, we must escape this prison and this strife.
One way of escape is by philosophic contemplation. Philosophic
contemplation does not, in its widest survey, divide the universe into two
hostile camps—friends and foes, helpful and hostile, good and bad—it
views the whole impartially. Philosophic contemplation, when it is
unalloyed, does not aim at proving that the rest of the universe is akin to
man. All acquisition of knowledge is an enlargement of the Self, but this
enlargement is best attained when it is not directly sought. It is obtained
when the desire for knowledge is alone operative, by a study which does
not wish in advance that its objects should have this or that character, but
adapts the Self to the characters which it finds in its objects. This
enlargement of Self is not obtained when, taking the Self as it is, we try to
show that the world is so similar to this Self that knowledge of it is possible
without any admission of what seems alien. The desire to prove this is a
form of self-assertion and, like all self-assertion, it is an obstacle to the
growth of self which it desires, and of which the Self knows that it is
capable. Self-assertion, in philosophic speculation as elsewhere, views the

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world as a means to its own ends; thus, it makes the world of less account
than self, and the Self sets bounds to the greatness of its goods. In
contemplation, on the contrary, we start from the not-Self, and through
its greatness, the boundaries of Self are enlarged; through the infinity of
the universe the mind which contemplates it achieves some share in
infinity.
For this reason, greatness of soul is not fostered by those philosophies
which assimilate the universe to Man. Knowledge is a form of union of
Self and not-Self; like all union, it is impaired by dominion, and therefore
by any attempt to force the universe into conformity with what we find in
ourselves. There is a widespread philosophical tendency towards the
view which tells us that Man is the measure of all things, that truth is man-
made, that space and time and the world of universals are properties of
the mind, and that, if there be anything not created by the mind, it is
unknowable and of no account for us. This view, if our previous
discussions were correct, is untrue; but in addition to being untrue, it has
the effect of robbing philosophic contemplation of all that gives it value,
since it fetters contemplation to self. What it calls knowledge is not a
union with the not self, but a set of prejudices, habits, and desires, making
an impenetrable veil between us and the world beyond. The man who
finds pleasure in such a theory of knowledge is like the man who never
leaves the domestic circle for fear his word might not be law.
The true philosophic contemplation, on the contrary, finds its
satisfaction in every enlargement of the not-Self, in everything that
magnifies the objects contemplated, and thereby the subject
contemplating. Everything, in contemplation, that is personal or private,
everything that depends upon habit, self-interest, or desire, distorts the
object, and hence impairs the union which the intellect seeks. By thus
making a barrier between subject and object, such personal and private
things become a prison to the intellect. The free intellect will see as God
might see, without a here and now, without hopes and fears, without the
trammels of customary beliefs and traditional prejudices, calmly,
dispassionately, in the sole and exclusive desire of knowledge—
knowledge as impersonal, as purely contemplative, as it is possible for
man to attain. Hence, also the free intellect will value more the abstract
and universal knowledge into which the accidents of private history do
not enter, than the knowledge brought by the senses, and dependent, as

23
such knowledge must be, upon an exclusive and personal point of view
and a body whose sense-organs distort as much as they reveal.
The mind which has become accustomed to the freedom and
impartiality of philosophic contemplation will preserve something of the
same freedom and impartiality in the world of action and emotion. It will
view its purposes and desires as parts of the whole, with the absence of
insistence that results from seeing them as infinitesimal fragments in a
world of which all the rest is unaffected by any one man's deeds. The
impartiality which, in contemplation, is the unalloyed desire for truth, is
the very same quality of mind which, in action, is justice, and in emotion
is that universal love which can be given to all, and not only to those who
are judged useful or admirable. Thus, contemplation enlarges not only
the objects of our thoughts, but also the objects of our actions and our
affections: it makes us citizens of the universe, not only of one walled city
at war with all the rest. In this citizenship of the universe consists man's
true freedom, and his liberation from the thraldom of narrow hopes and
fears.
Thus, to sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy;
Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its
questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true,
but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these
questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our
intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which
closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the
greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also
is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe
which constitutes its highest good.

24
2

A brief History
of Philosophy

25
26
1 Eastern Philosophy

When we are talking about the Eastern Philosophy, we mean the

Philosophy in Asia and Africa, in past and present days, which
includes the Ancient Iraqi and ancient Egypt and ancient China
and ancient India in particular, but it includes also the Japanese,
the Korean and the other Asian nations.
The Eastern Philosophy is very complicated one, because it has
emerged with the Religions, which is very wide and very
complicate religions, return to thousands of years with many
teachings in every aspect of life. In the same time, the Religions
in these Countries dominate everything in life, and philosophy
became one of components and serve the teachings of the religion
and Politics. most of the philosophies in ancient China, India,
Mesopotamia and Egypt is a practical one, seeking to build a
virtue life not to think about the Metaphysical issues in depth in
general.
We are going to take a very brief idea about this Philosophy, just
to realize the differences between the Philosophies in the World.

Differences between the Eastern and Western Philosophies

1. Western Philosophy is generally considered to be born out of
wonder (Aristotle) about the universe and man. On the other
hand, Eastern Philosophy is:
- Generally understood to be more practically oriented,
- To inquire into human suffering and how to alleviate it,
- And to emphasize harmonious living of man.

2. In the West Philosophy has always been sharply distinguished

from religion (and even theology). Philosophy started as a
reaction against religion on the one hand, and against myth and
magic on the other. Thales (c. 600 B.C.) was the first
philosopher in ancient Greek times. He was also a noted

27
 physicist of his times. He tried to explain the nature of the
universe in purely physical terms as when he said that water
was the substance out of which the whole universe arose. He
was also famous for allowing his scientific observations and
reasoning (for example, about eclipses) govern his behaviour,
rather than rely on myth and magic. In the West Philosophy
always tended to be a rational enterprise, severed from faith,
superstition or religious experiences of various kinds.

3. In Eastern Philosophy, on the other hand, there is no sharp

division between Philosophy and religion, or between say,
Philosophy and Psychology. It was ever strictly severed from
religion. There never was a conflict between it and religion to
begin with. It only heightened some aspects of religion,
representing as it were the contemplative aspects of religion,
while at the same time providing a theoretical framework and
justification for the basic concepts of religion. To some degree,
it is true to say that Eastern Philosophy is to religion as
Western theology is to religions like Christianity. Only it must
not be forgotten that there are elements of Eastern Philosophy
which are not just apologetics of religion, but which represent
an independent aspect of civilization, consisting of an
independent mode of apprehending Reality, other than what
religions generally present. Furthermore, these modes are not
based on belief, faith or ritual, some of the essential modes of
religion.
4. In the West Philosophy theory is distinguished from actual
practical living. In the East Philosophy includes experience
(say of the oneness of existence) and actual living: they
supplement each other.
5. Even when it started Western Philosophy was considered as
theory (Greek, `theoria' = vision). The dominant trend in
Western Philosophy had always been an inquiry into the
fundamental principles of the universe, of man, of his society
and of values.
It contains a system of interrelated principles explaining the
universe. It is concerned with matters or problems of living,
but only as an intellectual discipline inquiring into the sources,

28
 foundations or basic principles behind problems of living. For
example, Hume, Kant, Mill and Bentham in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries asked what is the highest good for man
and what is the justification behind our notions of right and
wrong.
In the East when philosophical speculations began…
philosophers started asking the same questions as in the West,
such as what is the ultimate reality behind the universe, the
unity behind the diversity which we experience, and
sometimes even came to similar conclusions, as for example,
that the four or five elements--earth, air, water, fire and ether-
- are the ultimate principles of the universe. But from very
early the dominant trend in the East had been to arrive at a
unifying experience, an experience which is free from a sense
of duality and multiplicity, in an attempt to answer these
questions. This is one reason that religion and Philosophy are
not sharply distinguished in the East. Philosophy as theory is
construed only as a means of formulating and justifying
systematically these experiences.
This is particularly true of the systems of Samkhya-Yoga,
Vedanta, Buddhism, Taoism and Zen Buddhism.

6. Eastern Philosophy is existential. In the West and Western

Philosophy reason, and life governed by reason (for example,
the `examined life' of Socrates), and not by custom, instinct or
passion, are given prominence.
In the East and in the dominant trends of Eastern Philosophy
reason has its place in life, but the final goal of life is liberation
and freedom from the self. And the means to achieve it, i.e.,
the way we live our lives, must not be severed from this goal.
So, ethical codes, if they exist, are organized around this idea.
One can say the idea is not merely to use reason, but to go
beyond it.
At least the dominant trends in Western Philosophy have
always been such that they would present a view of the world
and of life, but in some fashion leave the person who studies
them unaffected. As a matter of history, only a few Western

29
 philosophers--Socrates, Zeno the Stoic, Epictetus and
Spinoza--to mention some examples--translated their
philosophies into living. In any typical Western university, it
is not even expected of a philosopher that he should live what
he professes in his philosophy, at any rate nothing outside of
the professional ethical standards everyone is supposed to
adhere to. There is a deep underlying belief in the West that he
must not be required to, because values are matters of personal
opinion, and institutions have no right to impose their values
on individuals.
In Eastern Philosophy on the other hand, the ultimate experience it
talks about, however it is understood, is not a matter of individual
opinion or philosophical theory, but something, which, if one ever
attains to it, cannot but transform one's living or existence. In Eastern
Philosophy generally speaking, knowing in the genuine sense of the
term, is synonymous with being.
For the above reasons, the methods Philosophy uses are different
between the West and the East: Rational speculation, dialectical use of
reason showing the inadequacy of reason, or logical analysis etc. are the
various methods used in the West, depending on how a philosopher
conceives the business of philosophy.
Some of these methods are indeed also used in the East in their system
building or showing the contradictoriness of different views of reality.
(For example, Shankara's or Nagarjuna's use of dialectical reason to
refute opponents' systems.) Even the results also may seem similar.
Compare, for example, Hume's rejection of the notion of the self as a
substance with the Buddhist analysis of the ego as an illusion.
However, in the East there is a basic underlying distrust in the capacity
of reason in comprehending ultimate Reality. It is not that, as we said
above, people, including philosophers, do not use reason to speculate
about the nature of Reality. It is not even that philosophers in India or
China did not attempt to rationally systematize their philosophic
intuitions into systems of philosophy. It is just that when it came to
experiencing or comprehending Reality, they believed that reason is
incapable of it. What are their reasons for believing so?
There are two reasons for this:
a) Any reality, which one comprehends in some fashion, if it
deserves the name of Reality, must include the knower. But
reason by its very nature must separate the knower from the
known, for ordinary process of knowing is such that we are at

30
 least implicitly automatically aware of ourselves as separate
from the known.
To think of a chair is to have the concept of a chair in mind,
and this presupposes that I (even though only in the
background of my consciousness) aware of myself as distinct
from the chair.
b) Reason is thinking done by means of concepts. The very
process of conceptual thought is such that if a concept is used
to "represent" Reality, then it must distinguish that Reality
from what it is not, that is, the object (Reality known) from
the subject (the knower), or the object from the non-object,
and so on. This is so because concepts can be significantly
used only in contrast to one another; they can only operate in
duality. For example, we can make sense of the concept of
chair by knowing not just what a chair is, but also what it is
not.
There can be no concept, at least no positive concept, of
something totally unique, or totally all-inclusive. And if the
Reality I am trying to know is to be all-inclusive, then it
cannot be known by a divisive concept.
7. Distinctions, divisions, and oppositions are not ultimately
real in Eastern Philosophy. For example, the opposition
between the self and the world, subject and object, good and
evil, right and wrong, pleasure and pain, beautiful and ugly,
are all thought-generated, and have no ultimate validity. The
West presupposes that ultimately the distinctions like good and
evil must be real. At the same time, it believes that what is
ultimately real must also be good. The West always struggled
to reconcile these two ideas in its aim of arriving at a monistic,
unitary conception of reality. However, it is impossible to
reconcile these, for, if Reality is only good and not evil, then
evil will be an ultimate principle as well as the good. We will
now have the choice of making evil a non-reality (an absence
of Reality), or making good and evil relative conceptions,
which means that they are real only at the conceptual or
`empirical' level, but not absolutely real. Eastern philosophy,
with of course many exceptions such as Visishta Advaita and
Confucianism, takes the latter approach.

31
It is not that somehow this is a special problem with Western
philosophy. In as much as mankind in general by virtue of its
being governed by the processes of thinking is subject to the same
preconceptions, the problem is rather human than Western. For
example, Eastern cultures are just as much subject to the notion
of the self as opposed to the world, to the notions of good and
evil, or of pleasure and pain. Thus understood, Eastern
Philosophy represents a different possibility for living for
mankind in general and not just for the West.

Indian Philosophy

Essential features of Indian Philosophy

Indian Philosophy shares with other Eastern philosophies many

features such as:
its practicalness, Existential nature, emphasis one unifying
experience which helps us transcend merely rational knowledge
which separates the knower from the known and which frees us
from duality and opposites including good and evil, pleasure and
pain and so forth; Emphasis on self-knowledge and selflessness;
An understanding that the individual ego or self is in the final
analysis unreal; And an understanding that all real knowledge
must affect one's personal being, and so forth.
It also has a few important features of its own, which differentiate
it not only from Western Philosophy, but also from the rest of
Eastern Philosophy.
The following are some common features of all Indian
philosophies:
1. Practically all Indian Philosophy believes in some form or
other in the law of karma and, its corollary, rebirth. The term

32
`karma' means action. The law of karma states roughly that
whatever we are is the result of our previous actions and what
we will be in future is determined by what we do in the present
(and also by what we did in the past, if the effects of past
actions are not yet exhausted). The effects of our actions may
be just physical, as for example, when I slap someone on his
face, there are red marks on his cheek. The effects may be
psychological: the other person may get angry at me in return.
The effects are not only on the person but also on myself: I
may feel guilty about my slapping, or I may feel justified and
confirm myself (or be reinforced) in my attitudes toward the
other person. Thus, the law of karma establishes a conditioned
response in myself.
So far, the law of karma seems commonsensical, and no more
than a mere law of cause and effect. But this is not the whole
story. The effects may also be metaphysical. The law is
invoked to explain a lot of unknowns in a person's life.
Suppose I am born to poor parents and am a beggar, or am born
a cripple, and my neighbour is born rich, yet nothing in this
life seems to explain the difference in our plights, I am tempted
to say that it must be because of what I have done in my past
life (or lives). Similarly, I may lead a life of piety and
righteousness in this life; yet the circumstances in my life seem
constantly to turn against myself while in someone else's life
they may be in his favour, notwithstanding the immoral life he
has been leading. If, thus, I can't seem to find any immediate
effects in this life of my moral or his immoral conduct, then I
am tempted to say that our plights will reflect our conduct
more faithfully in our future lives. Thus, the law of karma begs
for the postulation of past and future lives for a person. Aga in
almost all Indian Philosophy believes in some form or rebirth
or another.

33
 In order to explain how karma or the effects of one's previous
actions carry over into another time in this life, or into a future
life, certain hypotheses are invoked: the actions cause
unconscious latent impressions in one's psyche. These latent
impressions are carried over into the future life by a subtle
body. The impressions not only cause our future plight but
becoming as such, that is, our future lives. The future plight
includes, among other things, going to heaven or hell. Notice
that in Indian Philosophy heaven and hell are not permanent
states one gets into, but are temporary stages in one's spiritual
career where one works out the effects of one's previous
actions without at the same accruing further merits or demerits.
Thus, being subject to karma and undergoing births and deaths
are generally considered as what constitute bondage in Indian
Philosophy, and are commonly called -samsara.
Notice here that the law of karma requires an outside agency
to coordinate the circumstances of the external world with the
merits or demerits created by one's own past karma, or the
karmas of different persons so that in some appropriate
contexts they are bound together. In order to affect this some
philosophies have invoked an unseen agency called adrshta or
apurva (both these terms mean an unseenforce). The first is
used by Nyaya as one of the fundamental constituents of the
universe to explain the coordination of the effects of karma
(for example, between different persons). The second is
proposed by Purva Mimamsa as an unseen residual force
which occurs as an effect of our actions and which, however,
lingers on and takes effect at a later time. Thus, it is clear how
the notion of karma has taken a distinctly metaphysical
connotation.
2. Liberation in Indian Philosophy is considered to be not only
freedom from suffering, but also from karma and rebirth, i.e.,
from the binding effects of one's action which include being

34
 born, dying, and being born again and so on. This process of
becoming is called samsara.
3. What in the West are considered to be the psychological aspects
of man are
considered to be only his
material side. Where a
bifurcation in human nature
does exist (and it does not
always, as clearly seen in
Buddhism where body and mind are considered to be two
aspects of the same basic process), the bifurcation is not, as in
Western Philosophy, between body and mind, but between the
body-mind (both of which are considered material) and
consciousness. On this understanding, thought and its
products, one's conditioning, even one's sense of oneself (the
ego-sense), would all be considered material. So, to be
liberated would mean to be liberated from the material aspects
of oneself.
4. All schools of Indian Philosophy contain accounts of the basic
principles, particularly of what constitutes the universe and the
human being.
5. In Indian theory of knowledge there are six valid means of
knowledge, although not all of them are recognized by all the
schools of Philosophy. In order to defend his philosophical
position a philosopher has to engage himself in discussions
about how he knows what he knows. It is in answer to this
question that Indian Philosophy postulates these valid means
of knowledge. Every school of Indian Philosophy has a theory
of knowledge and also a theory of error.

The six means of knowledge are:

Perception or Pratyaksha (there are two kinds of perception:
savikalpaka (discriminatory) and nirvikalpaka (rather more
immediate and non- discriminatory); Inference; Verbal
testimony; Comparison; Presumption And non-existence.

35
 Every school of Indian Philosophy has a theory of perception
and a theory of perceptual error. All the orthodox schools
generally accept the Nyaya (one of the orthodox schools of
Indian Philosophy) theory of inference and fallacy. Several
schools accept verbal testimony as an independent means of
knowledge, and even the Vedas as an authority to be trusted.
However, they only pay lip service to their authority and go
ahead with their own philosophizing paying little heed as to
whether what they say is or is not contained in the Vedas,
sometimes even presenting ideas contrary to those in the
ancient texts. The general tradition in India has been to claim
only to expound and illuminate what the ancients had laid
down and not to postulate new ideas.
Comparison as a means of knowledge is the basis for
identifying a new object on the basis of the knowledge of its
similarity with another previously familiar object.
Presumption is a case of presuppositional inference: for
example, if we see a man gaining weight, but he is not seen
eating at all in the daytime, it is presumed that he has been
eating at night or when no one is observing him. Absence or
no n-existence would again be a special case of perception, as
in Western theories of knowledge; although there is a dispute
here, as to whether it is a case of perception of something not
being there, or a non-perception of something being there.
Those schools of Philosophy, which recognize one or more of
these means generally, argue also for the independence of each
from the other means of knowledge.
6. There is also a considerable amount of discussion in Indian
philosophical schools about what constitutes truth, how
universals are related to particular objects, and how cause and
effect are related to each other. Thus, every school of Indian
Philosophy would have theory of truth, a theory of universals,
and a theory of causality.
7. Finally all schools of Indian Philosophy have a theory of what
constitutes the highest state of the soul, an analysis of the
psyche and an account of the means which one can adopt to
attain the highest state, however that is construed.

36
Chinese Philosophy
In the 6th century BCE, China moved toward a state of internal warfare
as the ruling Zhou Dynasty disintegrated. This change bred a new social
class of administrators and magistrates within the courts, who occupied
themselves with the business of devising strategies for ruling more
effectively. The large body of ideas that was produced by these officials
became known as the Hundred Schools of Thought.
All this coincided with the emergence of philosophy in Greece,
and shared some of its concerns, such as seeking stability in a
constantly changing world, and alternatives to what had
previously been prescribed by religion. But Chinese philosophy
evolved from practical politics and was therefore concerned with
morality and ethics rather than the nature of the cosmos. One of
the most important ideas to appear at this time came from the
Daode jing (The Way and its Power), which has been attributed
to Laozi (Lao Tzu). It was one of the first attempts to propose a
theory of just rule, based on de (virtue), which could be found
by following dao (the Way), and forms the basis of the
philosophy known as Daoism.

Stages of change
In order to understand the concept of dao, it is necessary to know
how the ancient Chinese viewed the ever-changing world. For
them, the changes are
cyclical, continually
moving from one state to
another, such as from night
to day, summer to winter,
and so on. They saw the
different states not as
opposites, but as related,
one arising from the other.

37
These states also possess complementary properties that together
make up a whole. The process of change is seen as an expression
of dao, and leads to the 10,000 manifestations that make up the
world. Laozi, in the Daode jing, says that humans are merely
one of these 10,000 manifestations and have no special status. But
because of our desire and free will, we can stray from the dao,
and disturb the world’s harmonious balance. To live a virtuous
life means acting in accordance with the dao.
Following the dao, however, is not a simple matter, as the Daode
jing acknowledges. Philosophizing about dao is pointless, as it is
beyond anything that humans can conceive of. It is characterized
by wu (“not-being”), so we can only live according to the dao by
wu wei, literally “non-action.” By this Laozi does not mean “not
doing”, but acting in accordance with nature—spontaneously and
intuitively. That in turn entails acting without desire, ambition,
or recourse to social conventions.
So little is known for certain about the author of the Daode jing,
who is traditionally assumed to be Laozi (Lao Tzu). He has
become an almost mythical figure; it has even been suggested that
the book was not by Laozi, but is in act a compilation of sayings
by a number of scholars. What we do know is that there was a
scholar born in the state of Chu, with the name Li Er or Lao Tan,
during the Zhou dynasty, who became known as Laozi (the Old
Master).
Several texts indicate that he was an archivist at the Zhou court,
and that Confucius consulted him on rituals and ceremonies.
Legend states that Laozi left the court as the Zhou dynasty
declined, and journeyed west in search of solitude. As he was
about to cross the border, one of the guards recognized him and
asked for a record of his wisdom.
Laozi wrote the Daode jing for him, and then continued on his
way, never to be seen again.

38
2 Western Philosophy
I Greek Philosophy

Our main focus here will be with the three major ancient Greek
philosophers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. It is in these thinkers
that science and philosophy get started. However, even these
great minds were working in an intellectual tradition and it will
be well worth a few minutes to appreciate the historical context
in which they worked and the foundation it provided. Therefore,
we will begin with a quick tour of Pre-Socratic thought.

The Pre-Socratics
In the Iliad and the Odyssey, the early Ionian epic poet Homer
offers a view of the world as under the influence of the Olympian
gods. The Olympian gods were much like humans, capricious and
willful. In the Homeric view of the
world, human qualities are
projected onto the world via
human-like gods. Here
explanation of the natural world is
modeled on explanation of human
behavior. This marks the
worldview of the epic poets as pre-philosophical and pre-
scientific. However, even in the early epic poems we find a moral
outlook that is key to the scientific and philosophical frame of
mind. In Homer and in later Greek tragedy, we find stories of the
grief that human hubris brings upon us. The repeated warnings
against human pride and arrogance make a virtue out of humility.
Intellectual humility involves recognizing the fallibility of human
thought, in particular one’s own. The willingness to submit one’s
own opinions to rational enquiry is essential to moving beyond
the realm of myth and into the realm of philosophy and science.

39
Intellectual humility makes it possible to see the world and one’s
place in it as a matter for discovery rather than a matter of self-
assertion.

The Milesians
The beginning of philosophy in ancient Greece is often given as
585 B.C., the year that the Milesian philosopher Thales predicted
a solar eclipse. Thales brings a new naturalistic approach to
explaining the world. That is, his proposed explanations for
natural phenomenon are given in terms of more fundamental
natural phenomenon, not in supernatural terms. The step away
from supernatural myth and towards understanding the natural
world on its own terms is a major development. Thales is
interested in the fundamental nature of the world and arrives at
the view that the basic substance of the world is water. His
reason for thinking that water is fundamental is that of the four
recognized elements - earth, air, fire and water - only water can
take the form of a solid, liquid, or a gas. According to Thales,
earth is really water that is even more concentrated than ice and
fire is really water that is more rarified than steam. While his view
sounds absurd to us, the significance of his contribution is not the
specific answer he gives to the question of the ultimate nature of
the world, but how he proposes to answer this question. Thales
takes an important step away from projecting ourselves onto the
world through myth and superstition and towards explanations
that invite further investigation of the world as it is independent
of human will.
Pythagoras (fl. 525-500 B.C.) traveled in Egypt where he learned
astronomy and geometry. His thought represents a peculiar
amalgam of hardnosed mathematical thinking and creative but
rather kooky superstition. Pythagoras holds that all things consist

40
of numbers. He saw mathematics as a purifier of the soul.
Thinking about numbers takes one’s attention off of particular
things and elevates the mind to the realm of the eternal. Scientific
thinking, on this view, is not so far from meditation. Pythagoras
is responsible for the Pythagorean Theorem, which tells us that
the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum
of the squares of the remaining sides. He also discerned how
points in space can define shapes, magnitudes, and forms:

• 1 point defines location .

• 2 points define a line . .
• 3 points define a plane

.
. .
• 4 points define solid 3 dimensional objects . .
. .
Pythagoras introduces the concept of form. The earlier Milesians
only addressed the nature of matter, the stuff of the universe. A
full account of the nature of the world must also address the
various forms that underlying stuff takes. Form implies limits. For
Pythagoras, this is understandable in numerical terms. Number
represents the application of limit (form) to the unlimited
(matter). The notion of form takes on greater sophistication and
importance in the thought of Plato and Aristotle.
Pythagoras led a cult that held some rather peculiar religious
beliefs. The more popular beliefs in the Homeric gods are not
concerned with salvation or spiritual purification. There was the
Dionysian religion, which sought spiritual purification and

41
immortality through drunken carnal feasts and orgies.
Pythagorean religious belief also aims at purification and
immortality. Pythagoras founded a religious society based on the
following precepts:
• that at its deepest level, reality is mathematical in nature
• that philosophy can be used for spiritual purification
• that the soul can rise to union with the divine
• that certain symbols have a mystical significance
• That all brothers of the order should observe strict loyalty and
secrecy.

Members of the inner circle were strict communist vegetarians.

They were also not allowed to eat beans. Pythagoras might have
done well in Ballard.
The last of the Milesians we will discuss is Heraclitus. Heraclitus
(544-484 B.C.) was born in Ephesus on the coast of Asia Minor.
He is best known for his doctrine of eternal flux according to
which everything undergoes perpetual change. “One can never
step in the same river twice.” The underlying substance of the
world is fire or heat according to Heraclitus. This is the least
stable of the elements and explains the transitoriness of all things.
Everything is a kindling or extinguishing of fire. While
everything is in a continual state of flux, this change is not without
order. Heraclitus saw Logos or rational order as essential to the
world. Changes are injustices, which by natural necessity are
redressed in further changes. Heraclitus held ethical views worth
noting as well. The good life involves understanding and
accepting the necessity of strife and change.

The Sophists
Most of early Greek philosophy prior to the Sophists was
concerned with the natural world. The desire to explain an

42
underlying reality required natural philosophers to speculate
beyond what is observable and they lacked any developed critical
method for adjudicating between rival theories of substance
change or being. In this situation, it is easy to see how many might
grow impatient with natural philosophy and adopt the skeptical
view that reason simply cannot reveal truths beyond our
immediate experience. But reason might still have practical value
in that it allows the skilled arguer to advance his interests. The
Sophists were the first professional educators. For a fee, they
taught students how to argue for the practical purpose of
persuading others and winning their way. While they were well
acquainted with and taught the theories of philosophers, they were
less concerned with inquiry and discovery than with persuasion.
Pythagoras and Heraclitus had offered some views on religion
and the good life. Social and moral issues come to occupy the
center of attention for the Sophists. Their tendency towards
skepticism about the capacity of reason to reveal truth and their
cosmopolitan circumstances, which exposed them to a broad
range of social customs and codes, lead the Sophists to take a
relativist stance on ethical matters. The Sophist’s lack of interest
in knowing the truth for its own sake and their entrepreneurial
interest in teaching argument for the sake of best serving their
client’s interests leads Plato to derisively label the Sophists as
“shopkeepers with spiritual wares.”
One of the better-known Sophists, Protagoras (481-411 B.C.),
authored several books including, Truth, or the Rejection (the
rejection of science and philosophy), which begins with his best-
known quote, “man is the measure of all things, of those that are
that they are, of those that are not that they are not.” Knowledge,
for Protagoras is reducible to perception. Since different
individuals perceive the same things in different ways, knowledge

43
is relative to the knower. This is a classic expression of epistemic
relativism. Accordingly, Protagoras rejects any objectively
knowable morality and takes ethics and law to be conventional
inventions of civilizations, binding only within societies and
holding only relative to societies.

Socrates
Socrates is widely regarded as the founder of philosophy and
rational inquiry. He was born around 470 B.C., and tried and
executed in 399 B.C. Socrates was the first of the three major
Greek philosophers; the others being Socrates’ student Plato and
Plato’s student Aristotle.
Socrates did not write anything himself. We know of his views
primarily through Plato’s dialogues where Socrates is the
primary character. Socrates is also known through plays of
Aristophanes and the historical writings of Xenophon. In many of
Plato’s dialogues it is difficult to determine when Socrates’ views
are being represented and when the character of Socrates is used
as a mouthpiece for Plato’s views.
Socrates was well known in Athens. He was eccentric, poor, ugly,
brave, stoic, and temperate. He was a distinguished veteran who
fought bravely on Athens’ behalf and was apparently indifferent
to the discomforts of war. Socrates claimed to hear a divine inner
voice he called his daimon and he was prone to go into catatonic
states of concentration.
The conflicting views of the Ionian and Eleatic philosophers of
nature encouraged skepticism about our ability to obtain
knowledge through rational inquiry. Among the Sophists, this
skepticism is manifested in epistemic and Moral Relativism.
Epistemic relativism is the view that there is no objective standard
for evaluating the truth or likely truth of our beliefs. Rather,

44
epistemic standards of reasoning are relative to one’s point of
view and interests. Roughly, this is the view that what is true for
me might not be true for you (when we are not just talking about
ourselves). Epistemic relativism marks no distinction between
knowledge, belief, or opinion on the one hand, and truth and
reality on the other. To take a rather silly example, if I think it’s
Tuesday, then that’s what’s true for me; and if you think it’s
Thursday, then that’s what is true for you. In cases like this,
epistemic relativism seems quite absurd, yet many of us have
grown comfortable with the notion that, say, beliefs about the
moral acceptability of capital punishment might be true for some
people and not for others.
Moral Relativism is the parallel doctrine about moral standards.
The moral relativist takes there to be no objective grounds for
judging some ethical opinions to be correct and others not. Rather,
ethical judgments can only be made relative to one or another
system of moral beliefs and no system can be evaluated as
objectively better than another. Since earlier attempts at rational
inquiry had produced conflicting results, the Sophists held that no
opinion could be said to constitute knowledge. According to the
Sophists, rather than providing grounds for thinking some beliefs
are true and others false, rational argument can only be fruitfully
employed as rhetoric, the art of persuasion. For the epistemic
relativist, the value of reason lies not in revealing the truth, but in
advancing one’s interests. The epistemic and Moral Relativism of
the Sophist has become popular again in recent years and has an
academic following in much "post- modern" writing.
Socrates was not an epistemic or moral relativist. He pursued
rational inquiry as a means of discovering the truth about ethical
matters. But he did not advance any ethical doctrines or lay claim
to any knowledge about ethical matters. Instead, his criticism of

45
the Sophists and his contribution to philosophy and science came
in the form of his method of inquiry.
As the Socratic Method is portrayed in Plato’s Socratic dialogues,
interlocutor proposes a definition or analysis of some important
concept, Socrates raises an objection or offers counter examples,
then the interlocutor reformulates his position to handle the
objection. Socrates raises a more refined objection. Further
reformulations are offered, and so forth. Socrates uses the
dialectic to discredit others’ claims to knowledge. While
revealing the ignorance of his interlocutors, Socrates also shows
how to make progress towards more adequate understanding.
A good example of the Socratic Method at work can be found in
one of Plato’s early Socratic dialogues, Euthyphro. Here is a link:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1642. Here is Euthyphro as an
audiobook: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19840.
In Plato’s dialogues we often find Socrates asking about the
nature of something and then critically examine proposed
answers, finding assorted illuminating objections that often
suggest next steps. In this dialogue, Socrates and Euthyphro are
discussing the nature of piety or holiness. Socrates and Euthyphro
never conclusively discover what piety is, but they learn much
about how various attempts to define piety fail. The dialogue
works the same if we substitute moral goodness for piety.
Understood in this way, Euthyphro provides a classic argument
against Divine Command Theory, a view about the nature of
morality that says that what is right is right simply because it is
commanded by God.
Socrates would not have us believe our questions have no correct
answers. He is genuinely seeking the truth of the matter. But he
would impress on us that inquiry is hard and that untested claims
to knowledge amount to little more than vanity. Even though

46
Euthyphro and Socrates don’t achieve full knowledge of the
nature of piety, their understanding is advanced through testing
the answers that Euthyphro suggests. We come to see why piety
can’t be understood just by identifying examples of it. While
examples of pious acts fail to give us a general understanding of
piety, the fact that we can identify examples of what is pious
suggests that we have some grasp of the notion even in the
absence of a clear understanding of it.
After a few failed attempts to define piety, Euthyphro suggests
that what is pious is what is loved by the gods (all of them, the
Greeks recognized quite a few). Many religious believers
continue to hold some version of Divine Command Theory. In his
response to Euthyphro, Socrates points us towards a rather
devastating critique of this view and any view that grounds
morality in authority. Socrates asks whether what is pious is pious
because the gods love it or whether the gods love what is pious
because it is pious. Let’s suppose that the gods agree in loving
just what is pious. The question remains whether their loving the
pious explains its piety or whether some things being pious
explains why the gods love them. Once this question of what is
supposed to explain what is made clear, Euthyphro agrees with
Socrates that the gods love what is pious because it is pious. The
problem with the alternative view, that what is pious is pious
because it is loved by the gods, is that this view makes piety
wholly arbitrary. Anything could be pious if piety is just a matter
of being loved by the gods. If the gods love puppy torture, then
this would be pious. Hopefully this seems absurd. Neither
Socrates nor Euthyphro is willing to accept that what is pious is
completely arbitrary. At this point, Socrates points out to
Euthyphro that since an act’s being pious is what explains why
the gods love it, he has failed to give an account of what piety is.
The explanation can’t run in both directions. In taking piety to

47
explain being loved by the gods, we are left lacking an
explanation of what piety itself is. Euthyphro gives up shortly
after this failed attempt and walks off in a huff.
If we substitute talk of God making things right or wrong by way
of commanding them for talk of the gods loving what is pious in
this exchange of ideas, we can readily see that Divine Command
Theory has the rather unsavory result that torturing innocent
puppies would be right if God commanded it. We will return to
this problem when we take up ethical theory later in the course.
While we don’t reach the end of inquiry into piety (or goodness)
in Euthyphro, we do make discernible progress in coming to see
why a few faulty accounts must be set aside. Socrates does not
refute the skeptic or the relativist Sophist by claiming to discover
the truth about anything. What he does instead is show us how to
engage in rational inquiry and show us how we can make progress
by taking the possibility of rational inquiry seriously.

Apology
This dialogue by Plato is a dramatization of Socrates’ defense at
his trial for corrupting the youth among other things. Socrates
tells the story of his friend Chaerophon who visits the Oracle of
Delphi and asks if anyone in Athens is wiser than Socrates. The
Oracle answered that no one is wiser than Socrates. Socrates is
astounded by this and makes it his mission in life to test and
understand the Oracle’s pronouncement. He seeks out people who
have a reputation for wisdom in various regards and tests their
claims to knowledge through questioning. He discovers a good
deal of vain ignorance and false claims to knowledge, but no one
with genuine wisdom.
Ultimately, Socrates concludes that he is wisest, but not because
he possesses special knowledge not had by others. Rather, he

48
finds that he is wisest because he recognizes his own lack of
knowledge while others think they know, but do not.
Of course, people generally, and alleged experts especially, are
quite happy to think that what they believe is right. We tend to be
content with our opinions and we rather like it when others affirm
this contentment by agreeing with us, deferring to our claims to
know or at least by “respecting our opinion” (whatever that is
supposed to mean). We are vain about our opinions even to the
point of self-identifying with them (I am the guy who is right
about this or that). Not claiming to know, Socrates demonstrates
some intellectual humility in allowing that his opinions might be
wrong and being willing to subject them to examination. But in
critically examining various opinions, including those of the
supposed experts, he pierces the vanity of many of Athens’
prestigious citizens. Engaging in rational inquiry is dangerous
business, and Socrates is eventually brought up on charges of
corrupting the youth who liked to follow him around and listen to
him reveal people’s claims to knowledge as false pride. The
Apology documents Socrates’ defense of his of behavior and the
Athenian assembly’s decision to sentence him to death anyway.
You will find the Apology in several formats here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1656

Plato
Plato (429-347 B.C.) came from a family of high status in ancient
Athens. He was a friend and fan of
Socrates and some of his early
dialogues chronicle events in
Socrates’ life. Socrates is a character
in all of Plato’s dialogues. But in
many, the figure of Socrates is

49
employed as a voice for Plato’s own views. Unlike Socrates, Plato
offers very developed and carefully reasoned views about a great
many things. Here we will briefly introduce his core
metaphysical, epistemological and ethical views.
Metaphysics and Epistemology
Plato’s metaphysics and epistemology are best summarized by his
device of the divided line. The vertical line between the columns
below distinguishes reality and knowledge. It is divided into
levels that identify what in reality corresponds with specific
modes of thought.
Objects Modes of Thought
The Forms Knowledge
Mathematical objects Thinking
Particular things Belief /Opinion
Images Imaging

Here we have a hierarchy of Modes of Thought, or types of

mental representational states, with the highest being knowledge
of the forms and the lowest being imaging (in the literal sense of
forming images in the mind). Corresponding to these degrees of
knowledge, we have degrees of reality. The less real includes the
physical world, and even less real, our representations of it in art.
The more real we encounter as we inquire into the universal
natures of the various kinds of things and processes, we
encounter. According to Plato, the only objects of knowledge are
the forms, which are abstract entities.
In saying that the forms are abstract, we are saying that while they
do exist, they do not exist in space and time. They are ideals in
the sense that a form, say the form of horse-ness, is the template
or paradigm of being a horse. All the physical horses partake of
the form of horse-ness, but exemplify it only to partial and
varying degrees of perfection. No actual triangular object is

50
perfectly triangular, for instance. But all actual triangles have
something in common, triangularity. The form of triangularity is
free from all of the imperfections of the various actual instances
of being triangular. We get the idea of something being more or
less perfectly triangular. For various triangles to come closer to
perfection than others suggests that there is some ideal standard
of “perfectly triangularity.” This for Plato, is the form of
triangularity. Plato also takes moral standards like justice and
aesthetic standards like beauty to admit of such degrees of
perfection. Beautiful physical things all partake of the form of
beauty to some degree or another. But all are imperfect in varying
degrees and ways. The form of beauty, however, lacks the
imperfections of its space and time bound instances. Perfect
beauty is not something we can picture or imagine. But an ideal
form of beauty is required to account for how beautiful things are
similar and to make sense of how things can be beautiful to some
less than perfect degree or another.
Only opinion can be had regarding the physical things, events,
and states of affairs we are acquainted with through our sensory
experience. With physical things constantly changing, the degree
to which we can grasp how things are at any given place and time
is of little consequent. Knowledge of the nature of the forms is a
grasp of the universal essential natures of things. It is the
intellectual perception of what various things, like horses or
people, have in common that makes them things of a kind. Plato
accepts Socrates’ view that to know the good is to do the good.
So, his notion of epistemic excellence in seeking knowledge of
the forms will be a central component of his conception of moral
virtue.

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Ethics
Plato offers us a tripartite account of the soul. The soul consists
of a rational thinking element, a motivating willful element, and
a desire-generating appetitive element. Plato offers a story of the
rational element of the soul falling from a state of grace
(knowledge of the forms) and dragged down into a human state
by the unruly appetites. This story of the soul’s relation to the
imperfect body supports Plato’s view that the knowledge of the
forms is a kind of remembrance. This provides a convenient
source of knowledge as an alternative to the merely empirical and
imperfect support of our sense experience. Plato draws an analogy
between his conception of the soul and a chariot drawn by two
horses, one obedient, the other rebellious. The charioteer in this
picture represents the rational element of the soul, the good horse
the obedient will, and the bad horse, of course, represents those
nasty earthly appetites. To each of the elements of the soul, there
corresponds a virtue; for the rational element there is wisdom, for
the willing element of the soul there is courage, and for the
appetitive element there is temperance. Temperance is matter of
having your appetites under control. This might sound like
chronic self-denial and repression, but properly understood, it is
not. Temperance and courage are cultivated through habit. In
guiding our appetites by cultivating good habits, Plato holds, we
can come to desire what is really good for us (you know, good
diet, exercise, less cable TV, and lots more philosophy - that kind
of stuff).
Wisdom is acquired through teaching, via the dialectic, or through
“remembrance.” Perhaps, to make the epistemological point a
little less metaphysically loaded, we can think of remembrance as
insight. A more general virtue of justice is conceived as each thing
functioning as it should.

52
To get Plato’s concept of justice as it applies to a person, think of
the charioteer managing and controlling his team; keeping both
horses running in the intended direction and at the intended speed.
Justice involves the rational element being wise and in charge.
For a person to be just is simply a matter of having the other
virtues and having them functioning together harmoniously.
Given Plato’s ethical view of virtue as a matter of the three
elements of the soul functioning together as they should, Plato’s
political philosophy is given in his view of the state as the human
“writ at large.” Project the standards Plato offers for virtue in an
individual human onto the aggregate of individuals in a society
and you have Plato’s vision of the virtuous state. In the virtuous
state, the rational element (the philosophers) is in charge. The
willing element (the guardians or the military class) is obedient
and courageous in carrying out the policies of the rational
leadership. And the appetitive element (the profit-driven business
class) functions within the rules and constraints devised by the
rational element (for instance, by honestly adhering to standards
of accounting). A temperate business class has the profit motive
guided by the interests of the community via regulation devised
by the most rational. The virtuous business class refrains from
making its comfort and indulgence the over-riding concern of the
state. Plato, in other words, would be no fan of totally free
markets, but neither would he do away with the market economy
altogether.

53
 Plato’s vision
of social
justice is non-
egalitarian and
anti-
democratic.
While his view
would not be
popular today,
it is still
worthwhile to
consider his criticism of democracy and rule by the people. Plato
has Socrates address this dialectically by asking a series of
questions about who we would want to take on various jobs.
Suppose we had grain and wanted it processed into flour.
We would not go to the cobbler or the horse trainer for this; we
would go to the miller. Suppose we had a horse in need of
training. We obviously would not go to the miller or the baker for
this important task, we’d go to the horse trainer. In general, we
want important functions to be carried out by the people with the
expertise or wisdom to do them well. Now suppose we had a state
to run. Obviously, we would not want to turn this important task
over to the miller, the cobbler, or the horse trainer. We would
want someone who knows what he or she is doing in charge. Plato
has a healthy regard for expertise. As Plato sees it, democracy
amounts to turning over the ethically most important jobs to the
people who have the least expertise and wisdom in this area.
There is very little reason to expect that a state run by cobblers,
millers, and horse trainers will be a virtuous state.

54
Aristotle
Aristotle is a towering figure in the history of philosophy and
science. Aristotle made substantive contributions to just about
every philosophical and scientific issue known in the ancient
Greek world. Aristotle was the first to develop a formal system of
logic. As the son of a physician, he pursued a life-long interest in
biology. His physics was the standard view through Europe’s
Middle Ages. He was a student of Plato, but he rejected Plato’s
other-worldly theory of forms in favor of the view that things are
a composite of substance and form. Contemporary discussions of
the good life still routinely take Aristotle’s ethics as their starting
point. Here I will offer the briefest sketch of Aristotle’s logic and
metaphysics. We will return to his ethics later in the course.

Logic
Aristotle’s system of logic was not only the first developed in the
West, it was considered complete and authoritative for well over
2000 years. The core of Aristotle’s logic is the systematic
treatment of categorical syllogisms.
1. All monkeys are primates.
2. All primates are mammals.
3. So, all monkeys are mammals.
This argument is a categorical syllogism. That’s a rather
antiquated way of saying it’s a two-premise argument that uses
simple categorical claims. Simple categorical claims come in one
of the following four forms:
• All A are B
• All A are not B
• Some A are B
• Some A are not B
There are a limited number of two premise argument forms that
can be generated from combinations of claims having one of these

55
four forms. Aristotle systematically identified all of them, offered
proofs of the valid one’s, and demonstrations of the invalidity of
the others. 16
Beyond this, Aristotle proves a number of interesting things about
his system of syllogistic logic and he offers an analysis of
syllogisms involving claims about what is necessarily the case as
well.
No less an authority than Immanuel Kant, one of the most brilliant
philosophers of the 18th century, pronounced Aristotle’s logic
complete and final. It is only within the past century or so that
logic has developed substantially beyond Aristotle’s. While
Aristotle’s achievement in logic was genuinely remarkable, this
only underscores the dramatic progress of the 20th century.

Metaphysics
While Aristotle was a student of Plato’s, his metaphysics is
decidedly anti-Platonist. The material of the world takes various
forms. Here it constitutes a tree and there a rock. The things
constituted of matter have various properties. The tree is a certain
shape and height, the rock has a certain mass. Plato accounts for
the various forms matter takes and the ways things are in terms of
their participating in abstract and ideal forms to one degree or
another. Plato’s metaphysics centrally features an abstract realm
of eternal unchanging and ideal forms. Plato’s forms are not
themselves part of the physical spatio-temporal world. Aristotle
rejects the theory of abstract forms and takes everything that
exists to be part of the physical spatio-temporal world. It might
thus be tempting to think of Aristotle as a materialist, one who
thinks all that exists is matter, just atoms swirling in the void.
Some pre-Socratic philosophers could accurately be described as
materialists. But this would miss key elements of Aristotle’s

56
metaphysics. While Aristotle denies the existence of an abstract
realm of eternal and unchanging ideal entities, his account of the
nature of things includes more than just matter. Aristotle holds
the view that form is an integral part of things in the physical
world. A thing like a rock or a tree is a composite of both matter
and form. In addition to matter, the way matter is gets included in
Aristotle’s metaphysics.
Among the ways things are, some seem to be more central to their
being what they are than others. For instance, a tree can be pruned
into a different shape without the tree being destroyed. The tree
can survive the loss of its shape. But if it ceased to be a plant, if
it got chipped and mulched, for instance, it would also cease to be
a tree. That is to say, being a plant is essential to the tree, but
having a certain shape isn’t. An essential property is just a
property a thing could not survive losing. By contrast, a property
something could survive losing is had accidentally. Aristotle
introduces the distinction between essential and accidental
characteristics of things. This was an important innovation. When
we set out to give an account of what a thing is, we are after an
account of its essence. To say what a thing is essentially is to list
those ways of being it could not survive the loss of. My hair
length is not essential to me, and neither is my weight, my having
four limbs, or a given body/mass index. But my having a mind,
perhaps, is essential to being me.
How a thing functions is a critical aspect of its nature in
Aristotle’s view. As an organism, I metabolize. As an organism
with a mind, I think. These are both ways of functioning. For
Aristotle, what makes something what it is, its essence is
generally to be understood in terms of how it functions.
Aristotle’s account of the essential nature of the human being, for

57
instance, is that humans are rational animals. That is, we are the
animals that function in rational ways.
Functioning is, in a sense, purposeful. Aristotle would say that
functioning is ends oriented. The Greek term for an end or a goal
is telos. So, Aristotle has a teleological view of the world. That
is, he understands things as functioning towards ends or goals,
and we can understand the essence of things in terms of these
goal-oriented ways of functioning. We still understand people’s
actions as teleological or goal oriented. We explain why people
do things in terms of their purposes and methods. Aristotle
similarly understands natural processes generally as ends
oriented. Even Aristotle’s physics is fundamentally teleological.
So, water runs downhill because it is part of its essential nature to
seek out the lower place.

Explanation: The Four Causes

What does it mean to explain something? If we would like to have
some idea what we are up to when
we explain things, giving some
account of explanation should seem
like an important methodological
and epistemological issue. In fact,
the nature of explanation continues
to be a central issue in the
philosophy of science. Aristotle
was the first to address explanation
in a systematic way and his
treatment of explanation structures and guides his philosophical
and scientific inquiry generally. According to Aristotle, to explain
something involves addressing four causes. Here we need to think
of “causes” as aspects of explanation or “things because of which

58
. . ..” Only one of Aristotle’s four causes resembles what we
would now think of as the cause of something. Three of the four
causes, or explanatory principles, are reflected in Aristotle’s
metaphysics and will be familiar from the discussion above. Part
of explaining something involves identifying the material of
which it is made. This is the material cause.
Thales account of the nature of the world addressed its material
cause. A further part of explaining something is to give an account
of its form, its shape and structure. The chair I am sitting on is not
just something made of wood; it is something made of wood that
has a certain form. A complete explanation of what this chair is
would include a description of its form. This is the formal cause.
Pythagoras and Plato introduce the explanation of formal causes.
The idea of a final cause refers to the function, end, or telos of a
thing. What makes the chair I’m sitting on a chair is that it
performs a certain function that serves the end or telos of
providing a comfortable place to sit. Again, Aristotle sees final
causes as pervasive in the natural world. So, part of explaining
what a tomato plant is, for instance, will involve giving an
account of how it functions and the goals towards which that
functioning is aimed. Bear in mind Aristotle’s interest in biology
here. A complete biological account of an organism includes both
its anatomy (its material and formal causes) and physiology
(which involves functioning and final causes). The remaining
cause (explanatory principle) is the one we can identify as a kind
of cause in our normal sense of the word. The efficient cause of a
thing is that which brings it into existence or gives form to its
material. So, for instance, the activity of a carpenter is the
efficient cause of my chair.

59
Philosophy in the Middle Ages
One important philosophical accomplishment of the Middle Ages
was to wed philosophy to the requirements of the expanding
Christian religion. The theological synthesis was achieved by
defining God as the most real being (that is, pure Form) in the
Platonic–Aristotelian sense and by treating the Greek Forms as
ideas in the mind of God. Otherwise, Greek philosophy survived
the transition intact, and the debate over the reality of the Forms
continued. Realists such as Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) and
Duns Scotus (1270–1308) argued with Aristotelians that Forms
were real, but only in particular things. Nominalists such as
William of Ockham (1300–1350) argued with the early atomists
that Forms are only names to which no abstract entity corresponds
in reality. The basic realities, Ockham argued, are particular
things, but in order to talk about specific things, we must
introduce general terms and relations into our language. Just
because there is a word for something (such as justice), it does not
follow that there is a real object corresponding to it (Justice).
With the rise of the New Science toward the end of the
Renaissance (late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries),
philosophy took a new turn and the period known as Modern
Philosophy began (the seventeenth through the twentieth
centuries).

Modern Philosophy
René Descartes (1596–1650) was the first major figure of the
modern period. Knowledge must be erected on a solid foundation
of certainty, he argued; nothing less than complete certainty will
do. But although the purpose was to secure our scientific
knowledge of the physical world, the logical implications of this
initial starting point led ironically toward subjective idealism. It

60
was held that what we are most sure of is our own thoughts, just
as it had been held much earlier that what answered the criterion
of reality was what can be thought. A person could say, “I may
not know how things really stand, but at least I know what I think
about them.” The gaze outward toward the physical world
therefore turned inward toward the self, and Descartes’ “I think,
therefore I am” became the foundation for all subsequent
developments in Modern Philosophy until the early twentieth
century.
This idealist trend took two forms: the Continental Rationalists
(including Descartes, Spinoza [1632–1677], and Leibniz [1646–
1716]), who stressed the importance of reason in the acquisition
of knowledge; and the British Empiricists (Hobbes [1588–1679],
Locke [1632–1704], Berkeley [1685–1753], and Hume [1711–
1776]), who stressed the role of sensation and observation. The
rationalists looked primarily to Plato as their source of
inspiration, while the empiricists called upon the authority of
Aristotle and the atomists.
Both groups were in essential agreement that our knowledge of
the external world had to be constructed out of subjective
certainties, regardless of whether they were derived from our
reasoning faculty or our faculty of sensation. The empiricists
began, with Hobbes and Locke, on the materialist note that our
sensations are caused by the interaction of our bodies with the
physical world. But as it gradually became clear to Berkeley and
Hume that this was only a supposition of which we could by no
means be certain, empiricism moved progressively toward a kind
of idealism known as phenomenalism.
Much of the debate between the rationalists and the empiricists
cantered on the possibility of a priori knowledge. Did all
knowledge come from sensation, as the empiricists claimed, or

61
did all or some of it come innately from within by pure reason, as
the rationalists insisted? The rationalists naturally stressed logical
and mathematical knowledge as the basis of knowledge,
emphasizing the uncertainties of opinions about the physical
world, while the empiricists stressed perceptual knowledge,
explaining logical and mathematical certainty nominalistically, as
being true simply by definition.
Just as Plato worked out a lasting compromise between
competing views of his predecessors, so the eighteenth-century
German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) came up with
an ingenious resolution of rationalism and empiricism that held
together for several centuries and is still important today.
Borrowing Plato’s distinction of matter and form, Kant held that
the materials of our knowledge come from sensation (conceding
to the empiricists), while the form of our knowledge comes from
reason and the other cognitive faculties (which he interpreted the
rationalists to mean). Kant was one of the first to see how
concept-laden our everyday experience of the world is. We cannot
perceive much less think, raw sense impressions; we can only
assimilate information that has been “programmed” through our
own forms of perception and reason. Just as Aristotle had said that
neither matter nor form could exist alone, but that things could
exist only as a mixture of form in matter, so Kant argued that the
objects of our experience can be neither pure sensation (matter)
nor pure thought (form), but must always be a combination of the
two.

Twentieth-Century Philosophy
The twentieth century was characterized by a revolution against
the past. The dominant mood among philosophers of that century
was to denounce all previous philosophy as a colossal mistake

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and to begin re-examining the nature of philosophy itself and the
reconstruction of its foundations. The more positive character of
this revolution could be described as a break with the
metaphysical dream of discovering the real nature of the world
and a new conception of the role of philosophy as the analysis of
meaning (though not so new as many of those philosophers
thought). For the Analysts, who consisted of Ludwig
Wittgenstein (1889–1951), Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976), John L.
Austin (1911–1960), and P. F. Strawson (1919–2006), among
others, this meant the analysis of words and concepts. For the
phenomenologists, such as Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), Jean-
Paul Sartre (1905–1980), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961),
it was the analysis and meaning of the most general structures of
our experience.
In retrospect, the differences between these approaches to
philosophy seem less radical, though there has yet to be a
reconciliation between the two. Nonetheless, some contemporary
philosophers, such as Paul Ricoeur, Richard Rorty, Thomas
Nagel, and Robert Brandom, seem comfortable drawing from
both traditions. Much of the distinction between these two
important philosophical movements resulted from differences in
historical background and style rather than in substance. Analytic
philosophers prided themselves on their tough-minded rigor.
They thrived on logic and avoided discussions of such things as
sex, death, and anxiety. The phenomenologists tended to revel in
more tender, emotional, relevant issues, which they dealt with in
a sometimes-literary style. The phenomenologists complained
that the analysts were too mechanical, aloof, trivial, and
irrelevant. The analysts responded that the phenomenologists
were vague, wishy-washy, and too poetical.

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3 Islamic Philosophy
The Islamic religion
Muslims have six main beliefs, they Belief in: Allah as the one
and only God; angels;
the holy books; the Prophets... e.g. Adam, Ibrahim (Abraham),
Musa (Moses), Dawud (David), Isa (Jesus). Muhammad (peace
be upon him) is the final prophet; the Day of Judgement... The
day when the life of every human being will be assessed to decide
whether they go to heaven or hell; in Predestination... That Allah
has the knowledge of all that will happen; Muslims believe that
this doesn't stop human beings making free choices.

Allah ‫هللا‬
Allah is the name Muslims use for the supreme and unique God,
who created and rules everything. The heart of faith for all
Muslims is obedience to Allah's will:

• Allah is eternal, omniscient, and omnipotent...

o Allah has always existed and will always exist.
o Allah knows everything that can be known.
o Allah can do
anything that can be
done.
• Allah has no shape or
form...
o Allah can't be seen.
o Allah can't be heard.
o Allah is neither
male nor female.
• Allah is just...
o Allah rewards and
punishes fairly.
o But Allah is also merciful.
• A believer can approach Allah by praying, and by reciting the
Qur'an, which is the speech of Allah.
• Muslims worship only Allah...
o Because only Allah is worthy of worship.

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The one and only God ‫ال إله إال هللا‬
All Muslims believe that God is one alone:
• There is only one God.
• God has no children, no parents, and no partners.
• God was not created by a being.
• There are no equal, superior, or lesser Gods.

The Islamic Pillars

Islam has also five Pillars; these Pillars are the core beliefs
and practices of Islam:
1. Profession of Faith (shahada). The belief that "There is
no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of
Allah" is central to Islam.
2. Prayer (salat). Muslims pray facing Mecca five times a
day: at dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and after dark.
Prayer includes a recitation of the opening chapter (sura)
of the Qur'an, and is sometimes performed on a small rug
or mat used expressly for this purpose. Muslims can pray
individually at any location, or together in a mosque,
where a leader in prayer (imam) guides the congregation.
3. Alms (zakat). In accordance with Islamic law, Muslims
donate a fixed portion of their income to community
members in need. Many rulers and wealthy Muslims build
mosques, drinking fountains, hospitals, schools, and other
institutions both as a religious duty and to secure the
blessings associated with charity.
4. Fasting (sawm). During the daylight hours of Ramadan,
the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, all healthy adult
Muslims are required to abstain from food and drink.
5. Pilgrimage (hajj). Every Muslim whose health and
finances permit it must make at least one visit to the holy
city of Mecca.

Islamic or Arabic Philosophy?

There are a lot of discussion about the Islamic Philosophy: Is it
Islamic Philosophy or Arabic Philosophy or Arabic Islamic

65
Philosophy; The Name is not matter, we can name it with all the
Above names, most of this Philosophy written in Arabic
Language, With the majority of Muslim Philosophers.

The Main Philosophers

In Islam the development of philosophical thought, properly

speaking, succeeded earlier schools of dialectical theology
(kalam) that began to arise in the eighth century (second century
AH in the Islamic calendar) through the action of foreign ideas on
certain fundamental moral issues raised within the Islamic
community. These moral issues clustered particularly around the
problems of the freedom of the human will, God's omnipotence
and justice, and God's relationship to the world. Although these
early schools do not properly belong within the scope of our
interest here, since they are theological rather than philosophical,
a very brief characterization of the main groups and their tenets
will serve to elucidate the content of the philosophical movement
itself. Broadly speaking, there were two theological schools. The
so-called rationalist, or Muʿtazila, school maintained the freedom
of the will; insisted that right and wrong are knowable through
reason independently of, but confirmed by, revelation; and
claimed that God's attributes are identical with his essence and
that God cannot do what is unreasonable or unjust. However, the
Muʿtazilites posed and solved all these problems theologically,
not philosophically; their entire thought was theocentric. For
example, they did not pose the problem of the will absolutely but
discussed it mainly insofar as it is relevant to the concept of a just
God. However, their opponents (the Ahl al-Sunnah waʾl-
Jamaʿah), who came to constitute the orthodoxy, accused them of
stark humanism and opposed them on all these major questions.
The orthodoxy, after a long, hard struggle, completely routed the
Muʿtazilites as a theological school, but the spark of the

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Muʿtazilites kindled the purely rationalist movement in
philosophic thought.
The work of the original philosophers in Islam was preceded by
feverish translation that began around 800 and lasted for about
two hundred years; its climax was reached in the time of Caliph
al-Maʾmūn son of Haroun al-Rashid (reigned 813–833). Al-
Maʾmūn set up the first official seat of liberal learning in Islam,
called the House of Wisdom, whose main function was to
translate the works of the Greek masters of science and
philosophy. The translations, however, were mostly from Syriac
versions and not directly from the Greek. These translations,
which were made almost invariably by Arab Christians, covered
the entire range of Greek civilization—that is, it’s thought
content—but excluded such specifically cultural aspects as
mythology, drama, and literature, which were foreign to the Arabs
and to Islam. The Arabs were able to develop a highly technical
philosophical diction with astonishing rapidity and to integrate it
into the Arabic language so successfully that a philosopher like
al-Farabi (c. 873–950), who was a Turk and not an Arab, was able
to express himself philosophically in Arabic with remarkable
facility. All this happened within a span of about 150 years in a
language that had previously known no technical philosophical
literature whatsoever.
The main character of Islamic philosophy was set by the
combination of Aristotle and Neoplatonism that had constituted
an important tradition in the late stages of Hellenistic philosophy
and that was represented particularly by the Neoplatonic
commentators on Aristotle in Athens and Alexandria, such as
Simplicius and John Philoponus (sixth century). The Muslim
philosophers introduced into this tradition other fundamental
concepts in order to adapt it to an Islamic milieu; the most

67
important were the ideas of contingent and necessary being and
of prophethood. Despite these fundamental changes, the Muslim
philosophers accepted the general cosmological scheme they had
inherited from the Greek traditions.

Al-Kindi
The first important Muslim philosopher was the Arab prince Abu-
Yusuf Yaʿqub ibn Isḥaq al-Kindi (d. after 870). Al-Kindī's
philosophic thought is directly connected with, on the one hand,
Greek philosophical doctrines transmitted to him through
translations and, on the other, with the rationalist theological
movement of the Muʿtazilites. He seems to have espoused the
Muʿtazilite doctrines and to have sought to create a philosophical
substructure for them. Thus, the Muʿtazilite dogma of the
attributeless transcendence of God must have led him to the
somewhat parallel idea of God as absolute and transcendent
being, a combination of the Aristotelian concept of God and the
Neoplatonic concept of the One. It is this affinity that must have
led him further to formulate the doctrine, common to all the great
Muslim philosophers, that philosophy and religion, or the rational
truth and the revealed truth, not only do not conflict with each
other but, in fact, lend support to each other and are basically
identical. This recalls the Muʿtazilite doctrine that the source of
our knowledge of values is reason confirmed by revelation.
In his philosophy, al-Kindi was more of a Neoplatonist than an
Aristotelian. (The Arabs attributed certain Neoplatonic works,
such as De Causis and Theologia Aristotelis, to Aristotle.) He
adopted the Neoplatonic doctrine of emanation in his metaphysics
and cosmology. Also, in his theory of intellectual knowledge he
adopted the doctrine of the active intellect and the passive
intellect, originally formulated by Aristotle, later elaborated by

68
the commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias, and subsequently
reworked and essentially modified by Neoplatonists.

Al-Farabi
With al-Farabi, philosophy reached maturity in Islam. Not many
of his works have come down to us, but his writings that we do
possess reveal an unusually incisive and clear mind. In his
cosmology, as well as in his psychology, al-Farabi was almost
entirely Aristotelian, except for the doctrine of emanation. In
political theory, which seems to have preoccupied him
considerably more than it did other Muslim philosophers, he
based himself on Plato's Republic and Laws, but he adapted the
Platonic system to his contemporary political situation with a
remarkable ingenuity. He developed the doctrine of the intellect
from the point at which al-Kindi had left off, and he constructed
a theory of divine inspiration that was to serve as a model for
Avicenna. But apart from his original theories, the importance of
al-Farabi lies in his attempt to elevate philosophy to the place of
highest value and to subordinate the revelation and the shariʿa, or
religious law, to it. In this also he served as a model for both Ibn
Sina and Ibn Rushd, but it was precisely this doctrine, in which
the shariʿa took an inferior place as a symbolic expression of a
higher intellectual truth, that was also ultimately responsible for
the fatal attacks on the philosophical movement by
representatives of the orthodoxy.
In his religious attitudes, al-Farabi was a genuinely universalistic
spirit who believed that the entire world should have one religion,
of which all particular religions would be considered symbolic
expressions. However, it would be a mistake to regard al-Farabi
as a relativist. He tells us in no uncertain terms that not all
religions are equal either as adequate symbols of truth or as the

69
effective harnessing of men's minds and hearts. Indeed, he
believed that there are religious symbolisms that are positively
harmful and must be discarded. He did affirm, however, that there
are religions which are equivalent in their religious value; and any
one of these symbolic systems may be applied in a given milieu,
depending upon circumstances. Although al-Farabi gave no
concrete examples of religions or names of prophets, there is little
doubt that the prophet Muhammad was fixed in his mind as a
paradigm par excellence of a prophet and a lawgiver. This
becomes clear in his insistence that the teachings of a prophet
should not only be universal but should also be successful in
history.
Al-Farabi's writings give us a full-scale picture of the basic world
view of Muslim philosophy. At the apex of his scheme of reality
stands God, who is both the One of Plotinus and the First Cause
of Aristotle. From him proceeds the first intelligence, which is
also the archangel. The first intelligence has a dual nature and
gives rise to two further beings: the highest sphere on the physical
side and the second intelligence on the spiritual side. This process
of emanation continues until we reach the tenth sphere and the
last intelligence, identified as the angel of revelation, Gabriel, on
the one hand, and as the sphere of the moon on the other. The
entire process of the world below the moon is an interaction
between the materials emanating from the sphere of the moon and
the spiritual influence generated by the tenth intelligence, called
the Active Intellect. This interaction generates the world process,
and its culminating product is man, with his fully organized body
and rational soul.
The goal of man, wherein lies his ultimate bliss, is to develop his
rational faculty by his will. The rational faculty is developed by
the action of the active intelligence upon it, through which actual

70
thought arises. The end of man, therefore, is to reach philosophic
contemplation, and al-Farabi categorically states that men whose
rational faculty remains undeveloped cannot attain immortality
but perish with their physical death. The actual activation of man's
rational power, however, demands certain practical virtues as
well, and this makes it necessary for man to live in organized
societies rather than in isolation. People who are ultimately
responsible for organizing and directing human societies are
those possessed of philosophical wisdom, for it is not possible to
enunciate practical laws for humankind without having
theoretical wisdom. Therefore, for al-Farabi the philosopher and
the prophet are identical. It is the philosopher-prophet who can
formulate the practical principles and laws that will lead men to
their final goal of philosophic bliss. Societies governed by such
laws are "good societies"; others are "ignorant societies,"
"misguided societies," or "retarded societies."
At the final stage of the intellective development, the
philosophical mind becomes like matter to the Active Intellect,
which becomes its form. This is the absolute apogee of human
bliss. The prophet is a person who, having attained this
philosophical illumination, transforms the philosophic truth into
an imaginative myth that moves people to action and can
influence societies toward greater morality. It is because of his
imaginative power, the power to represent the intellectual truth in
the form of a figure or a symbol, that the prophet is able to make
laws and to bring revelation. Revelation, therefore, is not
philosophic truth but imaginative truth. Only a few gifted
philosophical spirits can pierce the imaginative shell and reach
the philosophic truth. In al-Farabi 's theory of prophethood, there
seems to be no place for miracles; the accommodation of miracles
on a philosophical basis was the work of Ibn Sina.

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Al-Farabi likened the ruler to the head in the human organism
and, like Plato, developed the idea of a hierarchy in which each
stratum receives orders from above and issues commands to those
below. Just as at the top there is a ruler who is not ruled, so at the
bottom there are those who are ruled but do not rule. It is a fully
authoritarian view of government, and some scholars have
suggested that al-Farabi was influenced by Shi’ite doctrine. The
fact that al-Farabi was at the court of the Shi’ite ruler is supposed
to lend some support to this view. We do not have sufficient
historical evidence for such a judgment, but it should be noted
that the ultimate ruler of the Farabian state does resemble the
Shi’ite Imam, the repository of divine wisdom.

Ibn Sina
The most important and original of Muslim philosophers was
Abū ʿAli ibn Sina, known to the West as Avicenna (980–1037).
The philosophic movement in eastern Islam comes to its fullest
fruition in the thought of Ibn Sina, who elaborated one of the most
cohesive, subtle, and all-embracing systems of medieval history.
In the West, his ideas had a profound influence on medieval
scholastic philosophy, and in the Muslim world, his system is still
taught in the traditional centers of Islamic learning. The central
thesis of Ibn Sina's metaphysics is the division of reality into
contingent being and Necessary Being. In order to formulate this
doctrine, whose influence has been so palpable and enduring in
both Eastern and Western thought, Ibn Sina devised his theory of
the distinction between essence and existence. In this theory, he
refined the implications of the Islamic doctrine of creation, which
al-Kindi had crudely asserted, into an integrated philosophic
system.

72
The bases of this theory of essence and existence are set in
Aristotle's doctrine of movement and in the Neoplatonic doctrine
of emanation, but in order to achieve the desired results, Ibn Sina
had to effect basic changes both in the doctrine of emanation and
in the Aristotelian doctrine of matter and form. Briefly, Aristotle
had taught that matter is the principle of potentiality and form the
principle of actuality, and that through the interaction of the two
the actual movement of the universe takes place, in which
potentialities are progressively actualized. Thus, the analysis of
any given thing—with the exception of God and prime matter—
falls into matter and form. There are, however, grave objections
to this view. How can an actual thing come into existence through
the interaction of a matter that, according to Aristotle, does not
exist and a form that also does not exist? Why should things not
remain unactualized in their potentialities, and where is the
necessity of movement? Emanation seems to simplify this
problem by asserting a single, universal process of outward
movement, but it gives no rationale of this movement.
Closer examination led Ibn Sina to posit three factors—matter,
form, and existence—and to postulate a Necessary Being as the
basis for the world process. There is little doubt, however, that it
was not merely these philosophic reasons that led him to
formulate this doctrine but also the fact that Islam demanded a
fundamental distinction between God and the world. Since Ibn
Sina could not accept the creationism of the Muslim theologians
because it implied temporal priority of God over the world, he
affirmed that God is distinguished from the world by the fact that
his being is necessary and simple; God cannot be composed of
matter and form but must be pure existence. From God emanate
the intelligences, which, although they have no matter, are
nevertheless composites of essence and existence; the material
beings are composed of matter and form, which constitute their

73
essence, and the fact of their existence—all existence flowing
from God.
Ibn Sina was thus able to solve, to his own satisfaction, the
contradiction that seemed to exist between the Greek philosophic
world view and the Islamic doctrine of creationism: in accord
with the philosophers, he affirmed the eternity of the world and
rejected temporal creation, but with the Islamists he made the
world entirely and eternally dependent upon God. This solution
led him to establish the relationship between religion and
philosophy. Since the findings of religion and of philosophy do
not contradict one another on this crucial point but are not
identical either, they run parallel to one another. From this, Ibn
Sina expounded his further view that religion is a kind of
philosophy for the masses: It does not tell the naked philosophical
truth but is an endeavour to make the masses come as near to the
philosophical truth as possible. The prophets are, then, mass
psychologists who launch religious movements as pragmatic
endeavours to make people virtuous. Thus, Ibn Sina reaffirms al-
Farabi's position that revelation is not philosophic truth but
symbolic truth.

Al-Ghazali, Abu Hamed

Ibn Sina's system went furthest in integrating the traditional
demands of the orthodox religion with the purely Greek
rationalism, which explains why his works continue to be studied
in the traditional Islamic schools even today. However, his system
was made the object of denunciatory criticism by the orthodoxy
on certain points: the eternity of the world, the inferior status of
the shariʿa (religious law) as a mere symbol of the higher truth,
and the rejection of the resurrection of the body. The classical
criticism was carried out by al-Ghazali (1058–1111) in his
famous work Tahafut al-Falasifa (Incoherence of the
philosophers).

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Ibn Rushd
The unrelenting criticism of philosophy as it appeared in Ibn
Sina's system by al-Ghazali and others led Ibn Rushd, known in
the West as Ibn Rushd (c. 1126–c. 1198), to defend the claims of
philosophy. In the process of doing this, Ibn Rushd sought to
resurrect the original Aristotelian doctrines from the later
Neoplatonic and Muslim accretion as much as possible. He wrote
many commentaries on the works of Aristotle, whom he believed
to be the philosopher par excellence. He accused both Ibn Sina
and al-Ghazali of having mutilated philosophical theses and of
having confused them with religious doctrines. Ibn Rushd,
however, did not advocate a theory of two truths, although this
may be a logical conclusion of what he said in his work titled Faṣl
al-Maqāl‫( فصل املقال فيما بين الشريعة والحكمة من االتصال‬The decisive
statement) on the relationship between philosophy and religion.
Ibn Rushd rejected Ibn Sina distinction between essence and
existence. He insisted that existence is, in a way, part of the
essence of a thing. The one conspicuous doctrine on which Ibn
Rushd does not appear to be a faithful follower of Aristotle is that
concerning intellect. He declared the passive human intellect also
to be eternal and incorruptible and, indeed, to be universal to all
humankind, like the Active Intellect. This doctrine of the unity of
intellect, besides being apparently unfaithful to Aristotle, was
also unacceptable to the followers of the revealed religions. He
was thus attacked both by Muslims and, in the West, by Thomas
Aquinas, who wrote a special treatise, titled De Unitate
Intellectus, against the Ibn Rushd's doctrine. It must, however, be
pointed out that the common objection raised against Ibn Rushds'
doctrine of the universality of the intellect ever since Thomas's
classic formulation of it as ego intellego is very superficial. Ibn
Rush not only never held that the act of cognition is universal but
was, in fact, at pains to prove its individual character. What he

75
seems to be concerned to show is that all thinking, although it
occurs individually, becomes in a real sense universal, and that
this universal aspect is more intrinsic to human cognition than is
the fact that it is the product of such-and-such an individual or
individuals. In any case, it is certain that Ibn Rushd never denied
the individuality of the act of cognition.
Although Ibn Rushd believed that religion and philosophy are in
two different orbits, he nevertheless felt the necessity of
reconciling the two and of so stating the philosophic doctrines as
not to offend religion and of so conceiving the religious dogmas
that they would not conflict with philosophy. We are, therefore,
back at the position of Ibn Sina. On the question of the eternity of
the world, Ibn Rushd taught the doctrine of eternal creation.
Although he did not reject the religious dogmas of the
resurrection of the body, as Ibn Sina had done, he taught that the
numerically same body cannot be resurrected. There was,
however, bitter opposition to the doctrines of Ibn Rushd, who was
also the qadī (judge) of Seville, and today very few of his works
survive in the original Arabic; they are to be found mostly in
Hebrew and Latin translations.

The Future of Philosophy

What about the future? Perhaps there will yet be reconciliation
between philosophy’s past and present, British and Continental,
analytic and phenomenological. What is clear is that, as our world
shrinks before our eyes, philosophers are beginning to absorb
currents of thought outside their own Western tradition from
Africa, the Middle East, and especially the Far East. What precise
direction this will take depends on the work of philosophers from
your own generation.

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Readings: No. 2

Abu Nasr Al Farabi

At-tanbih ala sabil as-sa-adah
‫كتاب التنبيه على سبيل السعادة‬
Directing Attention to the way to happiness

1. Happiness is an end that everyone desires, and everyone who strives to

direct himself toward it does so precisely because it is a known perfection.
This requires no explanation since it is so completely well known. Man
desires every perfection and every end precisely because it is a certain
good, which is unquestionably something preferred. Now, while there
are many ends that are desired because they are preferred goods,
happiness is the most advantageous of the preferred goods. It is thus clear
that of all goods, happiness is the greatest, and of all preferred things,
happiness is the most perfect end that man has ever desired.
2. Some goods are preferred in order to obtain by them some other end,
like physical exercise or taking medicine, while other goods are preferred
for their own sake. It is obvious that those that are preferred for their own
sake are more preferable and more perfect than those that are preferred
on account of something else. More-over, some of those preferred for
their own sake are also sometimes preferred for the sake of something
else. An example of this is knowledge; for sometimes we might prefer it
for its own sake [and] not in order thereby to obtain something else, and
sometimes we might prefer it in order to obtain wealth or something else
that can be obtained by leadership or knowledge. Other [goods], by their
very nature, are always preferred for their own sake and at no time are
preferred on account of something else. These are more preferable, more
perfect, and of greater good than [those goods] that are sometimes
preferred on account of something else.
3. Since we deem it correct that, once we obtain happiness, we have
absolutely no need thereafter to strive to obtain some other end, it is
apparent that happiness is preferred for its own sake and never for the sake
of something else. Consequently, it is clear that happiness is the most
preferred, the most perfect, and the greatest good. We also deem it
correct that, once we obtain happiness, we are in need of nothing else to
accompany it. Anything like this is most suitably considered to be
sufficient in itself. This statement may be supported by the conviction
each person has concerning what alone is happiness, whether this has

77
been explained to him or he supposes it to be so. Some think that wealth
is happiness; others think that the enjoyment of sensible pleasures is
happiness; some think that the power to rule is happiness; others think
that knowledge is happiness; still others think that happiness resides in
other things. Each one is convinced that what he considers to be absolute
happiness is the most preferable, the greatest, and the most perfect
good—such is the rank happiness holds among the goods! Now, since
happiness is of such a rank, and since it is the highest degree of human
perfection, anyone who chooses to obtain it for himself surely must have
a path and the means that allow him to arrive at it.
4. We begin by saying that the states belonging to a person in his life
include some that entail neither grounds for praise nor grounds for blame,
and others that, when he has them, do entail grounds for praise or blame.
Now a person certainly does not obtain happiness by means of those of
his states that do not result in praise or blame. On the contrary, the states
through which he obtains happiness are (in summary here) those that do
entail praise or blame of him. Those states of his that entail his praise or
blame are three. One c is the actions for which he requires the use of the
organic parts of his body, such as standing, sitting, riding, seeing, and
hearing.
The second is the accidents of the soul, such as appetite, pleasure, joy,
anger, fear, desire, mercy, jealousy, etc. The third is discernment by use
of the mind. A person has these three, or some combination of them, at
any given point in his life, and for each one a person is either praised or
blamed. Grounds for blame attach to him when his actions are ignoble;
grounds for praise attach to him when they are noble. Grounds for blame
attach to him through the accidents of the soul whenever they are not
what they should be; grounds for praise [attach to him] whenever they
are what they should be. Grounds for blame attach to him on account of
his discernment whenever it is poor. Excellent discernment is either
when he has a true conviction, or when he is capable of distinguishing
with regard to what he receives [from others]. Poor discernment is when
man has neither a true nor a false conviction about what he would like to
pursue. So, we have to explain how we come to possess the means to
make our actions noble and the accidents of our souls what they should
be, and which path leads to our obtaining excellent discernment.
We should know first that a person’s actions can be noble (1) by chance,
or his performance of them is (2) without will and choice. But happiness

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is definitely not obtained through noble actions when they come from
the person in this manner. [The person obtains happiness] when he has
undertaken them (3) willingly and by choice—and not when he does
them by choice in just some things and just some of the time, but rather
when he chooses the noble for every action and for the entire duration
of his life. These very same conditions must also be present in the noble
accidents of the soul. Excellent discernment also sometimes comes to a
person by chance, for sometimes man has a true conviction neither by
intention nor skill. But happiness is definitely not obtained through
excellent discernment as long as it is not by intention and skill but such
that the person is aware of how he discerns what he discerns. Sometimes
it may be possible for a person to possess [excellent discernment] and be
aware of it, but in just a very few things and only some of the time, and
it is not by this amount of excellent discernment that happiness is
obtained.
Happiness is obtained only in as much as man has excellent discernment
while being aware of how he discerns what he discerns and at every
moment of his life. [Finally], misery attaches to a person when his actions,
the accidents of his soul, and his discernment are all the opposite of what
has been said, namely, that he performs ignoble actions willingly and
chooses them in everything he does for as long as he lives—and so too
with the accidents of the soul—and that he has poor discernment at every
point of his life about all things discernible to people.
6. We should speak now of the circumstances in which a person’s actions,
the accidents of the soul, and his discernment inevitably yield happiness
or inevitably do not yield happiness. Then we can bypass the latter and
devote our attention to the former.
7. Every person, from the moment he exists, is endowed with a
potentiality through which his actions, the accidents of his soul, and his
discernment are the way they should be, and it is through the very same
potentiality that these three are not the way they should be. It is through
this potentiality that he performs noble actions, and it is by the very same
potentiality that he performs ignoble ones. Consequently, it is equally as
possible for a person to do what is ignoble as it is for him to do what is
noble. Through [this potentiality] he can have excellent discernment;
through the same, he can have poor discernment. This is also the state of
the potentiality with regard to the accidents of the soul; for it is equally
as possible for them to be ignoble as it is for them to be noble. After that,

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the person comes to have another state in which these three follows only
one of two possibilities, I mean, in terms of what should be; they are
either only noble, or only ignoble. However, doing what one should do
remains equally as possible as doing what one should not do; but in [the
second state] one is more likely than the other.
8. A person does not acquire the potentiality he is endowed with, but
rather he has it from the moment he exists. The other state, however,
comes about only by the person’s acquisition of it. This state has two
divisions. In one, his discernment is either only excellent or only poor.
In the other, the actions and the accidents of the soul are either only noble
or only ignoble. The one in which discernment is either excellent or poor
has two further divisions. In one, there is excellent discernment; this is
called the powerful mind. In the other, there is poor discernment; this is
called the weak mind, or stupidity. The division in which one’s actions
and the accidents of one’s soul are either noble or ignoble is called
disposition. Disposition is what leads to a person’s ignoble and noble
actions.
9. Now, since the actions and discernment through which happiness is
obtained require the conditions enumerated, and since one of those
conditions is that [these actions and discernment are undertaken] in
everything and always, it necessarily follows that the thing through which
these actions and discernment issue from the person with these
conditions is a state that accords with only one of the two possibilities if
the person is to sustain noble action and excellent discernment in
everything always. Moreover, since the person’s endowed potentiality is
not such that only one of the two possibilities issues from it without the
other, but the acquired state that comes about after is such that only one
of the two possibilities issues from it, the following necessarily holds true.
First, it necessarily follows that the actions and accidents of the soul can
come from us in such a way that happiness inevitably results only when
we have a noble disposition. Second, it necessarily follows that we can
have excellent discernment in such a way that happiness inevitably results
only when the powerful mind becomes a habit that is either impossible
or very difficult to lose.

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3

The main Philosophical

Areas:

Epistemology
Logic
Critical thinking
Ethics

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82
I Epistemology
History of Epistemology
Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, is that branch of
philosophy which is concerned with the nature and scope of
knowledge, its presuppositions and basis, and the general
reliability of claims to knowledge. The pre-Socratic philosophers,
the first philosophers in the Western tradition, did not give any
fundamental attention to this branch of philosophy, for they were
primarily concerned with the nature and possibility of change.
They took it for granted that knowledge of nature was possible,
although some of them suggested that knowledge of the structure
of reality could better come from some sources than from others.
Thus, Heraclitus emphasized the use of the senses, and
Parmenides in effect stressed the role of reason. But none of them
doubted that knowledge of reality was possible. It was not until
the fifth century BCE that such doubts began to emerge, and the
Sophists were chiefly responsible for them.
During the fifth century BCE human practices and institutions
came under critical examination for the first time. Numerous
things that had previously been thought to be part of nature were
seen not to be. Thus, a general antithesis was drawn between
nature and human convention or custom, and the question of
where the line was to be drawn between them arose. The Sophists
asked how much of what we think we know about nature is really
an objective part of it and how much is contributed by the human
mind. Indeed, do we have any knowledge of nature as it really is?
Protagoras, for example, seems to have held, if Plato's report is to
be believed, that everything is as it appears to a man, that
appearances are the only reality. This is the meaning, or part of it,
of his famous dictum "Man is the measure of all things." Gorgias

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was, if anything, more radical, claiming that there was no such
thing as reality, that if there were, we could not know of it, and
that even if we could know of it, we could not communicate our
knowledge of it.
This general skepticism led to the beginning of epistemology as
it has been traditionally known—the attempt to justify the claim
that knowledge is possible and to assess the part played by the
senses and reason in the acquisition of knowledge. Before Plato,
Democritus, the Greek atomist, had already drawn a distinction
between those properties ordinarily attributed to things which, in
his view, really belong to them—for example, size and shape—
and those which, as he put it, are a matter of convention (nomos),
a function of the mind—for example, colour. It was Plato,
however, who can be said to be the real originator of
epistemology, for he attempted to deal with the basic questions:
What is knowledge? Where is knowledge generally found, and
how much of what we ordinarily think we know is really
knowledge? Do the senses provide knowledge? Can reason
supply knowledge? What is the relation between knowledge and
true belief?

The Nature of Epistemology

Epistemology differs from psychology in that it is not concerned
with why people hold the beliefs that they do or with the ways in
which they come to hold them. Psychologists can, in principle,
give explanations of why people hold the beliefs they do, but they
are not necessarily competent, nor is it their province, to say
whether the beliefs are based on good grounds or whether they
are sound. The answer to these questions must be sought from
those who are experts within the branches of knowledge from
which the beliefs are drawn. The mathematician can give the

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grounds for believing in the validity of Pythagoras's theorem, the
physicist can give the grounds for believing in, say, the
indeterminacy principle, and an ordinary but reliable witness can
provide the grounds for believing in the occurrence of an
accident. Normally, when the beliefs are true and the grounds
sufficient, it is permissible to claim knowledge, and whether a
particular truth can be said to be known may be determined by
reference to the grounds that are appropriate to the field from
which the truth is drawn. The epistemologist, however, is
concerned not with whether or how we can be said to know some
particular truth but with whether we are justified in claiming
knowledge of some whole class of truths, or, indeed, whether
knowledge is possible at all. The questions that he asks are
therefore general in a way that questions asked within some one
branch of knowledge are not.

Role of skepticism
To characterize the questions asked by the epistemologist as
extremely general is not, however, sufficient. Interest in very
general questions of this sort and in the nature of general concepts
is typical of philosophy as a whole. What distinguishes
epistemology other than the fact that its interests center on the
concept of knowledge? When a philosopher asks whether
something is possible, the question must be set against the
consideration that this thing may not be possible. It must be set
against a general skepticism concerning the matter in question.
To be called upon to justify the possibility of knowledge or of
certain kinds of knowledge makes sense only on the supposition
that it or they may not be possible. It is no coincidence that
epistemology began in the context of a form of the Sophists'
general skepticism about knowledge, for until such doubts had

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been raised, the possibility of knowledge was bound to be taken
for granted. Once the doubts had been raised, they had to be
answered. How they were to be answered depended on the nature
of the doubts and on the degree to which any particular
philosopher was susceptible to them.

Views on the nature of knowledge

Perhaps the most characteristic form of skepticism about
knowledge has been based upon the premise that we ought not to
claim knowledge about anything unless we are absolutely sure
about it, unless there is no possibility of our being wrong. Once
given this, it is possible to point out that it is at least logically
possible to be wrong about most, if not all, the things that we
ordinarily claim to know. Philosophers who have been impressed
by this argument have generally tried to show that there are at
least some things that we can claim to know, about which we
cannot be wrong. Even so, most of the things that we normally
think we know cannot, on this view, be said to be known at all.
This consequence can be mitigated, although not removed, if it
can be shown that the things accepted as known in the strict sense
give reasons for believing the things that we normally take
ourselves to know. Philosophers who have taken this course have
differed both on what this "certain knowledge" is and on how it is
connected with what we ordinarily suppose ourselves to know.
Rationalists have generally attempted to show that the primary
truths that constitute this certain knowledge are related to other
truths somewhat as the axioms of a formal or geometrical system
are related to the theorems.
Empiricists, on the other hand, have taken the view that the truths
which constitute ordinary knowledge can be constructed out of
the primary truths, as a building is built up from its foundations.

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They have differed again on the nature of the primary truths
themselves. Rationalists have looked for them among the
deliverances of reason, whereas empiricists have claimed that
sense experience alone can provide such truths. Other
philosophers have accepted part of the skeptical argument to the
extent of denying the status of knowledge to some class of truths,
reserving that status for some privileged class. Plato is a case in
point in that for at least part of his life he maintained that sense
experience never provides knowledge at all, this being reserved
for a kind of awareness of or acquaintance with a world of quite
distinct entities called Forms. In respect to the world of sense
experience we have only opinion or supposition. This view of
sense experience has not been uncommon among philosophers.

Kinds of Knowledge
The term “epistemology” comes from the Greek “episteme,”
meaning “knowledge,” and “logos,” meaning, roughly, “study, or
science, of.” “Logos” is the root of all terms ending in “-ology” –
such as psychology, anthropology – and of “logic,” and has many
other related meanings.
The word “knowledge” and its cognates are used in a variety of
ways. One common use of the word “know” is as an expression
of psychological conviction. For instance, we might hear
someone say, “I just knew it wouldn’t rain, but then it did.” While
this may be an appropriate usage, philosophers tend to use the
word “know” in a factive sense, so that one cannot know
something that is not the case.
Even if we restrict ourselves to factive usages, there are still
multiple senses of “knowledge,” and so we need to distinguish
between them. One kind of knowledge is procedural knowledge,

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sometimes called competence or “know-how;” for example, one
can know how to ride a bicycle, or one can know how to drive
from Amman to Aqaba. Another kind of knowledge is
acquaintance knowledge or familiarity; for instance, one can
know the department chairperson, or one can know London.
Epistemologists typically do not focus on procedural or
acquaintance knowledge, however, instead preferring to focus
on propositional knowledge. A proposition is something that can
be expressed by a declarative sentence, and which purports to
describe a fact or a state of affairs, such as “Dogs are mammals,”
“2+2=7,” “It is wrong to murder innocent people for fun.” (Note
that a proposition may be true or false; that is, it need
not actually express a fact.) Propositional knowledge, then, can
be called knowledge-that; statements of propositional knowledge
(or the lack thereof) are properly expressed using “that”-clauses,
such as “He knows that Houston is in Texas,” or “She does not
know that the square root of 81 is 9.” In what follows, we will be
concerned only with propositional knowledge.
Propositional knowledge, obviously, encompasses knowledge
about a wide range of matters: scientific knowledge, geographical
knowledge, mathematical knowledge, self-knowledge, and
knowledge about any field of study whatever. Any truth might, in
principle, be knowable, although there might be unknowable
truths. One goal of epistemology is to determine the criteria for
knowledge so that we can know what can or cannot be known, in
other words, the study of epistemology fundamentally includes
the study of meta-epistemology (what we can know about
knowledge itself).
We can also distinguish between different types of propositional
knowledge, based on the source of that knowledge. Non-
empirical or a priori knowledge is possible independently of, or

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prior to, any experience, and requires only the use of reason;
examples include knowledge of logical truths such as the law of
non-contradiction, as well as knowledge of abstract claims (such
as ethical claims or claims about various conceptual matters).
Empirical or a posteriori knowledge is possible only subsequent,
or posterior, to certain sense experiences (in addition to the use of
reason); examples include knowledge of the colour or shape of a
physical object or knowledge of geographical locations. (Some
philosophers, called rationalists, believe that all knowledge is
ultimately grounded upon reason; others, called empiricists,
believe that all knowledge is ultimately grounded upon
experience.) A thorough epistemology should, of course, address
all kinds of knowledge, although there might be different
standards for a priori and a posteriori knowledge.
We can also distinguish between individual knowledge and
collective knowledge. Social epistemology is the subfield of
epistemology that addresses the way that groups, institutions, or
other collective bodies might come to acquire knowledge.
Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. It is concerned with the
mind’s relation to reality. What is it for this relation to be one of
knowledge? Do we know things? And if we do, how and when do
we know things? These questions, and so the field of
epistemology, is as old as philosophy itself. Answering these
questions requires considering the relationship between
knowledge, truth, belief, reason, evidence and reliability. It
requires considering the different psychological routes to
knowledge, including different processes of reasoning – logical
and scientific – introspection, perception, memory, testimony and
intuition. And it requires considering the nature of the known
reality: How we know our own minds differs from how we know
the minds.

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Sources of Knowledge
Given the above characterization of knowledge, there are many
ways that one might come to know something. Knowledge of
empirical facts about the physical world will necessarily
involve perception, in other words, the use of the senses. Science,
with its collection of data and conducting of experiments, is the
paradigm of empirical knowledge. However, much of our more
mundane knowledge comes from the senses, as we look, listen,
smell, touch, and taste the various objects in our environments.
But all knowledge requires some amount of reasoning. Data
collected by scientists must be analysed before knowledge is
yielded, and we draw inferences based on what our senses tell us.
And knowledge of abstract or non-empirical facts will
exclusively rely upon reasoning. In particular, intuition is often
believed to be a sort of direct access to knowledge of the a priori.
Once knowledge is obtained, it can be sustained and passed on to
others. Memory allows us to know something that we knew in the
past, even, perhaps, if we no longer remember the original
justification. Knowledge can also be transmitted from one
individual to another via testimony; that is, my justification for a
particular belief could amount to the fact that some trusted source
has told me that it is true.

The origins of knowledge

Philosophers wish to know not only what knowledge is but also
how it arises. That desire is motivated in part by the assumption
that an investigation into the origins of knowledge can shed light
on its nature. Accordingly, such investigations have been one of
the major themes of epistemology from the time of the ancient
Greeks to the present. Plato’s Republic contains one of the
earliest systematic arguments to show that sense experience

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cannot be a source of knowledge. The argument begins with the
assertion that ordinary persons have a clear grasp of certain
concepts—e.g., the concept of equality. In other words, people
know what it means to say that a and b are equal, no matter what
a and b are. But where does such knowledge come from?
Consider the claim that two pieces of wood are of equal length. A
close visual inspection would show them to differ slightly, and
the more detailed the inspection, the more disparity one would
notice. It follows that visual experience cannot be the source of
the concept of equality. Plato applied such reasoning to all
five senses and concluded that the corresponding knowledge
cannot originate in sense experience. As in the Meno, Plato
concluded that such knowledge is “recollected” by the soul from
an earlier existence.
It is highly significant that Plato should
use mathematical (specifically, geometrical) examples to show
that knowledge does not originate in sense experience; indeed, it
is a sign of his perspicacity.
As the subsequent history
of philosophy reveals, mathematics provides the strongest case
for Plato’s view. Mathematical entities—e.g., perfect triangles,
disembodied surfaces and edges, lines without thickness, and
extensionless points—are abstractions, none of which exists in
the physical world apprehended by the senses. Knowledge of such
entities, it is argued, must therefore come from some other source.

Innate and acquired knowledge

The problem of the origins of knowledge has engendered two
historically important kinds of debate. One of them concerns the
question of whether knowledge is innate—i.e., present in
the mind, in some sense, from birth—or acquired through

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experience. The matter has been important not only in philosophy
but also, since the mid-20th century, in linguistics and
psychology. The American linguist Noam Chomsky, for
example, argued that the ability of young (developmentally
normal) children to acquire any human language on the basis of
invariably incomplete and even incorrect data is proof of the
existence of innate linguistic structures. In contrast, the
experimental psychologist B.F. Skinner (1904–90), a leading
figure in the movement known as behaviourism, tried to show
that all knowledge, including linguistic knowledge, is the product
of learning through environmental conditioning by means of
processes of reinforcement and reward. There also have been a
range of “compromise” theories, which claim that humans have
both innate and acquired knowledge.

A. Rationalists
Is all of our knowledge based on the evidence of the senses, or is
some of it justified by other means? This epistemological
question about the foundations of knowledge is what separates
Rationalism and Empiricism. According to Rationalism, at least
some knowledge can be had through reason alone. For
rationalists, the paradigm example of knowledge acquired
independent of sense experience is mathematics. Once we have
the concepts required to understand mathematical propositions
(like 2+2=4), no experience is required to be justified in accepting
their truth. They seem to be adequately known “through the light
of reason.” Empiricism, on the other hand, takes all of our
knowledge to be ultimately grounded in sense experience.
Descartes was the first significant rationalist philosopher of the
modern classical period. He rejects sense experience as a
trustworthy source of knowledge early in his Meditations.

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Following Descartes, a number of other European philosophers
develop rationalist philosophical systems. Leibniz and Spinoza
are the most notable. Meanwhile, an empiricist tradition gets
started in Great Britain.
The three major empiricist philosophers are John Locke, George
Berkeley and David Hume. Here, we will focus on Descartes,
Spinoza, and Leibniz, and we will take up the empiricists later.

Rene Descartes
Rene Descartes (1596-1650) lived during an intellectually vibrant
time. European scholars had supplemented Catholic doctrine with
a tradition of Aristotle scholarship, and early scientists like
Galileo and Copernicus had challenged the orthodox views of the
Scholastics. Surrounded by conflicting yet seemingly
authoritative views on many issues, Descartes wants to find a firm
foundation on which certain knowledge can be built and doubts
can be put to rest. So, he proposes to question any belief he has
that could possibly turn out to be false and then to methodically
reason from the remaining certain foundation of beliefs with the
hope of reconstructing a secure structure of knowledge where the
truth of each belief is ultimately guaranteed by careful inferences
from his foundation of certain beliefs.
When faith and dogma dominate the intellectual scene, “How do
we know?” is something of a forbidden question. Descartes dared
to ask this question while the influence of Catholic faith was still
quite strong. He was apparently a sincere Catholic believer, and
he thought his reason-based philosophy supported the main

93
tenants of Catholicism.
Still, he roused the
suspicion of religious
leaders by granting reason
authority in the justification
of our beliefs.
Descartes is considered by
many to be the founder of modern philosophy. He was also an
important mathematician and he made significant contributions to
the science of optics. You might have heard of Cartesian
coordinates. Thank Descartes. Very few contemporary
philosophers hold the philosophical views Descartes held. His
significance lays in the way he broke with prior tradition and the
questions he raised in doing so. Descartes frames some of the big
issues philosophers continue to work on today. Notable among
these are the foundations of knowledge, the nature of mind, and
the question of free will. We will look briefly at these three areas
of influence before taking up a closer examination of Descartes’
philosophy through his Meditations of First Philosophy.
To ask, “How do we know?” is to ask for reasons that justify our
belief in the things we think we know. Descartes’ Meditations
provide a classic example of the epistemological project of
providing systematic justification for the things we take ourselves
to know, and this remains a central endeavor in epistemology.
This project carries with it the significant risk of finding that we
lack justification for things we think we know. This is the problem
of skepticism. Skepticism is the view that we can’t know.
Skepticism comes in many forms depending on just what we
doubt we can know. While Descartes hoped to provide solid
justification for many of his beliefs, his project of providing a
rational reconstruction of knowledge fails at a key point early on.
The unintended result of his epistemological project is known as

94
the problem of Cartesian skepticism. We will explain this
problem a bit later in this chapter.
Another area where Descartes has been influential is in the
philosophy of mind. Descartes defends a metaphysical view
known as dualism that remains popular among many religious
believers. According to this view, the world is made up of two
fundamentally different kinds of substance, matter and spirit (or
mind). Material stuff occupies space and time and is subject to
strictly deterministic laws of nature. But spiritual things, minds,
are immaterial, exist eternally, and have free will. If dualism
reminds you of Plato’s theory of the Forms, this would not be
accidental. Descartes thinks his rationalist philosophy validates
Catholic doctrine and this in turn was highly influenced by Plato
through St. Augustine.
The intractable problem for Descartes’ dualism is that if mind and
matter are so different in nature, then it is hard to see how they
could interact at all. And yet when I look out the window, an
image of trees and sky affects my mind. When I will to go for a
walk, my material body does so under the influence of my mind.
This problem of mind-body interaction was famously and
forcefully raised by one of the all too rare female philosophers of
the time, princess Elisabeth of Bohemia.
A whole branch of philosophy, the philosophy of mind, is
launched in the wake of problems for substance dualism. Today,
the philosophy of mind is merging with neuroscience, cognitive
psychology, and information science to create a new science of
mind. We are rapidly learning how material brains realize the
processes of thought. Once again, Descartes has failed in a most
fruitful way. We also see how undeserved philosophy’s
reputation for failing to answer its questions is. While many
distinctively philosophical issues concerning the mind remain,

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the credit for progress will go largely to the newly minted science
of mind. The history of philosophy nicely illustrates how
parenthood can be such worthwhile but thankless work. As soon
as you produce something of real value, it takes credit for itself.
Later in a chapter on the philosophy of mind we will examine
some developments in this area since Descartes and get
acquainted with a few of its contemporary issues including the
nature of consciousness.
The final big issue that Descartes brought enduring attention to is
the problem of free will. We all have the subjective sense that
when we choose something we have acted freely or
autonomously. We think that we made a choice and we could
have made a different choice. The matter was entirely up to us
and independent of outside considerations. Advertisers count on
us taking complete credit and responsibility for our choices even
as they very effectively go about influencing our choices. Is this
freedom we have a subjective sense of genuine or illusory? How
could we live in a world of causes and effects and yet will and act
independent of these? And what are the ramifications for personal
responsibility? This is difficult nest of problems that continues to
interest contemporary philosophers.
Descartes’ is also a scientific revolution figure. He flourished
after Galileo and Copernicus and just a generation before Newton.
The idea of the physical world operating like a clockwork
mechanism according to strict physical laws is coming into
vogue. Determinism is the view that all physical events are fully
determined by prior causal factors in accordance with strict
mechanistic natural laws. Part of Descartes’ motivation for taking
mind and matter to be fundamentally different substances is to
grant the pervasive presence of causation in the material realm
while preserving a place for free will in the realm of mind or

96
spirit. This compromise ultimately doesn’t work out so well. If
every event in the material realm is causally determined by prior
events and the laws of nature, this would include the motions of
our physical bodies. But if these are causally determined, then
there doesn’t appear to be any entering wedge for our mental free
will to have any influence over out bodily movements.
Now we will turn to Descartes’ Meditations and examine how he
comes to the positions just outlined. Here is a link to several of
Descartes’ writings including Meditations on First Philosophy:
http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/authors/descartes.html.

The Meditations
Descartes project in his meditations is to carry out a rational
reconstruction of knowledge. Descartes is living during an
intellectually vibrant time and he is troubled by the lack of
certainty. With the Protestant Reformation challenging the
doctrines of the Catholic Church, and scientific thinkers like
Galileo and Copernicus applying the empirical methods Aristotle
recommends to the end of challenging the scientific views handed
down from Aristotle, the credibility of authority was challenged
on multiple fronts. So, Descartes sets out to determine what can
be known with certainty without relying on any authority, and
then to see what knowledge can be securely justified based on that
foundation.
In the first meditation we are introduced to Descartes’ method of
doubt. According to this method, Descartes goes through all of
his beliefs, not individually but by categories, and asks whether
there is any possible way that beliefs of this or that type can be
mistaken. If so, they must be set aside as doubtable. Many of these
beliefs may ultimately be redeemed as knowledge, but they
cannot serve as part of the secure foundation of indubitable beliefs

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from which his rational reconstruction of knowledge proceeds.
Empirical beliefs, things that we believe based on the evidence of
our senses, are set aside first. Our senses sometimes deceive us,
as when an oar appears bent in water or a stranger in a crowd
appears to be a friend. It won’t do to say that we can reliably
diagnose these cases and correct for mistaken appearances though
because we also have experiences just like seemingly reliable
sense experiences that are anything but in the case of dreams.
How can we be certain that any of our seeming sense experiences
of the external world are not in fact dreams? How can we be
certain that our whole life is not a dream?
So, sense experience is set to the side as uncertain and insufficient
for justifying knowledge. Descartes then considers things we
might know for certain by the light of reason, like mathematical
claims. I seem to be about as certain in my belief that 2+2=4 as I
can be about anything. Is there any possible way I could be
mistaken? Descartes here imagines a powerful demon that could
deceive me into always thinking that 2+2=4 when in fact this is
not true. Is this a genuine possibility? Descartes allows that it is
and considers all such knowledge had through reason doubtable
as well.
Does anything remain? Are there any beliefs that can’t be
doubted, even given the hypothesis of a powerful evil deceiver?
Descartes does find at least one. Even an evil deceiver could not
deceive Descartes about his belief that he thinks. At least this
belief is completely immune from doubt, because Descartes
would have to be thinking in order for the evil deceiver to deceive
him. In fact, there is a larger class of beliefs about the content of
one’s own mind that can be defended as indubitable even in the
face of the evil deceiver hypothesis. When I look at the grey wall
behind my desk, I form a belief about the external world; that I

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am facing a grey wall. I might be wrong about this. I might be
dreaming or deceived by an evil deceiver. But I also form another
belief about the content of my experience. I form the belief that I
am having a visual experience of greyness. This belief about the
content of my sense experience may yet be indubitable. For how
could the evil deceiver trick me into thinking that I am having
such an experience without in fact giving me that experience? So
perhaps we can identify a broader class of beliefs that are
genuinely indubitable. These are our beliefs about the contents of
our own mind. We couldn’t be wrong about these because we
have immediate access to them and not even an evil deceiver
could misdirect us.
The problem Descartes faces at this point is how to justify his
beliefs about the external world based on the very narrow
foundation of his indubitable beliefs about the contents of his own
mind. And this brings us to one of the more famous arguments in
philosophy: Descartes’ “Cogito Ergo Sum” or “I think, therefore
I exist.” Descartes argues that if he knows with certainty that he
thinks, then he can know with certainty that he exists as a thinking
being. Many philosophers since then have worried about the
validity of this inference. Perhaps all we are entitled to infer is
that there is thinking going on and we move beyond our
indubitable foundation when we attribute that thinking to an
existing subject (the “I” in “I exist”). There are issues to explore
here. But bigger problems await Descartes, so we will just note
this one and let it pass.
So far, Descartes has only adequately justified his beliefs about
the contents of his own mind and his own existence as a thinking
being. Knowledge about any external reality or even truths of
reason like 2+2=4 remain in need of justification. To overcome
skepticism about these matters, Descartes sets out to prove that

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God exists and is not an evil deceiver. Once the evil deceiver
hypothesis is in check, Truths of reason and perhaps others may
be yet be knowable. Not any argument for God’s existence and
good nature will do, though. The trick for Descartes’ project of a
rational reconstruction of knowledge is to prove the existence of
a good God by reasoning only from those beliefs that he has
identified as indubitable and foundational.
Descartes argument for the existence of a good God goes roughly
as follows:

1. I find in my mind the idea of a perfect being.

2. The cause of my idea of a perfect being must have at least
as much perfection and reality as I find in the idea.
3. I am not that perfect.
4. Nothing other than a good and perfect God could be
the cause of my idea of a perfect being.
5. So, a good and perfect God must exist.

This argument simplifies the rather involved reasoning Descartes

goes through in the Meditations. But it will do for diagnosing the
fatal flaw in Descartes’ reasoning. Let us grant the validity of the
argument and consider the truth of its premises. Keep in mind that
to accord with the method Descartes has set for himself in
carrying out a rational reconstruction of well-grounded certain
knowledge, all of the premises of this argument must be
indubitable and foundational. Being a belief about the contents of
his own mind, we can grant the certain truth of premise one.
Though it is not as clear, premise three might arguably count as a
foundational belief about the contents of Descartes’ own mind.
An evil deceiver, being evil, would lack perfection found in
Descartes’ idea of a perfect being. So as powerful as such, a being
could be, the cause of Descartes’ idea of a perfect being must be
more perfect than any evil deceiver.

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Perhaps any being so perfect would have to be a good God.
But the fatal flaw for Descartes’ rational reconstruction of
knowledge is the second premise. What are our grounds for
thinking that the cause of something must have at least as much
perfection as its effect? The idea of degrees of perfection and the
notion that the less perfect can only be explained in terms of the
more perfect is an idea that we find in Plato’s theory of forms. It
will strike many of us as implausible or even incomprehensible.
Just what is perfection supposed to mean here? And even once
we’ve spelled this out, why think causes must be more perfect? It
seems not at all uncommon for less perfect things to give rise to
more perfect things (just consider my son, for instance). In any
case, whether the second premise can be explained and defended
at all, the fatal flaw for Descartes’ project is that it is not
foundational. It is not an indubitable belief about the contents of
Descartes’ own mind, but rather a substantive belief about how
things are beyond the bounds of Descartes’ own mind. Therefore,
Descartes’ attempt to provide a rational justification for a
substantive body of knowledge leaves us with an enduring
skeptical problem. All we have immediate intellectual access to
is the contents of our own minds. How can we ever have
knowledge of anything beyond the contents of our own mind
based on this? This is the problem of Cartesian skepticism.
Having diagnosed the fatal flaw in Descartes’ project, we should
briefly consider how his rational reconstruction of knowledge
was to go from there. Given knowledge of God’s existence and
good nature, we would appeal to this to assure the reliability of
knowledge had through reason and later also through the senses.
God being the most perfect and good being would rule out the
possibility of interference by an evil deceiver. We might still
make mistakes in reasoning or be misinformed by the senses. But

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this would be due to our failure to use these faculties correctly. A
good God, however, would not equip us with faculties that could
not be trusted to justify our beliefs if used properly. This is a very
cursory summary of the later stages of Descartes’ attempted
rational reconstruction of knowledge in his Meditations. But it
will suffice for our purposes.

Cartesian Skepticism
In addition to the nature of knowledge, epistemologists concern
themselves with the question of the extent of human knowledge:
how much do we, or can we, know? Whatever turns out to be the
correct account of the nature of knowledge, there remains the
matter of whether we actually have any knowledge. It has been
suggested that we do not, or cannot, know anything, or at least
that we do not know as much as we think we do. Such a view is
called skepticism.
We can distinguish between a number of different varieties of
skepticism. First, one might be a skeptic only with regard to
certain domains, such as mathematics, morality, or the external
world (this is the most well-known variety of skepticism). Such a
skeptic is a local skeptic, as contrasted with a global skeptic, who
maintains that we cannot know anything at all. Also, since
knowledge requires that our beliefs be both true and justified, a
skeptic might maintain that none of our beliefs are true or that
none of them are justified (the latter is much more common than
the former).
While it is quite easy to challenge any claim to knowledge by
glibly asking, “How do you know?”, this does not suffice to show
that skepticism is an important position. Like any philosophical
stance, skepticism must be supported by an argument. Many
arguments have been offered in defence of skepticism, and many
responses to those arguments have been offered in return. Here,

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we shall consider two of the most prominent arguments in support
of skepticism about the external world.
In the first of his Meditations, René Descartes offers an argument
in support of skepticism, which he then attempts to refute in the
later Meditations. The argument notes that some of our
perceptions are inaccurate. Our senses can trick us; we sometimes
mistake a dream for a waking experience, and it is possible that
an evil demon is systematically deceiving us. (The modern
version of the evil demon scenario is that you are a brain-in-a-vat,
because scientists have removed your brain from your skull,
connected it to a sophisticated computer, and immersed it in a vat
of preservative fluid. The computer produces what seem to be
genuine sense experiences, and also responds to your brain’s
output to make it seem that you are able to move about in your
environment as you did when your brain was still in your body.
While this scenario may seem far-fetched, we must admit that it
is at least possible.)
As a result, some of our beliefs will be false. In order to be
justified in believing what we do, we must have some way to
distinguish between those beliefs which are true (or, at least, are
likely to be true) and those which are not. But just as there are no
signs that will allow us to distinguish between waking and
dreaming, there are no signs that will allow us to distinguish
between beliefs that are accurate and beliefs which are the result
of the machinations of an evil demon. This indistinguishability
between trustworthy and untrustworthy belief, the argument goes,
renders all of our beliefs unjustified, and thus we cannot know
anything. A satisfactory response to this argument, then, must
show either that we are indeed able to distinguish between true
and false beliefs, or that we need not be able to make such a
distinction.

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Readings: No. 3

Rene Descartes
Meditations on First Philosophy
First Meditation:
On what can be called into doubt
Some years ago, I was struck by how many false things
I had believed, and by how doubtful was the structure
of beliefs that I had based on them. I realized that if I
wanted to establish anything in the sciences that was
stable and likely to last, I needed—just once in my life—
to demolish everything completely and start again
from the foundations. It looked like an enormous task, and I decided to
wait until I was old enough to be sure that there was nothing to be gained
from putting it off any longer. I have now delayed it for so long that I have
no excuse for going on planning to do it rather than getting to work. So
today, I have set all my worries aside and arranged for myself a clear
stretch of free time. I am here quite alone, and at last, I will devote myself,
sincerely and without holding back, to demolishing my opinions.
I can do this without showing that all my beliefs are false, which is
probably more than I could ever manage. My reason tells me that as well
as withholding assent from propositions that are obviously false, I should
also withhold it from ones that are not completely certain and
indubitable. So, all I need, for the purpose of rejecting all my opinions,
is to find in each of them at least some reason for doubt. I can do this
without going through them one by one, which would take forever: once
the foundations of a building have been undermined, the rest collapses
of its own accord; so, I will go straight for the basic principles on which
all my former beliefs rested.
Whatever I have accepted until now as most true has come to me through
my senses. But occasionally I have found that they have deceived me,
and it is unwise to trust completely those who have deceived us even
once.

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[The next paragraph presents a series of considerations back and
forth. It is set out here as a discussion between two people, but that
isn’t how Descartes presented it.]
Hopeful: Yet although the senses sometimes deceive us about objects
that are very small or distant, that doesn’t apply to my belief that I am
here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown, holding this piece
of paper in my hands, and so on. It seems to be quite impossible to doubt
beliefs like these, which come from the senses. Another example: how
can I doubt that these hands or this whole body is mine? To doubt such
things, I would have to liken myself to brain-damaged madmen who are
convinced they are kings when really, they are paupers, or say they are
dressed in purple when they are naked, or that they are pumpkins, or
made of glass. Such people are insane, and I would be thought equally
mad if I modelled myself on them.
Doubtful (sarcastically): What a brilliant piece of reasoning! As if I were
not a man who sleeps at night and often has all the same experiences
while asleep as madmen do when awake—indeed sometimes even more
improbable ones. Often in my dreams, I am convinced of just such
familiar events— that I am sitting by the fire in my dressing-gown—when
in fact I am lying undressed in bed!
Hopeful: Yet right now my eyes are certainly wide open when I look at
this piece of paper; I shake my head and it isn’t asleep; when I rub one
hand against the other, I do it deliberately and know what I am doing.
This wouldn’t all happen with such clarity to someone asleep.
Doubtful: Indeed! As if I didn’t remember other occasions when I have
been tricked by exactly similar thoughts while asleep! As I think about
this more carefully, I realize that there is never any reliable way of
distinguishing being awake from being asleep. This discovery makes me
feel dizzy, [joke:] which itself reinforces the notion that I may be asleep!
Suppose then that I am dreaming—it isn’t true that I, with my eyes open,
am moving my head and stretching out my hands. Suppose, indeed that
I don’t even have hands or anybody at all. Still, it has to be admitted that
the visions

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That come in sleep are like paintings: they must have been made as
copies of real things; so at least these general kinds of things— eyes, head,
hands and the body as a whole—must be real and not imaginary. For even
when painters try to depict sirens and satyrs with the most extraordinary
bodies, they simply jumble up the limbs of different kinds of real animals,
rather than inventing natures that are entirely new. If they do succeed in
thinking up something completely fictitious and unreal—not remotely like
anything ever seen before—at least the colours used in the picture must
be real.
Similarly, although these general kinds of things— eyes, head, hands and
so on—could be imaginary, there is no denying that certain even simpler
and more universal kinds of things are real. These are the elements out
of which we make all our mental images of things—the true and also the
false ones.
These simpler and more universal kinds include body, and extension;
the shape of extended things; their quantity, size and number; the places
things can be in, the time through which they can last, and so on. So, it
seems reasonable to conclude that physics, astronomy, medicine, and all
other sciences dealing with things that have complex structures are
doubtful; while arithmetic, geometry and other studies of the simplest
and most general things—whether they really exist in nature or not—
contain something certain and indubitable. For whether I am, awake or
asleep, two plus three makes five, and a square has only four sides. It
seems impossible to suspect that such obvious truths might be false.
However, I have for many years been sure that there is an all-powerful
God who made me to be the sort of creature that I am. How do I know
that he hasn’t brought it about that there is no earth, no sky, nothing that
takes up space, no shape, no size, no place, while making sure that all
these things appear to me to exist? Anyway, I sometimes think that others
go wrong even when they think they have the most perfect knowledge; so
how do I know that I myself don’t go wrong every time I add two and
three or count the sides of a square? Well, ·you might say·, God would
not let me be deceived like that, because he is said to be supremely good.
But, ·I reply·, if God’s goodness would stop him from letting me be

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deceived all the time, you would expect it to stop him from allowing me
to be deceived even occasionally; yet clearly, I sometimes am deceived.
Some people would deny the existence of such a powerful God rather
than believe that everything else is uncertain. Let us grant them—for
purposes of argument—that there is no God, and theology is fiction. On
their view, then, I am a product of fate or chance or a long chain of causes
and effects. But the less powerful they make my original cause, the more
likely it is that I am so imperfect as to be deceived all the time—because
exception and error seem to be imperfections. Having no answer to these
arguments, I am driven back to the position that doubts can properly be
raised about any of my former beliefs. I don’t reach this conclusion in a
flippant or casual manner, but on the basis of powerful and well-thought-
out reasons. So, in future, if I want to discover any certainty, I must
withhold my assent from these former beliefs just as carefully as I
withhold it from obvious falsehoods. It isn’t enough merely to have
noticed this, though; I must make an effort to remember it. My old
familiar opinions keep coming back, and against my will they capture my
belief. It is as though they had a right to a place in my belief-system as a
result of long occupation and the law of custom. These habitual opinions
of mine are indeed highly probable; although they are in a sense doubtful,
as I have shown, it is more reasonable to believe than to deny them. But
if I go on viewing them in that light, I shall never get out of the habit of
confidently assenting to them. To conquer that habit, therefore, I had
better switch right around and pretend (for a while) that these former
opinions of mine are utterly false and imaginary. I shall do this until I
have something to counter-balance the weight of old opinion, and the
distorting influence of habit no longer prevents me from judging
correctly. However far I go in my distrustful attitude, no actual harm will
come of it, because my project won’t affect how I act, but only how I go
about acquiring knowledge.
So, I shall suppose that some malicious, powerful, cunning demon has
done all he can to deceive me—rather than this being done by God, who
is supremely good and the source of truth. I shall think that the sky, the
air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely

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dreams that the demon has contrived as traps for my judgment. I shall
consider myself as having no hands or eyes, or flesh, or blood or senses,
but as having falsely believed that I had all these things. I shall stubbornly
persist in this train of thought; and even if I can’t learn any truth, I shall
at least do what I can do, which is to be on my guard against accepting
any falsehoods, so that the deceiver—however powerful and cunning he
may be—will be unable to affect me in the slightest. This will be hard
work, though, and a kind of laziness pulls me back into my old ways. Like
a prisoner who dreams that he is free, starts to suspect that it is merely a
dream, and wants to go on dreaming rather than waking up, so I am
content to slide back into my old opinions; I fear being shaken out of
them because I am afraid that my peaceful sleep may be followed by hard
labour when I wake, and that I shall have to struggle not in the light but
in the imprisoning darkness of the problems I have raised.

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B. The Empiricism

Empiricism, you might recall, is

the view that all of our knowledge
is ultimately acquired through by
sense experience. The empiricist
philosophical tradition comes to
fruition in Great Britain over the
course of the 17th and 18th centuries. We will discuss three major
empiricist thinkers: David Hume, John Locke and George
Berkeley. We will consider the Locke and Berkeley briefly and
focus more closely on Hume.

David Hume
Of the philosophers discussed
here, David Hume (1711-
1776) has probably had the
greatest influence on
contemporary analytic
philosophy. The twentieth
century begins with a movement known as Logical Positivism
that tests the limits of
Empiricism. The Empiricism of
the Logical Positivists is heavily
indebted to Hume.
Hume’s empiricist epistemology
is grounded in his philosophy of
mind. Hume starts by asking
what we have in the mind and where these things come from. He
divides our mental representations into two categories, the
relatively vivid impressions; these include sensations and

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feelings, and the less vivid ideas which include memories and
ideas produced by the imagination.
What distinguishes impressions from ideas in our experience is
just their vividness. The picture of the mind Hume offers is one
where all of our
beliefs and
representations
are cooked up
out of basic
ingredients
provided by
experience.
Our experience
gives us only impressions through sense experience and internal
impressions like feelings. From this, we generate less vivid ideas.
Memories are merely faint copies of impressions. Through the
imagination, we can generate further ideas by recombining
elements of ideas we already have. Therefore, through
impressions we get the idea of a lizard and the idea of a bird. We
can then generate the idea of a dragon by imaginatively
combining elements of each. In cooking up new ideas from old
ideas, the imagination is guided by associating relations like
resemblance, contiguity (next-to-ness) and cause and effect. So,
for example, an impression of a grapefruit might lead me to think
of an orange due to their similarity. The thought of my bicycle
might lead me to think of the table saw it is parked next to in the
basement. Through the association of cause and effect, my idea
of a struck match leads me to the idea of a flame. The last of these
principles of association, cause and effect, turns out to be faulty
for reasons we will examine shortly.

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The imagination is not merely a source of
fancy and fiction. The imagination also
includes our ability to understand things when
we reason well in formulating new ideas from
old ones. A priori reasoning, which is
reasoning independent of experience, can
produce understanding of relations of ideas.
Mathematical and logical reasoning is like
this. When I recognize the validity of an
argument or the logic behind a mathematical
proof, the understanding I attain is just a
matter of grasping relations between ideas.
But a priori reasoning only reveals logical
relations between ideas. It tells us nothing
about matters of fact. Our ability to
understand matters of fact, say truths about the
external world, depends entirely on a posteriori reasoning, or
reasoning based on experience. As we will see, our ability to
reason about matters of fact does not get us very far.
Often our philosophical confusion is the result of having added
more than we are entitled to add to our experience when we are
striving to understand it. Hume aims to correct many of these
errors and, in doing so, he aims to delineate the limits of human
knowledge and understanding. As it turns out, we do not know as
much as we commonly suppose, in Hume’s opinion. The result of
Hume’s rigorous Empiricism is skepticism about a great many
things. Some of Hume’s skeptical results are not so surprising
given his Empiricism. Hume is skeptical about objective moral
truths, for instance. We do not get to observe rightness and
wrongness in the way we can see colors and shapes, for instance.
The idea that there are objective moral truths, according to Hume,
is a mistaken projection of our subjective moral sentiments.

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Hume is not worried that his subjectivism about morality will lead
to moral anarchy. Note that the opinion that it is OK to do
whatever you want is itself a moral opinion. So, for the
subjectivist, “anything goes” is no more rationally justified than
any other moral opinion. While Hume does think that morality is
concerned with subjective sentiments, not objective facts, the lack
of objective moral truths will not corrupt us or undermine the
social order because we all have pretty much the same sorts of
moral sentiments and we can base a sensible social order on these.
While we may feel differently about specific practices or
principles, Hume thinks we have a basis for negotiating our moral
differences in our more general and more or less universally
shared moral sentiments of self-love, love for others, and concern
for happiness.
Hume’s skepticism about objective moral truths now strikes
many people as common sense. But the empiricist epistemology
that leads him to subjectivism about morality also leads him to
skepticism about causation, the external world, inductive
reasoning, about God, and even about the self. We will examine
these further skeptical conclusions starting with causation.
• An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Foundation of all
knowledge is in sensory experience
• Can we have certain knowledge? YES!
• Relation of Ideas How our ideas relate to one another:
Analytic Truths
Tautologies
Mathematical Truths
• Always can involve a contradiction
“An unmarried man is not a bachelor”
Why is this a contradiction?
Because of how we define the terms
All other knowledge?

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 • Matters of Fact
Synthetic Truths Never can involve a contradiction
We can only have a high degree of probability
Example: “The sun will rise tomorrow”
Two Types of Perceptions
1. Impressions
From
Sense data Of
Mind independent reality
2. Thoughts / Ideas
From
Our memory of
Impressions
Or
Imagination
Difference between the two?
Impressions are more lively than thoughts or ideas
Example
Which is more lively:
Actually, burning your finger
Or
The memory of burning your finger?
• Empirical Criteria of Meaning
1. All meaningful ideas must be traced back to sense
impression (Experience)
2. Ideas and beliefs that cannot be traced back to sense
impression (experience) are meaningless
Example
A golden mountain
A unicorn
Al Ghoul
• How would you explain colour to a blind person?
You can’t they have no impression reference

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Causation
When we examine our everyday idea of causation, Hume says
we find four component ideas:
• The idea of a constant conjunction of cause and effect
(whenever the cause occurs, the effect follows).
• The idea of the temporal priority of the cause (the cause
happens first, then the effect).
• The idea of causes and effects being contiguous (next to each
other) in space and time.
• The idea of a necessary connection between the cause and the
effect.
So, for instance, the idea that striking a match causes it to light is
made up of the idea that whenever similar matches are struck
(under the right conditions), they light, plus the idea of the
striking happening first, and the idea of the striking and the
lighting happen right next to each other in time and space, and,
finally, the idea that the striking somehow necessitates or makes
the match light. Now let’s consider these component ideas and
ask whether they all have an
empirical basis in corresponding
sense impressions. We do have
sense impressions of the first
three: the constant conjunction of
cause and effect, the temporal priority of the cause, and the
contiguity of cause and effect. But Hume argues that we lack any
corresponding empirical impression of necessary connections
between causes and effects. We do not observe anything like the
cause making the effect occur. As Hume puts the point,
When we look about us towards external objects, and consider the
operation of causes, we are never able, in a single instance, to
discover any power or necessary connexion; any quality, which
binds the effect to the cause, and renders the one an infallible
consequence of the other. We only find that the one does actually,

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in fact, follow the other. (An Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding, Section VII)
The idea of causes necessitating their effects, according to
Hume’s analysis, is a confused projection of the imagination for
which we find no basis in experience. For this reason, Hume
denies that we have rational grounds for thinking that causes do
necessitate their effects.

Cause and Effect

• Cause and Effect Cannot be traced back to impressions It
involves no contradiction
For Example:
Let’s take the sentence: “X causes Y”
Where X and Y are both events
X is the event of billiard ball A striking billiard ball B
Y is the event of billiard ball B moving after being struck
Question: Is the sentence “X causes Y” analytic?
That is to say, is the sentence “X does not cause Y” a
self-contradiction?
Like:
“A unmarried male is not a
bachelor”
Answer: NO!
This sentence is not analytic!
• Is this sentence synthetic?
It seems that the answer will be yes because this is the only
alternative
But Hume had a problem with this answer too!
• When he analyzed the concept of causality, he broke it down
into three components:
1. Priority

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2. Contiguity
3. Necessary Connection
Priority
Means that X precedes Y
This can be traced back to sense data.
Contiguity
Means that X touches Y
This can also be traced back to sense data.
Necessary Connection?
Means that if X happens, Y MUST happen
No matter how many times Hume looked he could find no
necessary connection
Therefore, causality cannot be traced back to sense data
Implications?
Causality means that whenever we say that one thing (X)
causes another thing (Y)
We are really only reporting our own EXPECTATIONS that
X will be followed by Y
This is a psychological fact about us and not a fact about the world
Even if X was followed by Y innumerable times in the past,
that does not justify our claim to know that it will do so again
in the future
And we assume that (A) caused (B)
But all we have seen is two distinct events that happen in
succession
Example
The rooster always crows just before the sun rises
Does that cause the sun to rise? NO!
Causality is a matter of
CUSTOM
And
HABIT

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The External World
All of our reasoning about the external world is based on the idea
of causation. So, the skepticism that follows from Hume’s
skepticism about causation is quite far reaching. Our beliefs about
the external world, for instance, are based on the idea that things
going on in the external world cause our sense impressions. We
have no rational grounds for thinking so, says Hume.
More generally, our evidence for what we can know begins with
our impressions, the mental representations of sense experience.
We assume that our impressions are a reliable guide to the way
things are, but this is an assumption we can’t rationally justify.
We have no experience beyond our impressions that could
rationally certify that our impressions correspond in any way to
an external reality. Our assumption that our impressions do
correspond to an external reality is a rationally unsupportable
product of our imagination.

Induction
Closely related to Hume’s skepticism about causation is Hume’s
skepticism about inductive reasoning. Inductive argument, in its
standard form, draws a conclusion about what is generally the
case, or what will prove to be the case in some as yet unobserved
instance, from some limited number of specific observations. The
following is an example of a typical inductive argument:
1. Every observed sample of water heated to well over 100 C
has boiled.
2. Therefore, whenever water is heated to well over 100 C, it
boils.
Unless every instance of water heated to over 100C in the history
of the universe is among the observed instances, we can’t be sure
that the conclusion is true given the truth of the premises. It
follows those strong inductive arguments like the one above is not

117
deductively valid. But then what justifies the inference from the
premise to the conclusion of an inductive argument? Hume
considers the suggestion that every inductive argument has a
principle of induction as a suppressed premise, and it is this
principle of induction that renders the inference from premises to
conclusion rational. This principle of induction tells us roughly
that unobserved instances follow the pattern of observed
instances. So inductive arguments really go something like this:
1. Every observed sample of water heated to over 100 C has
boiled.
2. (Unobserved cases tend to follow the pattern of observed
cases)
3. So, whenever water is heated to over 100 C, it boils.
Of course, the argument still isn’t valid, but that’s not what we
are aiming for in induction. Given the hidden second premise -
our principle of induction - we can reasonably hold that the
premises taken together give us good grounds to accept that the
conclusion is probably true. However, if this principle of
induction (2 above) is to render inductive inferences rational, then
we need some grounds for thinking that it is true. In considering
how this principle of induction is to be justified, Hume presents a
dilemma. Since there is no contradiction in denying the principle
of induction, it cannot be justified a-priori (independent of our
experience as can be done with logical truths). And any empirical
argument would be inductive and therefore beg the question by
appealing to the very principle of induction that requires support.
So, Hume concludes, we have no rational grounds for accepting
inductive inferences.
Think about the ramifications of Hume’s skepticism about
induction. If inductive argument is not rational, then we have no
reason at all to think the sun will rise tomorrow. Here we aren’t
worried about improbably possibilities like the sun getting blown

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to bits by aliens before tomorrow morning. Hume’s argument
against the rationality of inductive reasoning implies that all of
our experience of the sun regularly rising gives us no reason to
think its rising tomorrow is even likely to happen. If this sounds
crazy, then we have a problem because it is not easy to find a
defect in Hume’s reasoning. This is why philosophers speak of
this topic as the Problem of Induction. Very few are prepared to
accept Hume’s skepticism about induction. But in the two and a
half centuries that have passed since Hume died, we have yet to
settle on a satisfactory solution to the problem of induction. We’ll
take a closer look at this problem when we take up the Philosophy
of Science in the next chapter.

C. The Critical Philosophy

Immanuel Kant

The German philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), was

moved, by the skeptical conclusions to which Hume’s philosophy
seemed to lead, to seek a way of escape. But he did not take refuge
in “Common Sense”; he developed an ingenious doctrine which
has had an enormous influence in the philosophical world, and
has given rise to a Kantian literature of such proportions that no
man can hope to read all of it, even if he devotes his life to it. In
Germany and out of it, it has for a
hundred years and more simply
rained books, pamphlets, and
articles on Kant and his philosophy,
some of them good, many of them
far from clear and far from original.
Hundreds of German university
students have taken Kant as the
subject of the dissertation by which
they hoped to win the degree of

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Doctor of Philosophy; – I was lately offered two hundred and
seventy-four such dissertations in one bunch; – and no student is
supposed to have even a moderate knowledge of philosophy who
has not an acquaintance with that famous work, the “Critique of
Pure Reason.”
It is to be expected from the outset that, where so many have
found so much to say, there should reign abundant differences of
opinion. There are
differences of opinion
touching the interpretation
of Kant, and touching the
criticisms which may be
made upon, and the
development which should
be given to, his doctrine. It
is, of course, impossible to go into all these things here; and I shall
do no more than indicate, in untechnical language and in briefest
outline, what he offers us in place of the philosophy of Hume.
Kant did not try to refute, urged by Descartes and by his
successors, that all those things which the mind directly perceives
are to be regarded as complexes of ideas. On the contrary, he
accepted it, and he has made the
words “phenomenon” and
“noumenon” household words in
philosophy.
The world which seems to be spread
out before us in space and time is, he
tells us, a world of things as they are revealed to our senses and
our intelligence; it is a world of manifestations, of phenomena.
What things-in-themselves are like we have no means of
knowing; we know only things as they appear to us. We may, to
be sure, talk of a something distinct from phenomena, a
something not revealed to the senses, but thought of, a noumenon;

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but we should not forget that this is a negative conception; there
is nothing in our experience that can give it a filling, for our
experience is only of phenomena.
Now, Berkeley had called all the things we immediately perceive
ideas. As we have seen, he distinguished between “ideas of sense”
and “ideas of memory and imagination.” Hume preferred to give
to these two classes different names – he called the first
impressions and the second ideas.
The associations of the word “impression” are not to be mistaken.
Locke had taught that between ideas in the memory and genuine
sensations there is the difference that the latter are due to the
“brisk acting” of objects without us. Objects impress us, and we
have sensations or impressions. To be sure, Hume, after
employing the word “impression,” goes on to argue that we have
no evidence that there are external objects, which cause
impressions. But he retains the word “impression,” nevertheless,
and his use of it perceptibly colours his thought.
In Kant’s distinction between phenomena and noumena we have
the lineal descendant of the old distinction between the circle of
our ideas and the something outside of them that causes them and
of which they are supposed to give information. Hume said we
have no reason to believe such a thing exists, but are impelled by
our nature to believe in it. Kant is not so much concerned to prove
the nonexistence of noumena, things-in-themselves, as he is to
prove that the very conception is an empty one. His reasonings
seem to result in the conclusion
that we can make no intelligible
statement about things so cut
off from our experience as
noumena are supposed to be;
and one would imagine that he
would have felt impelled to go

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on to the frank declaration that we have no reason to believe in
noumena at all, and had better throw away altogether so
meaningless and useless a notion. But he was a conservative
creature, and he did not go quite so far.
So far there is little choice between Kant and Hume. Certainly,
the former does not appear to have rehabilitated the external
world which had suffered from the assaults of his predecessors.
What important difference is there between his doctrine and that
of the man whose sceptical tendencies he wished to combat?

The difference is this: Descartes and Locke had accounted for our
knowledge of things by maintaining that things act upon us, and
make an impression or sensation – that their action, so to speak,
begets ideas. This is a very ancient doctrine as well as a very
modern one; it is the doctrine that most men find reasonable even
before they devote themselves to the study of philosophy. The
totality of such impressions received from the external world,
they are accustomed to regard as our experience of external
things; and they are inclined to think that any knowledge of
external things not founded upon experience can hardly deserve
the name of knowledge.
Now, Hume, when he cast
doubt upon the existence
of external things, did not,
as I have said above, divest
himself of the suggestions
of the word “impression.”
He insists strenuously that
all our knowledge is
founded upon experience;
and he holds that no experience can give us knowledge that is
necessary and universal. We know things as they are revealed

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to us in our experience; but who can guarantee that we may not
have new experiences of a quite different kind, and which flatly
contradict the notions which we have so far attained of what is
possible and impossible, true and untrue.
It is here that Kant takes issue with Hume. A survey of our
knowledge makes clear, he thinks, that we are in the possession
of a great deal of information that is not of the unsatisfactory kind
that, according to Hume, all our
knowledge of things must be. There,
for example, are all the truths of
mathematics. When we enunciate a
truth regarding the relations of the
lines and angles of a triangle, we are
not merely unfolding in the predicate
of our proposition what was implicitly
contained in the subject. There are propositions that do no more
than this; they are analytical, i.e., they merely analyse the subject.
Thus, when we say: Man is a rational animal; we may merely be
defining the word “man” – unpacking it, so to speak. But a
synthetic judgment is one in which the predicate is not contained
in the subject; it adds to one’s information. The mathematical
truths are of this character. So also, is the truth that everything
that happens must have a cause.
Do we connect things with one another in this way merely
because we have had experience that they are thus connected? Is
it because they are given to us connected in this way? That cannot
be the case, Kant argues, for what is taken up as mere experienced
act cannot be known as universally and necessarily true. We
perceive that these things must be so connected. How shall we
explain this necessity?

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We can only explain it, said Kant, in this way: We must assume
that what is given us from without is merely the raw material of
sensation, the matter of our experience; and that the ordering of
this matter, the arranging it into a world of phenomena, the
furnishing of form, is the
work of the mind. Thus, we
must think of space, time,
causality, and of all other
relations which obtain
between the elements of our
experience, as due to the
nature of the mind. It
perceives the world of
phenomena that it does, because it constructs that world. Its
knowledge of things is stable and dependable because it cannot
know any phenomenon which does not conform to its laws. The
water poured into a cup must take the shape of the cup; and the
raw materials poured into a mind must take the form of an orderly
world, spread out in space and time.
Kant thought that with this turn he had placed human knowledge
upon a satisfactory basis, and had, at the same time, indicated the
limitations of human knowledge. If the world we perceive is a
world which we make; if the forms of thought furnished by the
mind have no other function than the ordering of the materials
furnished by sense; then what can we say of that which may be
beyond phenomena? What of noumena?
It seems clear that, on Kant’s principles, we ought not to be able
to say anything whatever of noumena. To say that such may exist
appears absurd. All conceivable connection between them and
existing things as we know them is cut off. We cannot think of a
noumenon as a substance, for the notions of substance and quality

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have been declared to be only a scheme for the ordering of
phenomena. Nor can we think of one as a cause of the sensations
that we unite into a world, for just the same reason. We are shut
up logically to the world of phenomena, and that world of
phenomena is, after all, the successor of the world of ideas
advocated by Berkeley.
This is not the place to discuss at length the value of Kant’s
contribution to philosophy. There is something terrifying in the
prodigious length at which it seems possible for men to discuss it.
Kant called his doctrine
“Criticism,” because it
undertook to establish the
nature and limits of our
knowledge. By some he
has been hailed as a great
enlightener, and by others
he has been accused of
being as dogmatic in his
assumptions as those whom he disapproved.
But one thing he certainly has accomplished. He has made the
words “phenomena” and “noumena” familiar to us all, and he has
induced a vast number of men to accept it as established fact that
it is not worthwhile to try to extend our knowledge beyond
phenomena. One sees his influence in the writings of men who
differ most widely from one another.

D. Pragmatism

In 1878 Mr. Charles S. Peirce wrote an article for the Popular

Science Monthly in which he proposed as a maxim for the
attainment of clearness of apprehension the following: “Consider

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what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings,
we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our
conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the
object.”
This thought has been taken up by others and given a
development, which Mr. Peirce regards with some suspicion. He
refers especially to the development it has received at the hands
of Professor William James, in his two essays, “The Will to
Believe” and “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results.”
Professor James is often regarded as foremost among the
pragmatists.
I shall not attempt to define pragmatism, for I do not believe that
the doctrine has yet attained to that definiteness of formulation
which warrants a definition. We seem to have to do not so much
with a clear-cut doctrine, the limits and consequences of which
have been worked out in detail, as with a tendency which makes
itself apparent in the works of various writers under somewhat
different forms.
I may roughly describe it as the tendency to take that to be true
which is useful or serviceable. It is well illustrated in the two
essays to which reference is made above.
Thus, Professor James dwells upon the unsatisfactoriness and
uncertainty of philosophical and scientific knowledge: “Objective
evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with,
but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they
found?”
Now, among those things regarding which it appears impossible
to attain to intellectual certitude, there are matters of great
practical moment, and which affect deeply the conduct of life; for

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example, the doctrines of religion. Here a merely skeptical
attitude seems intolerable.
In such cases, argues Professor James, “we have the right to
believe at our own risk any hypothesis that is live enough to tempt
our will.”
It is important to notice that there is no question here of a logical
right. We are concerned with matters regarding which, according
to Professor James, we cannot look for intellectual evidence. It is
assumed that we believe simply because we choose to believe –
we believe arbitrarily.
It is further important to notice that what is a “live” hypothesis to
one man need not tempt the will of another man at all. As our
author points out, a Turk would naturally will to believe one thing
and a Christian would will to believe another. Each would will to
believe what struck him as a satisfactory thing to believe.
What shall we say to this doctrine? I think we must say that it is
clearly not a philosophical method of attaining to truth. Hence, it
has not properly a place in this chapter among the attempts which
have been made to attain to the truth of things.
It is, in fact, not concerned with truths, but with assumptions, and
with assumptions which are supposed to be made on the basis of
no evidence. It is concerned with “seemings.”
The distinction is a very important one. you cannot, by willing to
believe it, make his hypothesis true; but he can make it seem true.
Why should he wish to make it seem true whether it is true or not?
Why should he strive to attain to a feeling of subjective certainty,
not by logically resolving his doubts, but by ignoring them?
The answer is given us by our author. He who lives in the midst
of doubts, and refuses to cut his knot with the sword of belief,
misses the good of life. This is a practical problem, and one of no
small moment. In the last section of this book, I have tried to
indicate what it is wise for a man to do when he is confronted by
doubts which he cannot resolve.

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Into the general question whether even a false belief may not,
under some circumstances, be more serviceable than no belief at
all, I shall not enter. The point I wish to emphasize is that there is
all the difference in the world between producing a belief and
proving a truth.
We are compelled to accept it as a fact that men, under the
influence of feeling, can believe in the absence of evidence, or,
for that matter, can believe in spite of evidence. But a truth cannot
be established in the absence of evidence or in the face of adverse
evidence. And there is a very wide field in which it is made very
clear to us that beliefs adopted in the absence of evidence are in
danger of being false beliefs.
The pragmatist would join with the rest of us in condemning the
Turk or the Christian who would simply will to believe in the rise
or the fall of stocks, and would refuse to consult the state of the
market. Some hypotheses are, in the ordinary course of events,
put to the test of verification. We are then made painfully aware
that beliefs and truths are quite distinct things, and may not be in
harmony.
Now, the pragmatist does not apply his principle to this field. He
confines it to what may not inaptly be called the field of the
unverifiable. The Turk, who wills to believe in the hypothesis that
appeals to him as a pious Turk, is in no such danger of a rude
awakening as is the man who wills to believe that stocks will go
up or down. But mark what this means: it means that he is not in
danger of finding out what the truth really is. It does not mean
that he is in possession of the truth.
So, I say, the doctrine which we are discussing is not a method of
attaining to truth. What it really attempts to do is to point out to
us how it is prudent for us to act when we cannot discover what
the truth is.

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II Logic
Logic: The Definition

Logic (from the Greek "logos", which has a variety of meanings

including; word, thought, idea, argument, account, reason or
principle.
It is the study of reasoning, or the study of the principles and
criteria of valid inference and demonstration. It attempts to
distinguish good reasoning from bad reasoning.
- The study of the principles of reasoning.
- Logic can include the act of reasoning by humans in
order to form thoughts and opinions, as well as
classifications and judgments.
- “The study of truths based completely on the meanings
of the terms they contain.”
- Is a process for making a conclusion and a tool you can
use.
Logic is a branch of philosophy. There are different schools of
thought on logic in philosophy, but the typical version is
called classical elementary logic or classical first-order logic. In
this discipline, philosophers try to distinguish good reasoning
from bad reasoning.
Aristotle defined logic as "new and necessary reasoning";
New: because it allows us to learn what we do not know,
and "necessary" because its conclusions are inescapable.
It asks questions like "What is correct reasoning?", "What
distinguishes a good argument from a bad one?", "How can we
detect a fallacy in reasoning?"
Logic investigates and classifies the structure
of statements and arguments, both through the study of formal
systems of inference and through the study of arguments in natural

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language. It deals only with propositions (declarative sentences,
used to make an assertion, as opposed to questions, commands or
sentences expressing wishes) that are capable of
being true and false. It is not concerned with the psychological
processes connected with thought, or with emotions, images and
the like.
It covers core topics such as the study of fallacies and paradoxes,
as well as specialized analysis of reasoning using probability and
arguments involving causality and argumentation theory.
Logical systems should have three things:
- consistency (which means that none of the theorems of the
system contradict one another);
- soundness (which means that the system's rules of proof will
never allow a false inference from a true premise);
- completeness (which means that there are no true sentences in the
system that cannot, at least in principle, be proved in the system).

History of Logic
modern logic descends mainly from the Ancient Greek tradition.
Both Plato and Aristotle conceived of logic as the study
of argument and from a concern with the correctness
of argumentation. Aristotle produced six works on logic, known
collectively as the "Organon", the first of these, the "Prior
Analytics", being the first explicit work in formal logic.
Aristotle espoused two principles of great importance in logic,
The Law of Excluded Middle (that every statement is either true
or false)
And the Law of Non-Contradiction (confusingly, also known as
the Law of Contradiction, that no statement is both true and
false). He is perhaps most famous for introducing

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the syllogism (or term logic). His followers, known as
the Peripatetics, )‫ (المشاءون‬further refined his work on logic.
Logic in Islamic philosophy also contributed to the development
of modern logic, especially the development of Avicennian
logic (which was responsible for the introduction of
the hypothetical syllogism, temporal logic, modal
logic and inductive logic) as an alternative to Aristotelian logic.

In the 18th Century, Immanuel Kant argued that logic should be

conceived as the science of judgment, so that the valid
inferences of logic follow from the structural features of
judgments, although he still maintained that Aristotle had
essentially said everything there was to say about logic as a
discipline.
In the 20th Century, however, the work of Gottleb Frege, Alfred
North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell on Symbolic Logic,
turned Kant's assertion on its head. This new logic, expounded in
their joint work "Principia Mathematica", is much broader in
scope than Aristotelian logic, and even contains classical logic
within it, albeit as a minor part. It resembles a mathematical
calculus and deals with the relations of symbols to each other.
So
Logic is the science, which directs the operations of the mind in
the attainment of truth.
What do we mean by truth? An assertion is said to be true when
it corresponds to the reality of which the assertion is made. But the
verbal statement is merely the outward expression of the thought
within. It is our thoughts which are properly said to be true or
erroneous. For present purposes, therefore, we may define truth
as the conformity of the intellect with its object. Thus, if I see a
white horse, and judge 'That horse is white', my judgment is said

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to be true, because my thought corresponds with the thing about
which I am judging.
The aim of all our mental operations is to attain true judgments.
If I endeavour to establish a geometrical proposition, my object is
to arrive in the end at a judgment, which is in conformity with
reality. Now there are certain definite ways in which, and in
which alone, our thinking faculty must proceed if it is to achieve
its task of faithfully representing the real order. Reflection enables
us to observe the operations of the mind; and hence we are able
to know and to catalogue these common types of mental action.
In this way we learn the rules, which we must observe in
reasoning, if we are to arrive at a true result. For, as experience
shows us, it is very easy to argue in a way that will bring us, not
to truth, but to error. It was a boast of the Sophists in ancient
Greece that they could make the worse appear to be the better
cause. They managed this end by skilfully violating the rules
which men must observe, if their conclusions are to be true.
Another definition may be given of Logic, in which the science is
considered in a different aspect. Logic is the science
which treats of the conceptual representation of the real order; in
other words, which has for its subject-matter things as they are
represented in our thought. The difference between this
definition and that which we gave in the first instance, is that this
definition expresses the subject-matter of Logic, while the former
expresses its aim. We shall find as we proceed that the science
can scarcely be understood, unless both these aspects are kept in
view.
The work of Logic therefore is not to teach us some way of
discovering new facts. First Francis Bacon, later Descartes, and
finally, despite his admitted genius, John Stuart Mill failed to
recognise this simple fact and drove logic from the confines of its

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valid form into the realm of the physical sciences. The discovery
of things belongs to the special sciences, each in its own
sphere. Logic's purpose, on the other hand, is to assist us in
the attainment of truth, because it treats of the way in which the
mind represents things, and thus shows us what are those general
conditions of right thinking, which must be observed whatever
subject we are considering.
Where we have a systematic body of securely established
principles and of conclusions legitimately drawn from these
principles, there we have a science. Thus, in the science of
Astronomy we start from certain general laws, and have a body
of conclusions derived from these. Mere facts not brought under
general laws do not constitute a science. We are rightly said to
have a science of Logic, for, as we shall see, it consists of a body
of principles and legitimate conclusions, such as we have
described.

Why we study Logic?

There are many reasons to study Logic, some of these reasons
are:
1. Symbolic Logic Is Fun
Studying basic symbolic logic is like learning a new language,
albeit one with a small vocabulary and just a few rules of
grammar. You learn to do all sorts of things with these new
symbols: use them to analyse the logic of ordinary sentences, test
arguments for validity, and construct proofs for complex
arguments for which the validity isn't obvious. The exercises that
help you become adept at these things are like puzzles, so if you
like Futoshiki or Sudoku, you will probably love logic.

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2. Knowing if an Argument Is Valid Is a Valuable Skill
Logic is essentially the study of reasoning or argumentation. We
use reason all the time to draw inferences that are useful to us. If
our car won't start, we reason that the battery may be dead—so
we test the battery. If the battery is not dead, then we deduce the
problem must lie elsewhere, perhaps with the starter motor—so
we check the starter motor, and so on. The reasoning here is
simple, but sometimes chains of reasoning can become quite
complex. Training ourselves to construct effective arguments and
to spot weak ones is a skill that is useful in just about every field
of endeavour, as well as in everyday life. It helps steer us in the
direction of truth and away from falsehood.

3. Good Logic Is an Effective Tool of Persuasion

The art of persuasion is called rhetoric. Rhetoric, like logic, used
to be an essential part of the liberal arts curriculum. Sadly, neither
is generally required any longer. Rhetoric can encompass just
about any means of persuasion—short of bribery, blackmail, or
physical violence. It includes, for instance, appeals to emotion,
provocative images, or clever wordplay. There is no doubt that all
of these can be persuasive; however, so can cogently reasoning.
We are not saying that a good argument will always win the day
over clever rhetoric. After all, human beings are not Vulcans like
Mr. Spock. In the long run, though, good arguments usually come
out on top.

4. Logic Is a Foundational Discipline

Logic is foundational to any field that makes use of arguments. It
has especially close connections to mathematics, computer
science, and philosophy. Both Aristotelian logic and modern
symbolic logic are impressive bodies of knowledge that constitute
major intellectual achievements.

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5. Logic Helps You Spot Fallacies & Makes You a
Better Citizen
Fallacious thinking—in the form of propaganda, exaggeration,
misdirection, and even outright lies—abounds in our culture.
Politicians, pundits, advertisers, and corporate spokespersons
attack straw men, appeal to the majority opinion, promote red
herrings, or oppose a view simply because they dislike the person
who holds it. Familiarity with common fallacies of this sort helps
make you a more critical reader, listener, and thinker.
Dubious techniques of persuasion, such as "criticizing" a
candidate's views by showing an unflattering image of them, once
used most often during election campaigns have become the norm
of news and social media. These tactics are no doubt sometimes
effective, however, that is no reason for preferring them to a
sound clear argument. On the contrary, this trend toward
believing everything you hear is why the need for logical thinking
is more crucial than ever.
Over the course of the 20th century, notes A.D. Irvine, "the study
of logic has benefited, not only from advances in traditional fields
such as philosophy and mathematics, but also from advances in
other fields as diverse as computer science and economics"
(Philosophy of Science, Logic and Mathematics in the Twentieth Century,
2003)

The Language of Logic

• The foundation of a logical argument is its proposition, or

statement.
• The proposition is either accurate (true) or not accurate
(false).
Iron is melted at 328 Cْ
• Premises are the propositions used to build the argument.
S is P
P is D

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 Therefor S Is D
• The argument is then built on premises.
S is P
P is D
Therefor S Is D
• Then an inference is made from the premises.
• S is P
• P is D
• Therefor S Is D
• Finally, a conclusion is drawn.
S Is D

Types of Logic with Examples

There are four types of logic.

1. Informal Logic

is what’s typically used in daily reasoning. This is the reasoning and

arguments you make in your personal exchanges with others.
• Premises: Nikki saw a black cat on her way to work. At work, Nikki got
fired.
Conclusion: Black cats are bad luck.
Explanation: This is a big generalization and can’t be verified.
• Premises: There is no evidence that penicillin is bad for you. I use
penicillin without any problems.
Conclusion: Penicillin is safe for everyone.
Explanation: The personal experience here or lack of knowledge isn’t
verifiable.
• Premises: My mom is a celebrity. I live with my mom.
Conclusion: I am a celebrity.
Explanation: There is more to proving fame that assuming it will
rub off.

Informal Logic:
Informal Logic is a recent discipline which studies natural
language arguments, and attempts to develop a logic to assess,

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analyze and improve ordinary language (or "everyday")
reasoning. Natural language here means a language that
is spoken, written or signed by humans for general-purpose
communication, as distinguished from formal languages (such
as computer-programming languages)
or constructed languages (such as Esperanto).
It focuses on the reasoning and argument one finds in personal
exchange, advertising, political debate, legal argument, and
the social commentary that characterizes newspapers, television,
the Internet and other forms of mass media.

2. Formal Logic

In formal logic, you use

deductive reasoning and the
premises must be true. You
follow the premises to reach a
formal conclusion.
Formal Logic is what we think of
as traditional
logic or philosophical logic, namely the study of inference with
purely formal and explicit content (i.e. it can be expressed as
a particular application of a wholly abstract rule), such as the rules
of formal logic that have come down to us from Aristotle.
A formal system (also called a logical calculus) is used to derive
one expression (conclusion) from one or more other expressions
(premises). These premises may be axioms (a self-evident
proposition, taken for granted) or theorems (derived using a fixed
set of inference rules and axioms, without any additional
assumptions).
Formalism is the philosophical theory that formal
statements (logical or mathematical) have no intrinsic meaning

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 but that its symbols (which are regarded as physical entities)
exhibit a form that has useful applications.
• Premises: Every person who lives in Amman lives in Jordan.
Everyone in Jordan lives in Asia.
Conclusion: Every person who lives in Amman lives in Asia.
Explanation: Only true facts are presented here.
• Premises: All spiders have eight legs. Black Widows are a type of
spider.
Conclusion: Black Widows have eight legs.
Explanation: This argument isn’t controversial.
• Premises: Bicycles have two wheels. Jan is riding a bicycle.
Conclusion: Jan is riding on two wheels.
Explanation: The premises are true and so is the conclusion.

3. Symbolic Logic

Symbolic logic deals with how symbols relate to each other. It

assigns symbols to verbal reasoning in order to be able to check
the veracity of the statements through a mathematical process.
You typically see this type of logic used in calculus.
Symbolic logic example:
Propositions: If all mammals feed their babies milk from the
mother (A). If all cats feed their babies mother’s milk (B). All cats
are mammals(C). The Ʌ means “and,” and the ⇒ symbol means
“implies.” Conclusion: A Ʌ B ⇒ C
Explanation: Proposition A and proposition B lead to the
conclusion, C. If all mammals feed their babies milk from the
mother and all cats feed their babies mother’s milk, it implies all
cats are mammals.

Symbolic Logic:
Symbolic Logic is the study of symbolic abstractions that capture the
formal features of logical inference. It deals with the relations of
symbols to each other, often using complex mathematical calculus,
in an attempt to solve intractable problems traditional formal logic is
not able to address.

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It is often divided into two sub-branches:
o Predicate Logic: a system in which formulae
contain quantifiable variables.
o Propositional Logic (or Sentential Logic): a system in
which formulae representing propositions can be formed
by combining atomic propositions using logical
connectives, and a system of formal proof rules allows
certain formulae to be established as theorems.

4. Mathematical Logic

In mathematical logic, you apply formal logic to math. This type

of logic is part of the basis for the logic used in computer sciences.
Mathematical logic and symbolic logic are often used
interchangeably.
Mathematical Logic:
Both the application of the techniques of formal
logic to mathematics and mathematical reasoning, and,
conversely, the application of mathematical techniques to the
representation and analysis of formal logic.
Computer science emerged as a discipline in the 1940's with the
work of Alan Turing (1912 - 1954) on the Entscheidungs
problem, which followed from the theories of Kurt Gödel (1906
- 1978), particularly his incompleteness theorems. In the 1950s
and 1960s, researchers predicted that when human
knowledge could be expressed using logic with mathematical
notation, it would be possible to create a machine that reasons
(or artificial intelligence), although this turned out to be more
difficult than expected because of the complexity of human
reasoning. Mathematics-related doctrines include:
o Logicism: perhaps the boldest attempt to apply logic to
mathematics, pioneered by philosopher-logicians such

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 as Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, especially the
application of mathematics to logic in the form of proof
theory, model theory, and set theory.
o Intuitionism: the doctrine which holds that logic and
mathematics does not consist of analytic
activities wherein deep properties of existence are
revealed and applied, but merely the application
of internally consistent methods to realize
more complex mental constructs.

Types of Reasoning with Examples

Each type of logic could include deductive reasoning, inductive

reasoning, or both.
1- Deductive reasoning provides complete evidence of the truth
of its conclusion. It uses a specific and accurate premise that
leads to a specific and accurate conclusion. With correct
premises, the conclusion to this type of argument is verifiable
and correct.

• Premises: All squares are rectangles. All rectangles have four

sides.
Conclusion: All squares have four sides.
• Premises: All people are mortal. Saleem Is a person.
Conclusion: Saleem is mortal.
• Premises: All trees have trunks. An oak tree is a tree.
Conclusion: The oak tree has a trunk.
Deductive reasoning concerns what follows necessarily from
given premises (i.e., from a general premise to a particular one).
An inference is deductively valid if (and only if) there is no
possible situation in which all the premises are true and the

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 conclusion false. However, it should be
remembered that a false premise can
possibly lead to a false conclusion.
Deductive reasoning was developed
by Aristotle, Thales, Pythagoras and
other Greek philosophers of the Classical
Period. At the core of deductive reasoning
is the syllogism (also known as term
logic),usually attributed to Aristotle),
where one proposition (the conclusion)
is inferred from two others
(the premises), each of which has one term in common with the
conclusion. For example:

Major premise: All humans are mortal.

Minor premise: Socrates is human.
Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.

An example of deduction is:

All apples are fruit.

All fruits grow on trees.
Therefore all apples grow on trees.
One might deny the initial premises, and therefore deny the
conclusion. But anyone who accepts the premises must accept the
conclusion. Today, some academics claim that Aristotle's system
has little more than historical value, being made obsolete by the
advent of Predicate Logic and Propositional Logic.

2- Inductive reasoning is "bottom up," meaning that it takes

specific information and makes a broad generalization that is
considered probable, allowing for the fact that the conclusion
may not be accurate. This type of reasoning usually involves a
rule being established based on a series of repeated experiences.

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 • Premises: An umbrella prevents you from getting wet in the
rain. Ashley took her umbrella, and she did not get wet.
Conclusion: In this case, you could use inductive reasoning to
offer an opinion that it was probably raining.
Explanation: Your conclusion, however, would not necessarily
be accurate because Ashley would have remained dry whether
it rained and she had an umbrella, or it didn't rain at all.
• Premises: Every three-year-old you see at the park each
afternoon spends most of their time crying and screaming.
Conclusion: All three-year-olds must spend their afternoon
screaming.
Explanation: This would not necessarily be correct, because
you haven’t seen every three-year-old in the world during the
afternoon to verify it.
• Premises: Red lights prevent accidents. Mike did not have an
accident while driving today.
Conclusion: Mike must have stopped at a red light.
Explanation: Mike might not have encountered any traffic
signals at all. Therefore, he might have been able to avoid
accidents even without stopping at a red light.
Inductive reasoning is the process of deriving a
reliable generalization from observations (i.e., from
the particular to the general), so that the premises of an argument
are believed to support the conclusion, but do not
necessarily ensure it. Inductive logic is not concerned
with validity or conclusiveness, but with the soundness of those
inferences for which the evidence is not conclusive.
An example of strong induction (an argument in which the truth
of the premise would make the truth of the
conclusion probable but not definite) is:
All observed crows are black.
Therefore:
All crows are black.

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An example of weak induction (an argument in which
the link between the premise and the conclusion is weak, and the
conclusion is not even necessarily probable) is:
I always hang pictures on nails.
Therefore:
All pictures hang from nails.

Induction is a
method of reasoning
that moves from
specific instances to
a general conclusion.
Also called inductive
reasoning.
In an
inductive argument,
a rhetor (that is, a
speaker or writer)
collects a number of
instances and forms
a generalization that
is meant to apply to
all instances.
(Contrast
with deduction.)

In rhetoric, the equivalent of induction is the accumulation

of examples.

• Induction operates in two ways. It either advances a conjecture

by what are called confirming instances, or it falsifies a conjecture
by contrary or disconfirming evidence. A common example is the
hypothesis that all crows are black. Each time a new crow is
observed and found to be black the conjecture is increasingly
confirmed. But if a crow is found to be not black the conjecture is
falsified."
(Martin Gardner, Skeptical Inquirer, Jan.-Feb., 2002

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• "If you have trouble remembering the difference
between inductive and deductive logic, consider their roots.
Induction comes from Latin for 'to induce' or 'to
lead.' Inductive logic follows a trail, picking up clues that
lead to the end of an argument. Deduction (both in rhetoric
and expense accounts) means 'to take away.' Deduction uses
a commonplace to pull you away from your current
opinion."
(Jay Heinrichs, Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle,
Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of
Persuasion. Three Rivers Press, 2007

Modal Logic

Modal Logic is any system of formal logic that attempts to deal

with modalities (expressions associated with notions
of possibility, probability and necessity). Modal Logic,
therefore, deals with terms such as "eventually", "formerly",
"possibly", "can", "could", "might", "may", "must", etc.

Modalities are ways in which propositions can be true or false.

Propositional Logic

Propositional Logic (or Sentential Logic) is

concerned only with sentential connectives and logical
operators (such as "and", "or", "not", "if ... then ...", "because" and
"necessarily"), as opposed to Predicate Logic, which also
concerns itself with the internal structure of atomic propositions.
Propositional Logic, then, studies ways of joining and/or
modifying entire propositions, statements or sentences to
form more complex propositions, statements or sentences, as well
as the logical relationships and properties that are derived from
these methods of combining or altering statements. In

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propositional logic, the simplest statements are considered
as indivisible units.

Predicate Logic
Predicate Logic allows sentences to be analyzed into subject and
argument in several different ways, unlike Aristotelian syllogistic
logic, where the forms that the relevant part of the involved
judgments took must be specified and limited. Predicate Logic is
also able to give an account of quantifiers general enough to
express all arguments occurring in natural language, thus allowing
the solution of the problem of multiple generality that had
perplexed medieval logicians.
For instance, it is intuitively clear that if:

Some cat is feared by every mouse

then it follows logically that:
All mice are afraid of at least one cat
But because the sentences above each contain two
quantifiers ('some' and 'every' in the first sentence and 'all' and 'at
least one' in the second sentence), they cannot be adequately
represented in traditional logic.
Predicate logic was designed as a form of mathematics, and as
such is capable of all sorts of mathematical reasoning beyond the
powers of term or syllogistic logic. In first-order logic (also
known as first-order predicate calculus), a predicate can only refer
to a single subject, but predicate logic can also deal with second-
order logic, higher-order logic, many-sorted logic or infinitary
logic. It is also capable of many common-sense inferences that
elude term logic, and has all but supplanted traditional term logic
in most philosophical circles.

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Premise Definition and Examples in Arguments
A premise is a proposition upon which an argument is based or
from which a conclusion is drawn. Put another way, a premise
includes the reasons and evidence behind a conclusion.
A premise may be either the major or the minor proposition of
a syllogism—an argument in which two premises are made and
a logical conclusion is drawn from them—in
a deductive argument. Merriam-Webster gives this example of a
major and minor premise (and conclusion):
"All mammals are warm-blooded [major premise];
whales are mammals [minor premise];
therefore, whales are warm-blooded [conclusion]."
The term premise comes from medieval Latin, meaning "things
mentioned before." In philosophy as well as fiction and nonfiction
writing, the premise follows largely the same pattern as that
defined in Merriam-Webster. The premise—the thing or things
that came before—lead (or fail to lead) to a logical resolution in
an argument or story.

Premises in Philosophy
To understand what a premise is in philosophy, it helps to
understand how the field defines an argument. In philosophy, an
argument is not concerned with disputes among people; it is a set
of propositions that contain premises offered to support a
conclusion, so;
"A premise is a proposition one offers in support of a
conclusion. That is, one offers a premise as evidence for the
truth of the conclusion, as justification for or a reason to believe
the conclusion."
May offers this example of a major and minor premise, as well
as a conclusion:

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 1. All humans are mortal. [major premise]
2. Socrates is a human. [minor premise]
3. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. [conclusion]

May notes that the validity of an argument in philosophy (and in

general) depends on the accuracy and truth of the premise or
premises. For example, may give this example of a bad (or
inaccurate) premise:

1. All women are Republican. [major premise: false]

2. Hilary Clinton is a woman. [minor premise: true]
3. Therefore, Hilary Clinton is a Republican. [conclusion: false]
The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy says that an argument
can be valid if it follows logically from its premises, but the
conclusion can still be wrong if the premises are incorrect:
"However, if the premises are true, then the conclusion is also
true, as a matter of logic."
In philosophy, then, the process of creating premises and carrying
them through to a conclusion involves logic and deductive
reasoning. Other areas provide a similar, but slightly different,
take when defining and explaining premises.

What Is an Argument?
Understanding Premises, Inferences, and Conclusions
When people create and critique arguments, it's helpful to
understand what an argument is and is not. Sometimes an
argument is seen as a verbal fight, but that is not what is meant
in these discussions. Sometimes a person thinks they are offering
an argument when they are only providing assertions.

What Is an Argument?

Perhaps the simplest explanation of what an argument is comes from

Monty Python’s "Argument Clinic" sketch:
How to Choose a Position for an Argument Essay

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 • An argument is a connected series of statements intended to
establish a definite proposition. ...an argument is an
intellectual process... contradiction is just the automatic
gainsaying of anything the other person says.

This may have been a comedy sketch, but it highlights a

common misunderstanding: to offer an argument, you cannot
simply make a claim or gainsay what others claim.
An argument is a deliberate attempt to move beyond just making
an assertion. When offering an argument, you are offering a
series of related statements which represent an attempt
to support that assertion — to give others good reasons to
believe that what you are asserting is true rather than false.

Here are examples of assertions:

1. Shakespeare wrote the play Hamlet.
2. The Civil War was caused by disagreements over slavery.
3. God exists.
4. Prostitution is immoral.
Sometimes you hear such statements referred to as propositions.
Technically speaking, a proposition is the informational content
of any statement or assertion. To qualify as a proposition, a
statement must be capable of being either true or false.

What Makes a Successful Argument?

The above represent positions people hold, but which others may
disagree with. Merely making the above statements do not
constitute an argument, no matter how often one repeats the
assertions. To create an argument, the person making the claims
must offer further statements which, at least in theory, support the
claims. If the claim is supported, the argument is successful; if the
claim is not supported, the argument fails.
This is the purpose of an argument: to offer reasons and
evidence for the purpose of establishing the truth value of a
proposition, which can mean either establishing that the

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proposition is true or establishing that the proposition is false. If
a series of statements does not do this, it isn’t an argument.

Three Parts of an Argument

Another aspect of understanding arguments is to examine the

parts. An argument can be broken down into three major
components: premises, inferences, and a conclusion.
Premises are statements of (assumed) fact which are supposed to
set forth the reasons and/or evidence for believing a claim. The
claim, in turn, is the conclusion: what you finish with at the end
of an argument. When an argument is simple, you may just have
a couple of premises and a conclusion:
1. Doctors earn a lot of money. (Premise)
2. I want to earn a lot of money. (Premise)
3. I should become a doctor. (Conclusion).

Inferences are the reasoning parts of an argument. Conclusions

are a type of inference, but always the final inference. Usually,
an argument will be complicated enough to require inferences
linking the premises with the final conclusion:
1. Doctors earn a lot of money. (Premise)
2. With a lot of money, a person can travel a lot. (Premise)
3. Doctors can travel a lot. (Inference, from 1 and 2)
4. I want to travel a lot. (Premise)
5. I should become a doctor. (From 3 and 4)
Here we see two different types of claims which can occur in an
argument. The first is a factual claim, and this purports to offer
evidence. The first two premises above are factual claims and
usually, not much time is spent on them — either they are true or
they are not.
The second type is an inferential claim — it expresses the idea
that some matter of fact is related to the sought-after conclusion.
This is the attempt to link the factual claim to the conclusion in

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such a way as to support the conclusion. The third statement
above is an inferential claim because it infers from the previous
two statements that doctors can travel a lot.
Without an inferential claim, there would be no clear connection
between the premises and the conclusion. It is rare to have an
argument where inferential claims play no role. Sometimes you
will come across an argument where inferential claims are
needed, but missing — you won’t be able to see the connection
from factual claims to a conclusion and will have to ask for
them.
Assuming such inferential claims really are there, you will be
spending most of your time on them when evaluating and
critiquing an argument. If the factual claims are true, it is with the
inferences that an argument will stand or fall, and it is here where
you will find fallacies committed.
Unfortunately, most arguments aren’t presented in such a logical
and clear manner as the above examples, making them difficult to
decipher sometimes. But every argument which really is an
argument should be capable of being reformulated in such a
manner. If you cannot do that, then it is reasonable to suspect that
something is wrong.

Definition and Examples of Syllogisms

In logic, a syllogism is a form of deductive reasoning consisting
of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion.
Adjective: syllogistic. Also known as a categorical argument or
a standard categorical syllogism. The term syllogism is from the
Greek, "to infer, count, reckon">

Here is an example of a valid categorical syllogism:

Major premise: All mammals are warm-blooded.
Minor premise: All black dogs are mammals.
Conclusion: Therefore, all black dogs are warm-blooded.

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Examples and Observations
Major Premise, Minor Premise, and Conclusion

"The process of deduction has traditionally been illustrated with

a syllogism, a three-part set of statements or propositions that
includes a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion.

Major premise: All books from that store are new.

Minor premise: These books are from that store.
Conclusion: Therefore, these books are new.

The major premise of a syllogism makes a general statement

that the writer believes to be true. The minor premise presents a
specific example of the belief that is stated in the major premise.
If the reasoning is sound, the conclusion should follow from the
two premises. . ..
"A syllogism is valid (or logical) when its conclusion follows
from its premises. A syllogism is true when it makes accurate
claims—that is, when the information it contains is consistent
with the facts. To be sound, a syllogism must be both valid and
true. However, a syllogism may be valid without being true or
true without being valid."

THE JUDGMENT AND THE PROPOSITION

1. The Proposition.
As the Term is the external expression of the Concept, so the
Proposition is the expression of the Judgment. The Proposition
may be defined as a verbal expression in which we affirm or deny
an attribute of a subject. It is also sometimes defined
as a verbal expression enunciating a truth or falsity: for it is
characteristic of every proposition that it must be either true or

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false. The form of the proposition is S is (or is not) P, e.g. 'The
lion is vertebrate', 'Haroun al Rasheed is not alive'.
A proposition of the kind we have described, is commonly known
as the Categorical Proposition, to distinguish it
from Conditional Propositions. In these we do not assert the
attribute of the subject absolutely: we merely affirm that, given
certain conditions, it belongs to it. In regard to the Categorical
proposition, the following points are to be noted:

(1) It is always in the indicative mood. In the other

grammatical moods, the mind does not judge that the
attribute belongs to the subject, but expresses a wish that
it may be so, or gives an injunction that it should be so. In
the indicative alone we affirm (or deny) the attribute of the
subject. Thus, we have, "The messenger is speaking", "May
the messenger speak?" "Speak, messenger!" So too it is
only when the attribute is affirmed of the subject that the
mind reaches truth or falsity. For truth is attained when the
mind assigns to the subject an attribute which belongs to it
in the real order.
(2)The logical proposition is always stated in the present
tense. Our purpose in Logic, as we have seen, is to study
the mode in which the mind represents the real order. As
regards this the question of present, past or future is purely
accidental. The time-determination does not affect the
mental representation as such. Hence differences of tense
so necessary in the use of language for practical ends have
no place in Logic.
(3)The logical predicate is always separated from the
copula. In the language of common life, we frequently
express them in one word, as for instance, 'The bird flies'.
In Logic we must say, 'The bird is flying.'
This same process must be performed whenever we get mutilated
expressions, such as 'Wolf!' 'Fire!' 'Rain!' For Logic demands that
every sentence, whatever its grammatical form, shall be so

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analysed and expressed, as to represent as closely as possible the
intellectual act. Sir W. Hamilton stated this in what is sometimes
termed Hamilton's Postulate, viz. 'Logic postulates to be allowed
to state explicitly in language, whatever is implicitly contained in
thought.' Our three mutilated expressions may be respectively
resolved into, 'A wolf is near,' 'A fire is burning,' 'Rain is falling.'
We must carefully distinguish between the 'is' of the copula, and
the same word when it means 'to exist'. This point will be treated
at length later. Here it will be sufficient to note that the copula
does not necessarily imply that the subject exists. Its office in
affirmative sentences is to denote the objective identity of the
subject and predicate: that they are expressions representing one
and the same object. In negative sentences the copula 'is not'
signifies the objective diversity of the terms: the predicate is not
applicable to the object denoted by the subject. I may say, 'The
lion is vertebrate,' because the term 'vertebrate' is rightly applied
to the same object as the term 'lion'. I cannot say 'The octopus is
vertebrate'. This relation between the subject and predicate of the
proposition, arises immediately from the nature of the mental act
which the proposition represents -- the judgment. In every
affirmative judgment the two terms are different mental
expressions of the same object. The same object is expressed in
one concept as 'lion', in another as 'vertebrate'. But the object
which I conceive as 'octopus', I cannot conceive also as
'vertebrate'. Hence the judgment, 'The octopus is vertebrate', is
impossible.

2. Analysis of the Judgment.

Although as we have seen, the subject and predicate of the
judgment are different concepts of the same thing, it is important
to bear in mind that it is the subject which directly expresses the

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thing, i.e., that to which attributes belong. The predicate
expresses the thing as qualified by a particular attribute or
form. Whenever we fix our attention on a thing, our mind
immediately commences to abstract the attributes from the object
of thought, and affirm them of it one by one. It judges: 'The thing
is hard -- is black -- is brittle, etc.'. Here the predicate in each
case is the attribute or form —not indeed the attribute considered
in separation from the object in which it inheres, i.e., hardness,
blackness, etc., but considered as qualifying the thing. It is easy
to see how such judgments develop into more complex ones. The
hard, brittle thing will be called 'coal': and the judgment will take
predicates of a less primary character.
A judgment is said to be true when the form expressed by the
predicate is really found in the object denoted by the subject.
Thus, if I see some object, e.g., Socrates, and I judge 'Socrates is
walking,' my judgment is a true one if the attribute 'walking',
which I affirm of Socrates in thought, does in fact belong to him
in the real order. Hence truth is defined as the conformity of the
mind with its object. For in every true affirmative judgment the
mental concept expressed in the predicate is in conformity with a
real attribute belonging to the external object. As regards
negative judgments the case is somewhat different. In them we
declare that the form expressed in the predicate is not to be found
in the object to which the judgment refers. Yet in a somewhat
wide sense we can say that in negative judgments also the mind
is conformed to its object. In judging a form not to belong to an
object which in fact does not possess it, my mind is in
correspondence with reality. But negation is a secondary and
subsidiary form of truth. In affirmation there is perfect
correspondence between the mental form expressed in the
predicate and the objective reality.

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Grammatically the subject does not always take the first
place. It is the meaning of the proposition, not the arrangement
of the words, which tells us which is the subject and which the
predicate. The term which qualifies or defines the other, whether
it comes first or last, is the predicate. Thus, in the words, 'Blessed
are the meek,' it is the meek who form the logical subject.
What has just been said will throw light on the nature of the third
element of the proposition -- the copula. While the predicate
expresses one of the forms which determine the subject, thus
telling us what the thing is, the copula expresses the being which
is thus determined. Unless the subject were conceived as
possessed of being, we could not attribute any predicates to it: for
its predicates are so many determinations of its being. A thing
which is not cannot be determined. It is nonsense - a nonentity.
These relative functions of copula and predicate are clearly seen,
if we consider the judgment in its primary form, viz, that in which
the subject is a concrete singular substance, and the predicate a
form apprehended as belonging to it, e.g., 'Socrates is a
man', 'Bucephalus is black'. In the first of these propositions the
being of Socrates is characterized as human; in the second the
being of Bucephalus is determined by the accidental form of a
particular colour. Again, if we wish to affirm that the subject
possesses real being - that it exists - though without indicating
how that being is determined, we use the same verb 'to be', which
is employed in the copula. We say, 'Socrates is'.
It will have been noticed that we said it was requisite that the
subject should be conceived as possessed of being. We did not say
that it must actually possess real being. In fact, there are many
true propositions in which the subject has no real being: many in
which the predicate is not a real form. Our words, as we have
often said, are the expression of our thoughts: they signify things

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as mentally represented. Hence the being of which the copula is
the direct and immediate expression is being in the conceptual
order: and the forms signified by the predicate are forms as they
conceived. In the propositions 'Socrates is a man', 'Bucephalus is
black', there is correspondence between the real order and the
conceptual. But this is not always the case. We can give
conceptual existence to things which have never actually existed,
and many of our judgments relate, not to something which has
really existed, but to some creation of the mind. Thus, when
speaking of Greek mythology, I may say, 'A centaur is an animal
half man and half horse'. The judgment is true because it
corresponds with the object of thought. But that object only
existed in the mind: it had no real existence. The same principal
accounts for those judgments in which the predicate is a second
intention, e.g., ‘Man is a universal nature.' The nature 'man'
viewed as universal, exists only conceptually.

3. Quality of Propositions.
In every proposition P must be either affirmed or denied of S.
This alternative determines the Quality of the proposition, which
must be either:
(I) affirmative,
or (2) negative. This division is ultimate. Some logicians have,
it is true, endeavoured to reduce all propositions to the affirmative
form by writing S is not-P. But the difference cannot be thus
bridged. S is not-P is, of course, equivalent to S is not P. But they
differ the one from the other: since in S is not P we deny the
positive concept P of S, and in S is not-P we affirm the negative
concept not-P of S. The negative and affirmative forms remain
radically distinct.

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4. Quantity of Propositions.
In any affirmation or negation, P may be affirmed or denied,
(1) of all the objects denoted by the subject-term, e.g. 'All men
are mortal';
or (2) of only some of these objects, e.g. 'Some men are talls:
or (3) there may be no sign to mark whether the predicate refers
to some only or to all, e.g., 'Pleasure is not a good’:
or (4) the subject may be a singular term, e.g., 'Socrates is wise,'
'The highest of the Alps has been scaled.' These various
alternatives lead to the division of propositions according to
quantity.

A Universal proposition is one, in which the predicate is affirmed

(or denied) of a subject, taken in its whole extension and
distributively.

We have already explained that when a subject is employed

distributively, the predicate is affirmed of every individual
denoted by the subject. When we say, 'All sparrows are winged,'
we mean that every individual sparrow is possessed of wings. A
proposition in which the subject is understood collectively is not
universal. Thus, the proposition, 'All the slates covered the roof,'
is not a universal proposition. The predicate is not affirmable of
each individual denoted by the subject, but of the individuals as
forming one group. Hence, whenever the word All (and
not Every) is employed to qualify the subject, care must be taken
to observe whether it be understood collectively or distributively.
It is plain that though the Affirmative Universal is of the form All
S is P, the Negative Universal will not be All S is not P, but No S
is P. The form All S is not P does not exclude P from each and
every individual S, as at once appears in the proposition 'All
soldiers are not generals'. If, however, I say, 'No Englishmen are
negroes,' I deny the attribute of every Englishman.

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The employment of the plural in a universal proposition, e.g. 'All
men are mortal,' may possibly mislead the student into supposing
that in the subject the intellect conceives a number of individuals.
This is, of course, impossible. Mentally the whole class is
expressed by the universal concept 'man.' But the grammatical
form 'All men are mortal,' shows that we have under our
consideration, not the universal nature viewed in abstraction from
particulars, but the concrete individuals. Man is mortal' is the
purely logical form. 'All men are mortal' puts us in touch with
concrete reality.
A Particular proposition is one in which the predicate is
affirmed (or denied) of a part only of the extension of the subject.
The form of the Particular proposition is Some S are (or are
not) P; for instance, 'Some soldiers are brave,' 'Some rich men are
not generous'. The sense, in which the word 'some' is here used,
differs in certain respects from that in which it is ordinarily
employed. In ordinary use, when we speak, e.g., of 'some' men,
we are under stood to mean more than one, and also to exclude
the supposition that what we say may be true of all men. 'Some'
means 'several but not all.' In Logic, the 'some' of a particular
proposition, may be used even where the predicate might be truly
affirmed of all: and it may be used also even if there be but one
individual to whom it could be applied. Thus, I may say, 'Some
birds have wings,' even though it be the case that all birds possess
them: and 'Some men are eight feet high,' though in fact there be
but one such man. 'Some' leaves the extension to which reference
is made indeterminate.
The essential distinction then between Universal and Particular
propositions lies in this, that Universals deal with the whole class,
Particulars with an indeterminate portion of the class.

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5. The Fourfold Scheme of Propositions.

The last paragraph has shown us that the two fundamental forms
of the proposition are the Universal and the Particular. In one
of these two, every known truth can be expressed. For the
assertion made is either known to hold good of the subject in its
whole extension, or not. If it is known to hold good, we use the
Universal proposition. If it does not hold good as regards the
whole extension of the subject, or if, though it holds good, we do
not know this to be the case, we use the Particular. This
distinction, combined with that based on quality, gives us the
fourfold scheme, viz.
Universal Affirmative, All S are P. A. SaP.
Particular Affirmative, Some S are P. I. SiP.
Universal Negative, No S are P. E. SeP.
Particular Negative. Some S are not P. 0. SoP.

These are respectively given by the letters, A.I.E.O. These letters

are the vowels of the two Latin words, Affirmo (I affirm)
and Nego (I deny). The first vowel in each stand for the Universal,
the second vowel for the Particular. Another notation, which is
found convenient, is SaP, SiP, SeP, SoP: this notation has
symbols for the subject and predicate, as well as for quantity and
quality. Hence, our four propositions may be thus expressed.

6. Analytic and Synthetic Propositions.

This distinction is based on the fact that each of our judgments is

based on one or other of two very different motives. The point
will best be elucidated by a few examples. If we consider the
following propositions, 'The angles of every triangle are equal to
two right angles,' 'The whole is greater than its part,' 'Every square
has four sides,' and compare them with such propositions as

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'Water freezes at 320o Fahrenheit,' 'Some cows are black,' we
shall at once recognize that there is a difference between the two
classes. We are, indeed, certain of the truth of all these
propositions.
The former class of propositions is termed Analytic, the latter
Synthetic.

An Analytic proposition is one, in which either the predicate is

contained in the intension of the subject, or the subject in the
intension of the predicate. H2O is Water

A Synthetic proposition is one in which the connection of subject

and predicate is not involved in the intension of the terms. Iron is
melted at 328C.

It will be seen that Analytic propositions are of two kinds. The

first kind consists of those in which the predicate is a term
signifying either the whole intension, or part of the intension of
the subject. Such is the proposition, 'Every square has four sides.'
The second kind consists of those in which the predicate is an
attribute which results necessarily from the nature of the
subject. For where this is the case the subject is found in the
intension of the predicate. An example is furnished by the
proposition, 'A triangle is a figure having its interior angles equal
to two right angles.' The predicate here is not found in the
intension or definition of 'triangle'. But it is an attribute which
necessarily results from and is involved in the characteristics of a
triangle. And if we desire to define the attribute 'having its interior
angles equal to two right angles,' we can only do so by stating that
it is a quantitative measure proper to the angles of a triangle.
The modern definitions are as follows
An Analytic Proposition is one, in which the predicate is
contained in the definition of the subject.
A Synthetic proposition is one, in which the predicate is not
contained in the notion of the subject.

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III Critical Thinking

1: What Is Critical
Thinking?

Critical thinking is the ability to

think clearly and rationally about
what to do or what to believe. It
includes the ability to engage in
reflective and independent
thinking.
Critical thinking is the
intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully
conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or
evaluating information gathered from, or generated by,
observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or
communication, as a guide to belief and action.

It’s:

The Critical thinking is just deliberately and

systematically processing information so that you can make
better decisions and generally understand things better. The
above definition includes so many words because critical
thinking requires you to apply diverse intellectual tools to
diverse information.
Critical thinking is important because it can help you reason
through important decisions, solve problems, generate creative
ideas and set goals, all of which are necessary for developing your
personality and career. Whether you have just entered the
workforce or want to advance your career, you may eventually
encounter challenges that require logical reasoning skills. The

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stronger your logical thinking skills are, the more easily you can
develop solutions and plans that benefit you and your workplace.
Critical thinking is the ability to think in an organized and
rational manner in order to understand connections between
ideas and/or facts. It helps you decide what to believe in. In other
words, it’s “thinking about thinking”—identifying, analyzing,
and then fixing flaws in the way we think.
So
Critical thinking has been described as:
an ability to question; to acknowledge and test previously held
assumptions; to recognize ambiguity; to examine, interpret,
evaluate, reason, and reflect; to make informed judgments and
decisions; and to clarify, articulate, and justify positions.
Someone with critical thinking skills is able to do the following:

• understand the logical connections between ideas;

• identify, construct
and evaluate
arguments;
• detect
inconsistencies and
common mistakes in
reasoning;
• solve problems systematically;
• identify the relevance and importance of ideas;
• reflect on the justification of one's own beliefs and values.

Critical thinking is not a matter of accumulating information. A

person with a good memory and who knows a lot of facts is not
necessarily good at critical thinking. A critical thinker is able to
deduce consequences from what he knows, and he knows how to
make use of information to solve problems, and to seek relevant
sources of information to inform himself.

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Some people believe that critical thinking hinders creativity
because it requires following the rules of logic and rationality, but
creativity might require breaking rules. This is a misconception.
Critical thinking is quite compatible with thinking "out-of-the-
box", challenging consensus and pursuing less popular
approaches. If anything, critical thinking is an essential part of
creativity because we need critical thinking to evaluate and
improve our creative ideas.

2: The Aim of Critical Thinking:

My goal as educator should be to aid students in advancing from

knowledge of concepts to application, analysis, synthesis, and
evaluation.

Why Does Critical Thinking Matter?

Most of our everyday thinking is uncritical.
If you think about it, this makes sense. If we had to think
deliberately about every single action (such as breathing, for
instance), we wouldn’t have any cognitive energy left for the
important stuff. It’s good that much of our thinking is automatic.
We can run into problems, though, when we let our automatic
mental processes govern important decisions. Without critical
thinking, it is easy for people to manipulate us and for all sorts of
catastrophes to result. Anywhere that some form of
fundamentalism led to tragedy, critical thinking was sorely
lacking.
Even day to day, it is easy to be caught in pointless arguments or
say stupid things just because you failed to stop and think
deliberately.
But you’re reading College Info Geek, so I’m sure you’re
interested to know why critical thinking matters in college.

Here is why:

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Critical thinking matters in college because students often adopt
the wrong attitude to thinking about difficult questions. These
attitudes include:
Ignorant Certainty
Ignorant certainty is the belief that there are definite, correct
answers to all questions–all you have to do is find the right
source. It is understandable that many students come into college
thinking this way.
In college and in life, however, the answers to most meaningful
questions are rarely straightforward. To get anywhere in college
classes (especially upper-level ones), you have to think critically
about the material.
Naive Relativism
Naive relativism is the belief that there is no truth and all
arguments are equal. This is often a view that students adopt once
they learn the error of ignorant certainty.
While it is certainly a more “critical” approach than ignorant
certainty, naive relativism is still inadequate since it misses the
whole point of critical thinking: arriving at a more complete, “less
wrong” answer.
Part of thinking critically is evaluating the validity of arguments
(yours and others’). Therefore, to think critically you must accept
that some arguments are better (and that some are just plain
awful).

Critical thinking also matters in college because:

• It allows you to form your own opinions and engage with

material beyond a superficial level. This is essential to
crafting a great essay and having an intelligent discussion
with your professors or classmates. Regurgitating what
the textbook says will not get you far.
• It allows you to craft worthy arguments and back them up.
If you plan to go on to graduate school or pursue a PhD.,
original, critical thought is crucial

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 • It helps you evaluate your own work. This leads to better
grades (who doesn’t want those?) and better habits of
mind.
Doing college level work without critical is a lot like walking
blindfolded: you will get somewhere, but it’s unlikely to be the
place you desire.
The value of critical thinking doesn’t stop with college,
however. Once you get out into the real world, critical thinking
matters even more. This is because:
• It allows you to continue to develop intellectually after
you graduate. you should keep learning as much as you
can. When you encounter new information, knowing how
to think critically will help you evaluate and use it.
• It helps you make hard decisions. Equally important in
the decision-making process is the ability to think
critically. Critical thinking allows you compare the pros
and cons of your available options.
• People can and will manipulate you. At least, they will
if you take everything at face value and allow others to
think for you. Just look at ads for the latest fad diet or
“miracle” drug–these rely on ignorance and false hope to
get people to buy something that is at best useless and at
worst harmful. When you evaluate information critically
(especially information meant to sell something), you can
avoid falling prey to unethical companies and people.
• It makes you more employable (and better paid). The
best employees not only know how to solve existing
problems–they also know how to come up with solutions
to problems no one ever imagined.

3: Ways to Think More Critically

Now we come to the part that I am sure you’ve all been
waiting for:

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How do we get better at critical thinking? Below, you’ll find
seven ways to get started.
Ask Basic Questions

“The world is complicated. But does every problem

require a complicated solution?”
Stephen J. Dubner

Sometimes an explanation becomes

so complex that the original question
gets lost. To avoid this, continually go back to the basic questions
you asked when you set out to solve the problem.
Here are a few key basic questions you can ask when
approaching any problem:

• What do you already know?

• How do you know that?
• What are you trying to prove, disprove, demonstrated, critique,
etc.?
• What are you overlooking?

Some of the most breathtaking solutions to problems are

astounding not because of their complexity, but because of their
elegant simplicity. Seek the simple solution first.

2. Question Basic Assumptions

Some of the greatest innovators in human history were those who
simply looked up for a moment and wondered if one of
everyone’s general assumptions was wrong. From Newton to
Einstein, questioning assumptions is where innovation happens.
You don’t even have to be an aspiring Einstein to benefit from
questioning your assumptions. That trip you’ve wanted to take?
That hobby you’ve wanted to try? That internship you’ve wanted
to get? That attractive person in your World Civilizations class
you’ve wanted to talk to?

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All these things can be a reality if you just question your
assumptions and critically evaluate your beliefs about
what’s prudent, appropriate, or possible.

3. Be Aware of Your Mental Processes

Human thought is amazing, but the speed and automation with
which it happens can be a disadvantage when we’re trying to
think critically. Our brains naturally use heuristics (mental
shortcuts) to explain what’s happening around us.
This was beneficial to humans when we were hunting large
game and fighting off wild animals, but it can be disastrous
when we’re trying to decide who to vote for.
A critical thinker is aware of their cognitive biases and personal
prejudices and how they influence seemingly “objective”
decisions and solutions.
All of us have biases in our thinking. Becoming aware of them
is what makes critical thinking possible.

4. Try Reversing Things

A great way to get “unstuck” on a hard problem is to try
reversing things. It may seem obvious that X causes Y, but what
if Y caused X?
The “chicken and egg problem” a classic example of this. At first,
it seems obvious that the chicken had to come first. The chicken
lays the egg, after all. But then you quickly realize that the
chicken had to come from somewhere, and since chickens come
from eggs, the egg must have come first. Or did it?
Even if it turns out that the reverse isn’t true, considering it can
set you on the path to finding a solution.

5. Evaluate the Existing Evidence

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Isaac Newton

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When you’re trying to solve a problem, it’s always helpful to look
at other work that has been done in the same area. There’s no
reason to start solving a problem from scratch when someone has
already laid the groundwork.
It’s important, however, to evaluate this information critically,
or else you can easily reach the wrong conclusion. Ask the
following questions of any evidence you encounter:

• Who gathered this evidence?

• How did they gather it?
• Why?

Take, for example, a study showing the health benefits of a sugary

cereal. On paper, the study sounds pretty convincing. That is, until
you learn that a sugary cereal company funded it.

6. Remember to Think for Yourself

Do not get so bogged down in research and reading that you forget
to think for yourself–sometimes this can be your most powerful
tool.
Do not be overconfident, but recognize that thinking for yourself
is essential to answering tough questions. I find this to be true
when writing essays–it’s so easy to get lost in other people’s work
that I forget to have my own thoughts. Don’t make this mistake.

7. Understand That No One Thinks Critically

100% of the Time
“Critical thinking of any kind is never universal in any individual; everyone is subject
to episodes of undisciplined or irrational thought.”
– Michael Scriven and Richard Paul
You can’t think critically all the time, and that’s okay. Critical
thinking is a tool that you should deploy when you need to make
important decisions or solve difficult problems, but you don’t
need to think critically about everything.

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And even in important matters, you will experience lapses in your
reasoning. What matters is that you recognize these lapses and
try to avoid them in the future.

3: Characteristics of Critical Thinkers

Intuition is trustworthy after you have probed deeper to gain

information and insight.
Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Marie Curie, Sigmund Freud…these
are just a few of the critical thinkers who have shaped our modern
lives. Critical thinkers think clearly and rationally, and make
logical connections between ideas -- they are crucial to exploring
and understanding the world we live in.
Critical thinking is more than just the accumulation of facts and
knowledge; it’s a way of approaching whatever is presently
occupying your mind so that you come to the best possible
conclusion. Critical thinkers are focused on constantly upgrading
their knowledge, and they engage in independent self-learning.
They make some of the best leaders, because they can reach new
plans of self-improvement and self-actualization.
If you’re hoping to reach your full potential and make your mark
on the world, cultivate the following 16 characteristics of critical
thinkers.

1. Observation
Observation is one of the earliest critical thinking skills we learn
as children -- it’s our ability to perceive and understand the world
around us. Careful observation includes our ability to document
details, and to collect data through our senses. Our observations
will eventually lead to insight and a deeper understanding of the
world.

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2. Curiosity
Curiosity is a core trait of many successful leaders. Being
inherently inquisitive and interested in the world and people
around you is a hallmark of leaders who are critical thinkers.
Instead of taking everything at face value, a curious person will
wonder why something is the way it is.
3. Objectivity
Good critical thinkers are able to stay as
objective as possible when looking at
information or a situation. They focus on
facts, and on the scientific evaluation of the
information at hand. Objective thinkers seek
to keep their emotions (and those of others) from affecting their
judgment.
4. Introspection
This is the art of being aware of your thinking -- or, to put it
another way, thinking about how you think about things. Critical
thinkers need introspection so they’re aware of their own degree
of alertness and attentiveness, as well as their biases. This is your
ability to examine your inner-most thoughts, feelings and
sensations. Introspection is closely related to self-reflection,
which gives you insight into your emotional and mental state.
5. Analytical thinking
The best analytical thinkers are also critical thinkers, and vice
versa. The ability to analyze information is key when looking at
any almost anything, whether it is a contract, report, business
model or even a relationship.
Analyzing information means to break information down to its
component parts and evaluate how well those parts function
together and separately. Analysis relies on observation; on

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gathering and evaluating evidence so you can come to a
meaningful conclusion. Analytical thinking begins with
objectivity.
6. Identifying biases
Critical thinkers challenge themselves to identify the evidence
that forms their beliefs and assess whether or not those sources
are credible. Doing this helps you understand your own biases and
question your preconceived notions.
This is an important step in becoming aware of how biases intrude
on your thinking and recognizing when information may be
skewed. When looking at information, ask yourself who the
information benefits. Does the source of this information have an
agenda? Does the source overlook or leave out information that
doesn’t support its claims or beliefs?
7. Determining relevance
One of the most difficult parts of thinking critically is figuring out
what information is the most relevant, meaningful and important
for your consideration. In many scenarios, you’ll be presented
with information that may seem valuable, but it may turn out to
be only a minor data point to consider.
Consider if a source of information is logically relevant to the
issue being discussed. Is it truly useful and unbiased, or it is it
merely distracting from a more pertinent point?

8. Inference
Information doesn’t always come with a summary that spells out
exactly what it means. Critical thinkers need to assess the
information and draw conclusions based on raw data. Inference is
the ability to extrapolate meaning from data and discover
potential outcomes when assessing a scenario.

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9. Compassion and empathy.
Having compassion and empathy may seem like a negative for
critical thinkers. After all, being sentimental and emotional can
skew our perception of a situation. But the point of having
compassion is to have concern for others and to value the welfare
of other people.
Without compassion, we would view all information and
situations from the viewpoint of cold, heartless scientific facts and
data. It would be easy to allow our cynicism to become toxic, and
to be suspicious of everything we look at. But to be a good critical
thinker, we must always take into account the human element.
Not everything we do is about detached data and information --
it’s also about people.

10. Humility
Humility is the willingness to acknowledge one’s shortcomings
and see one’s positive attributes in an accurate way. When you
have humility, you are aware of your flaws, but also your
strengths, and this is an important element in critical thinking and
being willing to stretch and open your mind.
When you have intellectual humility, you’re open to other
people’s viewpoints, you recognize when you’re wrong and
you’re willing to challenge your own beliefs when necessary.

11. Willing to challenge the

status quo.
Critical thinking means questioning
long-established business practices and
refusing to adhere to traditional
methods simply because that’s the way
it’s always been done. Critical thinkers are looking for smart,
thoughtful answers and methods that take into account all the

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current and relevant information and practices available. Their
willingness to challenge the status quo may seem controversial,
but it’s an essential part of the creative and innovative mind of a
critical thinker.
12. Open-mindedness
Being able to step back from a situation and not become
embroiled helps critical thinkers see the broader view. Critical
thinkers avoid launching into a frenzied argument or taking sides
-- they want to hear all perspectives. Critical thinkers don’t jump
to conclusions. They approach a question or situation with an
open mind and embrace other opinions and views.
13. Aware of common thinking errors.
Critical thinkers don’t allow their logic and reasoning to become
clouded by illusions and misconceptions. They are aware of
common logical fallacies, which are errors in reasoning that often
creep into arguments and debates. Some common errors in
thinking include:

• Circular reasoning, in which the premise of an argument or a

conclusion is used as support for the argument itself.
• Cognitive shortcut bias, in which you stubbornly stick to a
favored view or argument when other more effective
possibilities or explanations exist.
• Confusing correlation with causation. In other words,
asserting that when two things happen together, one causes
the other. Without direct evidence, this assumption isn’t
justified.

14. Creative thinking

Effective critical thinkers are also largely creative thinkers.
Creative thinkers reject standardized formats for problem solving
-- they think outside the box. They have a wide range of interests
and adopt multiple perspectives on a problem. They’re also open

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to experimenting with different methods and considering different
viewpoints.
The biggest difference between critical thinkers and creative
thinkers is that creativity is associated with generating ideas,
while critical thinking is associated with analyzing and
appraising those ideas. Creativity is important to bringing in
novel ideas; critical thinking can bring those ideas into clearer
focus.
15. Effective communicators
In many cases, problems with communication are based on an
inability to think critically about a situation or see it from different
perspectives. Effective communication starts with a clear thought
process.
Critical thinking is the tool we use to coherently build our
thoughts and express them. Critical thinking relies on following
another person’s thought process and line of reasoning. An
effective critical thinker must be able to relay his or her ideas in
a compelling way and then absorb the responses of others.
16. Active listeners
Critical thinkers don’t just want to get their point across to
others; they are also careful to engage in active listening and
really hear others’ points of view. Instead of being a passive
listener during a conversation or discussion, they actively try to
participate.
They ask questions to help them distinguish facts from
assumptions. They gather information and seek to gain insight
by asking open-ended questions that probe deeper into the issue.

Steps of Critical Thinking

1. Identify the problem or question.

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Be as precise as possible: the narrower the issue, the easier it is
to find solutions or answers.
2. Gather data, opinions, and arguments.
Try to find several sources that present different ideas and points
of view.
3. Analyze and evaluate the data.
Are the sources reliable? Are their conclusions data-backed or
just argumentative? Is there enough information or data to
support given hypotheses?
4. Identify assumptions.
Are you sure the sources you found
are unbiased? Are you sure, you
weren’t biased in your search for
answers?
5. Establish significance.
What piece of information is most
important? Is the sample size
sufficient? Are all opinions and arguments even relevant to the
problem you are trying to solve?
6. Make a decision/reach a conclusion.
Identify various conclusions that are possible and decide which
(if any) of them are sufficiently supported.
7. Present or communicate.
Once you have reached a conclusion, present it to all other
people.

IV Ethics
What Is Moral Philosophy?
Moral Philosophy is the rational study of the meaning and justification
of moral claims. A moral claim evaluates the rightness or wrongness
of an action or a person’s character. For example, “Lying is wrong”
claims the act of lying is wrong, while “One shouldn’t be lazy” claims
a character trait (i.e., laziness) is wrong. Moral philosophy is usually
divided into four distinct subject areas: metaethics, normative ethics,
Descriptive and applied ethics.

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The Branches of Ethics
1. Descriptive Ethics
2. Normative Ethics
3. Meta Ethics
4. Applied Ethics

1. Descriptive Ethics
Descriptive ethics deals with
what people actually believe (or made to believe) to be right or
wrong, and accordingly holds up the human actions acceptable or
not acceptable or punishable under a custom or law.
However, customs and laws keep changing from time to time and
from society to society. The societies have structured their moral
principles as per changing time and have expected people to
behave accordingly. Due to this, descriptive ethics is also
called comparative ethics because it compares the ethics or past
and present; ethics of one society and other. It also takes inputs
from other disciplines such as anthropology, psychology,
sociology, Religion and history to explain the moral right or
wrong.

2. Normative Ethics
Normative Ethics deals with “norms” or set of considerations
how one should act. Thus, it’s a study of “ethical action” and sets
out the rightness or wrongness of the actions. It is also
called prescriptive ethics because it rests on the principles
which determine whether an action is right or wrong. The Golden
rule of normative ethics is “doing to other as we want them to do
to us “. Since we don’t want our neighbours to throw stones
through our glass window, then it will not be wise to first throw
stone through a neighbour’s window. Based on this reasoning,

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anything such as harassing, victimising, abusing or assaulting
someone is wrong. Normative ethics also provides justification
for punishing a person who disturbs social and moral order.
Aristotle’s virtue ethics, Kant’s deontological ethics,
Mill’s consequentialism (Utilitarianism) are some of the
theories in Normative Ethics.

A. Virtue ethics
Virtue ethics focuses on one’s character and the virtues for
determining or evaluating ethical behaviour. Plato, Aristotle and
Thomas Aquinas were major advocates of Virtue ethics. Plato
gave a scheme of four cardinal virtues viz. prudence, justice,
temperance and fortitude (courage). His disciple Aristotle
categorized the virtues as moral and intellectual. He identified
some of the moral virtues including “wisdom”.
B. Deontological ethics
Deontological ethics or duty ethics focuses on the rightness and
wrongness of the actions rather than the consequences of those
actions. There are different deontological theories such as
categorical imperative, moral absolutism, and divine command
theory etc.
First famous deontological theory is Immanuel
Kant’s Categorical Imperative or Kantianism. Kant said that
the human beings occupy special place in creation and there is
an ultimate commandment from which all duties and obligations
derive. The moral rules, as per Kant, should follow two principles
viz. universality and principle of reciprocity. By universality,
he meant that a moral action must be possible to apply it to all
people. By principle of reciprocity, he meant said “do as you
would be done by. Such premise of morality is found in all
religious systems.

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Second famous deontological theory is Moral absolutism. It
believes that there are absolute standards against which moral
questions can be judged. Against these standards, certain actions
are right while others are wrong regardless of the context of the
act. For example, theft is wrong, regardless of context in which
theft was carried out. It ignores that sometimes wrong act is done
to reach out to right consequence.
Third deontological theory is Divine command theory. It says
that an action is right if God has decreed it to be right. As per this
theory, the rightness of any action depends upon that action being
performed because it is a duty, not because of any good
consequences arising from that action.

C. Consequentialism (Teleology)
Consequentialism or teleological ethics says that the morality of
an action is contingent with the outcome of that action. So,
the morally right action would produce good outcome while
morally wrong action would produce bad outcome. Based on the
outcome, there are several theories such as:

Utilitarianism {right action leads to most happiness of greatest

number of people},
Hedonism {anything that maximizes pleasure is right},
Egoism {anything that maximizes the good for self is right},
Asceticism {abstinence from egoistic pleasures to achieve
spiritual goals is right action},
Altruism {to live for others and not caring for self is right action}.
The core idea of consequentialism is that “the ends justify the
means “. An action that might not be right in the light of moral
absolutism may be a right action under teleology.

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Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that determines right from wrong by focusing
on outcomes. It is a form of consequentialism.

Utilitarianism holds that the most ethical choice is the one that will produce
the greatest good for the greatest number. It is the only moral framework that
can be used to justify military force or war. It is also the most common
approach to moral reasoning used in business because of the way in which it
accounts for costs and benefits.
However, because we cannot predict the future, it’s difficult to know with
certainty whether the consequences of our actions will be good or bad. This is
one of the limitations of utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism also has trouble accounting for values such as justice and
individual rights. For example, assume a hospital has four people whose lives
depend upon receiving organ transplants: a heart, lungs, a kidney, and a liver.
If a healthy person wanders into the hospital, his organs could be harvested to
save four lives at the expense of one life. This would arguably produce the
greatest good for the greatest number. But few would consider it an acceptable
course of action, let alone the most ethical one.
So, although utilitarianism is arguably the most reason-based approach to
determining right and wrong, it has obvious limitations.

3. Meta Ethics
Meta Ethics or “analytical ethics” deals with the origin of the
ethical concepts themselves. It does not consider whether an
action is good or bad, right or wrong. Rather, it questions – what
goodness or rightness or morality itself is? It is basically a highly
abstract way of thinking about ethics. The key theories in meta-
ethics include naturalism, non-naturalism, emotivism and
prescriptivism.
Naturalists and non-naturalists believe that moral language is
cognitive and can be known to be true or false. Emotivists deny
that moral utterances are cognitive, holding that they consist of
emotional expressions of approval or disapproval and that the
nature of moral reasoning and justification must be reinterpreted
to take this essential characteristic of moral utterances into

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account. Prescriptivists take a somewhat similar approach,
arguing that moral judgments are prescriptions or prohibitions of
action, rather than statements of fact about the world.

4. Applied Ethics
Applied ethics deals with the philosophical examination, from a
moral standpoint, of particular issues in private and public life
which are matters of moral judgment. This branch of ethics is
most important for professionals in different walks of life
including doctors, teachers, administrators, rulers and so on.
There are six key domains of applied ethics: Decision
ethics {ethical decision-making process},
Professional ethics {for good professionalism},
Clinical Ethics {good clinical practices},
Business Ethics {good business practices},
Organizational ethics {ethics within and among organizations}
and social ethics.
It deals with the rightness or wrongness of social, economical,
cultural, religious issues also. For example, euthanasia, child
labour, abortion etc.

Moral or Ethics?

What is the difference?

There is a meaningful distinction to be

drawn between moral and ethical
decisions.
Certain customs or behaviours are
recognised as good and others as bad, and these collectively
comprise morality – arguably the summation of our value system

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as human beings. So, a conversation about ethical and moral
decision-making is important.
But problems arise when the terms “ethics” or “morals” are used
interchangeably.

The words derive respectively from the word in Greek (ethos,

ethikos) and Latin (mores, moralis), variously translated as
customs, manners or social norms. In fact, however, it is possible
to differentiate the Greek root of ethics from the Latin root of
morality in a way that may be practically helpful.
According to this understanding, “ethics” leans towards decisions
based upon individual character, and the more subjective
understanding of right and wrong by individuals – whereas
“morals” emphasises the widely-shared communal or societal
norms about right and wrong. Put another way, ethics is a more
individual assessment of values as relatively good or bad, while
morality is a more intersubjective community assessment of what
is good, right or just for all.
The relevance of the distinction is seen when questions such as
“how should I act?” and “what should I do?” are broadened to
Socrates’ question, “how should we live?”. Granted modern
society’s multiplicity of cultures and traditions, resulting in a
diverse moral collage, with no single truth easily identifiable, the
big moral question is surely, “how should we live together?
In approaching such a question, the individual ethical answer can
be limited by its essential egotism. It can be restricted to one’s
own worldview rather than being inherently aware of the
existence and relevance of others. Since recognition of others is
implicit to moral questions, according to the distinction made
above, moral questions can and must be answered universally.

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This requires having a shared dialogue – precisely since these
questions deal with good, right, and justice for all.
Put another way, moral decision-making relocates ethical
decision-making away from an individualistic reflection on
imperatives, utility or virtue, into a social space. In that space one
is implicitly aware of the other, wherein we understand from the
start that we need to have a dialogue. There is a difference
between what I should do in an ethical dilemma, and
what we should do in a moral dilemma.
In ethical dilemmas, individual decision-making may draw on the
frameworks of “must-do” imperatives, utility consequences, the
seeking of goodness, or a guiding framework from God.
But ethical decisions should recognise the context within which
they are set. That is, they must recognise that duties can be ranked
in a hierarchy (for example, to stop at an accident to render
assistance trumps the promise of meeting for coffee); in a similar
way, consequences can be ranked too.
In moral decisions, in which the importance of others and their
actual situation in the world, is recognised, community decisions
are based on dialogue between all those on whom the decision
impacts. That dialogue should aim to be inclusive, non-coercive,
self-reflective, and seek consensus among real people, rather than
seek an elusive absolute moral truth.
As a simple example, consider the decision of which career I
choose.
First, I collect the facts (such as the pre-requisites I need in order
to enrol in a course). Collecting the facts precedes any ethical or
moral decision-making. The ethical dimension of the decision
leads me to think about myself and recognise, say, that I have
certain talents, or that I would like to maximise my work-life
balance.

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The moral dimension is added when I recognise my decision
affects others – my family, the community in which I live – in
terms of being able to serve others, rather than simply earn an
income. Thus, I widen my own perspective and discuss with those
around me how we should decide.
But it is contentious whether certain dilemmas are seen
predominantly (or exclusively) as ethical or moral ones. Just
consider euthanasia, homosexuality, suicide, or the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict, to name a few.
Each may be seen by different observers as a dilemma either for
the individual to make a decision about (an ethical dilemma), or
for a society to make a decision about (a moral dilemma). How
we see the dilemma in large part determines the approach we will
take to the decision to be made. That is, whether I think about it
via a monologue with myself, or whether we, all together, enter
into a dialogue about it.
In short, there is a valuable difference between ethics and
morals.

Sometimes two words that seem alike may be more different than
you think. Ethics and morals are a good example. Some people
may believe they are the same thing or perhaps that morality is
just ethics viewed through a religious lens. However, this is not
quite accurate. In this article, we will discuss the differences
between the two words.

Comparing Morals and Ethics

It is understandable why one would think that ethics and morals
are the same thing. Both are related to what is right and what is
wrong.

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In fact, there is an important difference between the two terms. In
a nutshell, ethics are external. They can be codes of conduct you
follow at school or work, or a list of rules to follow in a religion.
Morality, on the other hand, is internal. It is your own personal
belief about what is right and wrong.
Here is another way of summarizing it:
Ethics:
Ethics are rules that are recognized by a certain institution. The
institution may be a group, culture, society, profession, or
religion.
Ethics are external and socially constructed.

Ethics tend to be followed because society tells us we should

follow them. Sometimes, we may follow ethics that we don’t
agree with.
Someone doesn’t need to be moral to be ethical. Someone without
a moral compass may follows ethical codes to be in good standing
with society. On the other hand, someone can violate ethics all the
time because they believe something is morally right.
Ethics originates from the word “ethos,” which is Greek for
“character.” In other words, ethics show the character of one’s
establishment.
Ethics are bound by society. As a society changes, so will its
ethics.
Morals
Morals are rules, principles, or other habits that conform to what
a person thinks are right or wrong.
Morality is internal, so it can be argued that morality is
subjective.
People’s morality tends to be consistent. However, a person can
change their beliefs and morals as they grow older, which may
allow them to live a better life.

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Morality comes from the Latin term mos, which means
“custom.”
Morality can come from cultural norms, but it doesn’t have to
follow them. Sometimes, your morals can transcend what is
considered to be the norm.

Ethics can come from different sources, including:

• The culture in which you live. There may be certain

manners or codes of conduct that aren’t illegal but are
eyebrow raising if you ignore them. For example, in some
societies, tipping the server is to be expected, while in
others, it’s considered an insult.
• An institution. A school will have codes of ethical
conduct for both teachers and students. A workplace will
have ethical codes for employers and employees.
Firefighters and police officers are expected to adhere to
ethical codes as well.
• Laws. Some people follow ethical codes because they
don’t want to be punished. When it comes to workplace
ethics, people don’t want to be fired. With laws, people may
follow some they disagree with just because they don’t
want to be fined or arrested. For example, a person may
think the speed limit is too low but follow it because they
don’t want to pay the fees caused by receiving a ticket.
• Religion. Religions (and interpretations of religions) each
have their own ethical guidelines. Many religions share
similar ethics, such as the Golden Rule, but others differ.
• A group of friends. Even a unit as small as a group of
friends may have its own ethics to follow, and if you don’t
follow them, you may be seen as a bad friend or one who
can’t be trusted.

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What about morals? All of the above can influence morals.
Often what you believe is right or wrong comes from society or
the rules of the land. However, you may have your own spin on
them or deny them entirely because you think they’re unjust. For
example, prostitution may be illegal, but you may believe it’s
morally acceptable because it is consensual.

How Consistent Can Morality and Ethics Be?

Ethics may change depending on context, but they may also be

similar across contexts. For example, the ethical guidelines of a
hospital may be similar to those of a psychiatrist’s medical
practice, while those of schools may widely vary.
The consistency of moral codes depends upon the person
involved. We are all different, and how consistent our morals are
across time and context will vary. Some people have a moral code
that remains unchanged throughout time. Others are open for their
code to change as new evidence emerges. Finally, some people
lack self-awareness and may embrace different moral codes as it
serves them.

How Morality and Ethics Can Clash

Morals and ethics can clash quite a bit, which raises some
provocative questions. Should someone follow the rules of the
society, or should they fight those rules if their values tell them
something else? The answer to this question may depend on the
situation.
Let’s look at a few examples. Say a police officer believes
marijuana should be legalized, but they have to follow the law

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and arrest people who possess or sell it because it is illegal where
they work. This raises some questions. Is it a good thing if the
officer violates his morals to keep the ethics of the law consistent,
while perhaps trying to change the system in different ways? Or
should they try to look the other way when they see marijuana or
give the person a lighter punishment? Some may argue that the
moral choice is better, while others may believe that if they ignore
one law, it’s a slippery slope toward ignoring the law in general.

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Readings: No. 4
ETHICS
CHAPTER 8
Morality and Law
How are we to behave toward one another? Morality is a social
phenomenon. Think about this. If a person is alone on some deserted island
would anything that person did be moral or immoral? That person may do
things that increase or decrease the chance for survival or rescue but would those
acts be moral or immoral? Most of what we are concerned with in ethics is
related to the situation in which humans are living with others. Humans are
social animals. Society contributes to making humans what they are. For
humans there arises the question of how are humans to behave toward one
another.
What are the rules to be? How are we to learn of them? Why do we need
them?

WHY BE MORAL?
Consider what the world would be like if there were no traffic rules at all. Would
people be able to travel by automobiles, buses and other vehicles on the
roadways if there were no traffic regulations? The answer should be obvious to
all rational members of the human species. Without basic rules, no matter how
much some would like to avoid them or break them, there would be chaos. The
fact that some people break the rules is quite clearly and obviously not sufficient
to do away with the rules. The rules are needed for transportation to take place.
Why are moral rules needed? For example, why do humans need rules about
keeping promises, telling the truth and private property? This answer should be
obvious. Without such rules, people would not be able to live amongst other
humans. People could not make plans, could not leave their belongings behind
them wherever they went. We would not know who to trust and what to expect
from others. Civilized, social life would not be possible. So, the question
is: Why should humans care about being moral?
REASONS: There are several answers.
Sociological: Without morality, social life is nearly impossible.
Psychological:
People care about what others think of them. Reputation and social censure.
Some people care about doing the right thing. Conscience.

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Theological: Some people care about what will happen after death, to their soul
or spirit. For many religions there is an afterlife that involves a person’s being
rewarded or punished for what they have done.
So, that is out of the way. We know that we should be moral and so should
others and without some sense of morality it would be very difficult if not
impossible for large numbers of humans to be living with one another. Now to
the questions that deal with the rules of morality and all the rules which govern
human behavior. First, some terms need to be clarified.
Mores- customs and rules of conduct
Etiquette – rules of conduct concerning matters of relatively minor importance
but which do contribute to the quality of life. Violations of such rules may bring
social censure. Etiquette deals with rules concerning dress and table manners
and deal with politeness. Violations would bring denunciations for being,
RUDE or CRUDE or GROSS. Friendships would not likely break up over
violations of these rules as they would for violating rules of morality, e.g., lies and
broken promises! These rules are not just “made up by a bunch of old British
broads” as one student once volunteered in class. But they are made up by
people to encourage a better life. In each society there are authorities on these
matters and there are collections of such rules. Many books are sold each year
to prospective brides who want to observe the proper rules of decorum and
etiquette. There are newspapers that have regular features with questions and
answers concerning these matters.
This deals with matters such as when do you place the napkin on your lap when
you sit at a dining table? How long do you wait on HOLD on a telephone call
with someone with call waiting? Should you use a cell phone at the dining
table? Should you have a beeper on or a cell phone on in class? In a movie
theatre?
(Check on the answers to these questions-Hint-There are books on etiquette and
now you can also surf the internet – the answers are out there!)
Morality- rules of right conduct concerning matters of greater
importance. Violations of such can bring disturbance to individual conscience
and social sanctions.
Law- rules which are enforced by society. Violations may bring a loss of or
reduction in freedom and possessions.
What is the relation of law to morality? They are NOT the same. You can
NOT equate the two. Just because something is immoral does not make it
illegal and just because something is illegal it does not make it immoral.

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You can probably think of many examples to support this view once you think
about it.
Things that are illegal but are thought to be moral (for many)!
Drinking under age.
Driving over the speed limit.
Smoking marijuana.
Cheating on a tax return.
Splitting a cable signal to send it to more than one television.
People do not think of themselves or of others as being immoral for breaking
these laws.
Can you think of other examples?
Things that are immoral (for many) but are not illegal.
Cheating on your spouse.
Breaking a promise to a friend.
Using abortion as a birth control measure.
People cannot be arrested or punished with imprisonment or fines for doing
these things.
Can you think of other examples?
What is the relation of morality to law? Well, when enough people think that
something is immoral, they will work to have a law that will forbid it and punish
those that do it.
When enough people think that something is moral, they will work to have a
law that forbids it and punishes those that do it repealed or, in other words, if
there is a law that says doing X is wrong and illegal and enough people no longer
agree with that then those people will work to change that law.
Moral Philosophy to understand and to justify moral principles
Ethics to establish principles of the GOOD and those of right behavior Ethics
deals with the basic principles that serve as the basis for moral rules. Different
principles will produce different rules.
Meta Ethics- discussion of ethical theories and language
So, ethics and morality are not the same things! A person is moral if that person
follows the moral rules. A person is immoral if that person breaks the moral
rules. A person is amoral if that person does not know about or care about the
moral rules.
A person is ethical if that person is aware of the basic principles governing moral
conduct and acts in a manner consistent with those principles. If the person
does not do so they are unethical.
* Introduction to Philosophy, Philip A. Pecorino, online Textbook).

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Further Readings:
1. Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method.
2. Rene Descartes, Meditations on the first Philosophy.
3. The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, editor, Paul Edwards.
4. Bertrand Russell, the Impact of Science on Society.
5. Knowledge and Skepticism, Marjorie Clay and Keith Lehrer, editors
6. Bertrand Russell, the History of Western Philosophy.
7. Bertrand Russell, the Wisdom of the West.
8. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy.
9. Al-Ghazali. The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Translated by
Michael E. Marmura.
10. Dmitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic
Translation Movement in Baghdad, and Early _Abba-sid Society (2nd–
4th/8th–10th Centuries).
11. Ibn Rushd. Decisive Treatise and Epistle Dedicatory. Translated by
Charles E.
12. -----. The Incoherence of the Incoherence.” Translated by Simon Van
den Bergh.
13. Ibn Sina, Al-Isharat wa-t-tanbıhat. Edited by Jacques Forget.
14. Ibn Sina, An-Najat. Edited by al-Kurdi. Cairo: 1938.
15. Ibn Tufay, Hayy Ben Yaqdhân. Edited by Léon Gauthier.
16. Al-Kindi, The Philosophical Works of al-Kindı. Trans. by Peter
Adamson and Peter E.
17. Ar-Razi, the Spiritual Physick of Rhazes. Translated by A. J. Arberry.
18. Wisnovsky, Robert. Avicenna’s Metaphysics in Context.
19. Jeniver Moor, Critical Thinking, An Exploration of the theory and
practice.
20. Donald Palmer, Does the Centre Hold? An Introduction to Western
Philosophy.
21. Tracy Bowell and Gary Kemp, Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide.

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22. Kelly James Clark, Religion and the Sciences of Origins: Historical
and Contemporary Discussion.
23. Hamed Ahmad Dababseh, Islamic Philosophy, Amman, 2021.
(Arabic).
24. Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy.
25. John Cottingham, Western Philosophy: An Anthology.
26. Thomas Nagel, what does it All Mean: A Very Short Introduction to
Philosophy.
27. https://www.iep.utm.edu/
28. https://plato.stanford.edu/
29. Hegel, the Phenomenology of Mind.
30. Aristotle, Metaphysics.
31. John Dewey, Experience and Nature.
32. Donald Sherer, Peter A. Facione, Thomas Attig, and Fred D. Miller,
Introduction to Philosophy.
33. Joseph Margolis, An Introduction to Philosophical Inquiry.
34. Paula Struhl and Karsten Struhl, Philosophy Now.

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