Jesse Hughes Philosophy 101

NOTES:
Descartes
I.Many things turn to be false, once to avoid falsity in the future. He want to came up with
a method, so the method would help him prevent
I. Motivated by TWO principles:
1. We want no false beliefs
a. Say to believe everything, then no falsity
b. Skeptical principle
c. Meditation began in this principle:
i. Examine my beliefs, to prove if it is false (what
is wrong with this?)
1. We do not have time to check each belief is true or not.
2. Other issue: it is not simplify to say certain beliefs are true or not.
3. Remove all doubtable beliefs
1. Not sure , or certain true, then assume it is false.
2. Four arguments for beliefs
1. Senses
1. An acknowledgement that may lead to falsity .
Doubt everything that senses is telling.
1. Ex: seeing things that mistakenly
seen.
2. Mad mon
1. If a person is mad, then the person is incapable
to reach to reality. (professor doesn’t think this fit
with the arguments)
3. Dreaming (p251)
1. Most of our dreams, not aware. Believe the
dream, but at that point could not prove if the
incident happens or not. If you could not tell the
difference of last night dreaming compare to the
reality, then you can not prove whether it is true
that you are dreaming and waking.
2. This argument proves sometimes when you are
dreaming, you do not know it.
3. What if I am dreaming, should I doubt
everything I am believing it:
1. Because dreaming has imagination, and
imagination has LIMIT, does not create
wholly new idea, rather it combines idea.
2. Dreaming creates something that you
have seen, not a wholly new idea, the
imagination must have seen in reality.
3. Dreaming does not allow us to doubt.
4. Evil demon
 1. Every perception, beliefs, and etc have been put
by an evil demon. IF there is a such demon, then
there is no reason for a person to believe
everything, because the evil demon can mess up
what a person seen.
2. DESCARTES is arguing if there is possible a
demon, then everything he sees should doubt. As
long as he can not prove there is a evil demon, then
DESCARTES's skeptical things are not true.
3. His arguments allow him to doubt every belief
he has.
4. He is not certain that everything he seen.
2. We want as many true beliefs as possible
a. Easy to satisfy, say: I believe everything, and then there is nothing
to be false.
b. Multiple principle (I want to believe)
c. he grab all his true beliefs.
d. Even there is a evil devil, then one belief is undoubleful
i. DESCARTES exist : He is thinking.
ii. He experiences thought, he is a thinking
thing. (p 53)
DESCARTES：　one thing he is sure is he is a thinking thing, and he exist. BELIEVE
THE UNIVERSE ALL HAS HIMSELF.
Iii. The only thing he knows he exist is he is thinking, and then he brought up the idea of
WAX.
e. Let's think wax exist: the wax causes certain sensation, taste, smell, feel, etc. All of these ideas are
got from his physical body.
a. The wax melt:
i. Every perception of a wax change, then his
physical senses are giving him a different sensation. Then his thinking must telling him
he did not getting the same idea while the wax didn’t melt.
ii. But, he understands the idea of melting. He did
not get the senses about the melting wax is wax, rather it is thought, from mental activity.
II. Knowing mind exist:
a. Knowing the mind exist is harder but most fundamental knowledge to understand.
(we sees chair and table, but before knowing that, we must know that mind exist. )

III. Meditation 3: what sort of stuff is in our mind?

1. Ideas (his ideas means image, include things like blue, white, and a bit of red in it) The perception
of the carpet. Any thought that is like an image. Ideas seem to be like a likeness. Ideas just an image,
you can not judge whether it is true or false.
a. IDEAS can be produce:
i. Innate
ii. Produced by me (Outside of me) = taught by
nature? Light of nature, something he says thing reveals to him as light of nature.
iii. Caused by me
2. Volitions/ emotions : images that thinking of coffee. But something of desire and passion grow
within in your mind. Emotions are similar, may be happy by listening to certain things, and some other
feelings. No true or falsity involve.
3. Judgment: sort of thought that can be true or false. You can not ask about the sensation whether
the red blue or white is a carpet, but you do can judge whether the blue white red is causing by
CARPET?!
a. Particular judgment causing by external things.
b. Principle of frequent errs, judge the idea that is in me to certain
things that are outside me.
Notes:
1. Descartes: two goals He wants to avoid falsity and gain true belief

2. He wants to move everything that is doubted, because there are too many doubtful beliefs.

3. More perfect the thing, greater the reality

Formal reality Objective reality of idea

The reality of the thing itself Presentational reality

formal reality of an idea Ex: formal reality of its
content…if it exists!

• only think of what it

contains, what does it present.

4. No effect can be greater than its cause. Where the effect come from if it is not from the
cause.
5. The objective reality of an idea cannot be greater than the formal reality of its cause.
a. If there are some ideas in me, then we have to look outside of the causes for the
ideas.
b. There is one idea that is so perfect: the idea of God

i.
Unlimited and perfect being

ii. Only a
perfect being has enough formal reality to
CAUSE a perfect being > God exists

6. Second argument for the existence of God

a. Establishing Descartes and God: Who ultimately is the cause of Descartes own
existence?
 i.
Descartes can not cause his own exist.
Creating something of nothingness is
harder to prove something exist.

ii. If he
capable to create himself, he will create
himself as all knowing thing. He
concluded he didn’t create himself, if he
did, he would do a better job of it.

iii. Did his

parents create himself?
1. Exist over time?
a. Create and destroy in every moment.

IV: Since God is perfect, then why He Suck?

1. Two central faculty in mind.

• • Will
Intellect/understanding

• Limited not faulty Unlimited: there is no difference between

Descartes and God in this WILL.

-How to avoid error? Will is limited, but the ability is limited.

If I understand You can swing your arm , pretend
clearly and you are flying, but you cannot fly!
understanding, then
it must be true.
Simply God creates
him, and God wont
deceive him.

Choices is freewill

Judgments are acts of will: involve with

understanding. You need to affirm or
deny. Error comes in when a person is
choose to believe or not to believe,
understanding is limited, but not faulty.
 2. IV meditation: error is possible only is because unique combination will beyond our understanding,
when we choose to affirm or deny. Understanding is limited but we can simply understand truth.
Understanding is given by God, therefore our understanding is not faulty.
3. V meditation:
i. It begins with a discussion of mathematic: a^2+b^2=c^2
ii. Descartes proved it is possible that the material things can be solve by math.
iii. No contradiction in math.
1. I have no trouble that the essence of triangle has this kind of feature, except for God
iv. He proves that God exist (AGAIN)
1. Nevertheless that the existence of substance = God's essence.
2. God is a supremely perfect being, God possesses every perfection. Existence is a
perfection.
3. A thing exist always better than the thing that does not exist
4. So, God possesses existence. < God exists.
5. Necessary existence = contingent existence.
a. Each of us exist but you could imagine without contradiction that the world and us
don’t exist.
b. For God, it is impossible for him not to exist.
v. He does not require to understand, as long as he remember one, then he would
assume he understands it.
• Imagination
o Allows him to view certain obj.
o Seems to depend something outside Descartes.
o Imagination is not part of his essence.
o Mind can not move, they are not in a place. (only physical stuff. Motion requires extension.
o Faculty of receiving and knowing the sensible things
• SENSING?
• Me?
• Physical stuff?
• God or some other beings?
 Ex: I have a capacity of sensing, but there must be something that produces these
sensing. (me?) it is not in me, because I only have two faculties, and these sensation does
not come with my consent. Therefore it is not produce by his understanding or his will,
therefore it is from outside of him. There must be a substance that is outside of him, that is
real enough to produce this kind of sensation.
 Sensation must produce by physical stuff
 God or some other being.
o I was created with a strong tendency to believe that physical stuff causes these ideas.
o I have no means for determining this belief is false.
 • IF IT IS FALSE, IMAGINE God creates me, there no physical stuff. Conclude
corporeal stuff exist.
• Primary qualities
• Extension
• Shape
• Motion
• number
• Secondary qualities
• Color
• Smell
• Texture
o Mind and body are connected.
• Because he can feels pain and hungry sense through the body.
• Primary senses are to maintain the health
• Natural helps us to prefer pleasure and to avoid painful.
 Fire has the quality that make us to feel the pain, but not because the fire represents the
pain.
 Feeling of heat does not resemble the fire.
 Color within an object only can create a sensation within a person, but not because it has
the color. But the shape itself has its shape.
 We should focus on the primary qualities, the things they are, but primary qualities lead
us to secondary qualities. Second qualities are not the real qualities of the material things.
• Nerves system
 The divisible body after it is been chopped, the missing part of the body parts seem to
cause pain, but the body part is no longer on the body. The pain is sending from the nerve
system.
 Body is constructed that different causes can cause the same effect.
• Special point of body
 Mind causes effect in your body.

A priori A posteriori

• Knowledge gain without • Knowledge dependent on

reference to experience experience
• DESCARTES is a Methodist,
his own existence has contradict
his belief of a priori knowledge.
• "Light of nature"
Descartes simply knows.
• Effect can not be greater than
the cause
• Descartes doubt all his
experience, he is not skeptical
enough

• Rationalism • Empiricism (Locke)

• Descartes has a belief of a • doubt a priori because all priori
chair, this is a sensation, not a knowledge is analytic.
physical chair in front of him. o Example: all bachelor are
• Skeptical conclusion, people unmarried.
get things through physical o However analytic do not help
experience. you gain any new knowledge
• Hume:
• Most cause and effect is a
priori knowledge. They believe
they have the knowledge before
the experience.
• 5+7=12 (no need to check)
we know this is true.

• Synthetic: we may gain some

knowledge in priori knowledge
• Synthetic example: (it is possible)
Kant said nothing 5+7=12, you can
not analyze 5 makes the equation =
12 nor any other symbol in 5+7=12
• But how we know the answer
without knowing some clues?
o A priori knowledge is mostly
about personal contribution.
o Psychological claim: we can
not get or experience things
itself, only we can is the
perception, feature of rationality.
• I can be certain 5+7=12?
According to Kant, why he said
that?
• Because necessary
condition, we experience us,
that is a priori synthetic
knowledge.
• Every rational being are
 nicely constructed.

1. Problems for priori knowledge, CRITICISM:

1. Assumes our nature is unchanging: "Why this is a rational thing? What if it changes the next day?"
The best we can claim, up to now, this is our rationality
o Kant thinks it just part of our rationality
2. Too narrow
o Make claims in itself
o Even you don’t experience the object, we know 2+2=4
2. Law of thought
1. A thing cannot both be and not be at the same time.
2. We don’t have to check the answer, we know this is correct.
3. Kant does not think it is law of thought
3. Russell
1. Agrees 5+7=12 is a priori synthetic
2. Criticism to Kant, a priori synthetic is possible
• If there is a criterion of truth, then this criterion should satisfy three conditions
1. Internal
i. No reason or rule of truth that is provided by an external authority can
serve as an ultimate criterion
ii. The mind cannot attain to certainty until it has found within itself a
sufficient reason for adhering to the testimony of such an authority.
2. Objective
i. Ultimate reason for believing cannot be a merely subjective state of
the thinking subject.
3. Immediate
i. To be sure, a certain conviction may rest upon many different reasons
some of which are subordinate to others. Must find an immediate criterion of certitude.
• Apples example
o Descartes thought our beliefs is to throw the bad ones and keep the good ones. Or Descartes wanted
us to hoped, we would be left with just a stock of good beliefs on which we could rely completely.
o Turn apples in to beliefs, there is a different than differentiate the good and bad apples
o There is a criterion, which beliefs are genuine cases of knowledge and which beliefs are not?
o Empiricism gives us an effective criterion for distinguishing the good apples from the bad ones.
• Two objections agaisnt empiricism
1. Is that the criterion is very broad and far reaching and at the same time completely arbitrary
2. We seem to throw out, not only the bad apples but the good ones as well, and we are left, with just a
few parings or skins with no meat behind them.
• Thomas Reid:
o A particularist
 o Thought he had an answer to question A, and in terms of the answer to question A, he then worked
out a kind of answer to question B.

1. We want to have a method or procedure to help us to get to good beliefs, and get rid of bad beliefs.
But how do we justify a good belief from a bad belief?
a. I cant show the method work unless I know how to decide which is a good or bad belief.
2. Two related questions
a. What do we know which belief is good in a sense? (the extent about our knowledge)
b. How do we decide whether we know? (the criteria on our knowledge)
• If you know question A, then you might know question B.
• If I know B, then I will know A, because I know the procedure, if I don’t have procedure,
then we have no way to conclude A.
• Answer A depends on answer B and vice versa.
• Skepticism
 If you can not solve the problems, you are screw.
• Methodism
 Claim an answer to B.
 Start with a method, Methodism can not back up the answer, cause he goes on circle, he knows which
is a good belief. Certain sensation exist from the memory.
 Ex: empiricism : all knowledge has to traceable back to experience. All knowledge comes to
experience. Give up too much.
• Particularism
 Claim an answer to A
 Has knowledge, but he can not tell every good beliefs from the bad beliefs.
 Possible to know, without showing that you know.
 How does he know good beliefs from bad beliefs?
• Assume an ordering on belief states:
• Set some beliefs, objectively better
• Beyond reasonable doubt
or

pQ

1. R is beyond reasonable doubt

2. R is evident, if R is beyond reasonable doubt, it is preferable to make decision using R than not using R.
3. R is certain, if it is evident and no other preposition is preferable .

• First Truths of fact

o Evident: self-presenting
• No doubt of your experience of how you feel, sense . Experience ourselves count the truth
• First truths of reason
o A priori truth
o Axiomatic : necessarily truth and if one believes the proposition, then it is evident.

Notes:

S knows X if and only if

1. X is true
2. S believes X
3. Proper justification of believing it
• (Not true: Believe in fortune teller is not a knowledge)
• These three takes sufficient

S knows X - > (1), (2), (3) 1. (1) (2) (3) are necessary condition for S knows X
(1) (2) (3) S knows X --------------------jointly speaking, then sufficient
conditions.

• Elementary logic:
• How you prove an implication is false?
 How to show that A > B is false?
Need: a situation in which A (1,2,3) is true and B (S knows X) is false.
EX: Suppose Yan and I are applying for the same job, Yan is going to get the job even
though "I" seem to be a nice guy.

A: Yan will get the job S may be justified in believing something that
is false

If S is justified in believing A -> B and

justified in believing A and believes B because
he believes A-> B and A then he is justified in
believing B.

B: Yan has 37 cents As soon as (A & B) -> X I am justified in

I believe (A & B) & I am believing X
justified in that belief
(X) The person who will get
the job has 37cents.
(A&B) -> (X)

Something happened to the 1,2,3 are true:

boss, "I" got the job instead of 1. (Yan does have 37 cents)
Yan. Therefore:
2. (He believes in Yan has 37 cents)
3. (He is justified Yan has 37 cents,
because he saw my wallet)
BUT
I DO NOT KNOW X

A -> (A or B) if you know A then you know A or B.

B -> (A or B)
X stans for A or B
Ex: Obama is president, or I either Obama is a president or I have two feet. When there is
a disjunction, and you know one of it, then A or B is true.
 (a) Chad drives a Corolla
(b) Andrey lives in Birch Hall
I believed A & I am justified in believing A.
Thus, I have a justified belief in X.
Assuming that Chad does not drive Corolla, and Andrey lives in Birch, then X is true.
(either A or B is true)
1,2,3 -> are true BUT I do not know X.

Notes:
1. Deducted: in when and which whenever the primacy is true and so is the conclusion.
For instance, if it is raining, then the dog is wet, when the dog is not wet, then it is not raining.
2. Inducted: See all swans are white, but not assuming all swans are white. See more swans are white, it is
probable that all swans are white, but not reach to certainty.

• Inductive arguments only reach probable conclusions.

• More instances yield more probable conclusion
o Why do you believe sun will rise tomorrow?
• We expect certain things happen, because it never happen in another way before.
• BECAUSE sun always rise in the past (inductive)
 But, why do we need to believe in the past? It might change tomorrow‾
• BECAUSE earth is rotating
 Proof of law of motions (This provide another outside info. ) But where do you believe
in law of motions? Because of science from past experience and observation.
 • But we are still going around the question
• Induction is a reliable method of reasoning
• It is work well up till now. When I reason base on my past experience, then induction is a
pretty good guide. That is induction.
• The past resembles the future.
o Every morning in my life, the sun is rising, great certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow.

• The next swan will be white > one allows you to guess the next one
• All swans are white. > one allows you to conclude the next one
HUME believes induction is not justified.
• Default reasoning often change once the statement has more details.
• Joe is a bird > we assume he will fly <- default reasoning
• However, Joe is a bird, penguin, then we would say he can not fly.

2-9-09

Note:

New riddle of induction: because emerald either green or blue but it can not be both.

What property allow us to say green is better hypothesis than Grue hypothesis?

• Particular instances, each instance that we see, for instance each swan we see is white;
o Positive
o Negative
• Evidence class
 If any of the evidence class gives us a difference class, we are done.
• Ex: we assume all swans are white, but we see a black one, then the previous
statement is untrue.
• Projective class : going from smaller object class through observation and project the larger
class.
• Supported if evidence class supported
• violated if it is not.

 How can we say one hypothesis is better than the other?

o Newman's answer: the good source of predicate is that we have successfully in using induction for.
• Ex: we are using green emerald, it had been green for all time.
• Projectable: it is a source of thing that we like to use induction for.
• "a predicate is projectable: is projectable.
 Good and bad predicate, how separate them? By induction.
  Entrenchment : past success induction.

 Two predicates with same evidence class, we should see the predicate that is projectable, (produce more
inducted success)