Philosophy

Philosophy of Religion
Plato’s Tripartite Soul
● Rational - logical
○ Stop eating bacon because it’s bad
● Spirited - emotional, how feelings fuel action
○ Responds in anger to injustice
○ Ambition
○ Protect others
○ Stop eating bacon because you don’t want to kill the pigs
● Appetitive - primal desires
○ Eat, sex, protect yourself
○ Eating all the bacon because it smells good

Plato thinks that the best humans are ruled by the rational part

Anatomy of an Argument
Premise - the facts/reasons you use to justify your conclusion

Types of Arguments
Deductive
● If your premises are true, your conclusion must be true

Premise 1: All humans are mortal

Premis 2: Socrates is a human
Conclusion: Socrates is mortal

● Entailment - where one fact leads to another; something is implied by something else
logically → the premises entail that Socrates is mortal
● If one of the premises are false, the conclusion will be false

Inductive
● Patterns; a conclusion about future events based on past experiences
● Conclusion is only likely to be true; probabilities; educated guess
○ Deductive conclusions are true

Premise 1: Most men in ancient Athens had beard

Premise 2: Socrates was a man who lived in ancient Athens
Conclusion: Socrates probably had a beard

Abductive
● Making the conclusion that is most likely the case based off the premises
● Not from a premise → conclusion, but by ruling out possible conclusions until you reach
the most probable conclusion
● Uses only information you have at the moment, which is why it’s important to get as
much info as possible

Anna told you she failed her physics exam

Anna hasn’t been in physics since your teacher graded the exams
Anna has been in sociology class, which meets right after physics

→ Anna dropped physics

● Plenty of other things could have happened, but this is the most likely

Argument by Analogy

Reductio Ad Absurdum (reduction to absurdity)

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Plato’s The Republic - the cave allegory

● Even our reality is a shadow of something more

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Metaphysics - studies the nature of reality

Epistemology - studies the nature and scope of knowledge

Value Theory
Ethics
Aesthetics

Rene Descartes
● Extreme skeptic
● Epistemology
● Realized that many of his beliefs are false (toothfairy, 등)
○ When he believed those things, he didn’t realize they were false → how does he
know that what he knows now is true?
 ○ Solution - disbelieve everything
■ He inspected all of his beliefs and accepted those which he absolutely
couldn’t doubt so he’d only believe true things
● He could only know that he was doubting → doubting is a thought → there must be a
thinker → he exists as the thinker, even if his body doesn’t exist
○ Cogito ergo sum (Meditations on First Philosophy) = his foundational belief
● Cartesian skepticism

Empirical - your senses can fail you

Local doubts - doubts about a specific sense experience at a specific time → can check if
you’ve been deceived
● You wake up from a dream, so you know it was a dream
● The room stops spinning after you stopped drinking, so you know that wasn’t reality

Global doubt - opposite of local → the kind of experiences you can’t step out of to check if
they’re true

5 Minute Hypothesis (thought experiment)

● Bertrand Russell
● What if the universe was created just 5 minutes ago
○ No way to prove
● But does it matter?
○ Descartes thought it mattered

Radical Skepticism - knowledge is impossible

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Responses to skepticism
Rationalism - reason is the most reliable source of knowledge
● Descartes
● Deductive proofs, mathematical truth

Empiricism - senses are the most reliable

Plato (rationalism) vs Aristotle (empiricism)

John Locke
● Foiled Descartes
● Believed we were all born as tabula rasa - a blank slate → all knowledge is obtained
through experience
 ○ Rejected innate ideas
● Didn’t necessarily trust senses
○ Descartes threw out all reliance on senses / Locke didn’t

Primary Quality - qualities that physical objects themselves have; not in mind
● Solidity, density, mass, height, depth, shape, whether it’s in motion
○ belongs to itself

Secondary Quality - in our minds but get there through the primary qualities
● Sound, color, taste, feels

● Secondary qualities explain disagreements about the outside world

○ Is it green or yellow?
○ Is the sound crunchy or crispy?

George Berkeley
● Showed that primary and secondary qualities are inextricably linked → primary qualities
can’t be real either
○ You can’t perceive the apple’s shape without also detecting its color
○ If you try to strip away its primary qualities you get no apple at all
● There is no matter; there are only perceptions
○ His aha: Esse est percepi = To be is to be perceived
● God is the ultimate perceiver, so everything stays existence

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Assertion - spoken or written statement that has a truth value

● Truth Value - the state of being true, or false, or indeterminate
● Assertions about the future are indeterminate (you don’t know yet)

Proposition - the underlying meaning of what you’re saying

● A proposition is true if its claim corresponds to reality

Propositional Attitude
● “This is a cat” but it’s actually a rat and you know that = propositional attitude of disbelief
● “This is a cat” and you believe it is a cat = propositional attitude of belief

Belief - when you take a propositional attitude of belief

● God is real
● Your propositional attitude determines a belief
● Can have false beliefs
Knowledge - a justified true belief
● You have knowledge that this is a cat if:
○ You believe it is a cat
○ It actually is a cat

Justified - evidence, or other support, for your belief

● Through testimony - taking someone’s word for it
○ teacher told you things, etc
● Through first person observation

True -

Edmund Gettier - turned the standard definition of knowledge upside down

● Gettier cases - situations you can have a justified true belief, but not knowledge
○ you don’t know something if you stumbled upon it

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● Sigmund Freud, Einstein, and Karl Popper where active at the same time
○ Freud - childhood experiences influencing later self
○ Einstein - waiting for an eclipse to see how light will react (if it would disprove the
general theory of relativity)

Karl Popper
● Attended Einstein lectures and learned about Freud
● Noticed the two had different methods
○ Freud - used every (already existing) evidence to support his claims
○ Einstein - predicted the future (eclipse)
● Argued we all have preconceived notions

Pseudo-science
● Freud’s method of using everything and turning it into confirmation for his claims is
pseudoscience
● If you’re looking to confirm beliefs you already have, it’s pseudoscience
○ Science disconfirms
○ Pseudoscience confirms
● Confirmation should only count if it comes from risky predictions (ones that can destroy
your theory)
 ○ Every good scientific theory rules things out
● The only genuine test of a theory is one that tries to disprove it
● Be willing to give your beliefs up
● Never thought certainty was possible → certainty closes your mind → can’t get closer to
the truth

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Philosophy of Religion vs Theology

Philosophy of Religion Theology

● Need evidence for everything; ● Starts by assuming God exists
searches all aspects of believing and ● Solve philosophical problems that
God arise from believing in God
● Faith is not valuable because there is ● Never doesn’t believe in God
no evidence
● Whether we can offer arguments in
support of God’s existence

Anselm of Canterbury
● 11th century
● French monk
● Argued that God’s existence is provable based on his definition of God
○ Anselm defined God as the “best possible thing”
■ A great thing can exist in your mind, but if it existed in reality it would be
even better
■ Conclusion: If God is the greatest thing possible, the only thing that can
be greater is it existing

Fallacy - flaw in reason; something that weakens or destroys an argument

Beg the Question - assume the very thing that the argument proves
● Anselm says God is a “necessary being” → it has to exist →
proving his existence is not the point

Kant
● Existence is not a predicate
○ A Predicate - something that’s said of an object; adds to the essence of the
subject, but can’t be used to prove their existence
 ■ If a triangle exists, it has to have 3 sides but it could be that no triangle
exists at all because the idea of existence isn’t part of the definition of a
triangle
■ If God exists, he must be the greatest thing we can imagine--but that
doesn’t mean that he exists

The Parable of the Invisible Garden

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Thomas Aquinas
● Tried a different argument for God

Aquinas’s 5 Arguments
1. Motion
a. We live in a world where things are moving
b. Movement is cause by movers
c. Everything that’s moving was set into motion by another thing that was moving
d. Something started the first motions
i. God is the unmoved mover

e. Objects are in motion

f. Everything was put into motion by something else
g. There can’t be an infinite regress of movers
i. There must be a first mover that wasn’t moved -- God

2. Causation
a. Some things are caused
b. Everything was caused by something else
c. There can’t be an infinite regress of causes
i. The first causer, itself uncaused, is God

3. Contingency
a. There are contingent things
b. Contingent things can cause other contingent things
c. But that’s an infinite regress and a possibility that nothing might have existed
d. An infinite regress is impossible
i. There must be at least on necessary being and that is God

4. Degrees
a. All values are relative
 b. There must be something perfect against which all is measured
i. That is God

5. Teleological Argument
a. Teleological - relating to the explanation of something in the terms of the purpose
it serves than why it was created; its purpose

Infinite Regress - every further piece of evidence relies on the evidence before it

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Argument by Analogy - establishes a familiar situation A and likens it to situation B, saying you
should draw the same conclusions about both

Watchmaker Analogy
You find a clock in the woods, randomly. Would the watch appear randomly on its own? You see
the complexity of the watch accomplish a goal. Assume the watch was made by someone on
purpose.

Conclusion: The existence of the complex world implies there is a world maker

Teleological Argument / Intelligent Design

The world was created to be designed in that complex way

● The world was designed with a purpose

● If you don’t know the purpose?
○ Just because you don’t know the purpose, it doesn’t mean there isn’t
■ But his whole argument is based on seeing the purpose of the world
■ Leads people to search for purpose → The people who make up the
purpose, rather than seeing inherent ones, are the people who made up
the purpose (not God)

Disanalogy - proving the analogy false

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Traditional Divine Attributes

Omnipotent - all powerful
Omniscient - all knowing
Omnitemporal - existing in all places
Omnipresent - existing at all times

● How can we have free will if God is omniscient (all-knowing)?

Divine Impassibility - can’t sin

Petitionary prayers - asking God for something (let me pass this test, let the Patriots win)

● Eleanor Stump: There’s no reason to ask God for something would make a difference
○ If God knows everything, which he does → he’s omniscient &
○ If God can bring about any state of affairs, which he can → omnipotent &
○ If he always wants to bring the best state of affairs, which he does →
omnibenevolent
■ God already decided what’s going to happen in every single case. To
everyone. Always

None of the traditional attributes are in the Bible (so not the omni-God)

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Why Is There Evil?

The Logical Problem of Evil

The world is full of evil. Every type of badness.
● The omni-God creates a contradiction
○ Omniscient - he would know about it
○ Omnipotent - he could stop it
○ Omnibenevolent - he would stop it

Atheists’ solution - don’t believe in God

Theists’ solution - Theodicy

Theodicy
When you try to prove that the existence of evil doesn’t rule out the existence of God

Theodicies
● Free Will Defense - God maximized goodness by creating free beings → bc we’re free
we can do evil things and some do
○ Taking away freedom would make a less-good world, so God doesn’t and evil still
exist
 ○ Only addresses evil that is caused by humans (moral evil) → doesn’t cover things
like earthquakes, pandemics, storms that damage houses (natural evil)

● Good can’t exist without evil

● Soul-making Theodicy - instead of thinking that God created a good world which
humans ruined, God deliberately creates us “unfinished” and earthly lives are designed
to toughen us, train us, that this world makes possible
○ John Hick

Evidential Problem of Evil - Why is there so much?

A little bit of evil would suffice in showing the contrast between good and evil

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In 1998, a study linked vaccines with autism → later discredited → previously wiped out
diseases came back

Epistemic responsibility - the responsibility we have for our beliefs → they should be backed
by evidence
● Bc beliefs can hurt others, you are morally responsible to only hold beliefs with evidence

Beliefs are public. Even if you don’t voice them, they spread silently through actions
● The ship master tricked himself into believing the ship was seaworthy and, because he
let the passengers sail on it, tricked the passengers into think it too

Epistemic Belief Examples

Sexism, anti-vac, belief in God

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Pragmatism - theory that having a true belief is less important than having a belief that is
practical, makes your life work better

Blaise Pascal
● Pascal’s Wager

God exists God doesn’t

 Belief Eternity in Heaven Not much

Disbelief Eternity in Hell Not much

● The best bet is on believing in God because it creates the best outcome

Soren Kierkegard
● Fideism - school of thought that religious belief has to come from faith alone
○ Believing in the unknown without having evidence
○ Surrender reason to get to truth (an existence of God)

Bertrand Russel

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Existence and Death

Essence - what characteristic makes that thing that thing

Essentialism - you’re born with your essence (your purpose)

Nihilism - life has no meaning at all

Existentialism - you exist first and create your own essence (no set path to follow)

Abundance of freedom
● No one actually knows anything; they all figure out how to live
● There is no set answer
● Any meaning should come through you giving it meaning; otherwise it’s meaningless →
you have to choose the answer yourself (no one can chose for you bc there is no
answer)

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Personhood
If you have personhood, society will treat you with moral consideration (ie not kill you, not abuse
you like animals)
Theories

Genetic Criterion - if you have human DNA, you are a person

● Included: cheek cells, fetuses
● Excluded: Superman, animals

Cognitive Criterion
1. Consciousness
2. Reasoning
3. Self-motivated activity
4. Capacity to communicate
5. Self-awareness

● People can stop being persons or could have not become a person yet
● Rules out fetuses and young children

Social - you are a person if society considers you one or when someone cares about you as
one
● You matter morally when you matter to someone morally
● Allows change
● If no one doesn’t care about you

Sentience - if you feel pleasure or pain → it’s wrong to cause pain to beings that can feel but it’s
okay to do that to beings that can’t feel
● Fetuses younger than 23 weeks are not persons
● Humans in persistent vegetative states are not persons
● Any animal with a developed nervous system (can feel pain) is a person

Gradation - you can have more or less personhood

● A fetus is a person, but not as much a person as the mother → mother gets more moral
consideration

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Where does your mind reside?

Phineas Gage

Reductive Physicalism - the world is only made of physical stuff

Substance Dualism - the world is made of both physical and mental stuff
● Rene Descartes Cogito ergo sum → he could doubt his body but not his mind
Epiphenomenalism - physical states can give rise to mental states, but mental cannot give rise
to physical
● Your beliefs, desires, and temperaments do exist, but don’t have influence over you
physically

Mysterianism - the question of consciousness is unsolvable by humans

Mind-Body Problem - How does my mind (purely mental) control my body (purely physical)?
Why is my mind tethered to this body and why can’t it leave?

● Mary’s Room - studies and knows everything about color works, but has never seen it.
When she does see it, has she learned anything new?
○ The experience of it is something (qualia = experience)
○ Begs the question

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Strong AI

Weak AI

Turing Test - if the AI can convince you it is a human, then it has strong AI

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Metaethics
Grounding Problem - if moral facts are like physical facts--testable and falsifiable--what are
moral facts founded on? What is the foundation for them, that can make them objective and
unmoving?

Moral Realism - moral facts are scientific facts

● Moral absolutism - some moral facts are absolutely universal (no exceptions for culture,
etc)
● Moral relativism
○ Cultural relativism
■ No culture can be wrong (bc they’re all right for their own culture)
■ Nazis were right for their culture
Moral Antirealism - moral facts are subjective; not grounded
● Moral subjectivism - there are no moral facts, just moral attitudes (you have an opinion
but it’s not right or wrong)

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Divine Command Theory - what is moral and immoral is determined by the divine

The Euthyphro Problem (guy charging his dad for murder. Awaiting trial the same day
Socrates is -- cue dialogue)
Are actions right because God commands them?
Does God command things because they are right?

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Is-Ought Problem - because something is a certain thing that it is good