Philosophy 

The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest
possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.

W. Sellars, Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man (1962).

Philosophers make statements which are intended to be true, and they commonly rely on
argument both to support their own theories and to refute the theories of others; but the
arguments which they use are of a peculiar character. The proof of a philosophical
statement is not, or only very seldom, like the proof of a mathematical statement; it does
not normally consist in formal demonstration. Neither is it like the proof of a statement in
any of the descriptive sciences.

A. J. Ayer, The Problem of Knowledge (1956).

 
Ethics​or moral philosophy is the study of codes of conduct that govern our behaviour  
 
• Morality can be distinguished from law; and moral rules are independent of religious commands.  
•Moral rules are thought to be overriding, universal, and to be obeyed because they are moral rules.  
• There are three subdisciplines in ethics: metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics.  
 
Epistemology:​This is the name given for the theory of knowledge. Those who study epistemology, known 
as epistemologists, are also interested in those notions closely associated with knowledge, such as truth, 
justification and rationality. 

Normative Ethics 1
● Ch. 17. Killing Mary to Save Jodie (Law, 2003)
● Ch. 18. The categorical imperative (Dupré, 2007)
● Video: B
​ eginner's Guide to Kant's Moral Philosophy ​youtu.be/mQ2fvTvtzBM

 
Normative ethics​​https://avva.livejournal.com/2880352.html  
 
Sometimes called moral theory, this is the attempt to construct systematic theories that aim to explain what it is that 
right actions have in common. Moral theories typically appeal to, and defend, a fundamental moral principle that 
underlies the more particular principles and rules we use in our everyday moral thinking. 

The  field  of  ethics  (or  moral  philosophy)  involves  systematizing,  defending,  and  recommending  concepts  of  right 
and wrong behavior.   
Normative ethics involves arriving at moral standards that regulate right and wrong conduct.  
In a sense, it is a search for an ideal litmus test of proper behavior. 

Normative ethics ​- [often called philosophical ethics] search for norms, not in the sense of what is average, but in the 
sense of authoritative standards of what it “ought” to be. 
 
 
•  Ethical  theorising  moves  from  the  particular  to  the  general,  and  back  again.  •  We  appeal  to  general  principles  and 
rules  in  order  to  explain  our  opinions  about  particular  cases;  but  particular  cases  can  also  be  used  to  ‘test’  moral 
principles.  
•  Consequentialism  is  a  moral  theory  that  makes  the  rightness  of  an  action  depend  solely  upon  the  value  of  its 
consequences.  
•  Utilitarianism  holds  that  pleasure  and  the  absence  of  pain  are  the  only  things  intrinsically  valuable,  and  that  we 
should aim to maximise pleasure in our actions.  
• Utilitarianism has been criticised for allowing immoral actions, and for demanding too much.  
• Deontology is characterised by constraints and permissions.  
•  Kant’s  fundamental  moral  principle  is  the  Categorical  Imperative,  and  holds  that  wrong  actions  are  ones  that  we 
cannot rationally will that everyone perform.  
•  Deontology  has  been  criticised  for  being  absolutist,  and  for  failing  to  explain  why  we  have  constraints  and 
permissions.  
•  Virtue  ethics  holds  that  morality  should  be  much  more  focused  on  people,  their  motives,  and  their  character.  • 
Aristotle  thought  that  the  best  way  to  live  was  virtuously;  and virtues are a midpoint between excesses of feeling and 
desires.  
•  Virtue  ethics  has  been  criticised  for  being  too  ‘egoistic’,  and  for  being  unclear  as  to  how  we  identify  the  virtuous 
person. 
 
Major Theories 
1.Utilitarianism (Bentham, Mill) 

2.Deontology (Kant) 

3.Virtue ethics (Aristotle) 

Utilitarians​believe that the ​purpose of morality is to make life better by increasing the amount of good​things (such 
as ​pleasure and happiness​) in the world and decreasing the amount of bad things (such as pain and unhappiness).  

They reject moral codes or systems that consist of commands or taboos that are based on customs, traditions, or 
orders given by leaders or supernatural beings.  

Instead, utilitarians think that what makes a morality be true or justifiable is its ​positive contribution to human (and 
perhaps non-human) beings. 

The most important classical utilitarians are ​Jeremy Bentham​(1748-1832) and ​John Stuart Mill​(1806-1873). 

Well being => Happiness 

The Main Strength of Utilitarian Theory: happiness is a fundamental human value 
A moral theory focusing on the attainment of the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people gives good 
guidance. If we all seek the greatest happiness, then we should live in a better world and a better society. The 
utilitarian objects to racial and sexual exploitation, to vengeful punishment, to war, and to pollution. These things 
deprive us of happiness. A careful analysis of the hostility caused, harm inflicted, in relation to gains, will show that the 
utilitarian is able to insist upon solid social reform. A utilitarian not only objects, typically, to many of the things we 
consider wrong, but gives us a reason why they are wrong. When that reason doesn't hold, then the utilitarian, 
theoretically, is willing to agree that it is not morally wrong. Far from being a vice, the utilitarian believes moral life 
requires that we carefully consider all actions to determine whether we are doing the right thing. 

 
Act Utilitarianism  Rule utilitarians  
The greatest happiness should be the goal of our  a)a ​specific action is morally justified​if it conforms to 
actions  a justified moral rule; 

Believe  that  whenever  we  are  deciding  what to do, we  b)a moral rule ​is justified if its inclusion​into our moral 
should  perform  the  action  that  will  create  the  greatest  code would create more utility than other possible 
net utility. In their view, the principle of utility—do   rules (or no rule at all). 

whatever  will  produce  the  best  overall  results—should  According to this perspective, ​we should judge the 
be applied on a case by case basis.   morality of individual actions ​by reference to general 
moral rules, and we should judge particular moral rules 
The  right  action  in  any  situation  is  the  one  that  yields  by seeing whether their acceptance into our moral 
more  utility  (i.e.  creates  more  well-being)  than  other  code would produce more well-being than other 
available actions.  possible rules. 
Right  actions  result  in  ‘good  or  pleasure,’  wrong   
actions result in pain or absence of pleasure. 
 
“Calculus of utility” ​measuring pleasure and pain 
using what amounts to a formula (for a group, it   
measures intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, 
fecundity, purity, and extent). This calculation allows a   
utility based decision to be made on virtually any 
 
subject.   
 
Act utilitarianism​beliefs that an action becomes 
morally right when it produces the greatest good for   
the greatest number of people 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Both​act utilitarians and rule utilitarians agree that our overall aim in evaluating actions should be to ​create the best 
results possible​, but they ​differ about how to do that. 

The ​
key difference​between act and rule utilitarianism is that act utilitarians apply the utilitarian principle directly to the 
evaluation of individual actions while rule utilitarians apply the utilitarian principle directly to the evaluation of 
rules​and then evaluate individual actions by seeing if they obey or disobey those rules whose acceptance will 
produce the most utility. 

 
 
 
Criticisms of Act Utilitarianism 
•​‘Max pleasure/min suffering morality criticized as “pig-philosophy”

•​Don’t always know the consequences of our actions

•​Difficulty in measuring pleasure and happiness

•​May be counterintuitive – sacrifice one to save many

•​Concerned only with ends – only the bottom line matters

•​Does not take moral significance of individuals seriously enough, we are mere conduits of utility. Abuse of Power

John Stuart Mill’s Analysis of Pleasure

Mill objects to Bentham's procedure. Some pleasures, Mill thought, are more admirable than others. The pleasure from doing
mathematical proofs is a more admirable pleasure, in itself, than the pleasure we may get from eating a good meal.
Furthermore, some actions so fundamentally disrupt pleasure, like injustice and censorship, that they are virtually always
forbidden. Under his view, injustice is a name we assign to those actions that upset people's lives in basic ways. These are
forbidden in a strict way by most theories because they involve such a serious amount of pain and a consistent forfeit of
pleasure; typically, no calculation is needed to condemn acts of injustice. 

•​
A  Utility  Monster  is  a  thought  experiment  by  Robert  Nozick,  which  criticizes  utilitarianism.  He  asks  us  to  imagine  a 
monster  which  receives  more  utility  (more  pleasure  basically)  from  each  unit  of  resources  than  any  humans  do.  It  is 
therefore  logical,  and  indeed  morally  required,  to  give  everything  to  the  monster.  For  example,  if  we  had  a  piece  of 
cake,  the  Utility  Monster  would  get  1000  times  more  joy  out  of  eating  it  than  any  human,  so  the  action  that  would 
cause the most total pleasure would always be to give the cake to the monster. 

The pun based 'Utility Monster' depicted in the comic gets a great deal of pleasure from destroying pipes. Apparently 
that pleasure is so great it outweighs the pain it would cause us to have the pipes destroyed. Since that would still 
result in more net pleasure, it is morally required to destroy the pipes. Peter Singer is a contemporary utilitarian 
 
Utilitarianism is Consequentialism 
 
Consequentialism: ​This is a moral theory that makes the rightness of actions (and the goodness of people, 
institutions, etc.) depend upon the value of the consequences that the actions (people, institutions) bring about. 
Consequentialist theories typically have to parts: a value theory, telling us what it is about an outcome that makes it 
valuable; and a standard of rightness, telling us how actions (people, institutions) are to be related to the outcomes in 
order to be right. A standard consequentialist theory says that right acts are ones that maximise value 

https://www.iep.utm.edu/conseque/

Sequentialist will not lie, because a lie will lead to negative consequences. The deontologist will not lie, because it is
forbidden by moral precepts and rules, and the proponent of the ethics of virtue will not lie, because a lie is contrary
to his virtuous essence, which he intends to take care of.

Deontological ethics

Deontology​ : A moral theory that is characterised by constraints on our behaviour – there are certain things that we
must not do, even if these things maximise happiness – and permissions – we are not necessarily immoral if we don’t
act to bring about the best outcomes. Kantian deontology justifies constraints by proposing that immoral actions are,
in some sense, irrational; other deontological theories hold that immoral actions – and demands that we always
maximise happiness – violate the dignity or autonomy of a person.

Morality as a system of laws analogous to the laws of physics in terms of their universal applicability.
According to deontology, there is a set of moral rules or laws, according to which one should act. Where the rules
come from - it happens in different ways: from sacred texts, from personal reflections, from the criminal code, from
traditions. But there are rules, and you should behave according to the rules, and not some other criteria. Usually state
laws work on deontology; but the choice of laws is often dictated by other principles, including consequences. Most
of the moral principles of everyday behavior, as we understand them, are deontological. For example, "debts must be
returned." Suppose you lend a lot of money from someone, and he has since become a sectarian and gives all his
money to frowning people. The deontologist will say: all the same, the debt must be repaid, and what he will do there
further is his problems and his fault. The sequentialist will say: I must weigh; if the harm from returning this money
exceeds the benefit, I should not return it.

Categorical imperative - unconditionally

The First Formulation

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law
without contradiction.“

The Second Formulation

“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely
as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.”

Duty and Good Will

 
Any action based on desires a ​hypothetical imperative (STRUCTURE If...then - some conditional hold)​
, meaning by 
this that it is a command of reason that applies only if one desires the goal in question 

Kantian themes

Duty:
the moral action is one that we must do in accordance with a certain principle, not because of its good consequence.
Respect:
Persons should always be treated as an end, not a means. ‘No persons should be used.’

Purpose of life Eudaimonia

Eudaimonia is the good for a human life. It is usually translated as ‘happiness’ but Aristotle says it is ‘living 
well and faring well’. We have some idea of what it is when an animal or plant is living and faring well – we 
talk of them ‘flourishing’. A plant or animal flourishes when its needs are met in abundance and it is a good 
specimen of its species. Gardeners try to enable their plants to flourish; zookeepers try to enable the zoo 
animals to flourish. So eudaimonia is ‘the good’ or the ‘good life’ for human beings as the particular sort of 
being we are. To achieve it is to live as best a human being can live.  

Virtues are necessary but not sufficient for Eudaimonia.

Intellectual virtue: the virtue of knowledge or understanding. Intellectual virtue is had by the philosopher, who lives a
life of contemplation

Practical virtue: the virtue of action and feeling. Virtues are not innate. They are habits
To become courageous, one must act as a courageous person does—this will help one develop the habit of being
courageous

It is the extremes that damage people. A person who eats too much or eats to little will not be healthy.
Similiarly for the soul, a person who acts in an extreme manner will not be virtuous

The doctrine of the mean entails that we can (often, if not always) place a virtue ‘between’ two vices. Just as there is
a right time, object, person, etc., at which to feel fear (or any emotion), some people can feel fear too often, about too
many things, and towards too many people, or they get too afraid of things that aren’t that dangerous. Other people
can feel afraid not often enough, regarding too few objects and people. Someone who feels fear ‘too much’ is
cowardly. Someone who feels fear ‘too little’ is rash. Someone who has the virtue relating to fear is courageous. The
virtue is the ‘intermediate’ state between the two vices of ‘too much’ and ‘too little’.

Normative Ethics 2
● Virtue theory. P. 84-90. (Lacewing & Pascal, 2007)
● Video: Aristotle on 'Flourishing' ​youtu.be/j_7deR0idvs
● Ch. 2. What’s Wrong with Gay Sex? (Law, 2003)

● Virtue theory claims that ethics should focus on how we should live and what traits of 

character (virtues) we should develop to help us live well, not just what we should do. 

● Virtue theorists argue that virtues help us flourish. The basis of ethics, then, is human 

nature. Because we are rational animals, living well involves living in accordance with 

reason. Plato argued that reason is in charge. Christian writers emphasized traits of 

the soul in relationship with God and other people. 

● Philosophers have objected that virtue theory leads to relativism, as different cultures 

have counted different traits as virtues. Virtue theorists reply that there is some 

universal human nature underlying the differences that provides a critical basis for 

assessing cultures. 

● It seems that virtues do not always help their possessor to live a good life. They may, 

alternatively, support an admirable or meaningful life; or they may help others to lead 

good lives, but at a cost to the virtuous person. 

● Plato and Aristotle argue that we know what is good through reason. Plato argues that 

a training in philosophy is needed, as the good is highly abstract. Aristotle argues that 

the knowledge is so practical that it can’t be taught, but requires experience. 

 ● Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean claims that virtuous traits, choices and emotions 

commonly lie between two vices. However, this is little use in helping us discover what 

is virtuous, since the mean is not the ‘middle’ nor the ‘average’ nor the ‘moderate’. 

● Virtue theory can’t provide a method for making morally good decisions, though 

thinking in terms of the virtues can be helpful. If the virtues conflict, only practical 

wisdom will help. 

● To know what is good, Plato and Aristotle argue, you must first acquire virtues of 

character. This depends on being brought up well. 

● We may object that this makes moral knowledge and the good life available only to 

some people, and outside their control. Whether this undermines moral responsibility 

depends on whether people have enough moral knowledge to judge what is good or 

bad. 

● Aristotle argues that an action is virtuous only if it comes ‘naturally’ to the agent. But 

finding it difficult to do the right thing and doing it anyway also seems virtuous. 

 
Virtue theory: claims that ethics focus on how we should live and what traits of character we should develop to live 
well. 

Virtue theory: the focus on how we should live, the cultivation of virtues and flourishing 

This is a normative theory that puts much more prominence on agents, their characters, and their motives. 
Virtue ethics maintains that virtuous motives either make actions right, or are needed in order for us to see and 
be moved to do what is right. Virtues are regarded as excellences – of character and of the intellect – that can 
be developed through education and training. For Aristotle, virtues were a mid-point between excesses of 
feeling or desire. 

‘cardinal’ virtues: 

of intellect: move relevant to morality, practical wisdom, what is right/wrong 

of character: how we think, feel, react, what choices we makes 

soul 

reason : wisdom 

spirit : courage 

desire : temperance or self-control 

justice : make people to decide “what is right” 

PLATO: Why should we be just? 

 
justice is it’s own reward 
our souls is just, they are right, healthy 
 
‘living well’ – ​eudaimonia​– has been translated as ‘happiness’. But the idea is more like ‘flourishing’.We have an idea 
of what it is for a plant or animal to ‘flourish’; we can provide an analysis of its needs and when those needs are met in 
abundance. According to virtue theory, moral philosophy is interested in the ‘good life’ for human beings as the 
particular sorts of beings we are.What it is to live well is based on objective judgements about human nature. 

Meta-ethics
● Morality: objective, relative or emotive? (Chrisman & Pritchard, 2014)
● Ch. 14. The divine command theory (Dupré, 2007)

Metaethics​: A subdivision of ethics that attempts to make sense of ethical thought and practice, by trying to explain
and therefore capture some essential features that such thought and practice are supposed to have. In this metaethics
resembles philosophy of religion, insofar as the latter can be viewed as trying to make sense of another distinctively
human endeavour – religious belief and ritual.

Metaethics is about the nature and practice of morality.

• Metaethical theories try to explain the essential features of morality. These include the fact that people
disagree about moral matters, think that moral questions have right and wrong answers, and that morality and
action are closely connected.
• The fact of moral disagreement seems to cast doubt upon the objectivity of morality, and favour some form
of subjectivism. However, in fact, objective accounts are better placed to explain moral disagreement.
• Moral relativism holds that morality is relative to cultures or other groups; a different form of subjectivism
holds that morality is a matter of subjective opinion.
• Objectivist accounts struggle to explain what rightness and wrongness are; these cannot be natural properties,
and the idea that they are non-natural is mysterious.
• Objectivist accounts also struggle to explain the connection between moral judgement and motivation.

Objectivism - view that some moral principles are valid for everyone 
Objectivism says that our moral judgments are definitely in the realm of truth and falsity – they’re attempts at getting 
the objective facts about morality right. This view purports to make sense of our intuitions about statements like ‘The 
actions of Pol Pot were morally abhorrent’, but it faces the objection that it cannot explain the intuitive difference 
between disputes about empirical facts and about moral issues. 
 
A naturalist conception of meaning in life according to which a life is meaningful just insofar as it engages with 
conditions that are good in themselves, apart from whether anyone thinks they are good, likes them or decides to 
pursue them. The view that one’s life can be meaningful in virtue of mind-independent features, i.e. not because of 
one’s believing that it is meaningful, desiring it or having chosen it. 
 
 
Cultural relativism - an action is right if one’s culture approves it 
This is the view that moral statements and judgments are true or false but only relative to the culture in which 
they are made. 
 
Subjective relativism - an action is morally right if one approves it 
Relativism says that our moral judgments are in the realm of truth and falsity, but their truth and falsity is covertly 
relative to something like our subjective moral attitudes or our cultural norms. This view purports to make sense of our 
intuitions about morally relevant practices that seem to differ between very different cultures or people – e.g. 
polygamy. However, it faces the objection that it cannot make sense of moral progress.  
 
A naturalist conception of meaning in life according to which a life is meaningful just insofar as it engages with 
conditions that are thought to be meaningful, liked or chosen. The view that one’s life can be meaningful solely in 
virtue of mind-dependent features, such as one’s believing that it is meaningful or desiring it. 
 
Emotivism - moral judgements are expressive of emotions and 
preferences and are intended to affect the feelings of others  
Emotivism says that our moral judgments are not really beliefs in matters of fact at all but rather the moral attitudes 
themselves. The statements which express them are not statements of fact but expressions of emotive attitudes. This 
view makes sense of the way our moral views seem to be evaluative and so capable of motivating action in a 
distinctive way. For that, however, it faces the objection that it cannot make sense of the possibility of reasoning 
rationally about some moral question. 

Divine command theory of morality​: The view that moral rules that apply to at least all human persons are identical
to the expression of God’s will, such that wrong actions are those that God has forbidden and right ones are those that
God has permitted. This view entails that if God did not exist, then there would be no universally binding moral rules
on us.

Aesthetics
● What is art? (Pritchard, 2016)
● Ch. 37. The intentional fallacy (Dupré, 2007)

• Philosophers have sought to define the concept art, as a means of understanding what art is. They have aimed to do
this by offering either a limited set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions of art; or, less
ambitiously, a set of necessary conditions only.
• They have also aimed to offer definitions that satisfy the ‘critical practice constraint’; i.e. accommodate current
classificatory practices within the community of artists, critics, and other relevant experts. This has proved
challenging, given the wide diversity of entities classified by that community as artworks.
• This diversity has caused theorists in recent times to focus on searching, not on manifest properties shared by all
artworks, but non-manifest ones, and more specifically, non-manifest relational ones. Two important definitions of
art that focus on non-manifest relational properties of objects are (a) functional definitions and (b) procedural
definitions.
• George Dickie’s institutional definition is a famous version of the latter. Amongst others, it faces worries about
whether the artworld counts as a genuine institution with the power to transform objects into artworks in the way
required by the definition. It also faces worries about whether it can account for the value of art in our lives.
• A different approach is to reject the search for a definition of art altogether, and argue that art is not governed by
any (interesting) necessary conditions. This antiessentialism about art might be motivated by the thought that
individual art forms, rather than the general category of art, are the important explanatory unit; or by the thought that
art is a family resemblance concept. The latter view looks to be supported by the critical practice constraint alluded to
earlier.

They have also aimed to offer definitions that satisfy the critical ​practice constraint​— i.e. to accommodate
current classificatory practices within the community of artists, critics and other relevant experts.

This has been challenging, given the wide diversity of entities classified by that community as artworks.
Necessary conditions​of art would be conditions that all artworks had to satisfy, to count as art at all.
As necessary conditions, the conditions would say what all artworks had in common;

Sufficient conditions​of art would be conditions that, if all of them were satisfied by an object, would be
sufficient or enough to qualify that object as an artwork.
as jointly sufficient ones, they would say what distinguished artworks from all other things.

philosophers bent on defining art aim to say, at least, what all artworks have in common; and perhaps, more
ambitiously, what differentiates art from all other things as well. A further constraint usually endorsed upon
any definition is that it be in tune with widespread current art-historical and critical practice. This is sometimes
called the ‘critical practice constraint’. It would not be convincing to say, for instance, that all artworks are
necessarily made in studios, or that all art is made to look pretty.

successful definitions of art should accommodate at least most, and ideally all, of the objects about whose
art-status there is consensus in the community of art experts.

family resemblance concept​: that is to say, some artworks have properties in common with certain other
artworks, but there are no properties common or necessary to all artworks. (Weitz thinks this is also true of art
form concepts, so would presumably reject Lopes’s account for this reason.)

THE DIVERSITY OF EXISTING ARTWORKS

On the face of it, this makes the task of the would-be definer of art very difficult, in conjunction with a further
fact: there is an apparently vast and diverse range of objects counted by experts as artworks.

‘fine arts’​– painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and poetry, which, according to a famous text by Paul
Kristeller, ‘The Modern System of the Arts’ (1951), were identified for the first time as a significant group in
the eighteenth century.

If one’s focus is on the perceptible and manifest properties of such works, as experienced by a viewer or
listener engaged with them, it already appears difficult to find properties common to all of these objects. After
all, they cross sense modalities (vision, hearing, touch), media (canvas, marble, paper), and systems of
representation (written language, musical notation, depiction). Relatively recent events in art history make the
task yet more difficult. In the twentieth century there was an explosion in the development of new art forms,
and movements acknowledged as important by the artistic community. Partly these were driven by
technological development: for instance, in the case of photography and cinema. Partly they were driven by
recognition that the formation of the traditional artistic ‘canon’ has been influenced by prejudicial factors, such
as the devaluation of the experiences and activities of women and people of colour. For instance, it was noticed
that items traditionally considered, in virtue of their useful functional role, to be ‘craft’ objects, and so
disqualified as art, were often those most likely to be made and used by women; women whose historical
confinement to the home had deprived them of the time, economic means or social influence needed to
produce objects destined for galleries and concert-halls. Observations such as this led to an expansion of
accepted artforms, to include many craft objects and decorative items formerly excluded in principle. A
notable example is quilts.

mass-produced ​‘readymades’ ​were presented as artworks as a reaction to the idea of the artist as highly skilled
artisan;

conceptual art​, including the use of performances and of textual descriptions, was developed in order to
undermine the idea that an artwork must be a perceptible material object;

the development of ​atonal music​was a rejection of historically dominant Western norms governing classical
music composition; and

symbolism ​ was developed as a contrast to the dominant naturalistic and realist aspirations of
French literature at the time.
FROM MANIFEST TO NON-MANIFEST PROPERTIES

manifest properties (those one can perceive) and non-manifest ones (those one can’t)

Diversity has led theorists in recent times to stop searching for ​manifest properties​shared by all artworks (i.e. those
one can perceive).
the focus has been on ​ non-manifest properties​(i.e. those one cannot perceive).
specifically, there has been the most interest in ​non-manifest relational​properties (i.e. ones that one cannot perceive
and that are constituted by the object’s standing in relation to other instances)

Functional definition of art​: A definition of art which cites some function(s) as necessary and/or sufficient
conditions for something counting as an artwork.

Functions are non-manifest properties, because you can’t always tell by perceiving a thing what its function is. They
are relational properties because what function(s) a thing has usually depends on either ​(a) a relation to the intention
its maker had in making it, with respect to its use; or (b) a relation to its actual use by people; or both.

functional definitions of art tend to be hampered by the wide variety of objects counted as art by experts. This
diversity means that whatever function is offered as necessary for art, it must be suitably generally characterised, so
as to fit all the objects.

Procedural definition of art​: A definition of art which cites some procedure(s) as necessary and/or sufficient
conditions for something counting as an artwork.
As long as the quest is for a set of common perceptible or manifest properties, the prospects of finding any common
set of properties shared by all has looked hopeless. In relatively recent times, a different tack has been taken to the
task of definition, which I shall now explore.

you usually can’t tell by perceiving a thing what procedures it has undergone.

The (alleged) mistake of supposing that the meaning and value of a work can be determined by such factors is called
the ​
‘intentional fallacy’.​Describe the problem inherent in trying to judge a work of art by assuming the intent or
purpose of the artist who created it.

‘One doesn’t need to know the artist’s private intentions. The work tells all.’ Susan Sontag

DICKIE’S ​INSTITUTIONAL​DEFINITION OF ART

The most well-known procedural definition, George Dickie’s institutional definition of art, says that an artwork is an
artefact which has had a particular status conferred upon it – the status of being ‘a candidate for appreciation’.
Moreover, this status must have been conferred by some person(s) acting on behalf of an institution: the institution
of ‘the artworld’.

anti-essentialist approach

A different approach is to ​reject​the search for a definition of art altogether, and argue that art is not governed by
any (interesting) necessary conditions

This ​
anti-essentialism​about art might be motivated by the thought that individual art forms, rather than the general
category of art, are the important explanatory unit; or by the thought that art is a ​family resemblance concept

Family resemblance concept​: A concept not governed by necessary membership conditions, common to all, but
rather by partial similarities between some of the things that fall under it.
The latter view looks to be supported by the critical practice constraint alluded to earlier — for the critical practice
constraint forces the would-be definer to focus on the actual classificatory practices of the artistic community

Philosophy of science
● Ch. 89. Sir Karl Popper’s Demarcation Argument
Ch. 90. Kuhn’s Incommensurability Arguments
● Ch. 91. Putnam’s No Miracles Argument ​ (Bruce & Barbone, 2011)

Demarcation criterion​: A demarcation criterion would be a criterion that allows us to distinguish between science
and pseudo-science (or non-science). Karl Popper thought that falsifiability constituted a demarcation criterion. While
the demarcation problem continues to be relevant – not least since many pseudo-sciences try hard to emulate the
hallmarks of science – it is now believed that no single (e.g. logical) characteristic can be isolated as ‘the’
distinguishing feature of science.

Falsifiability​: For a statement (e.g. a prediction) to be falsifiable, it must have the potential to be refuted by empirical
evidence – that is, by some possible observation. Falsifiability, according to Karl Popper, is a central feature of
science. If a claim, or theory, is falsifiable, this does not mean that it is false, merely that it could be seen to be false if
certain observations were to occur.

According to Popper, a theory is scientific only if it makes predictions that can be tested and potentially shown to be
false. If a theory is not falsifiable in this way and can only be confirmed with cumulative supporting evidence, then it
is pseudo - scientific.
The problem which troubled me at the time was neither, “ When is a theory true? ”nor, “ When is a theory
acceptable? ”My problem was different. I wished to distinguish between science and pseudo - science; knowing very
well that science often errs, and that pseudoscience may happen to stumble on the truth. ( Conjectures, 44)
The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of
error. But science is one of the very few human activities –perhaps the only one –in which errors are systematically
criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our
mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there. ( Conjectures, 293)

P1​
. If a theory is scientific, then it makes claims or predictions that could be shown to be false.
P2​
. A theory that warrants only confirmation (and ignores falsifying evidence) cannot be shown to be false.
C1​
. A theory that can only be confirmed and not falsified is not scientific but pseudo - scientific ( modus tollens, P1,
P2).

Kuhn

P1. ​If an emerging paradigm becomes the dominant one not by scientific proof but by majority acceptance or
intuitive appeal, then the transition from one paradigm to another is not rationally decided.
P2.​An emerging paradigm becomes dominant by majority acceptance or intuitive appeal.
C1​. The transition from one paradigm to another is not rationally decided ( modus ponens, P1, P2).

Incommensurability​ : Incommensurability, in Thomas Kuhn’s theory of science, refers to our inability, following a
paradigm shift, to grasp fully the content of previous scientific theories and practices. On a broad interpretation of
‘incommensurability’, this would affect our view of scientific practices in general – e.g. divergent views on what
constitutes a scientific problem or an adequate experimental method. On a narrow interpretation, incommensurability
renders the meaning of scientific terms untranslatable across theory changes, since a paradigm shift affects not only
the explicit theoretical content of science, but also tacit assumptions, expectations, and conventions. As a result,
comparisons between past and present scientific theories may be rendered inconclusive or even impossible.

P1.​Scientific terms refer to things and have meaning through a network of meaning.
P2.​If paradigms were commensurable, then terms would still refer to the same things in new paradigms; for example,
“ mass ”in Newton’s theories would be equivalent to “ mass ”in Einstein’s theories.
P4.​Terms do not refer to the same things in new paradigms; for example, “ mass ”is not equivalent in Newton ’ s and
Einstein’s theories (and neither is a special case of the other), and some things (e.g., phlogiston) are eliminated
outright.
C1.​Paradigms are incommensurable ( modus tollens, P2, P4).
P5.​If paradigms are incommensurable, then science does not more closely approximate the truth over time.
C2.​Science does not more closely approximate the truth over time ( modus ponens, P5, C1).

Putnam ’ No-miracles argument​: The no-miracles argument asserts that the truth, or approximate truth, of our
current scientific theories is the best explanation of their explanatory, predictive and technological success. If our
theories had no basis in objective reality, their success would be a ‘miracle’.

The positive argument for realism is that it is the only philosophy that does not make the success of science a
miracle. (Putnam, 73)

P1​
. If a scientific theory yields accurate observational predictions, then it must be (at least approximately) true.
P2​
. Many of our scientific theories yield accurate observational predictions.
C1​. Many of our scientific theories must be (at least approximately) true; otherwise, the success of science would be
miraculous ( modus ponens, P1, P2).

Verification principle​is the doctrine that a proposition is only cognitively meaningful if it can be definitively and
conclusively determined to be either true or false (i.e. verifiable or falsifiable). It has been hotly disputed amongst
Verificationists whether this must be possible in practice or merely in principle.

Verificationism is often used to rule out as meaningless much of the traditional debate in areas of Philosophy of
Religion, Metaphysics, and Ethics, because many philosophical debates are made over the truth of unverifiable
sentences. It is the concept underlying much of the doctrine of Logical Positivism, and is an important idea in
Epistemology, Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Language.

Philosophy of Mind Part 1

● Lavelle J.S. What is it to have a mind? (Chrisman & Pritchard, 2014)

● An account of what it is to have a mind must accommodate two things: (a) how our minds can cause changes
in our bodies, and how changes in our bodies can cause changes to our minds; and (b) how our thoughts can
be about things.
● René Descartes thought that the mind is distinct from the body. This view is Cartesian dualism.
● Descartes’ main argument for this view – the argument from doubt – does not work.
● Cartesian dualism also cannot explain our first criterion for what an account of the mind should do: it cannot
explain the causal relations that exist between our minds and our bodies
● Physicalism is the view that everything that exists is physical, and as such can solve the problem of causation.
● The identity theory is a physicalist view which claims that mental states are identical to (one and the same as)
physical brain states.
● Functionalism is the view that something counts as a mind if it functions like one, and we should not be
concerned with what a mind is made of
● Turing’s imitation game accepts functionalism, and tests the hypothesis that something functions as a mind if
it can trick another person into believing that it is minded.
● One way of developing functionalism is to say that minds are computers, because like computers their
function is to process information.
● Searle’s Chinese room argument challenges the claim that minds are computers by showing us that (a) this
view is unable to address how thoughts can be about things, and (b) that in order for a process to be
 computational, there must be someone who interprets it as being so. There is no such person in the case of the
mind.
● The extended mind hypothesis builds on functionalism to show that mental states need not be located in our
heads. Instead, they can extend out into the world.

Theories of mind:
1. Substance (Cartesian) Dualism
2. Identity theory
3. Functionalism

Features of mind:
1. Causation:​mind explains how my mental states can bring about changes in my body (my desire for tea, in
combination with various other mental states, brings about my reaching for my mug), and how changing
physical states of my body can effect changes in my mental states (e.g. taking an aspirin relieves my
headache).
2. ‘Aboutness’: ​ an account of the mind should accommodate is how it is that we can have thoughts about things

1.Substance dualism (René Descartes)​:it posits two kinds of substance: ​material substances​occupy a certain
amount of space (and our bodies and everything else in the world are composed of them), while ​immaterial
substances​do not occupy any space. According to Cartesian dualism, ​minds are made of immaterial ‘thinking’
substance w​ hich does not occupy space. As a consequence, the part of me that thinks exists independently of the
body. Cartesian dualism answers the Question by claiming that ​having a mind requires having an immaterial
‘thinking’ substance​.
According to substance dualism animals are mechanical automatos.
Argument from doubt (Second Meditations):
I can doubt the existence of my body (Descartes claims that he can imagine having no body at all while his
mental life persists. Therefore, having a mind must be distinct from having a body because we can imagine one
existing without the other.)
I cannot doubt the existence of my thoughts (my mind) (In order for there to be thoughts, there has to be someone
who is doing the thinking. And, in order for there to be doubts, there must be someone who is doing the doubting.
Therefore, although I can doubt that the world exists, I cannot doubt that whatever it is that is doing the doubting,
exists.)
Conclusion. Therefore, my mind must be made of something fundamentally different from everything else around
me.
Leibniz’s law​states that two things are identical (one and the same) if and only if they share all the same properties.
By Leibniz’s law, the mind and the body cannot be one and the same thing, because they differ in their properties. If
the mind and the body are one and the same thing then they must share all the same properties. But the mind and the
body do not share all the same properties because one can doubt the existence of the body but one cannot doubt the
existence of the mind

Objections to dualism:
1. A challenge to the argument from doubt
Imagine that I am unaware that Dr Jekyll is Mr Hyde. It is generally correct to state that if two things have different
properties then those two things are distinct. But this doesn’t hold once we throw psychological terms in there,
because my beliefs might not map on to how the world actually is. I believe that Dr Jekyll has the property of being
kind, and I believe that Mr Hyde lacks this property (being a murdering psychopath), and I infer from these beliefs
that because Dr Jekyll has a property that Mr Hyde lacks, they must be distinct people. This believing, however, does
not preclude the possibility that they are identical. It may be the case that I can doubt the existence of my body and I
cannot doubt the existence of my mind, but as the example of Jekyll and Hyde shows, such doubting is not enough to
show that the two are distinct.
2. Argument from causation\problem of interaction (Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia)
How can Cartesian dualism explain mental causation, from the mind to the body and from the body to the mind?
Substances of different kinds do not seem able to causally interact. ​Descartes ​said that the mind is tethered to the
body at the pineal gland and all mind-body interactions are filtered through it.

Mind-Body interaction:
 1. Interactionism ​(the dualist view that mind and body have an effect on each other)
2. Epiphenomenalism ​(one-way causal relationship; physical states can be caused by other physical states, ​and
physical events in the brain can cause mental states, but mental states cannot cause physical states​
)
3. Pre-established harmony​(​t​here is no mind-body interaction, but only a non-causal relationship of harmony,
parallelism, or correspondence between mind and body​​which just as two clocks can tick in time with each
other without interaction and without perpetual interference maintaining a connection between them, but
purely because each is properly constructed, so a creating God can from the beginning ensure the harmony
between this elements​)

Physicalism ​ - the view that the world is made only of physical stuff and everything which exists can be explained by
physics.
What mary didn’t know (Frank Jackson): ​thought experiment of Mary, a woman who has spent her entire life in a
black and white room, learning everything via a black and white television. While locked in this room, Mary becomes
a neurophysicist specializing in the science of color. ​When Mary finally walks out of the room and sees color for the
first time, has Mary learned something new? ​Jackson devised this thought experiment as an argument against
reductive physicalism. Because, Jackson says, the qualitative experience of seeing a color – say, red – isn't the same
as knowing facts about red. If everything could be explained in terms of the physical, then when Mary finally saw
red, it wouldn’t have contributed to her understanding at all.

Identity theory (​ U.T. Place, Herbert Feigl, and J.J.C. Smart​)​- physicalist view that our mental states are identical
with physical states.
The example most loved by philosophers is that the mental state of pain is identical with the activity of C-fibres (pain
is C-fibres firing). ​The identity theory cheerfully accepts that everything which exists is material, and thus interaction
between the mind and the body is possible.
Advantages of identity theory:
1. It solves Descartes’ problem by reducing the mental realm to the physical. The identity theory, however, is
able to explain the causal efficiency of mental states in agreement with the assumption that the domain of
physical phenomena is causally closed
2. It highlights the role of empirical investigations about the mind and mind-brain correlations.
Objections​ :
1. Multiple realizability (Hilary Putnam ‘The Nature of Mental States’)​: it ​asserts that mental states can be
realized in multiple kinds of systems, not just brains, for example. Since the identity theory identifies mental
events with certain brain states, it does not allow for mental states to be realized in organisms or
computational systems that do not have a brain (e.g. the brain states that relate to pain are different in different
species, but pain is the same mental state)
2. Philosophical zombies (David Chalmers):​A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind
and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it
lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience. For example, a philosophical zombie could be poked with a
sharp object, and not feel any pain sensation, but yet, behave exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say "ouch"
and recoil from the stimulus, or say that it is in intense pain).

Functionalism ​ -mental states are identified by what they do rather than by what they are made of (Putnam).And the
function of mental states is to be caused by sensory stimuli and prior mental states, and to cause behaviour and new
mental states. Mental states are internal states that change in accordance with stimulation received from our senses
and other internal states that we happen to be in. On a functionalist view our minds are
also information-processing machines: they take information provided by our senses and other mental states which
we have, process it, and produce new behaviours and mental states.

Turing test\imitation game (Alan Turing)

Objection to the functionalism: Chinese room (John Searle):​His aim was to use the thought experiment to probe
our intuitions about mindedness by pointing to a fundamental issue facing the view that the mind is a computing
machine. Computers work by processing symbols. Symbols have ​syntactic ​and ​semantic ​properties. ​Their syntactic
properties are their geometric properties, e.g. shape. ​‘Syntax’ also refers to the set of rules by which these symbols
can be manipulated in accordance with their shape.​Their semantic property is what they mean, or what they stand
for.​Searle concludes that a computational theory of mind fails to explain how our mental states have meaning or
‘aboutness’, causing it to fail our second requirement of an account of what it is to have a mind. Minds have a feature
which computers do not have: computers do not have ‘aboutness’, they do not have an understanding of what the
symbols they manipulate stand for. If minds have a feature which computers do not have, then the claim that our
minds are computing machines fails.

Extended mind theory (Andy Clark, David Chalmers): Clark and Chalmers take this a step further to suggest that
mental states might not even be located in our heads (e.g.Otto has a form of Alzheimer’s disease and to cope with the
effect this has on his memory he writes information down in a notebook which he carries wherever he goes). Clark
and Chalmers claim that Otto’s notebook plays the same functional role for him as biological memory does for
another person. Their claim is that we should not limit mentality to only those processes that go on in our heads. The
hypothesis has also shaped a new movement known as ‘embodied cognition’, the view that our bodies as well as our
brains can constitute part of the cognitive process.

Personal Identity
● Ch. 1. Personal Identity ​(Conee & Sider, 2014)

Setting aside souls, let’s turn to scientific theories, which ​base personal identity on natural phenomena.​One
such theory uses the concept of ​spatiotemporal​continuity. Consider the identity over time of an inanimate
object such as a baseball. A pitcher holds a baseball and starts his windup; moments later, a baseball is in the
catcher’s mitt. Are the baseballs the same? How will we decide? It is easiest if we have kept our eyes on the
ball

The ​
spatiotemporal continuity theory​says that spatiotemporal continuity is indeed the essence of personal
identity, not just that it is a good practical guide. Personal identity just is spatiotemporal continuity.

A continuous series ​— ​a series of locations in space and time​containing a baseball, the first in the pitcher’s
hand, later locations in the intervening places and times, and the final one in the catcher’s mitt—convinces us
that the catcher’s baseball is the same as the pitcher’s. If we observe no such continuous series, we may
suspect that the baseballs are different. Now, we don’t usually need this method to identify a person over time,
since most people look very different from one another, but it could come in handy when dealing with
identical twins. Want to know whether it is Billy Bob or Bobby Bill in the jail cell? First compile information
from surveillance tape or informants. Then, using this information, trace a continuous series from the person in
the jail backward in time, and see which twin it leads to.

https://www.iep.utm.edu/person-i/

ANIMALISM
We are organisms. This does not imply that all organisms, or even all human organisms, are people […]. Being a
person may be only a temporary property of you, like being a student. Nor does animalism imply that all people are
organisms. It is consistent with the existence of wholly inorganic people: gods or angels or conscious robots. It does
not say that being an animal is part of what it is to be a person (a view defended in Wiggins 1980: 171 and Wollheim
1984: ch. 1 and criticized in Snowdon 1996). Animalism leaves the answer to the personhood question entirely open.
(It is consistent, for instance, with Locke’s definition quoted in section 2.)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/
Free Will
● Ch. 6. Free Will and Determinism ​(Conee & Sider, 2014)
Nota bene.​Determinism is not fatalism!

Free will is the unique ability of persons to exercise the strongest sense of control over their actions
necessary for moral responsibility. (p.6)

Free will: The capacity of an agent to choose between options in a way that freely exercises the will of the
agent and such that the agent can be held responsible for that action. It is controversial in what free will
consists, for instance, in whether it requires that causal determinism is false, or instead requires that the action
somehow issues from the agent in an appropriate manner.

McKenna, Michael, and Derk Pereboom. 2016. Free Will: A Contemporary Introduction. Routledge
Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

By freedom of will is meant freedom of action. I have freedom of action at a

time if more than one alternative is then open to me. (p.90)

Ginet, Carl. 1990. On Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Free will is the power to be the ultimate creator and sustainer of one’s own
ends and purposes. (p.4)

Kane, Robert. 1996. The Significance of Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

We ‘feel’ that we are free; that we are the originators of our own actions
We need to be free in order to be responsible for our actions; our practices of praise and blame
presuppose that we are free
(compare the kleptomaniac to the ordinary thief)

Free will may be defined as the power to perform

free actions. But what does ‘free action’ mean?

Universal causation: every event – everything that happens or occurs – has a cause
Even if we don’t know the cause, we don’t allow that something ‘just happened’
Causal necessity: given the total set of conditions under which the cause occurs, only one effect is
possible

Our actions are events.

Therefore, they have causes.
Given the causes they have, no action is possible other than what we actually do.
If we couldn’t do any other action, then we do not have free will, e.g. to choose between doing different
actions.

Baron d’Holbach: the brain is material; its actions (e.g., thought, will) are dictated by physical laws, heredity,
and environment

every event has a cause. This fact is known as determinism.

The thesis that the combination of a complete statement of the laws of nature and a complete description
of the condition of the entire universe at any point in time logically entails a complete description of the
condition of the entire universe at any other point in time.
Our belief in determinism is reasonable because we have all seen science succeed, again and again, in its
search for the underlying causes of things. Technological innovations owe their existence to science:
skyscrapers, vaccination, rocket ships, the internet. Science seems to explain everything we
observe: the changing of the seasons, the movement of the planets, the inner workings of plants and animals.
Given this track record, we reasonably expect the march of scientific progress to continue; we expect that
science will eventually discover the causes of everything.

To see why, we must first investigate the concepts of ​cause and effect.​A cause is an earlier event that makes a
later effect happen. Given the laws of nature,1 once the cause has occurred, the effect must occur. Lightning
causes thunder: the laws of nature governing electricity and sound guarantee that, when lightning strikes,
thunder will follow.
Determinism says that Hitler’s invasion of Poland was caused by some earlier event. So far, there is little to
threaten Hitler’s freedom. The cause of the invasion might be something under Hitler’s control, in which case
the invasion would also be under his control. For instance, the cause might be a decision that Hitler made just
before the invasion. If so, then it seems we can still blame Hitler for ordering the invasion.

But now consider this decision itself. It is just another event. So determinism implies that it too must have a
cause. This new cause might be an even earlier decision Hitler made, or something his advisers told him, or
something he ate, or, more likely, a combination of many factors. Whatever it is, call this cause of Hitler’s
decision to invade Poland ‘c’. Notice that c also caused the invasion of Poland. For as we saw above, a cause is
an earlier event that makes a later event happen. Once c occurred, Hitler’s decision had to occur; and once that
decision occurred, the invasion had to occur. We can repeat this reasoning indefinitely. Determinism implies
that c must have an earlier cause c1, which in turn must have an earlier cause c2, and so on.

The rejection of free will in the face of determinism is called ​hard determinism.
(or metaphysical determinism) is a view on free will which holds that determinismis true, and that it is
incompatible with free will, and, therefore, that free will does not exist.

Free will is not compatible with determinism

Determinism is true
So, we do not have free will

HARD DETERMINISTS are ​incompatibilists​who hold that determinism is true

Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about
man’s illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.
Einstein

Let us imagine a man who, while standing on the street, would say to himself: ‘It is six o’clock in the evening,
the working day is over. Now I can go for a walk, or I can go to the club; I can also climb up the tower to see
the sun set; I can go to the theatre; I can visit this friend or that one; indeed, I also can run out of the gate, into
the wide world and never return. All this is strictly up to me; in this I have complete freedom. But still, I shall
do none of these things now, but with just as free a will I shall go home to my wife.’ This is exactly as if water
spoke to itself: ‘I can make high waves (yes! in the sea during a storm), I can rush down hill (yes! in the river
bed), I can plunge down foaming and gushing (yes! in the fountain) I can, finally, boil away and disappear
(yes! at certain temperature); but I am doing none of these things now, and am voluntarily remaining quiet and
clear in the reflecting pond.
(​Schopenhauer, On the Freedom of The Wil​l)

Incompatibilists​believe freedom is not compatible with determinism; if determinism is true, then one cannot
be held truly free and responsible for one’s actions

Incompatibilists say:
For our actions to be free, it must be the case that, when we act, we could do otherwise(CDO) than we actually
do

Hard incompatibilism​. ​Hard incompatibilism​, like ​hard​determinism, is a type of skepticism about

free will. '​
Hard incompatibilism​' is a term coined by Derk Pereboom to designate the view that both
determinism and indeterminism are incompatible with having free will and moral responsibility.

Libertarians believe
We do have free will
Free will is not compatible with determinism
Determinism is therefore false

Agent causation is Incompatibilist view of Free Will and was adopted by Libertarians:​ they hope that agent
causation gives to the agent a kind or degree of control over their actions that would be missing were actions
event-caused (deterministically or indeterministically). A very few compatibilist theorists have also advanced
agent-causal theories. The existence and the conceptual coherence of agent causation is subject to dispute.

Indeterminism​is the concept that events (certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or not
caused deterministically by prior events. It is the opposite of determinism and related to chance.

COMPATIBILISTS​believe that freedom and responsibility are in every significant sense compatible with
determinism; thus there is no conflict between determinism and free will

Compatibilist responses:
Interpret the CDO-condition of freedom as having a hypothetical or conditional meaning, i.e.

To say one ‘could have done otherwise’ is to say that one would have done otherwise had things been different
(given a different set of beliefs, desires, etc.)

Thomas Hobbes suggested that freedom consists in there being no external impediments to an agent doing
what he wants to do: “A free agent is he that can do as he will, and forbear as he will, and that liberty is the
absence of external impediments.”

SOFT DETERMINISTS​are compatibilists who believe determinism is true

Classical Compatibilists: Hobbes, Hume, Mill
Modern Compatibilists: Ayer, Dennett, Frankfurt

Determinism is true
Free will exists
There is no tension between these claims
If some people see a tension here, it is because they are misunderstanding the notions of freedom and
determinism, of ‘free-choice’ and ‘causal necessity’

Dennett's three levels:

Physical stance
Design stance
Intentional stance
Meaning of life
● Part IX: The Meaning of Life P. 319-321.
Ch. 28: How might a meaningful life be possible in a purely physical world? P. 347-358. (Pritchard, 2016)

• A naturalist theory differs from a supernaturalist one in that the former denies that a spiritual realm is necessary for
life to be meaningful; according to naturalism, a significant existence can be had in a purely physical world as known
by science.
• There are three major kinds of naturalist theories, namely, subjectivism, objectivism and a combination of the two,
hybrid theory.
• According to subjectivism, what is meaningful varies from person to person, depending on her particular beliefs,
interests and decisions. Although this view makes good sense of the relevance of passion and authenticity for
meaning in life, and why there are many different types of meaningful lives possible, it has counterintuitive
implications about which lives can be meaningful. condition that says that meaning involves engaging with the
(worthy) object of love in a positive way is meant to make clear that mere passive recognition and a positive attitude
toward an object’s or activity’s value is not sufficient for a meaningful life. One must be able to be in some sort of
relationship with the valuable object of one’s attention – to create it, protect it, promote it, honor it, or more generally,
to actively affirm it in some way or other.
• According to objectivism, there are mind-independent factors that determine whether something is meaningful or
not, about which individuals can be mistaken. Although this view readily avoids the most serious counterintuitive
implications about which lives can be meaningful, it fails to make good sense of the relevance of passion and
authenticity for meaning in life. In addition, the lack of consensus among rational inquirers with regard to the nature
of purportedly objective conditions suggests that there might not be any.
• According to the hybrid theory, meaning in life is a matter of subjective attraction to objective attractiveness, which
is the dominant view among contemporary philosophers mainly because it obtains most of the advantages of both
subjectivism and objectivism. However, subjectivists and objectivists continue to deny that both elements are
essential for the best theory of what makes life meaningful.
• Supernaturalists typically object to naturalism by invoking the arguments for its opposite.
In addition, contemporary supernaturalists tend to be sympathetic to the idea that, while some meaning would be
possible in a purely physical world, a deeper or greater kind of meaning would not be possible without God and/or a
soul.

1.Existence - that something is

2.Essence – what something is

Classical View:
Existence is accidental to essence.
The ‘margining’ of one’s existence depends on essence

Essence ------> Existence

* Plato’s forms
* Aristotle's eudaimonia

Existentialist View:

Existence determines essence

Meaning or essence is forged through an exiting form of life

Existence ------>Essence

Meaning is both
*Ungrounded
*Pluralistic

For ​Kierkegaard​, the only important entity is the “existing individual” and in his writings were intended to try to help
the existing individual lead a meaningful, fulfilled life Kierkegaard denies the possibility of a collective, social
solution to the problem of how to live one’s life.

Three spheres of existence:

1.Aesthetic sphere (despair)
2.Ethical sphere (despair*despair)
3.Religious sphere (despair³)

Is it possible to be a member of the human race without being either an aesthetic, ethical or religious person?
Yes, for Kierkegaard.
One could refuse to live a reflective, principled life.
If so, one would be a very poor specimen of a human being, according to Kierkegaard

Aesthetic sphere
“To live for oneself.”
The person living within the aesthetic sphere is concerned with personal satisfaction.
You'd either achieve your goals or not. In both cases you wouldn’t be happy

Ethical sphere
One in which the individual thinks in terms of what’s best for the community, ideally all, not just for himself or
herself.
An ethical life requires the individual to take others into account and perform those actions which would be best for
all concerned.
One thinks in terms of universals, absolutes, good and evil, rather than just what pleases or displeases oneself.
Where did these moral absolute come from?

Religious sphere
The ethical and the religious are intimately connected: a person can be ethically serious without being religious, but
the religious stage includes the ethical. Whereas living in the ethical sphere involves a commitment to some moral
absolute, living in the religious sphere involves a commitment and relation to the Christian God.
One believes in God, one has faith, in spite of – and actually because of – the absurdity or paradoxicalness of the
belief

if one is a believer, that with God all things are possible, even things which are physically and logically impossible.
Of course, this is irrational, but according to Kierkegaard, that is the nature of religious faith.
In The Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard argues that, from the perspective of the religious sphere, anyone who does
not have a relationship with God is, to some degree or other, in despair because he or she has not recognized or
accepted the eternal part of himself or herself.

Kierkegaard says that “without risk there is no faith.”

If we know that God exists, if we have proof of His existence, there would be no need of, or place for faith.
Since we don’t have proof of God’s existence, the possibility of faith exists.

"If there is no God, everything is permitted"

is widely attributed to Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov(Sartre was the first to do so in his Being and
Nothingness), he simply never said it.

If there is a God, then everything is permitted

Lacan

… man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the
existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later,
and then he will be what he makes of himself (p.28).
Jean-Paul Sartre ​ Existentialism and Humanism

For Sartre ​
‘abandonment’​means specifically abandonment by God. This doesn’t imply that God as a metaphysical
entity actually existed at some point, and went away: Sartre is echoing Nietzsche’s famous pronouncement: ‘God is
dead’. Nietzsche did not mean that God had once been alive, but rather that the belief in God was no longer a tenable
position in the late nineteenth century. By using the word ‘abandonment’ in a metaphorical way Sartre emphasises
the sense of loss caused by the realisation that there is no God to warrant our moral choices, no divinity to give us
guidelines as to how to achieve salvation. The choice of word stresses the solitary position of human beings alone in
the universe with no external source of objective value.

The main consequence of abandonment is, as we have seen, the absence of any objective source of moral law: Sartre
objected to the approach of some atheistic moralists who, recognising that God didn’t exist, simply clung to a secular
version of Christian morality without its Guarantor. In order to meet the criticism that without God there can be no
morality, Sartre develops his theory about the implications of freedom and the associated state of anguish.

Sartre believes wholeheartedly in the freedom of the will: he is strongly anti-deterministic about human choice,
seeing the claim that one is determined in one’s choices as a form of self-deception to which he gives the label ‘bad
faith’, a notion that plays an important role in ​Being and Nothingness​. Although he rejects the idea that human
beings have any essence, he takes the essence of human beings to be that they are free when he declares: “man is
free, man is freedom” (p. 34). The word ‘freedom’ would have had a particularly powerful appeal for people
recently freed from the Nazi Occupation. ‘Freedom’ is a word with extremely positive associations – hence its
frequent appropriation by politicians who redefine it to suit their own purposes. Yet Sartre states that we are
“condemned to be free” (p. 34), a deliberate oxymoron bringing out what he believes to be the great weight of
responsibility accompanying human freedom.

Not only am I responsible for everything that I am, but also when choosing any particular action I not only commit
myself to it but am choosing as ​“a legislator deciding for the whole of mankind” ​(p. 30). So, to take an example
Sartre uses, if I choose to marry and to have children I thereby commit not only myself but the whole of humankind
to the practice of this form of monogamy. This is in many ways reminiscent of Immanuel Kant's concept of
universalisability: the view that if something is morally right for one person to do, it must also be morally right for
anyone in relevantly similar circumstances . Sartre labels the experience of this extended responsibility (which he
takes to be an unavoidable aspect of the human condition) ​‘anguish’,​likening it to the feeling of responsibility
experienced by a military leader whose decisions have possibly grave consequences for the soldiers under his
command. Like Abraham whom God instructed to sacrifice his son, we are in a state of anguish performing actions,
the outcome of which we cannot ascertain, with a great weight of responsibility: ​“Everything happens to every man
as though the whole human race had its eyes fixed upon what he is doing and regulated its conduct
accordingly”​(p. 32).

Despair​, like abandonment and anguish, is an emotive term. Sartre means by it simply the existentialist’s attitude to
the recalcitrance or obstinacy of the aspects of the world that are beyond our control (and in particular other people:
in his play No Exit one of the characters declares “Hell is other people”). Whatever I desire to do, other people or
external events may thwart. The attitude of despair is one of stoic indifference to the way things turn out: “When
Descartes said ‘Conquer yourself rather than the world’, what he meant was, at bottom, the same – that we should act
without hope” (p.39). We cannot rely on anything which is outside our control, but this does not mean we should
abandon ourselves to inaction: on the contrary, Sartre argues that it should lead us to commit ourselves to a course of
action since there is no reality except in action.

Nineteenth-century thinkers ​Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche led to the existentialist movement​of the
twentieth century.

Existentialism: ​ A branch of philosophy typified by the French philosophers Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre that
was most influential in twentieth-century Europe, and was ​characterised by a focus on the individual person.​It
sought to comprehend the fundamental​nature of one’s existence and addressed one’s need to take responsibility
for one’s life in the face of unavoidable scepticism about God and objective values.

‘meaningfulness’​, maintaining that it deserves independent inquiry for being a positive value that is largely distinct
from other goods such as happiness, understood as pleasant experiences, and
morality​- behavior that does not merit guilt or censure.

NATURALIST THEORIES OF MEANING IN LIFE

a meaningful life is possible in the absence of anything spiritual, and merely in the physical world as known
particularly well by scientific means.

Defenders of naturalism need not be atheists or agnostics (even if many in fact are). Naturalists can coherently
believe that God and a soul exist, either on evidential grounds or merely on faith. What makes them naturalists is the
view that meaning in life is not exhausted by engaging with God or one’s soul, i.e., that meaning would be possible
even if these spiritual conditions did not exist. Just as it is possible to be a God-based theorist about meaning and an
atheist about God’s existence (the combination of which entails that life is meaningless), so there is no incoherence in
being a theist about God’s existence, but a naturalist about meaning.

subjectivism​, what makes a life meaningful varies substantially, depending on the subject. More carefully, it is the
view that what is meaningful for an individual depends entirely on her psychological orientations, that is, her beliefs,
desires and choices (which need not be contained in a soul). Such a view is ‘relativistic’, maintaining that there are no
universal standards for a meaningful life, and that meaning instead differs from person to person, roughly in terms of
whatever is ‘meaningful to’ a given person.
-Subjectivism, recall, is the view that what makes a life meaningful is relative to the individual, and is constituted by
her particular attitudes. For example, if one person finds gardening meaningful, likes doing it and chooses to do it,
then it is indeed meaningful for her. Gardening would not, by the present theory, be meaningful for someone who
thought it is a waste of time, did not enjoy it and elected to avoid it.

objectivism​, the view that an individual’s contingent attitudes do nothing to constitute what makes her life
meaningful. This kind of perspective is ‘absolutist’, a matter of contending that there are invariant standards of
meaning that apply to all human persons, regardless of what they think, like or decide (while denying that these
standards are constituted by the mind of God).

-Defenders of objectivism have a relatively easy time avoiding counterexamples of the sort that appear to apply to
subjectivism. Objectivists maintain that there are certain ways of being and functioning in the physical world that are
meaningful ‘in themselves’, apart from whether a particular person thinks they are meaningful, enjoys them or
chooses them. Whereas the subjectivist maintains that meaning is something that is created, the objectivist, in
contrast, contends that it is something that is discovered. From the latter perspective, there are mind-independent facts
about what is meaningful and what is not, about which individuals and even entire societies can be mistaken.

hybrid theory​, according to which meaning in life arises when both subjective and objective conditions come
together. Hybrid theorists maintain that there are objective standards for meaning in life, but that they confer meaning
on a person’s life when, and only when, she is subjectively attracted to them. According to this perspective, neither a
purely subjective nor a purely objective theory is adequate on its own.

-At this point, one can readily see why the hybrid version of naturalism is the most widely held theory these days.
According to this view, a person’s life is meaningful if and only if she is subjectively attracted to objectively
attractive projects. If a person is engaging in something objectively worthwhile, but does not love doing it, or is not
otherwise keen to do it, then she cannot obtain meaning from it. And if a person loves doing something, but it is not
objectively worthwhile, e.g. he loves being a serial killer, then, again, no meaning can come from it. According to
hybrid theorists, it is the combination of the subjective and the objective that is necessary and sufficient for meaning
in life; either one on its own is not enough for an attractive account. Since the hybrid theory includes an objective
component, it can avoid counterintuitive implications about behavior such as urinating in snow or eating ice cream
being meaningful if someone is ‘into’ that activity. And since it also includes a subjective component, it can account
for many of the motivations for subjectivism, e.g. the ideas that a meaningful life includes one with passion, varies
depending on the person’s interests, and involves being true to one’s inner nature. Although the hybrid theory is
powerful and commonly believed, it still gets attacked from both sides, as it were. Subjectivists contend that there are
no such things as objective conditions of meaning. Perhaps only God could create universal standards for human
beings, and it is unlikely that God exists, so many of them say, which means that we must be the ones to create our
own meaning in life. And from the other pole, objectivists maintain that, even if subjective elements do contribute to
a meaningful life, they are not necessary for it. A particularly strong example here is volunteering to be bored so that
others will not be bored.

James, ‘What Makes a Life Significant?’ According to James, a significant life is one in which a person passionately
and vigorously strives to ​realize an ideal​, where ‘ideals are relative to the lives that entertain them’. Do you think
there can be meaningless ideals, or is every ideal simply ‘meaningful to’ the person who champions it?

Robert Nozick (1938–2002) had one of the most imaginative and wide-ranging philosophical minds of the twentieth
century, and had been based at the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University. In one of his books, The
Examined Life (1989)
Susan Wolf (1952–), currently based at the University of North CarolinaChapel Hill, is one of the philosophers who
has most driven naturalist inquiry into life’s meaning since the mid 1990s. Her book devoted to the topic, Meaning in
Life and Why It Matters (2010)
QUESTIONS FROM TESTS
TEST 1
1. Maria is not ready for exam. In order to get a better grade she is planning to cheat. She justifies her plan with
the following argument: a good grade would make my parents and me happy, whereas nobody will suffer.
Maria thinks like ACT UTILITARIAN

2. What type of consequences do rule utilitarians asses in their moral reasoning?

Whether a rule, if generally followed, would maximize happiness.

Whether a particular act in accordance with this rule would maximize happiness for a maximum amount of people 0
act utilitarianism

3. (a) hypothetical imperative and (b) categorical imperative

A Stop wasting your time, if you don’t want to ruin your health.
B Do not take anything from strangers.

4. How we must see other people according to categorical imperative?

‘Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, ​
never
simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end​’.

5. Main aim for virtuous person (virtue ethics)?

Virtue theory: the focus on how we should live, ​the cultivation of virtues and flourishing

6. How, according to virtue ethics, people can know what is good and what is bad?
practical wisdom

7. Advocates Divine command theory argue that existence of moral laws proves
that categorical imperative created by God

8. Objectivist view on morality?

9. Our moral judgements are sort of things that can e true or false
Objectivism, subjectivism, cultural relativism (not emotivism)

TEST 2

1. Example of intentional fallacy

Artwork must be considered with regard to author biography.

2. Identity theorists accept:

Pain is C-fibers firing

3. Functionalists hold that content of belief determined by practical usefulness of that belief.
Functionalism about ​ consciousness​is the view that consciousness is to be defined in terms of the role consciousness
plays. The most common versions take consciousness to be definable in terms of behaviour or other third-person
observable features.

4. family resemblance concept - Weitz

5. No-miracle
If a scientific theory yields accurate observational predictions, then it must be (at least approximately) true.
6. Popper: pseudo science can say smth true
We can’t exclude possibility that pseudo science can do so accidentally

7. in virtue of what (functionalists) it possible for alien and human tobe in a state of pain
they both can be in mental states that have functional role associated with pain

TEST 3

1. Theory of ​
spatiotemporal​continuity base personal identity on ​natural phenomena.

2. The project of restoration of Notre-Dame de Paris includes redesign of the spire and roof. If project would be
completed what would be the best description of the identity between Notre-Dame before the restoration and
after?
Numerically identical, but qualitatively not

3. Teletransportation.
x destroyed and created quantitatively identical y
theory: ​function psychological continuity

4. Animalism claims that ​I’m human animal

5. Dualism is the personal identity debate claims that ​each mind consists of two substances.

6. Agent causation to explain human actions?

Agent causation is Incompatibilist view of Free Will and was adopted by L
​ ibertarians

7. Claims that people do not have moral responsibility - ​hard determinist

8. Why we can not blame people according to hard determinists?

Past causes lead to all our actions with necessity, we can never do otherwise

9. Incompatibilities:
Libertarianism
Hard determinism
Hard incompatibilism

10. Concept of the soul - free will LIBERTARIAN?

11. According to James, a significant life is one in which a person passionately and vigorously strives to ​
realize an
ideal​/ possessing ideal

12. Naturalistic approaches to meaning of life

There are three major kinds of naturalist theories, namely, ​subjectivism, objectivism and a combination of the two,
hybrid theory.

13. Naturalism in meaning of life debates:

there is no incoherence in​being a theist about God’s existence, but a naturalist​about meaning.\

14. Libertarians
We do have free will
Free will is not compatible with determinism
Determinism is therefore false
Indeterminism is true
15. Difference between naturalistic and supernaturalistic
A naturalist theory differs from a supernaturalist one in that the former denies that a spiritual realm is necessary for
life to be meaningful; according to naturalism, a significant existence can be had in a purely physical world as known
by science.

16.Subjectivism - what is meaningful varies from person to person, depending on her particular beliefs, interests and
decisions.
Objectivism - there are mind-independent factors that determine whether something is meaningful or not, about
which individuals can be mistaken.
Hybrid theory - meaning in life is a matter of subjective attraction to objective attractiveness,
Naturalism - a significant existence can be had in a purely physical world as known by science.

17. Existentialist - Sartre

18. COMPATIBILISTS believe that freedom and responsibility are in every significant sense compatible with
determinism; thus there is no conflict between determinism and free will

19.

20.

Functionalism​ : Functionalism about consciousness is the view that consciousness is to be defined in terms of the role
consciousness plays. The most common versions take consciousness to be definable in terms of behaviour or other
third-person observable features.