BCC Logic Class NAME:____________________________
Instructor: Eric Gerlach
3/01/2010
ARISTOTLE ASSIGNMENT
1) Recreate the Square of Opposition below. For each corner, label each with X and Y (such as All X is Y), and then below that give an example (such as “All cars have wheels”). Make sure to draw the three arrows between corners that contradict, and put ‘can’t both be true’ and ‘can’t both be false’ on the two appropriate sides.
2) Describe the difference between inclusive and exclusive uses of OR.
3) Give examples (complete sentences) of a Barbara (All, All, All), Celarent (All, None, None), Darii (Some, All, Some) and Ferio (Some, None, Some Not) Syllogism.
Use new examples, not the examples from class or Aristotle.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Logic Lecture March 1: Aristotle and the Analytics
BCC Logic
Eric Gerlach
3/1/2008
SECOND LECTURE ON ARISTOTLE: PRIOR & POSTERIOR ANALYTICS
INCLUSIVE OR VS. EXCLUSIVE OR:
The last time, we talked about the Square of Opposition. The top and bottom of the square are a good way of introducing the concept of Exclusive OR and Inclusive OR which will become important for understanding how truth tables function for the second half of the course after the midterm.
There are two different ways that the conjunction OR can function: inclusively and exclusively. Let us say you are at a buffet, and the sign says, “You can have eggs, toast, bacon, soup, or salad”. At a buffet, you can have as much of any number of things as you want, so the OR in the sign is being used INCLUSIVELY here. Now let us say someone is buying you a car, and says “You can have an A, a B or a C”. Since you only get to have one item, the OR is being used EXCLUSIVELY by the generous person who is buying you a (single) car. When you can have your choice of more than one, OR is used inclusively. When you can have ONLY one choice, not more, OR is used exclusively.
Notice that the top of the Square of Opposition, the Universal and General side, functions like an exclusive OR because both “All X is Y” and “All X is not Y” cannot both be true. If all trees are green, then it can’t be that all trees are not green and vice versa. The bottom of the Square of Opposition, the particular and individual side, functions like an inclusive OR because both “Some X is Y” and “Some X is not Y” can’t both be false but one, the other or both can be true. If some trees are green, it is possible that some trees are not green.
Notice also that positivist and categorical thinking (black & white) functions like the top of the square, and skeptical and relative thinking (grey between black & white) functions like the bottom of the square of opposition. Aristotle, a positivist thinker, wants universal all or nothing truths to have necessary and certain knowledge, while skeptical thinkers (like Heraclitus from Greece who we will examine after Aristotle) want relative some and some not truths to have perspective and wisdom.
SWITCHING TERMS:
Aristotle notes that SOME and NONE can have terms switched, but not ALL. If some X is Y, then some Y is X (ex: if some trees are green things, then some green things are trees, and if some people are secret agents, then some secret agents are people). Likewise, if no X is Y then no Y is X (if no trees are happy, then no happy things are trees, and if no planets are friendly, then no friendly things are planets). However, if all X is Y it is not necessarily the case that all Y is X (ex: if all humans are animals, it does not mean that all animals are humans, and if all trees can scream it does not follow that all things that can scream are trees).
DEMONSTRATION VS. DIALECTIC
Aristotle says that true science or knowledge starts from starts from first principles to deduce necessary conclusions, and he says that this originated in ancient Babylon (modern day Iraq). While he includes consideration of some and some not, notice that nothing is known certainly about X if we only know that some X is Y or not Y. To know something certain about X, we would have to know that all X is Y or no X is Y.
Aristotle describes the difference between DEMONSTRATION, which starts from certain principles to deduce and conclude additional certain principles (If A, B, and C, therefore D) and DIALECTIC, which argues back and forth about a thing to see which side is more certain (Is A B or not B, just like the Nyaya Form of Debate). While his teacher Plato thought dialectic was the ultimate device for achieving certain knowledge (like Hegel, whose dialectics we will learn about in the second half of the course) Aristotle believed that demonstration is superior to dialectic even though he uses both throughout his texts. While some have said this makes Aristotle the first scientist, he himself believes that it originated in Babylon and it is also true that scientific study and daily reasoning make constant use of both forms.
THE FOUR PERFECT FORMS OF SYLLOGISM:
Aristotle presents us with many forms of argument that can be used in debate, but he only believes that the first four require no additional conditions, outside inferences or evidence. For this reason, Aristotle’s four “perfect” syllogisms were studied as the forms of logic up until Wittgenstein replaced them with truth tables. Aristotle does not put it in the easiest way, so we will reorder this like the Nyaya proof to make it easier to digest and recreate by keeping the order of A-B, B-C therefore A-C. Notice there is one for each of the four corners of the square.
BARBARA, the Positive Universal Syllogism:
If All A are B, and All B are C, then All A are C.
If all humans are animals, and all animals are alive, then all humans are alive.
In the Venn diagram form, if a circle A is entirely within a circle B, and this circle B is entirely in a third circle C, then circle A must be entirely inside circle C.
CELARENT, the Negative Universal Syllogism:
If All A are B, and No B are C, then No A are C.
If all humans are animals, and no animals are made of stone, then no humans are made of stone.
As a Venn diagram, if A is entirely within B, and no B is inside C, then no A can be inside C.
DARII, the Positive Particular Syllogism:
If Some A are B, and All B are C, then Some A are C.
If some animals are humans, and all humans are funny, then some animals are funny.
As a Venn diagram, if some A is inside B and all B is inside C then some A must be inside C.
FERIO, the Negative Particular Syllogism:
If Some A are B, and No B are C, then Some A are not C.
If some animals are humans, and no humans are reptiles, then some animals are not reptiles.
As a Venn diagram, if some A is in B and no B is in C then some of A is outside C.
Aristotle believed that you could derive pure knowledge from chaining these. He argues in the text that since the Scythians have no vines, thus no grapes, thus no intoxication, thus no flute players. He gives another example: If it is metal, then it will cut, Hatchets are made of metal, therefore hatchets will cut. He argues, just like Gotama, that the eternal is uncreated and the temporal is created, and, just like Kanada, that lightning is fire that passes down into water which then rises with the fire from sun up into the clouds until it falls as rain.
In the 1600s, Sir Francis Bacon rejected the syllogism as fallible, just as Islamic scholars and scientists had before. Aristotle’s forms thus became forms of logic but were too simple for science. Consider that all metal things do not cut, nor do all knives, the butter knife being an example of something metal and a knife that does not cut.
Aristotle sometimes goes back on his earlier statements and gives us examples when things that are normally universal and certain can be conditional, can be different in certain situations and circumstances. He says that it is never right to kill your father, but among the Triballi tribe, the gods sometimes demand it. Since the gods are one’s super-parents and one’s obligations to them supersedes one’s obligations to ones parents, he says that the Triballi rightly sacrifice their fathers. Notice that Aristotle believes that the polytheistic gods are real and that this is logical.
Interestingly Aristotle like the Nyaya provides us with defenses against syllogisms. He says that in order to avoid having a syllogism drawn against one’s own argument, one should not let the opponent give the same term twice over. This is an interesting place where arguing what is right blends with tactics and strategy for winning debates. If one’s opponent argues that A is B, and B is C, therefore A is C, one should attack the twice used middle term (B that links A and C in the syllogisms) to attack the syllogism. For example, if one’s opponent argues the war is American, what is American is good, therefore the war is good, one should argue that the war is only somewhat American or that only some of America is good because America is being used to link the war to the good. We naturally know to do this in arguing, just like using the forms.
Funny enough, this makes Aristotle look like a skeptic, a person who argues that absolute knowledge is only some and some relative, and he calls skeptics “destroyers” and “no better than plants” in the text. He says that we should conceal our syllogisms to prevent our opponent attacking our middle terms, which makes him sound like a sophist, someone who argues (like a lawyer) for a living and thus can’t be trusted with true science and knowledge above mere temporary, imperfect and uncertain opinions.
Eric Gerlach
3/1/2008
SECOND LECTURE ON ARISTOTLE: PRIOR & POSTERIOR ANALYTICS
INCLUSIVE OR VS. EXCLUSIVE OR:
The last time, we talked about the Square of Opposition. The top and bottom of the square are a good way of introducing the concept of Exclusive OR and Inclusive OR which will become important for understanding how truth tables function for the second half of the course after the midterm.
There are two different ways that the conjunction OR can function: inclusively and exclusively. Let us say you are at a buffet, and the sign says, “You can have eggs, toast, bacon, soup, or salad”. At a buffet, you can have as much of any number of things as you want, so the OR in the sign is being used INCLUSIVELY here. Now let us say someone is buying you a car, and says “You can have an A, a B or a C”. Since you only get to have one item, the OR is being used EXCLUSIVELY by the generous person who is buying you a (single) car. When you can have your choice of more than one, OR is used inclusively. When you can have ONLY one choice, not more, OR is used exclusively.
Notice that the top of the Square of Opposition, the Universal and General side, functions like an exclusive OR because both “All X is Y” and “All X is not Y” cannot both be true. If all trees are green, then it can’t be that all trees are not green and vice versa. The bottom of the Square of Opposition, the particular and individual side, functions like an inclusive OR because both “Some X is Y” and “Some X is not Y” can’t both be false but one, the other or both can be true. If some trees are green, it is possible that some trees are not green.
Notice also that positivist and categorical thinking (black & white) functions like the top of the square, and skeptical and relative thinking (grey between black & white) functions like the bottom of the square of opposition. Aristotle, a positivist thinker, wants universal all or nothing truths to have necessary and certain knowledge, while skeptical thinkers (like Heraclitus from Greece who we will examine after Aristotle) want relative some and some not truths to have perspective and wisdom.
SWITCHING TERMS:
Aristotle notes that SOME and NONE can have terms switched, but not ALL. If some X is Y, then some Y is X (ex: if some trees are green things, then some green things are trees, and if some people are secret agents, then some secret agents are people). Likewise, if no X is Y then no Y is X (if no trees are happy, then no happy things are trees, and if no planets are friendly, then no friendly things are planets). However, if all X is Y it is not necessarily the case that all Y is X (ex: if all humans are animals, it does not mean that all animals are humans, and if all trees can scream it does not follow that all things that can scream are trees).
DEMONSTRATION VS. DIALECTIC
Aristotle says that true science or knowledge starts from starts from first principles to deduce necessary conclusions, and he says that this originated in ancient Babylon (modern day Iraq). While he includes consideration of some and some not, notice that nothing is known certainly about X if we only know that some X is Y or not Y. To know something certain about X, we would have to know that all X is Y or no X is Y.
Aristotle describes the difference between DEMONSTRATION, which starts from certain principles to deduce and conclude additional certain principles (If A, B, and C, therefore D) and DIALECTIC, which argues back and forth about a thing to see which side is more certain (Is A B or not B, just like the Nyaya Form of Debate). While his teacher Plato thought dialectic was the ultimate device for achieving certain knowledge (like Hegel, whose dialectics we will learn about in the second half of the course) Aristotle believed that demonstration is superior to dialectic even though he uses both throughout his texts. While some have said this makes Aristotle the first scientist, he himself believes that it originated in Babylon and it is also true that scientific study and daily reasoning make constant use of both forms.
THE FOUR PERFECT FORMS OF SYLLOGISM:
Aristotle presents us with many forms of argument that can be used in debate, but he only believes that the first four require no additional conditions, outside inferences or evidence. For this reason, Aristotle’s four “perfect” syllogisms were studied as the forms of logic up until Wittgenstein replaced them with truth tables. Aristotle does not put it in the easiest way, so we will reorder this like the Nyaya proof to make it easier to digest and recreate by keeping the order of A-B, B-C therefore A-C. Notice there is one for each of the four corners of the square.
BARBARA, the Positive Universal Syllogism:
If All A are B, and All B are C, then All A are C.
If all humans are animals, and all animals are alive, then all humans are alive.
In the Venn diagram form, if a circle A is entirely within a circle B, and this circle B is entirely in a third circle C, then circle A must be entirely inside circle C.
CELARENT, the Negative Universal Syllogism:
If All A are B, and No B are C, then No A are C.
If all humans are animals, and no animals are made of stone, then no humans are made of stone.
As a Venn diagram, if A is entirely within B, and no B is inside C, then no A can be inside C.
DARII, the Positive Particular Syllogism:
If Some A are B, and All B are C, then Some A are C.
If some animals are humans, and all humans are funny, then some animals are funny.
As a Venn diagram, if some A is inside B and all B is inside C then some A must be inside C.
FERIO, the Negative Particular Syllogism:
If Some A are B, and No B are C, then Some A are not C.
If some animals are humans, and no humans are reptiles, then some animals are not reptiles.
As a Venn diagram, if some A is in B and no B is in C then some of A is outside C.
Aristotle believed that you could derive pure knowledge from chaining these. He argues in the text that since the Scythians have no vines, thus no grapes, thus no intoxication, thus no flute players. He gives another example: If it is metal, then it will cut, Hatchets are made of metal, therefore hatchets will cut. He argues, just like Gotama, that the eternal is uncreated and the temporal is created, and, just like Kanada, that lightning is fire that passes down into water which then rises with the fire from sun up into the clouds until it falls as rain.
In the 1600s, Sir Francis Bacon rejected the syllogism as fallible, just as Islamic scholars and scientists had before. Aristotle’s forms thus became forms of logic but were too simple for science. Consider that all metal things do not cut, nor do all knives, the butter knife being an example of something metal and a knife that does not cut.
Aristotle sometimes goes back on his earlier statements and gives us examples when things that are normally universal and certain can be conditional, can be different in certain situations and circumstances. He says that it is never right to kill your father, but among the Triballi tribe, the gods sometimes demand it. Since the gods are one’s super-parents and one’s obligations to them supersedes one’s obligations to ones parents, he says that the Triballi rightly sacrifice their fathers. Notice that Aristotle believes that the polytheistic gods are real and that this is logical.
Interestingly Aristotle like the Nyaya provides us with defenses against syllogisms. He says that in order to avoid having a syllogism drawn against one’s own argument, one should not let the opponent give the same term twice over. This is an interesting place where arguing what is right blends with tactics and strategy for winning debates. If one’s opponent argues that A is B, and B is C, therefore A is C, one should attack the twice used middle term (B that links A and C in the syllogisms) to attack the syllogism. For example, if one’s opponent argues the war is American, what is American is good, therefore the war is good, one should argue that the war is only somewhat American or that only some of America is good because America is being used to link the war to the good. We naturally know to do this in arguing, just like using the forms.
Funny enough, this makes Aristotle look like a skeptic, a person who argues that absolute knowledge is only some and some relative, and he calls skeptics “destroyers” and “no better than plants” in the text. He says that we should conceal our syllogisms to prevent our opponent attacking our middle terms, which makes him sound like a sophist, someone who argues (like a lawyer) for a living and thus can’t be trusted with true science and knowledge above mere temporary, imperfect and uncertain opinions.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Ethics Lecture Feb 26: Mill and Consequentialism
BCC Ethics
Eric Gerlach
2/26/2010
Lecture on Mill and Utilitarianism
The last few classes we have focused on ethical concepts that focus on the beginning or cause of an action rather than the end or consequence (with the possible exception of balance, which suggests a medium of the two). Today, we focus on consequentialism and its foremost school, Utilitarianism. Thus, I had you read the first two chapters of John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism. In this work, Mill argues that we should always look at our actions and ask if the consequences are ethical (do good/make people happy and reduce harm/pain). He specifically mentions Kant as wrong about principle and mentions virtue ethics as well, claiming that these two conceptions ignore how we use principle and virtue for happiness and reduction of harm by taking each as a good in itself out of context.
Mill notes: if you call it Utilitarianism, people think it is dry and boring.
If you call it Principle of Happiness or Pleasure first, people think its decadent.
This is why people called Epicurus decadent.
Brief Tradition of Consequentialism
(included in Mill’s own text)
Epicurus (340-270 BCE)
Greek philosopher who believed that happiness was the most important thing, and all virtues, purposes and ends are subordinate to it. From him we get the word ‘Epicurean’ as in ‘Gourmet’, one who appreciates the finer more pleasant tastes of things. As Mill notes, Epicurus was attacked as a glutton in his time, but he actually had a taste for thought, civilization, and what Mill calls the ‘higher virtues’, mental pleasures in giving to others rather than physical selfish pleasures of drinking every night. Mill argues that Epicurus took the long view just as he did, so his opponents are wrong to call happy principle people “swine”.
Jeremy Bentham (1750-1830 CE)
The first to come up with Utilitarianism, but Mill gave it the name.
Bentham believed in max happiness, while Mill complimented this with min pain.
Bentham also believed that simple and common pleasures are just as good as sophisticated, saying the common plays are just as good as fine opera.
Mill rejected this, believing that fine society was of a higher happiness than common culture, as mental pleasure is superior to physical, as selfless pleasures (giving to others) makes one happier than selfish pleasures (receiving from others).
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873 CE)
Born in London, Mill was influenced by Ancient Greek, French, and liberal thought.
His father wrote a history of India, and Mill was for a time involved with his father in the British East India company, the corporation that helped Britain maintain their hold over India. Mill’s family was friends with the Bentham family, from whom Mill took up his consequentialist, ‘happy principle’ thought. However, it was Mill who found the name ‘utilitarian’ in a Christian text talking about how evil it was to fall into it rather than believe in the principle as good, and he added the name and developed the thinking, becoming its famous spokesman.
Mill is a central thinker in Logic, Economics and Ethics.
His liberal social thought is his most famous. He argued for equal rights for all, the end to the subjugation of women and slavery.
Mill’s text: Utilitarianism
Mill’s harm principle as the principle to end principles, putting all focus on harmful consequences. This is not simply ease or expediency in limited personal vision, but the long view over time of what makes people happy and saves them from pain.
Notice: Mill completely agrees with Kant, we need a test for principles and an overall principle to serve as this text. For Kant, this test is ‘can it always be followed?’, while for Mill the test is ‘does following the principle make people happy as a consequence?’.
Both come up with a supreme principle.
Thus, for Kant, one should never lie because the principle is most important as beginning or all good action, while for Mill, one should never lie as long as this has good consequences because this is the most important as end of all good action.
Kant says: Always follow principle, and you will likely be happy.
Mill says: Always follow happiness (self and others), and you will likely be principled.
Both also come up with a pure ‘good in itself’: Kant’s is intention (the good-in-itself beginning of an act) and Mill’s is happiness (the good-in-itself end of an act). Both say that it is impossible to argue for this good-in-itself, but it simply shows itself in us.
We can see two sides to the Utilitarian Principle, maximizing positive and minimizing negative. Bentham says: Always act to maximize happiness. Mill agrees, but says the MOST important thing is to minimize the negative (at least, this is what scholars concur in reading his writings and comparing them to Bentham’s today). Thus, we see the whole principle is ‘max happy and min pain’, but one can lean either way on it. There are times when maximum happiness can cause much pain (majority over the minority, which Mill speaks about vs. Bentham), and there are times when minimum pain hurts maximum happiness (overprotective parenting, insurance issues, have to break some eggs etc).
Mill admits that there will be continuous problems whichever way we use the principle, but we are evolving in a positive direction slowly and we should stick to the Utilitarian view even when there are problems if we truly (and he thinks we do) desire good consequences basically as human beings.
Attacks on Utilitarianism:
Mill addresses many of these directly in the text.
Interesting Paradox/Problem for Utilitarianism: the Good of the Bad as Example
Mill notes this, as do other modern writers on Utilitarianism noting as Mill does that this is a common attack against the Utilitarian principle as ethical conception/system.
COMPARE: PBS documentaries all the time on slavery and the US overcoming slavery as freedom and our view as Americans of the type of place South Africa is.
COMPARE: Prosecuting Attorney arguing that someone is a habitual criminal so latest normal behavior is prime for relapse vs. Defense Attorney pointing at the same evidence as reform and pulling one’s life together as normal from bad upbringing and environment.
Dennett uses three mile island as ex: this caused good nuclear standards to follow, so we could say as a utilitarian that the catastrophe was just as good as people simply coming up with the standards without the disaster.
Consider that we love villains who go from good to bad and heroes who go from bad to good. We can very easily see bad as good and good as bad.
The attack on Utilitarianism says that it is prone to confusing bad with good especially compared to systems of principles or rights that are given, not based on their consequences
Marx attacks Utilitarianism with a common argument today: guess who are the ones to tell you what is useful or makes us happy? Yes: the upper class, who use the lower class as labor. Obviously, it is the task master or overseer and not the worker who gets to say who is useful in their place and how happy the system is overall.
Mill in fact approves of war to advance civilization, and he approves of colonialism as improving the uncivilized. Marx and us could criticize him for this short sightedness.
HOWEVER, Mill was a champion against the enslavement of Black people and the second class status of women. He was an early champion of both, so this is mixed.
He writes, in 1850 on ‘The Negro Question’ words I love:
“It is curious, withal, that the earliest known civilization was, we have the strongest reason to believe, a negro civilization. The original Egyptians are inferred, from the evidence of their sculptures, to have been a negro race: it was from negroes, therefore, that the Greeks learnt their first lessons in civilization; and to the records and traditions of these negroes did the Greek Philosophers to the very end of their career resort (I do not say with much fruit) as a treasury of mysterious wisdom.”
Defense against attack: Happiness as unobtainable ideal
This is similar to Jeremy’s Rand argument of selflessness as unobtainable ideal.
Happiness is unobtainable in full, so it can not be the true anchor and purpose of things.
Unfortunately, each end of any opposition is a perfect and unobtainable ideal.
This shows us the ignorance of judgment and argument such that it can learn more by arguing its form back against itself. We will get into this next time with Rand, but the duel between Mill’s happiness for others above selfishness vs. Rand’s selfishness both take this form against each other.
Defense against anti-environment challenge:
Many could say that ‘use’ and ‘happy’ can easily lead to how we abuse the environment. More relevant today, Mill loved deep forests and argued that wilderness was necessary in the long view of use and happiness. We will read on wilderness for environmental week.
Eric Gerlach
2/26/2010
Lecture on Mill and Utilitarianism
The last few classes we have focused on ethical concepts that focus on the beginning or cause of an action rather than the end or consequence (with the possible exception of balance, which suggests a medium of the two). Today, we focus on consequentialism and its foremost school, Utilitarianism. Thus, I had you read the first two chapters of John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism. In this work, Mill argues that we should always look at our actions and ask if the consequences are ethical (do good/make people happy and reduce harm/pain). He specifically mentions Kant as wrong about principle and mentions virtue ethics as well, claiming that these two conceptions ignore how we use principle and virtue for happiness and reduction of harm by taking each as a good in itself out of context.
Mill notes: if you call it Utilitarianism, people think it is dry and boring.
If you call it Principle of Happiness or Pleasure first, people think its decadent.
This is why people called Epicurus decadent.
Brief Tradition of Consequentialism
(included in Mill’s own text)
Epicurus (340-270 BCE)
Greek philosopher who believed that happiness was the most important thing, and all virtues, purposes and ends are subordinate to it. From him we get the word ‘Epicurean’ as in ‘Gourmet’, one who appreciates the finer more pleasant tastes of things. As Mill notes, Epicurus was attacked as a glutton in his time, but he actually had a taste for thought, civilization, and what Mill calls the ‘higher virtues’, mental pleasures in giving to others rather than physical selfish pleasures of drinking every night. Mill argues that Epicurus took the long view just as he did, so his opponents are wrong to call happy principle people “swine”.
Jeremy Bentham (1750-1830 CE)
The first to come up with Utilitarianism, but Mill gave it the name.
Bentham believed in max happiness, while Mill complimented this with min pain.
Bentham also believed that simple and common pleasures are just as good as sophisticated, saying the common plays are just as good as fine opera.
Mill rejected this, believing that fine society was of a higher happiness than common culture, as mental pleasure is superior to physical, as selfless pleasures (giving to others) makes one happier than selfish pleasures (receiving from others).
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873 CE)
Born in London, Mill was influenced by Ancient Greek, French, and liberal thought.
His father wrote a history of India, and Mill was for a time involved with his father in the British East India company, the corporation that helped Britain maintain their hold over India. Mill’s family was friends with the Bentham family, from whom Mill took up his consequentialist, ‘happy principle’ thought. However, it was Mill who found the name ‘utilitarian’ in a Christian text talking about how evil it was to fall into it rather than believe in the principle as good, and he added the name and developed the thinking, becoming its famous spokesman.
Mill is a central thinker in Logic, Economics and Ethics.
His liberal social thought is his most famous. He argued for equal rights for all, the end to the subjugation of women and slavery.
Mill’s text: Utilitarianism
Mill’s harm principle as the principle to end principles, putting all focus on harmful consequences. This is not simply ease or expediency in limited personal vision, but the long view over time of what makes people happy and saves them from pain.
Notice: Mill completely agrees with Kant, we need a test for principles and an overall principle to serve as this text. For Kant, this test is ‘can it always be followed?’, while for Mill the test is ‘does following the principle make people happy as a consequence?’.
Both come up with a supreme principle.
Thus, for Kant, one should never lie because the principle is most important as beginning or all good action, while for Mill, one should never lie as long as this has good consequences because this is the most important as end of all good action.
Kant says: Always follow principle, and you will likely be happy.
Mill says: Always follow happiness (self and others), and you will likely be principled.
Both also come up with a pure ‘good in itself’: Kant’s is intention (the good-in-itself beginning of an act) and Mill’s is happiness (the good-in-itself end of an act). Both say that it is impossible to argue for this good-in-itself, but it simply shows itself in us.
We can see two sides to the Utilitarian Principle, maximizing positive and minimizing negative. Bentham says: Always act to maximize happiness. Mill agrees, but says the MOST important thing is to minimize the negative (at least, this is what scholars concur in reading his writings and comparing them to Bentham’s today). Thus, we see the whole principle is ‘max happy and min pain’, but one can lean either way on it. There are times when maximum happiness can cause much pain (majority over the minority, which Mill speaks about vs. Bentham), and there are times when minimum pain hurts maximum happiness (overprotective parenting, insurance issues, have to break some eggs etc).
Mill admits that there will be continuous problems whichever way we use the principle, but we are evolving in a positive direction slowly and we should stick to the Utilitarian view even when there are problems if we truly (and he thinks we do) desire good consequences basically as human beings.
Attacks on Utilitarianism:
Mill addresses many of these directly in the text.
Interesting Paradox/Problem for Utilitarianism: the Good of the Bad as Example
Mill notes this, as do other modern writers on Utilitarianism noting as Mill does that this is a common attack against the Utilitarian principle as ethical conception/system.
COMPARE: PBS documentaries all the time on slavery and the US overcoming slavery as freedom and our view as Americans of the type of place South Africa is.
COMPARE: Prosecuting Attorney arguing that someone is a habitual criminal so latest normal behavior is prime for relapse vs. Defense Attorney pointing at the same evidence as reform and pulling one’s life together as normal from bad upbringing and environment.
Dennett uses three mile island as ex: this caused good nuclear standards to follow, so we could say as a utilitarian that the catastrophe was just as good as people simply coming up with the standards without the disaster.
Consider that we love villains who go from good to bad and heroes who go from bad to good. We can very easily see bad as good and good as bad.
The attack on Utilitarianism says that it is prone to confusing bad with good especially compared to systems of principles or rights that are given, not based on their consequences
Marx attacks Utilitarianism with a common argument today: guess who are the ones to tell you what is useful or makes us happy? Yes: the upper class, who use the lower class as labor. Obviously, it is the task master or overseer and not the worker who gets to say who is useful in their place and how happy the system is overall.
Mill in fact approves of war to advance civilization, and he approves of colonialism as improving the uncivilized. Marx and us could criticize him for this short sightedness.
HOWEVER, Mill was a champion against the enslavement of Black people and the second class status of women. He was an early champion of both, so this is mixed.
He writes, in 1850 on ‘The Negro Question’ words I love:
“It is curious, withal, that the earliest known civilization was, we have the strongest reason to believe, a negro civilization. The original Egyptians are inferred, from the evidence of their sculptures, to have been a negro race: it was from negroes, therefore, that the Greeks learnt their first lessons in civilization; and to the records and traditions of these negroes did the Greek Philosophers to the very end of their career resort (I do not say with much fruit) as a treasury of mysterious wisdom.”
Defense against attack: Happiness as unobtainable ideal
This is similar to Jeremy’s Rand argument of selflessness as unobtainable ideal.
Happiness is unobtainable in full, so it can not be the true anchor and purpose of things.
Unfortunately, each end of any opposition is a perfect and unobtainable ideal.
This shows us the ignorance of judgment and argument such that it can learn more by arguing its form back against itself. We will get into this next time with Rand, but the duel between Mill’s happiness for others above selfishness vs. Rand’s selfishness both take this form against each other.
Defense against anti-environment challenge:
Many could say that ‘use’ and ‘happy’ can easily lead to how we abuse the environment. More relevant today, Mill loved deep forests and argued that wilderness was necessary in the long view of use and happiness. We will read on wilderness for environmental week.
Intro Philosophy Lecture Feb 25: Confucius and the Analects
BCC Intro Philosophy
Eric Gerlach
2/25/2010
Lecture on Confucius
As we have seen in the course so far, systems of thought are not simply dogmatic answers, but also cultures of questioning. We saw that Shamans go on vision quests to learn the sources of problems, and that in Egyptian wisdom proverbs there is questioning of social status, consumption (over eating and drinking), and everything else that becomes easy to see when you gather many nomadic tribes into settled city states.
Now, we move to China and examine one of the foremost ethical geniuses of world history: Grand Master Kung, or as he is known to us, Confucius (Kong Fu Tsu, or Grand Master Kong). Confucius was dedicated to the idea that the individual can obtain fullness and happiness by placing others before oneself, by recognizing the desires of others as equal to the desires one has for oneself.
Chinese Philosophy and The Period of the Hundred Philosophers/Schools:
One would like to think that times of peace and prosperity are good for systems of thought, but in fact we find that times of war and disintegration of empires is best for thinkers and systems of thought. Human beings only rethink problems when they are faced with them, and so in Confucius’ China there were great problems in the ‘Warring States period’ as many kings came and went, each calling themselves ‘mandated by heaven’. If heaven speaks for a king, it was thought the king would prosper. If the king does not follow the way of heaven, heaven or the All Lord stops speaking for the king, and someone else comes along. Each new king then claims that the old king was ‘no longer spoken for’, so the populations of Greece, India etc. find themselves wondering: who exactly does Heaven (the heavens) speak for, and why? Confucius and the Daoists we will examine next week proposed different solutions to this problem. The Daoists believed that going off into nature and rejecting human ways was best for cultivating the individual, while Confucius believed that the city, morality and study were best for cultivating human virtues. Thus, while Confucius and the Daoists were both questioners of individual desires and judgment, Confucius believed we should turn to society to realize our true nature and the Daoists believed we should turn away from society to realize our true nature.
The Period of the Hundred Philosophers or Hundred Schools, as it is called, came with the Warring States Period and ended during the Han dynasty which supported the studies of many of the schools that had their origins during the Warring States Period. This included the teachings of Confucius and the early Confucians such as Mencius and Hsun Zi as well as the Daoists including Lao Zi and Zuan Zi. It also included the legalists, the followers of Mo Zi and many other schools.
An interesting point to make about the evolution of systems of thought here is that Confucius, the Daoists and others speak of the ‘Mandate of Heaven’. In India, Greece, China, and many other places, we can see that first many tribes and their gods were drawn into polytheistic (many gods) systems (as we focused on last week), and then after this these were drawn into monotheistic (one god) systems. We can see that many gods with human like desires become one god with human like desires, and then this one god becomes more and more abstract. We see the same pattern in India and China, where polytheism grew into a monotheistic ‘Way’ or ‘Mandate’. Essentially, the All Lord becomes simply the mind of the universe or the ‘way’ or ‘order’ of things. Greek philosophers were individuals who were progressive, pushing beyond the polytheism of ancient Greece toward an All Intelligence that is order, goodness, and life in the world. Confucius follows this sort of pattern in using the ‘Mandate of Heaven’. Confucius does not speak of the Lord of Heaven, but the Mandate is the speech or order from the mouth of the All Lord.
Confucius and his System of Thought
Just like we had with Egypt last week, Confucius(550-480 BCE)believes that the heart is the center of the human being. Notice that this ‘center’ is both mental and physical, fitting with cosmology, psychology and medical practices (these, of course, not being separated in ancient times and cultures). Confucius is often understood as a champion of order and ritual, as he is a proponent of society against the Daoists. However, it is clear from the Analects that Confucius believed it was more important to have right intentions than right actions, i.e. ‘one’s heart is in the right place’. Confucius believed that ritual was the strength of a society and so one should perform the rituals to the ancestors, but he also believed that the worst thing was not to simply avoid ritual but to do ritual without the proper intention. We could say that Confucius would say to a churchgoer today: it is more important to enjoy your church than to attend your church, for if you do not enjoy it whole heartedly you should not go. Empty ritual, ritual simply for the motions rather than authentic love for and continuity with one’s society, is the worst thing, and thus it would be better in such a case to avoid false ritual and simply not perform the ritual at all. This point is often lost when people focus on Confucius’ great love of ritual and city culture. A good example of this point is Analects 5.5 (and yes, these are standardized so no matter the translation, ‘5.5’ is always the fifth aphorism of the fifth chapter or book, just like the Bible and Koran are standardized with numbers): Confucius says that Ran Yong does not need eloquence (civilized speech) if he is not good. Another good example is 11.10, where Confucius is grieving ‘inappropriately’ for his favorite student, and tells us that genuine love is more important than being polite or pleasant (right intention trumps right outer form). However, the best example is clearly 3.26, “Authority without generosity, ceremony without reverence, mourning without grief, these things I cannot bear to contemplate”.
Also like we had with Egypt last week, Confucius was a great champion of scholarship. Confucius believed that scholarship was necessary for developing the heart, and the ‘gentleman’, Confucius’ word for the great person, developed love for others and knowledge through study of the classic texts. Needless to say, Confucius’ Analects became just such an object for devoted study in Chinese society, and Confucius became an ancestor revered by devotees with ritual. Confucius is credited as the father of China’s civil service system, a system in which anyone who tested well, regardless of their position in society, was given a government position. This is similar to the development of types of scribes in Egypt. It is just such a development that we call ‘the middle class’, the individuals who through study and work can rise or fall in position to fit the many niches required to run large cities and systems. In combination with the last point, this means that Confucius hates scholarship for show without genuine love of learning and discovery of human nature. A good example is 4.9, ‘if a scholar is ashamed of his shabby clothes or poor food, he is not worth listening to’.
The last and central point that I want to make about Confucius as you read the Analects is this: Confucius was a genius at seeing himself as equal to everyone, and he encouraged this attitude as the path to Goodness itself. Most of us have likely heard the ‘Golden Rule’, which is paraphrased from Confucius: ‘treat others the way you want to be treated’. My favorite example is 7.22: Confucius says that if you put him with any two people at random, he can take their strengths as a model to follow and their faults as a warning. Clearly, Confucius believed that we all share the same set of strengths and faults, no matter how talented (or horrible) we happen to individually be or where our talents are. I love this point, and I believe it is central for examining other cultures with an open mind, a mind beyond the simplistic idea that ‘the West is rational’ or ‘scientific’. Confucius teaches us that NO ONE is perfect, not even himself, but there is good in everyone and everything, and we had best remember that we will never loose any of our connection to our fellow human beings if we only remember to look hard enough for it.
Again, an example: “When you see a worthy man, seek to emulate him…When you see an unworthy man, examine yourself”.
Confucius’ Followers and Neo-Confucianism
Confucius had two followers who became the famous two poles of interpretation of the Analects. Mencius (370-290 BCE) or Men Zi, the second in command of Confucianism by popular consent in the tradition, believed that Confucius taught that the human being is basically good and develops the heart, growing and developing the virtues through love. He argued that because the human individual is essentially good, we need ritual to guide our growth but love is the true essence. Hsun Zi, the third in command of Confucianism, a cynic and conservative, argued that the human being is essentially evil and without the rituals and tradition to hold our nature back we would be selfish and uncivilized. This remains the major split in Confucian thought.
About 1100 CE, Confucianism merged with Daoist and Buddhist ideas to form a Confucian revival called Neo-Confucianism by scholars. Buddhist metaphors such as the pearl at the bottom of the muddy lake and the sun emerging from behind the clouds were reinterpreted in light of Confucianism and Daoism. The major figure of this revival was Chu His (1130-1200 CE), who believed that all three traditions were teaching the same truth but that Confucius was the superior and primary teacher.
Confucius’ Analects
Confucius shows us a brilliant development of the skepticism of individual and state that we have already seen develop elsewhere. When people gather, they can see each other and see groups, and are questioning and skeptical of themselves, other individuals, and group organizations.
First we look at the criticism of the individual, clearing the individual heart and putting oneself in tune with the Way. Then we look at criticism of the state, and see that the same shape applies.
Second, notice the passages where Confucius is criticizing sages who go to nature and do not study. Pay attention to this for next week, as these are early Daoists who have different opinions than Confucius about the cultivation of the human individual.
Criticism of the Individual:
Confucius puts the Good and the Heart over all else, including pride, whether the pride and judgment is for the state or for the individual.
Right act/conduct is important, but it is empty without intention
Heart over ritual/act, both important
Intention and Action, Mind and Body, the worst is the lower empty of the upper.
(4.12) He who acts out of self interest arouses much resentment.
(5.5) ‘Ran Yong is good but not eloquent’- I don’t know if he is good, but he certainly does not need eloquence if he isn’t.
(11.10) Yan Hui died. ‘Master, this grief isn’t right’ C; ‘What sort of grief for such a man is right?
Criticism of Luxury:
(5.18) Master said: Zang Sunchen built a house for his tortoise, with pillars in the shape of mountains and rafters decorated with duckweed. Has he lost his mind?
(7.16) Even if you have only coarse grain, water and your arm for a pillow, you may still be happy. Riches and honors without justice are to me as fleeting clouds.
Ritual without Virtue:
(3.26) authority without generosity, ceremony without reverence, mourning without grief, these things I cannot bear to contemplate.
(4.13) If one cannot govern by observing ritual and showing compassion, what is the use of ritual?
Scholarship without greed or want of career:
(4.9) If a scholar is ashamed of his shabby clothes or poor food, he is not worth listening to.
Haven’t seen someone who studies without any thought of career.
Good is at Hand (7.30) but no one is perfect (7.26)
Says again and again that he is not perfect, nor has he met perfection…
(7.33) My seal is as strong as anyone’s, but I have not succeeded in living nobly.
yet: ‘Is goodness out of reach? As soon as I long for goodness, goodness is at hand.’
(7.34) I make no claims to wisdom or to human perfection- how would I dare? Yet my aim never flags and I never tire of teaching people.
Disciple: ‘This is what we fail to follow.’
The amazing insight for continuous becoming:
(And a major lesson of this class)
Whatever one’s position, you always share the faults and talents of everyone.
Thus, you have to work to compare self with others, as not intuitive.
You should compare yourself to others, reflect yourself through others no matter how you judge them to be, and work to get over selfishness and become compassionate and balanced (the way of heaven, opposed to selfish desire for lower).
Confucius values joining all of humanity, not being selfish.
(7.22) Put me with any two people at random- they will invariably have something to teach me. I can take their qualities as a model and their defects as a warning.
(9.8) Am I knowledgeable? No. A Bumpkin asked me a question, and my mind went blank. Still, I hammered at his problem from all sides, till I worked out something.
(1.16) Don’t worry if you don’t recognize other’s merits: worry that you may not
recognize theirs.
(2.13) Practice what you preach.
(4.17) When you see a worthy man, seek to emulate him. When you see an unworthy man, examine yourself.
(5.12) Zigong ‘I do not want to do to others…’ C: you’re not that far yet…
(11.4) Yan Hui is of no help to me: whatever I say pleases him.
(9.28) It is in the cold of winter that you see how green the pines and cypresses are.
(15.23) A gentleman does not approve of a person because he expresses a certain opinion, nor does he reject an opinion because it is expressed by a particular person.
(15.24) ‘Single word to guide one’s life?’ C- Reciprocity: do not do to others…
(19.21) A gentleman’s mistake is like an eclipse of the sun or moon.
When happens, everyone notices, and when corrected everyone looks up in admiration.
Good as Unknown, Beyond Judgment and Opinion
(5.19, and one cut off before 5.9) Openness, Being without Arrogance or Prejudice. Clear Heart as without blockage, Light without shade, Consciousness without judgment.
(9.17) The master stood by a river and said: ‘Everything flows like this, without ceasing’
(note Heraclitus)
(2.17) Master said: Knowledge is to take the known as known and unknown as unknown.
(pre 3.14) (quoted by Wittgenstein) About what we don’t know we must keep silent.
(5.13) Our master’s views on culture can be gathered, but you can’t hear his views on the nature of things or the Way of Heaven.
(7.21) The master never talked of miracles, violence, disorders, spirits.
(7.35) Confucius is ill, student: ‘pray to spirits above & spirits below’
Con: In that case, I have been praying for a long time already.
(note not a rejection of the spiritual, but a knowing unknowing)
(11.12) Asked how to serve spirits, says: You have not yet learned how to serve man, how could you learn to serve the spirits?
Death: You do not yet know life, how can you learn about death?
Middle Way: (Buddha, Heraclitus)
(6.17) Who would leave a house without using the door? Why do people seek to walk outside the way?
(6.29) The power of the middle way is supreme, and yet it is not found among the people anymore. (notice restore the golden age)
Reform the old, bring in the new:
(2.11) He who by revising the old knows the new is fit to be a teacher.
(2.12) A gentleman is not a pot.
(Pre 3.4 cut off) each generation has added and dropped from the ritual, so we know what people will look like 100 generations from now (they will add and drop)
In pursuit of virtue, do not be afraid to outpace your teacher (15.36)
Criticism of the State:
Confucius is not a compliant sheep when it comes to the state.
His criticism of individual judgment and pride is matched by criticism of the state.
(11.17) Rich student tyrant: C- attach him: you have my permission.
Sees private interest trapped in the state (nobles disunifying Zhou court, into warring states). (passage?)
A tyrant must work for the good of all people
(13.15) asked by Duke: Is there a single maxim/rule that could ruin a country?
C- The prince should never suffer contradiction. When in error, prince should be told.
(13.24) ‘What if everyone likes a man?’ C- Not enough
‘What if everyone hates him?’ C- Not enough: Good should love, bad should hate.
(13.20) ‘present politicians?’ Those puny creatures are not even worth mentioning.
Free will of all:
(9.26) One cannot deny the humblest man his free will.
Criticism of Daoism and its sages retreat into Nature:
Just as Confucius appears in Daoist texts as an ally but inferior rival, so do proto-Daoist sages in the Analects.
This is very much like Buddha vs. the Jains, in that other group isn’t mentioned by name, but found not to be in balance but extremists. Daoists wanted to escape into nature, while Confucians believe in the value of the city and embracing not escaping humankind.
Believe in balance, like Daoists, but seek to balance the city, not escape into the perfect balance of nature from the city. Daoists are more skeptical of society.
(Similar to hippie communes in remote areas all over country- rejection of society)
Criticism of Escape from Humanity as opposed to transforming/reforming Humanity.
(vs. the sages of 18.6, 18.7 and 18.8)
(18.16) One cannot associate with birds and beasts. If the world were following the way, I would not have to reform it.
It is not right to be a hermit, and discard human relationships to preserve one’s purity.
(18.18) (Shaolain is the Daoist who had a monastery that became famous taken over by martial arts Buddhists)
C- I do things differently. I follow no rigid prescriptions on what should or should not be done.
(4.1) It is beautiful to live amidst humanity. It is hardly wise to live in a place destitute of people (don’t be a Daoist hermit).
Criticism of Meditation (D and later B), to Confucians not as good as study
(15.31) I once to meditate went without food for a day and a night without sleep.
It was no use. It is better to study.
Numerous criticisms of inactivity, inferior to activity, study and effort.
(2.1): At 15, I set my mind upon learning. At 30, I took my stand. At 40 I had no doubts. At 50, I knew the will (mandate) of heaven. At 60, my ear was attuned. At 70, I follow all the desires of my heart without breaking any rule.
(4.2) A good man rests in his humanity. A wise man profits from his humanity.
Eric Gerlach
2/25/2010
Lecture on Confucius
As we have seen in the course so far, systems of thought are not simply dogmatic answers, but also cultures of questioning. We saw that Shamans go on vision quests to learn the sources of problems, and that in Egyptian wisdom proverbs there is questioning of social status, consumption (over eating and drinking), and everything else that becomes easy to see when you gather many nomadic tribes into settled city states.
Now, we move to China and examine one of the foremost ethical geniuses of world history: Grand Master Kung, or as he is known to us, Confucius (Kong Fu Tsu, or Grand Master Kong). Confucius was dedicated to the idea that the individual can obtain fullness and happiness by placing others before oneself, by recognizing the desires of others as equal to the desires one has for oneself.
Chinese Philosophy and The Period of the Hundred Philosophers/Schools:
One would like to think that times of peace and prosperity are good for systems of thought, but in fact we find that times of war and disintegration of empires is best for thinkers and systems of thought. Human beings only rethink problems when they are faced with them, and so in Confucius’ China there were great problems in the ‘Warring States period’ as many kings came and went, each calling themselves ‘mandated by heaven’. If heaven speaks for a king, it was thought the king would prosper. If the king does not follow the way of heaven, heaven or the All Lord stops speaking for the king, and someone else comes along. Each new king then claims that the old king was ‘no longer spoken for’, so the populations of Greece, India etc. find themselves wondering: who exactly does Heaven (the heavens) speak for, and why? Confucius and the Daoists we will examine next week proposed different solutions to this problem. The Daoists believed that going off into nature and rejecting human ways was best for cultivating the individual, while Confucius believed that the city, morality and study were best for cultivating human virtues. Thus, while Confucius and the Daoists were both questioners of individual desires and judgment, Confucius believed we should turn to society to realize our true nature and the Daoists believed we should turn away from society to realize our true nature.
The Period of the Hundred Philosophers or Hundred Schools, as it is called, came with the Warring States Period and ended during the Han dynasty which supported the studies of many of the schools that had their origins during the Warring States Period. This included the teachings of Confucius and the early Confucians such as Mencius and Hsun Zi as well as the Daoists including Lao Zi and Zuan Zi. It also included the legalists, the followers of Mo Zi and many other schools.
An interesting point to make about the evolution of systems of thought here is that Confucius, the Daoists and others speak of the ‘Mandate of Heaven’. In India, Greece, China, and many other places, we can see that first many tribes and their gods were drawn into polytheistic (many gods) systems (as we focused on last week), and then after this these were drawn into monotheistic (one god) systems. We can see that many gods with human like desires become one god with human like desires, and then this one god becomes more and more abstract. We see the same pattern in India and China, where polytheism grew into a monotheistic ‘Way’ or ‘Mandate’. Essentially, the All Lord becomes simply the mind of the universe or the ‘way’ or ‘order’ of things. Greek philosophers were individuals who were progressive, pushing beyond the polytheism of ancient Greece toward an All Intelligence that is order, goodness, and life in the world. Confucius follows this sort of pattern in using the ‘Mandate of Heaven’. Confucius does not speak of the Lord of Heaven, but the Mandate is the speech or order from the mouth of the All Lord.
Confucius and his System of Thought
Just like we had with Egypt last week, Confucius(550-480 BCE)believes that the heart is the center of the human being. Notice that this ‘center’ is both mental and physical, fitting with cosmology, psychology and medical practices (these, of course, not being separated in ancient times and cultures). Confucius is often understood as a champion of order and ritual, as he is a proponent of society against the Daoists. However, it is clear from the Analects that Confucius believed it was more important to have right intentions than right actions, i.e. ‘one’s heart is in the right place’. Confucius believed that ritual was the strength of a society and so one should perform the rituals to the ancestors, but he also believed that the worst thing was not to simply avoid ritual but to do ritual without the proper intention. We could say that Confucius would say to a churchgoer today: it is more important to enjoy your church than to attend your church, for if you do not enjoy it whole heartedly you should not go. Empty ritual, ritual simply for the motions rather than authentic love for and continuity with one’s society, is the worst thing, and thus it would be better in such a case to avoid false ritual and simply not perform the ritual at all. This point is often lost when people focus on Confucius’ great love of ritual and city culture. A good example of this point is Analects 5.5 (and yes, these are standardized so no matter the translation, ‘5.5’ is always the fifth aphorism of the fifth chapter or book, just like the Bible and Koran are standardized with numbers): Confucius says that Ran Yong does not need eloquence (civilized speech) if he is not good. Another good example is 11.10, where Confucius is grieving ‘inappropriately’ for his favorite student, and tells us that genuine love is more important than being polite or pleasant (right intention trumps right outer form). However, the best example is clearly 3.26, “Authority without generosity, ceremony without reverence, mourning without grief, these things I cannot bear to contemplate”.
Also like we had with Egypt last week, Confucius was a great champion of scholarship. Confucius believed that scholarship was necessary for developing the heart, and the ‘gentleman’, Confucius’ word for the great person, developed love for others and knowledge through study of the classic texts. Needless to say, Confucius’ Analects became just such an object for devoted study in Chinese society, and Confucius became an ancestor revered by devotees with ritual. Confucius is credited as the father of China’s civil service system, a system in which anyone who tested well, regardless of their position in society, was given a government position. This is similar to the development of types of scribes in Egypt. It is just such a development that we call ‘the middle class’, the individuals who through study and work can rise or fall in position to fit the many niches required to run large cities and systems. In combination with the last point, this means that Confucius hates scholarship for show without genuine love of learning and discovery of human nature. A good example is 4.9, ‘if a scholar is ashamed of his shabby clothes or poor food, he is not worth listening to’.
The last and central point that I want to make about Confucius as you read the Analects is this: Confucius was a genius at seeing himself as equal to everyone, and he encouraged this attitude as the path to Goodness itself. Most of us have likely heard the ‘Golden Rule’, which is paraphrased from Confucius: ‘treat others the way you want to be treated’. My favorite example is 7.22: Confucius says that if you put him with any two people at random, he can take their strengths as a model to follow and their faults as a warning. Clearly, Confucius believed that we all share the same set of strengths and faults, no matter how talented (or horrible) we happen to individually be or where our talents are. I love this point, and I believe it is central for examining other cultures with an open mind, a mind beyond the simplistic idea that ‘the West is rational’ or ‘scientific’. Confucius teaches us that NO ONE is perfect, not even himself, but there is good in everyone and everything, and we had best remember that we will never loose any of our connection to our fellow human beings if we only remember to look hard enough for it.
Again, an example: “When you see a worthy man, seek to emulate him…When you see an unworthy man, examine yourself”.
Confucius’ Followers and Neo-Confucianism
Confucius had two followers who became the famous two poles of interpretation of the Analects. Mencius (370-290 BCE) or Men Zi, the second in command of Confucianism by popular consent in the tradition, believed that Confucius taught that the human being is basically good and develops the heart, growing and developing the virtues through love. He argued that because the human individual is essentially good, we need ritual to guide our growth but love is the true essence. Hsun Zi, the third in command of Confucianism, a cynic and conservative, argued that the human being is essentially evil and without the rituals and tradition to hold our nature back we would be selfish and uncivilized. This remains the major split in Confucian thought.
About 1100 CE, Confucianism merged with Daoist and Buddhist ideas to form a Confucian revival called Neo-Confucianism by scholars. Buddhist metaphors such as the pearl at the bottom of the muddy lake and the sun emerging from behind the clouds were reinterpreted in light of Confucianism and Daoism. The major figure of this revival was Chu His (1130-1200 CE), who believed that all three traditions were teaching the same truth but that Confucius was the superior and primary teacher.
Confucius’ Analects
Confucius shows us a brilliant development of the skepticism of individual and state that we have already seen develop elsewhere. When people gather, they can see each other and see groups, and are questioning and skeptical of themselves, other individuals, and group organizations.
First we look at the criticism of the individual, clearing the individual heart and putting oneself in tune with the Way. Then we look at criticism of the state, and see that the same shape applies.
Second, notice the passages where Confucius is criticizing sages who go to nature and do not study. Pay attention to this for next week, as these are early Daoists who have different opinions than Confucius about the cultivation of the human individual.
Criticism of the Individual:
Confucius puts the Good and the Heart over all else, including pride, whether the pride and judgment is for the state or for the individual.
Right act/conduct is important, but it is empty without intention
Heart over ritual/act, both important
Intention and Action, Mind and Body, the worst is the lower empty of the upper.
(4.12) He who acts out of self interest arouses much resentment.
(5.5) ‘Ran Yong is good but not eloquent’- I don’t know if he is good, but he certainly does not need eloquence if he isn’t.
(11.10) Yan Hui died. ‘Master, this grief isn’t right’ C; ‘What sort of grief for such a man is right?
Criticism of Luxury:
(5.18) Master said: Zang Sunchen built a house for his tortoise, with pillars in the shape of mountains and rafters decorated with duckweed. Has he lost his mind?
(7.16) Even if you have only coarse grain, water and your arm for a pillow, you may still be happy. Riches and honors without justice are to me as fleeting clouds.
Ritual without Virtue:
(3.26) authority without generosity, ceremony without reverence, mourning without grief, these things I cannot bear to contemplate.
(4.13) If one cannot govern by observing ritual and showing compassion, what is the use of ritual?
Scholarship without greed or want of career:
(4.9) If a scholar is ashamed of his shabby clothes or poor food, he is not worth listening to.
Haven’t seen someone who studies without any thought of career.
Good is at Hand (7.30) but no one is perfect (7.26)
Says again and again that he is not perfect, nor has he met perfection…
(7.33) My seal is as strong as anyone’s, but I have not succeeded in living nobly.
yet: ‘Is goodness out of reach? As soon as I long for goodness, goodness is at hand.’
(7.34) I make no claims to wisdom or to human perfection- how would I dare? Yet my aim never flags and I never tire of teaching people.
Disciple: ‘This is what we fail to follow.’
The amazing insight for continuous becoming:
(And a major lesson of this class)
Whatever one’s position, you always share the faults and talents of everyone.
Thus, you have to work to compare self with others, as not intuitive.
You should compare yourself to others, reflect yourself through others no matter how you judge them to be, and work to get over selfishness and become compassionate and balanced (the way of heaven, opposed to selfish desire for lower).
Confucius values joining all of humanity, not being selfish.
(7.22) Put me with any two people at random- they will invariably have something to teach me. I can take their qualities as a model and their defects as a warning.
(9.8) Am I knowledgeable? No. A Bumpkin asked me a question, and my mind went blank. Still, I hammered at his problem from all sides, till I worked out something.
(1.16) Don’t worry if you don’t recognize other’s merits: worry that you may not
recognize theirs.
(2.13) Practice what you preach.
(4.17) When you see a worthy man, seek to emulate him. When you see an unworthy man, examine yourself.
(5.12) Zigong ‘I do not want to do to others…’ C: you’re not that far yet…
(11.4) Yan Hui is of no help to me: whatever I say pleases him.
(9.28) It is in the cold of winter that you see how green the pines and cypresses are.
(15.23) A gentleman does not approve of a person because he expresses a certain opinion, nor does he reject an opinion because it is expressed by a particular person.
(15.24) ‘Single word to guide one’s life?’ C- Reciprocity: do not do to others…
(19.21) A gentleman’s mistake is like an eclipse of the sun or moon.
When happens, everyone notices, and when corrected everyone looks up in admiration.
Good as Unknown, Beyond Judgment and Opinion
(5.19, and one cut off before 5.9) Openness, Being without Arrogance or Prejudice. Clear Heart as without blockage, Light without shade, Consciousness without judgment.
(9.17) The master stood by a river and said: ‘Everything flows like this, without ceasing’
(note Heraclitus)
(2.17) Master said: Knowledge is to take the known as known and unknown as unknown.
(pre 3.14) (quoted by Wittgenstein) About what we don’t know we must keep silent.
(5.13) Our master’s views on culture can be gathered, but you can’t hear his views on the nature of things or the Way of Heaven.
(7.21) The master never talked of miracles, violence, disorders, spirits.
(7.35) Confucius is ill, student: ‘pray to spirits above & spirits below’
Con: In that case, I have been praying for a long time already.
(note not a rejection of the spiritual, but a knowing unknowing)
(11.12) Asked how to serve spirits, says: You have not yet learned how to serve man, how could you learn to serve the spirits?
Death: You do not yet know life, how can you learn about death?
Middle Way: (Buddha, Heraclitus)
(6.17) Who would leave a house without using the door? Why do people seek to walk outside the way?
(6.29) The power of the middle way is supreme, and yet it is not found among the people anymore. (notice restore the golden age)
Reform the old, bring in the new:
(2.11) He who by revising the old knows the new is fit to be a teacher.
(2.12) A gentleman is not a pot.
(Pre 3.4 cut off) each generation has added and dropped from the ritual, so we know what people will look like 100 generations from now (they will add and drop)
In pursuit of virtue, do not be afraid to outpace your teacher (15.36)
Criticism of the State:
Confucius is not a compliant sheep when it comes to the state.
His criticism of individual judgment and pride is matched by criticism of the state.
(11.17) Rich student tyrant: C- attach him: you have my permission.
Sees private interest trapped in the state (nobles disunifying Zhou court, into warring states). (passage?)
A tyrant must work for the good of all people
(13.15) asked by Duke: Is there a single maxim/rule that could ruin a country?
C- The prince should never suffer contradiction. When in error, prince should be told.
(13.24) ‘What if everyone likes a man?’ C- Not enough
‘What if everyone hates him?’ C- Not enough: Good should love, bad should hate.
(13.20) ‘present politicians?’ Those puny creatures are not even worth mentioning.
Free will of all:
(9.26) One cannot deny the humblest man his free will.
Criticism of Daoism and its sages retreat into Nature:
Just as Confucius appears in Daoist texts as an ally but inferior rival, so do proto-Daoist sages in the Analects.
This is very much like Buddha vs. the Jains, in that other group isn’t mentioned by name, but found not to be in balance but extremists. Daoists wanted to escape into nature, while Confucians believe in the value of the city and embracing not escaping humankind.
Believe in balance, like Daoists, but seek to balance the city, not escape into the perfect balance of nature from the city. Daoists are more skeptical of society.
(Similar to hippie communes in remote areas all over country- rejection of society)
Criticism of Escape from Humanity as opposed to transforming/reforming Humanity.
(vs. the sages of 18.6, 18.7 and 18.8)
(18.16) One cannot associate with birds and beasts. If the world were following the way, I would not have to reform it.
It is not right to be a hermit, and discard human relationships to preserve one’s purity.
(18.18) (Shaolain is the Daoist who had a monastery that became famous taken over by martial arts Buddhists)
C- I do things differently. I follow no rigid prescriptions on what should or should not be done.
(4.1) It is beautiful to live amidst humanity. It is hardly wise to live in a place destitute of people (don’t be a Daoist hermit).
Criticism of Meditation (D and later B), to Confucians not as good as study
(15.31) I once to meditate went without food for a day and a night without sleep.
It was no use. It is better to study.
Numerous criticisms of inactivity, inferior to activity, study and effort.
(2.1): At 15, I set my mind upon learning. At 30, I took my stand. At 40 I had no doubts. At 50, I knew the will (mandate) of heaven. At 60, my ear was attuned. At 70, I follow all the desires of my heart without breaking any rule.
(4.2) A good man rests in his humanity. A wise man profits from his humanity.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Logic Lecture Feb 24: Aristotle, the Categories and On Interpretation
BCC Logic
Eric Gerlach
2/24/2010
First Lecture on Aristotle: The Categories and On Interpretation
Aristotle (380-320 BCE) was not originally from Athens, but he traveled there to study with the great Athenian philosopher Plato. After Plato’s death (350 BCE) Aristotle left Athens, and then was offered the position of tutor to Alexander the Great. As Alexander went on his campaigns of conquest, Aristotle returned to Athens and founded a school like the Academy of his teacher Plato named the Lyceum. Upon Alexander’s death, Aristotle found himself unwanted in Athens and fled, as he was not Athenian and the Athenians were not too pleased to have been conquered by Alexander in the first place.
Aristotle is often praised as the father of Logic, but as we have seen with the Indian logicians it is far more reasonable (and logical) to say that Aristotle developed theories of debate and seeking truth just as earlier thinkers from many different cultures had done. He is also called the father of the scientific method, but this is quite unobservant of the similarities his theories have with the cosmology shared by much of the ancient world (including Egypt, India and Persia). He was not, in fact, primarily interested in logic or debate, but rather in cosmology, particularly what we would call today psychology, physics and biology. The book he was most famous for up through the middle ages in Islamic lands and Christian Europe was his On The Soul (a psychology and biology text), but this book is hard to find in print today.
There are four of his texts that concern logic and debate: the Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics. This first lecture will cover the Categories and On Interpretation, and the second lecture will cover the Prior and Posterior Analytics.
The Categories:
Starting with the Categories we notice that Aristotle believes in the power of speech. This lines up with the Zoroastrian and Abrahamic traditions. Order is spoken downward, from the eternal mind into the particular beings or substances of changing matter the same way that a leader issues orders to subordinates and the mind issues orders to the body and the limbs. Thus, ‘predicated’, something being said of a subject, is a central concept. Aristotle assumes that things have purposes according to their natures, and these purposes correspond to concepts that can be put into words.
Aristotle believes that we must observe nature and say what can be said of things, based on their similarities and differences (the same method of his teacher Plato and others). He believes that what can be said that is necessary of the thing must be what truly is. Thus, as example, he says that ‘animal’ can be said, can be predicated, of both man and ox, just as ‘man’ and ‘animal’ can be predicated of any human individual (male, that is).
A Genera or Genus is the family to which a thing belongs. Today, we think of this as the concept. This is paired with Species, the sub group of the family. He says (80) that if you are giving an account of a particular tree, you would say more with the species of tree than you would of the genus ‘plant’.
Aristotle gives us 10 categories, which he claims are in no way composite, meaning they are completely separate categories from each other, ‘categorically separate’: Substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, and affection. Note that we saw several of these in Kanada, and that ‘relation, place, time, position, state, and affection’ are all quite confusingly interrelated, even though Aristotle says that they are all categorically separate.
Substances ‘underlie’ everything else. This has led some to call Aristotle a materialist, but this is not so. He thought there were motions above (mover) , immobile matter (the moved) below, so the substances are material, the receiver of motions (like Plato’s forms). Aristotle argues that substances simply are, while ‘white’ or ‘beautiful’ or ‘warm’ can be more or less so in a thing.
(81) “The distinctive mark of substance is that it can admit contrary qualities. Thus, a color cannot be both white and black, nor can the same act be good and bad: this is true for any non substance, but substances can at different times be white and black…The same individual person is at one time white, at another black, at one time warm, at another cold, at one time good, at another bad.” (Note that by “white person” Aristotle means a pale or elderly person and nothing more, certainly not race).
Thus ‘he is sitting’ can be true, then false, then true of a person. Aristotle denies that things can possess contrary qualities (be both white and black) or be in contrary states (good and evil) at the same time. This is a major positivist point that any skeptic, before and after Aristotle, would deny. Heraclitus, a major opponent that Aristotle argues against, thought that things were good and bad by perspective and positioning and so things can have contrary qualities and be in contrary states at the same time. Aristotle completely denies the possibility of this: “If, then, someone says that statements and opinions are capable of admitting contrary qualities, his contention is unsound”. For Aristotle, a person cannot be healthy and sick at the same time, but it can be one at one time, then another at another time. (What if you have a healthy liver, but an eye infection? What if you then get a liver problem?)
On Interpretation:
Aristotle says that we must limit our discussion to propositions, sentences true OR false exclusively. He argues that prayers and other requests are neither true nor false because they do not guarantee whether they will be fulfilled or not. An affirmation is a positive statement of something, a denial a negative statement. Thus, ‘I exist’ is positive, whereas ‘I do not exist’ or ‘I doubt that I exist’ are negative.
The Square of Opposition is a central concept for the ideas that follow. In fact, Aristotle does not mention the concept himself but medieval Europeans created the square as a way of organizing his ideas. In the same way, Aristotle did not use algebraic notation but his syllogisms which we will focus on in the next lecture were put in symbolic forms by Muslims and Christians in the middle ages to make them simpler to digest.
A says there are universals and individuals. This corresponds to the eternal sphere and the temporal sphere. Universals are the forces and motions of the stars and planets above, individuals are the particular substances acted upon on and in the earth below. We saw this before in Kanada and Gotama’s texts. Cows is the universal group of all cows, while a particular cow is an individual. Thus, ‘All people are pale’ and ‘No people are pale’ is a universal proposition, whereas ‘Some people are pale’ and ‘Some people are not pale’ are particular propositions.
Notice that ‘men are white’ becomes the central example used, and how this can be misperceived by later cultures. Muslims and Christians mistook this to be speaking about themselves equally, and unfortunately Aquinas in the 1200s uses “Socrates was a white man” as a central example for teaching Aristotle’s On Interpretation. Yes, Aquinas is thinking that he and Aristotle are “white men”, and that this refers to the European race. Muslim logicians assumed that Aristotle was a “white” Asiatic man like themselves earlier, and Aquinas is getting his Aristotle from Persians like Al Farabi and Al Ghazali.
To come back to the subject, Aristotle tells us (and this is critical for understanding the Square of Opposition) that particular propositions can contradict each other but both be true, whereas universal propositions can not contradict each other and both be true.
Consider the four propositions, “I like all cows”, “I dislike all cows”, “I like some cows”, and “I dislike some cows”. The first two are universal propositions, as they refer to the group of all cows, while the second two are particular propositions, as they only refer to some individual cows. These propositions correspond to the four corners of a square. The top is universal (All and None), the bottom is particular (Some and Some Not), the left is positive (All and Some), and the right is negative (None and Some Not). If we want to put the four corners in an algebraic form with X and Y, they would be: All X is Y, No X is Y, Some X is Y, Some X is not Y.
Aristotle notes that the cross corners cannot both be true, and neither can the top two corners (ALL and NONE). Also, he argues that one or the other of the bottom must be true, but there are counter examples to this (like we saw with Nagarjuna’s neither Y or not Y).
At end of the reading, Aristotle gets himself into another problem given what he has said. He argues that he has a problem with things that are neither y nor not y, with the example of neither good nor bad person. Is ‘x is good’ the contradiction of ‘x is bad’ or ‘x is not good’? If x is neither good nor bad, the first is false, the second false, but the third is true. This is an interesting problem, as it shows two sets of contraries. Good and bad are contraries, but they are BOTH contrary to neither good nor bad (neutral, like Swiss). Aristotle says, strangely, that ‘not good’ is MORE REALLY FALSE than ‘bad’, the contrary quality. This seems to reverse his position from before, where he was saying that if something is good, it can be bad at some other time, but cannot be bad, because he is now saying that it is more that it cannot be good. He says, ‘it SEEMS more contrary’. Aristotle has already said that prayers (also commands) are neither true nor false, as are statements about the future (‘There will be a sea-battle tomorrow’). Are these, then, more the contradiction of truths? Or are false statements more? Now Aristotle seems to be saying that True means not not true, and not false is simply a byproduct, an accident, even though the duality of true and false is central to his system.
Aristotle has founded everything on two things, what is later called the PRINCIPLE OF BIVALENCE (a proposition must be either true or false, not neither true nor false) and the PRINCIPLE OF NONCONTRADICTION (a proposition must be true or false, not both). We will see with later European thinkers that positivism tends to support these principles while skepticism denies them.
Eric Gerlach
2/24/2010
First Lecture on Aristotle: The Categories and On Interpretation
Aristotle (380-320 BCE) was not originally from Athens, but he traveled there to study with the great Athenian philosopher Plato. After Plato’s death (350 BCE) Aristotle left Athens, and then was offered the position of tutor to Alexander the Great. As Alexander went on his campaigns of conquest, Aristotle returned to Athens and founded a school like the Academy of his teacher Plato named the Lyceum. Upon Alexander’s death, Aristotle found himself unwanted in Athens and fled, as he was not Athenian and the Athenians were not too pleased to have been conquered by Alexander in the first place.
Aristotle is often praised as the father of Logic, but as we have seen with the Indian logicians it is far more reasonable (and logical) to say that Aristotle developed theories of debate and seeking truth just as earlier thinkers from many different cultures had done. He is also called the father of the scientific method, but this is quite unobservant of the similarities his theories have with the cosmology shared by much of the ancient world (including Egypt, India and Persia). He was not, in fact, primarily interested in logic or debate, but rather in cosmology, particularly what we would call today psychology, physics and biology. The book he was most famous for up through the middle ages in Islamic lands and Christian Europe was his On The Soul (a psychology and biology text), but this book is hard to find in print today.
There are four of his texts that concern logic and debate: the Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics. This first lecture will cover the Categories and On Interpretation, and the second lecture will cover the Prior and Posterior Analytics.
The Categories:
Starting with the Categories we notice that Aristotle believes in the power of speech. This lines up with the Zoroastrian and Abrahamic traditions. Order is spoken downward, from the eternal mind into the particular beings or substances of changing matter the same way that a leader issues orders to subordinates and the mind issues orders to the body and the limbs. Thus, ‘predicated’, something being said of a subject, is a central concept. Aristotle assumes that things have purposes according to their natures, and these purposes correspond to concepts that can be put into words.
Aristotle believes that we must observe nature and say what can be said of things, based on their similarities and differences (the same method of his teacher Plato and others). He believes that what can be said that is necessary of the thing must be what truly is. Thus, as example, he says that ‘animal’ can be said, can be predicated, of both man and ox, just as ‘man’ and ‘animal’ can be predicated of any human individual (male, that is).
A Genera or Genus is the family to which a thing belongs. Today, we think of this as the concept. This is paired with Species, the sub group of the family. He says (80) that if you are giving an account of a particular tree, you would say more with the species of tree than you would of the genus ‘plant’.
Aristotle gives us 10 categories, which he claims are in no way composite, meaning they are completely separate categories from each other, ‘categorically separate’: Substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, and affection. Note that we saw several of these in Kanada, and that ‘relation, place, time, position, state, and affection’ are all quite confusingly interrelated, even though Aristotle says that they are all categorically separate.
Substances ‘underlie’ everything else. This has led some to call Aristotle a materialist, but this is not so. He thought there were motions above (mover) , immobile matter (the moved) below, so the substances are material, the receiver of motions (like Plato’s forms). Aristotle argues that substances simply are, while ‘white’ or ‘beautiful’ or ‘warm’ can be more or less so in a thing.
(81) “The distinctive mark of substance is that it can admit contrary qualities. Thus, a color cannot be both white and black, nor can the same act be good and bad: this is true for any non substance, but substances can at different times be white and black…The same individual person is at one time white, at another black, at one time warm, at another cold, at one time good, at another bad.” (Note that by “white person” Aristotle means a pale or elderly person and nothing more, certainly not race).
Thus ‘he is sitting’ can be true, then false, then true of a person. Aristotle denies that things can possess contrary qualities (be both white and black) or be in contrary states (good and evil) at the same time. This is a major positivist point that any skeptic, before and after Aristotle, would deny. Heraclitus, a major opponent that Aristotle argues against, thought that things were good and bad by perspective and positioning and so things can have contrary qualities and be in contrary states at the same time. Aristotle completely denies the possibility of this: “If, then, someone says that statements and opinions are capable of admitting contrary qualities, his contention is unsound”. For Aristotle, a person cannot be healthy and sick at the same time, but it can be one at one time, then another at another time. (What if you have a healthy liver, but an eye infection? What if you then get a liver problem?)
On Interpretation:
Aristotle says that we must limit our discussion to propositions, sentences true OR false exclusively. He argues that prayers and other requests are neither true nor false because they do not guarantee whether they will be fulfilled or not. An affirmation is a positive statement of something, a denial a negative statement. Thus, ‘I exist’ is positive, whereas ‘I do not exist’ or ‘I doubt that I exist’ are negative.
The Square of Opposition is a central concept for the ideas that follow. In fact, Aristotle does not mention the concept himself but medieval Europeans created the square as a way of organizing his ideas. In the same way, Aristotle did not use algebraic notation but his syllogisms which we will focus on in the next lecture were put in symbolic forms by Muslims and Christians in the middle ages to make them simpler to digest.
A says there are universals and individuals. This corresponds to the eternal sphere and the temporal sphere. Universals are the forces and motions of the stars and planets above, individuals are the particular substances acted upon on and in the earth below. We saw this before in Kanada and Gotama’s texts. Cows is the universal group of all cows, while a particular cow is an individual. Thus, ‘All people are pale’ and ‘No people are pale’ is a universal proposition, whereas ‘Some people are pale’ and ‘Some people are not pale’ are particular propositions.
Notice that ‘men are white’ becomes the central example used, and how this can be misperceived by later cultures. Muslims and Christians mistook this to be speaking about themselves equally, and unfortunately Aquinas in the 1200s uses “Socrates was a white man” as a central example for teaching Aristotle’s On Interpretation. Yes, Aquinas is thinking that he and Aristotle are “white men”, and that this refers to the European race. Muslim logicians assumed that Aristotle was a “white” Asiatic man like themselves earlier, and Aquinas is getting his Aristotle from Persians like Al Farabi and Al Ghazali.
To come back to the subject, Aristotle tells us (and this is critical for understanding the Square of Opposition) that particular propositions can contradict each other but both be true, whereas universal propositions can not contradict each other and both be true.
Consider the four propositions, “I like all cows”, “I dislike all cows”, “I like some cows”, and “I dislike some cows”. The first two are universal propositions, as they refer to the group of all cows, while the second two are particular propositions, as they only refer to some individual cows. These propositions correspond to the four corners of a square. The top is universal (All and None), the bottom is particular (Some and Some Not), the left is positive (All and Some), and the right is negative (None and Some Not). If we want to put the four corners in an algebraic form with X and Y, they would be: All X is Y, No X is Y, Some X is Y, Some X is not Y.
Aristotle notes that the cross corners cannot both be true, and neither can the top two corners (ALL and NONE). Also, he argues that one or the other of the bottom must be true, but there are counter examples to this (like we saw with Nagarjuna’s neither Y or not Y).
At end of the reading, Aristotle gets himself into another problem given what he has said. He argues that he has a problem with things that are neither y nor not y, with the example of neither good nor bad person. Is ‘x is good’ the contradiction of ‘x is bad’ or ‘x is not good’? If x is neither good nor bad, the first is false, the second false, but the third is true. This is an interesting problem, as it shows two sets of contraries. Good and bad are contraries, but they are BOTH contrary to neither good nor bad (neutral, like Swiss). Aristotle says, strangely, that ‘not good’ is MORE REALLY FALSE than ‘bad’, the contrary quality. This seems to reverse his position from before, where he was saying that if something is good, it can be bad at some other time, but cannot be bad, because he is now saying that it is more that it cannot be good. He says, ‘it SEEMS more contrary’. Aristotle has already said that prayers (also commands) are neither true nor false, as are statements about the future (‘There will be a sea-battle tomorrow’). Are these, then, more the contradiction of truths? Or are false statements more? Now Aristotle seems to be saying that True means not not true, and not false is simply a byproduct, an accident, even though the duality of true and false is central to his system.
Aristotle has founded everything on two things, what is later called the PRINCIPLE OF BIVALENCE (a proposition must be either true or false, not neither true nor false) and the PRINCIPLE OF NONCONTRADICTION (a proposition must be true or false, not both). We will see with later European thinkers that positivism tends to support these principles while skepticism denies them.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Ethics Lecture Feb 19: Balance, Egypt & Confucius
BCC Ethics
Eric Gerlach
2/18/2010
Lecture on Balance: Egyptian Wisdom & Confucius
In studying balance as an Ethical concept, we will look at Ma’at in the wisdom of ancient Egypt, the doctrine of the middle way in the teachings of the Buddha of India and Aristotle of ancient Greece, and then finish with the Analects of Confucius, one of the great ancient world Ethics texts and a masterwork on the balance of concern for the self and others.
Ma’at and the Wisdom of Ancient Egypt
The idea of balance was identified with the Goddess Ma’at in the early periods of Egyptian history, but just like the sun became the abstract principle of life and the universe Ma’at became the abstract conception of the balance of opposites.
In the Egyptian wisdom quotes, one of my favorite examples of early city-state texts, we can see that the Egyptians were concerned not only with the balance of good and evil that exist in particular desirable things but also in the ethical virtue of the balance of concern for oneself and for others. As many tribes gathered into the earliest city-states and empires, people saw more and more of human behavior and became concerned with balancing excess and lack. People saw that some had much to eat, much money, much power, and others had none. They saw that excess can hurt the individual and society as much as deficiency, power and riches as much as oppression and poverty. In Egypt and many societies that followed, including India, Greece and China, we can see a concern with balance and avoiding both excess and deficiency being praised as wise and ethical.
In the Egyptian texts (as well as Confucius) we can see a heart centered theory of the human being that ties into this concept of balance and wisdom. The heart was thought to be the center of the human being, as ancient people soon learned that the heart is the center of the vessels that branch throughout the body and which are crucial to its health and nourishment. The Egyptians thought that if one was unkind to others it would choke the breath and blood from the heart and hurt one’s physical as well as mental health (remember that in ancient cosmology, physics was identical with psychology and spirituality). Consider that we still wear the wedding ring on the finger next to the pinky, which has a large vein in it and was thought to control love and lust by the ancient Egyptians (the Greeks and Romans picked up much medicine and physiology from the Egyptians, and we keep this custom today). The ancient Israelites, in contrast, had their wives wear a ring on the index finger to keep her from casting spells while pointing.
In the Egyptian wisdom literature, the “heart-guided-individual” (very similar to the language and theories of Confucius) put wisdom over desire, mind over the body, and thus had self-control and the full powers and potential of the human individual. This was seen as putting oneself in-line with the cosmos, as Being, the one eternal way, is the source and guide of the many individual mortal beings.
Read the ancient Egyptian wisdom quotes with this in mind (particularly p. 7, 10, 17, 20, 21, 22, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 44, and 46).
The Buddha and The Middle Way
The Buddha (550 BCE), the founder of one of the largest systems of thought in history, taught moderation between extremes as a fundamental doctrine. Known as “The Middle Way” in both Buddhism and Confucianism, this teaching is quite similar to the ancient Egyptian conception of Ma’at. According to the story of the Buddha’s life he tried extreme practices in the jungle to rid himself of attachment and desire and gain unity of mind and enlightenment as many were doing in his time and still do today, but he found that extreme self denial brought self hatred.
Moderation became a core part of the Buddha’s later enlightenment and teaching. Rather than try to rid the self of selfhood or desire, release is found in the moderation between seeking and denying, neither running toward nor away from the self or desirable things. Thus, Buddhist conceptions of ethics often center of moderation between extremes, neither going completely without desirable things nor completely indulging in them.
Aristotle and The Doctrine of The Mean
Aristotle (350 BCE) argues for a very similar concept of moderation in his texts on ethics and health. He associates each virtue with two vices, one more extreme than virtue and the other too deficient. Thus, one should not be afraid of money or family or war but neither should one be a glutton for these things either. He argues that too much drinking and athletics can destroy the body, but no drinking or athletics can make the body and mind weak and deficient.
Confucius and the Golden Rule
Confucius (550 BCE – 480 BCE) was one of the great ethical geniuses of the ancient world. It is worth noting that in Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism we find Jesus, Buddha and Confucius telling us to press ourselves to identify with others, to see things through their eyes and treat them as we wish to be treated. All three were identified with the central gods of the heavens in each tradition. No matter how religious or non-religious one is, this shows us that humans consider love and wisdom to be quite divine and the supreme goal of individual life and activity.
The Golden Rule:
Jesus and Confucius both say almost the same “Golden Rule”: treat others the way one wants to be treated. Sometimes scholars say that Confucius rather says the negative “Silver Rule”: DON’T treat others the way one DOESN’T want to be treated. It is easy to see that these are two sides of the same rule, quite the same but slightly different. We will see almost the same dual sided rule shared between Bentham and Mill next week as we study consequentialism/utilitarianism. Bentham argued that one should act in a way to bring about the maximum happiness, and Mill argued (taking his ethics from Bentham) that one should act in a way to bring about the minimum pain. Consider that communism often idealizes the positive side of each rule (provides structure but little room for choice) and capitalism often idealizes the negative side of each rule (room for choice but provides little structure). Many scholars have noted that American law is quite influenced by Mill, and follows his idea of erring on the side of doing little harm rather than Bentham. Consider that communist countries often put their former rulers on trial for crimes against the people when things go wrong (except for the top cult-figures), while capitalist countries rarely send their rulers to jail even when crimes could be punishable in court (there are severe problems with both methods, of course).
Heart over Ritual, Intention over Action:
Confucius and Confucianism are often identified with ritual and tradition, such as the father ruling over the household. In many places in the Analects, however, Confucius is quite clear that although ritual and tradition are essential for the cultivation of the individual and the maintenance of society, they are secondary to love and having the right intentions. This can be seen as an extension of ancient cosmology placing mind over body. In courts of law today, and individual is only guilty if they intentionally performed an action. Confucius tells us that action and tradition without the right intention and emotion are the worst things imaginable. One would think that if the two elements of an act are the right intention and right action, having the right action would be half good, but this is wrong according to Confucius. He even argues that if a ruler is corrupt, one should overthrow the state and put a proper ruler in place. Strangely, the Analects became the core text of the Confucian state in China which was quite conservative of traditional structures.
Nothing is Perfect, but Everything is Good:
Another beautiful idea that is central to Confucius’ teachings is “Perfection is nowhere, but good is always at hand”. Confucius says several times that he is not perfect, and that he has never met a perfect person (or even, in some passages, an excellent person), but he tells us that we all share the same virtues and vices and we can learn to be good by listening to the lowest of people (just like the first passage of the Egyptian wisdom , which tells us that “Wisdom can be found even among the maidens at the grindstone”). He even says that Yao and Shun, the two legendary emperors and ancestors of China, could not obtain perfection, so how could we? The best quote on this is Analects 7.22:
“Put me in the company of any two people at random – they will invariably have something to teach me…I can take their qualities as a model and their vices as a warning.”
Examine Oneself First:
The last ethical point to consider while reading through the Analects is Confucius’ emphasis on modesty and examining the self for fault before one finds fault with others. This certainly fits snuggly with the quote just mentioned. Confucius praises individuals who question themselves rather than others and who display modesty rather than pride. Confucius displays these virtues with regards to himself many times in the Analects. Consider 1.16, “Don’t worry if people don’t recognize your merits; worry that you may not recognize theirs”. Consider 4.17, “When you see a worthy man, seek to emulate him; when you see an unworthy man, examine yourself”.
In reading the Analects, pay particular attention to the following passages in light of the above:
1.10, 1.14-16,
2.12-15, 2.17,
3.13, 3.26,
4.6, 4.7, 4.10, 4.11, 4.14, 4.17,
5.5, 5.12, 5.13, 5.18, 5.27,
6.15, 6.17, 6.18, 6.20, 6.29,
7.7, 7.22,
9.8, 9.17, 9.26,
11.17,
12.22,
13.24,
14.22, 14.29,
15.21, 15.23, 15.24, 15.36, 15.39
Eric Gerlach
2/18/2010
Lecture on Balance: Egyptian Wisdom & Confucius
In studying balance as an Ethical concept, we will look at Ma’at in the wisdom of ancient Egypt, the doctrine of the middle way in the teachings of the Buddha of India and Aristotle of ancient Greece, and then finish with the Analects of Confucius, one of the great ancient world Ethics texts and a masterwork on the balance of concern for the self and others.
Ma’at and the Wisdom of Ancient Egypt
The idea of balance was identified with the Goddess Ma’at in the early periods of Egyptian history, but just like the sun became the abstract principle of life and the universe Ma’at became the abstract conception of the balance of opposites.
In the Egyptian wisdom quotes, one of my favorite examples of early city-state texts, we can see that the Egyptians were concerned not only with the balance of good and evil that exist in particular desirable things but also in the ethical virtue of the balance of concern for oneself and for others. As many tribes gathered into the earliest city-states and empires, people saw more and more of human behavior and became concerned with balancing excess and lack. People saw that some had much to eat, much money, much power, and others had none. They saw that excess can hurt the individual and society as much as deficiency, power and riches as much as oppression and poverty. In Egypt and many societies that followed, including India, Greece and China, we can see a concern with balance and avoiding both excess and deficiency being praised as wise and ethical.
In the Egyptian texts (as well as Confucius) we can see a heart centered theory of the human being that ties into this concept of balance and wisdom. The heart was thought to be the center of the human being, as ancient people soon learned that the heart is the center of the vessels that branch throughout the body and which are crucial to its health and nourishment. The Egyptians thought that if one was unkind to others it would choke the breath and blood from the heart and hurt one’s physical as well as mental health (remember that in ancient cosmology, physics was identical with psychology and spirituality). Consider that we still wear the wedding ring on the finger next to the pinky, which has a large vein in it and was thought to control love and lust by the ancient Egyptians (the Greeks and Romans picked up much medicine and physiology from the Egyptians, and we keep this custom today). The ancient Israelites, in contrast, had their wives wear a ring on the index finger to keep her from casting spells while pointing.
In the Egyptian wisdom literature, the “heart-guided-individual” (very similar to the language and theories of Confucius) put wisdom over desire, mind over the body, and thus had self-control and the full powers and potential of the human individual. This was seen as putting oneself in-line with the cosmos, as Being, the one eternal way, is the source and guide of the many individual mortal beings.
Read the ancient Egyptian wisdom quotes with this in mind (particularly p. 7, 10, 17, 20, 21, 22, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 44, and 46).
The Buddha and The Middle Way
The Buddha (550 BCE), the founder of one of the largest systems of thought in history, taught moderation between extremes as a fundamental doctrine. Known as “The Middle Way” in both Buddhism and Confucianism, this teaching is quite similar to the ancient Egyptian conception of Ma’at. According to the story of the Buddha’s life he tried extreme practices in the jungle to rid himself of attachment and desire and gain unity of mind and enlightenment as many were doing in his time and still do today, but he found that extreme self denial brought self hatred.
Moderation became a core part of the Buddha’s later enlightenment and teaching. Rather than try to rid the self of selfhood or desire, release is found in the moderation between seeking and denying, neither running toward nor away from the self or desirable things. Thus, Buddhist conceptions of ethics often center of moderation between extremes, neither going completely without desirable things nor completely indulging in them.
Aristotle and The Doctrine of The Mean
Aristotle (350 BCE) argues for a very similar concept of moderation in his texts on ethics and health. He associates each virtue with two vices, one more extreme than virtue and the other too deficient. Thus, one should not be afraid of money or family or war but neither should one be a glutton for these things either. He argues that too much drinking and athletics can destroy the body, but no drinking or athletics can make the body and mind weak and deficient.
Confucius and the Golden Rule
Confucius (550 BCE – 480 BCE) was one of the great ethical geniuses of the ancient world. It is worth noting that in Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism we find Jesus, Buddha and Confucius telling us to press ourselves to identify with others, to see things through their eyes and treat them as we wish to be treated. All three were identified with the central gods of the heavens in each tradition. No matter how religious or non-religious one is, this shows us that humans consider love and wisdom to be quite divine and the supreme goal of individual life and activity.
The Golden Rule:
Jesus and Confucius both say almost the same “Golden Rule”: treat others the way one wants to be treated. Sometimes scholars say that Confucius rather says the negative “Silver Rule”: DON’T treat others the way one DOESN’T want to be treated. It is easy to see that these are two sides of the same rule, quite the same but slightly different. We will see almost the same dual sided rule shared between Bentham and Mill next week as we study consequentialism/utilitarianism. Bentham argued that one should act in a way to bring about the maximum happiness, and Mill argued (taking his ethics from Bentham) that one should act in a way to bring about the minimum pain. Consider that communism often idealizes the positive side of each rule (provides structure but little room for choice) and capitalism often idealizes the negative side of each rule (room for choice but provides little structure). Many scholars have noted that American law is quite influenced by Mill, and follows his idea of erring on the side of doing little harm rather than Bentham. Consider that communist countries often put their former rulers on trial for crimes against the people when things go wrong (except for the top cult-figures), while capitalist countries rarely send their rulers to jail even when crimes could be punishable in court (there are severe problems with both methods, of course).
Heart over Ritual, Intention over Action:
Confucius and Confucianism are often identified with ritual and tradition, such as the father ruling over the household. In many places in the Analects, however, Confucius is quite clear that although ritual and tradition are essential for the cultivation of the individual and the maintenance of society, they are secondary to love and having the right intentions. This can be seen as an extension of ancient cosmology placing mind over body. In courts of law today, and individual is only guilty if they intentionally performed an action. Confucius tells us that action and tradition without the right intention and emotion are the worst things imaginable. One would think that if the two elements of an act are the right intention and right action, having the right action would be half good, but this is wrong according to Confucius. He even argues that if a ruler is corrupt, one should overthrow the state and put a proper ruler in place. Strangely, the Analects became the core text of the Confucian state in China which was quite conservative of traditional structures.
Nothing is Perfect, but Everything is Good:
Another beautiful idea that is central to Confucius’ teachings is “Perfection is nowhere, but good is always at hand”. Confucius says several times that he is not perfect, and that he has never met a perfect person (or even, in some passages, an excellent person), but he tells us that we all share the same virtues and vices and we can learn to be good by listening to the lowest of people (just like the first passage of the Egyptian wisdom , which tells us that “Wisdom can be found even among the maidens at the grindstone”). He even says that Yao and Shun, the two legendary emperors and ancestors of China, could not obtain perfection, so how could we? The best quote on this is Analects 7.22:
“Put me in the company of any two people at random – they will invariably have something to teach me…I can take their qualities as a model and their vices as a warning.”
Examine Oneself First:
The last ethical point to consider while reading through the Analects is Confucius’ emphasis on modesty and examining the self for fault before one finds fault with others. This certainly fits snuggly with the quote just mentioned. Confucius praises individuals who question themselves rather than others and who display modesty rather than pride. Confucius displays these virtues with regards to himself many times in the Analects. Consider 1.16, “Don’t worry if people don’t recognize your merits; worry that you may not recognize theirs”. Consider 4.17, “When you see a worthy man, seek to emulate him; when you see an unworthy man, examine yourself”.
In reading the Analects, pay particular attention to the following passages in light of the above:
1.10, 1.14-16,
2.12-15, 2.17,
3.13, 3.26,
4.6, 4.7, 4.10, 4.11, 4.14, 4.17,
5.5, 5.12, 5.13, 5.18, 5.27,
6.15, 6.17, 6.18, 6.20, 6.29,
7.7, 7.22,
9.8, 9.17, 9.26,
11.17,
12.22,
13.24,
14.22, 14.29,
15.21, 15.23, 15.24, 15.36, 15.39
Intro Philosophy Lecture Feb 18: Socrates & Plato
BCC Introduction to Philosophy
2/17/2010
Eric Gerlach
Lecture on Socrates and Plato
Socrates (470-400 BCE) is a very famous yet very controversial and obscure figure. Like many great thinkers, he did not write his own thoughts down but rather Plato (430-350 BCE) and another student named Xenophon wrote about his teachings after his death. Plato was a playwright who wrote dialogues between Socrates and his students after failing at writing plays on other subjects. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (Plato’s student) are the three great Athenian thinkers, and before the rediscovery of the “presocratics” (like Heraclitus) they were considered to be the birth of philosophy in ancient Greece.
It is generally accepted by scholars today that Plato’s early dialogues are one of the best sources for understanding Socrates and his ideas, but in Plato’s later dialogues Socrates is a mouthpiece for Plato’s own ideas. We will consider Socrates and his thought first, then turn to two of Plato’s most important later dialogues, the Republic and the Timaeus, to study Plato’s thought. Socrates and Plato were both influenced by Heraclitus (our subject last week), and while Socrates seemed to have been quite similar to Heraclitus, Plato’s thought changed and he began putting quite different views into Socrates’ mouth.
The Dueling Views of Heraclitus and Parmenides
Consider that there are two polar opposite views one can have of reality and the world. In one view, everything changes constantly and permanence is an illusion. In the other opposite view, everything remains the same and change is the illusion. As we saw last week, Heraclitus was a famous champion of the first view. He argued that only Being, the One and All, the cosmic fire or energy, is eternal and all other beings are temporary in spite of what our judgments tell us. Another presocratic thinker named Parmenides (who lived sometime before 500 BCE) was a famous champion of the second and opposite view. He argued that there is one unchanging reality that is eternal and all change and temporary beings are the illusion in spite of what our judgments tell us.
Socrates and Plato were both influenced by Heraclitus, but in his later dialogues Plato has Socrates argue for views that sound much more like Parmenides. Originally, Socrates questioned everyone to show that we know very little and it is the job of the philosopher to show this to people. In Plato’s later dialogues, Socrates argues that there is one unchanging reality above the temporary perceivable world and it is the job of the philosopher to seek and understand this eternal reality.
Socrates and his Method of Questions
We know very little about Socrates’ early life other than the details supplied in Plato’s works. He mentions several influences, including two women: the witch/shaman Diotima who taught him about love (like Confucius, Socrates identified love with wisdom) and Aspasia, the mistress of the general Pericles, who taught him rhetoric. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle lived at a time when the glory days of Athens were in decline. Eventually, Alexander (Aristotle’s student) would conquer the city and the surrounding city-states. Socrates was a critic of Athenian society, called “the horsefly” because he believed in stinging Athens into action, and he was eventually condemned to commit suicide for corrupting the youth of the city.
Socrates’ career as a philosopher began when his friend Chaerephon went to the oracle of Delphi to ask if anyone was wiser than his friend Socrates. Socrates, with characteristic modesty, protests that this was a very crass question to ask of the great oracle. The oracle replied that no one was wiser than Socrates. This prompted Socrates to go out and seek someone wiser than himself to see if the words of the oracle were in fact true.
Socrates felt that he knew nothing, but as he questioned the experts of Athens he came upon a horrible discovery and paradox. The experts believed themselves to be wise and possess great knowledge, but when questioned it turned out they knew very little. Socrates knew that he himself knew nothing. Therefore, Socrates was wiser than the experts because he knew that he knew nothing, while the experts knew nothing but thought that they knew a great deal. Humble and modest Socrates was aware that mortal humans know nothing, but the politicians, artists and warriors were unaware of this great equality they shared with Socrates. The ignorance of Socrates was thus the greatest wisdom in all of Athens.
Notice the similarities between Socrates and Heraclitus, who argued that the experts believe themselves to know a great deal but do not understand that their knowledge and perspectives are mortal and we are all mere apes to the gods. Socrates argued, like Heraclitus, that the greatest wisdom is found in questioning oneself and others. Remember that great city-states and empires had risen along with increasingly specialized experts. Philosophy questions experts and the basis of our knowledge.
Socrates argued that the individual should accept their own ignorance and the guidance of the world through intuition. He believed that he had a spirit (a daemon in the Greek, a word which became “demon” as Christianity replaced the polytheism and spirits with monotheism and angels). This spirit was much like what we would call a conscience (a word which means “co-seeing”), an intuition that one should or should not do a particular thing. Socrates says that his daemon told him to stay out of politics. Not only did politics get Socrates killed in spite of this, but Plato has Socrates get increasingly political in his later dialogues, particularly in the Republic where Socrates debates the best form of the city. Socrates also praised the divinity of poetry, mysticism, love and getting drunk with friends (as he does at the Symposium, a dialogue about a drinking party that turns into a philosophical discussion about the nature of love).
Plato’s Thought, The Republic and The Timaeus
Plato was long assumed to be a student of Socrates simply because Plato writes as much in many of his dialogues. As Socrates is about to die, Plato has Socrates ask where the young Plato is, to which another student replies that Plato was sick and thus could not be there at the time. Scholars now are critical of this, and think that Plato had a habit of writing himself and his family into Socrates’ circle in his dialogues. Because they are our best sources on Socrates, it is difficult to tell whether or not Plato’s older cousin Critias or Plato himself were actual students of Socrates or whether they were simply influenced by this figure who became quite famous following his trial and death.
Plato’s actual name was Aristocles, but according to the story his wrestling instructor named him Platon or “Broad” because he had a wide figure. This may be merely a story, because Plato was known to have a wide “breadth” of knowledge covering all subjects of ancient thought. Plato’s father died when he was young, and his step-father became the Athenian ambassador to the Persian royal court (remember that Persia was a great source of ancient world cosmology at the time).
Long after his attempts to become an established playwright, after his dialogues about Socrates had gathered some fame, Plato founded his Academy in 385 BCE, an open area near a tree grove where he, his students and other lecturers would teach and debate matters of philosophy and cosmology. Academy in fact means “porch”, an open area in front of a building, a fact it took scholars long to understand for they believed that the Academy must have been a building itself. Scholars made a similar error looking for the famed Library of Alexandria (an Egyptian center of ancient world knowledge), when in fact the Library was a shelf that ran along a hall that connected two buildings.
To examine Plato’s thought (in its later and mature form) we will look at his two most influential dialogues which both come from his later period. By this point, Socrates was no longer sharing much of the conversation with other debaters, but dominates the texts with monologues that are now believed to be Plato’s own Parmenides-like views. Plato believed that Heraclitus was right about the world below, but Parmenides was right about the eternal world above, the unchanging model, form, order and cause of the ever-changing world below. Plato has Socrates argue that those who think they know the world below have mere opinions, but the one who knows the world above, the true eternal pattern of reality, has true knowledge.
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates debates with others on justice and the Good. Socrates debunks several common views, then constructs an ideal model of the city. The well ordered city is compared to the well ordered soul (3 layers in their places). Thus, the Good is proper order of the elements (perfectly in accord with ancient cosmology). The Timaeus, which is supposed to be the discussion the day after the Republic, has a student of Socrates named Timaeus lecture on the cosmos, showing Plato’s particular views on cosmology. Just as the individual is a microcosm to the city, the city is a microcosm to the cosmos, and again the elements must be separated and put in their places. The cosmos is ordered in its unfolding, producing the ideal order of the soul and the city.
One should order the self and order the city the way the cosmos are ordered.
Both are supposed to have been written about 360 BCE.
The Republic:
Socrates talks to several “interlocutors” and argues against their concepts of justice.
This is Socrates acting like the original Socrates.
Polemarchus argues that justice is paying debts, helping friends and harming enemies. Socrates argues that in some situations, helping friends and harming enemies are wrong.
Thrasymachus argues that justice is ‘the good of the stronger’.
Glaucon similarly argues that without threat of punishment, no one would do good. Socrates argues that the strong will corrupt themselves if they only act for their own interests and not for the good of the whole. (Remember the politics of the time- Many tyrants came and fell)
Starting with book 2, Socrates now turns into Plato, advocating an eternal form of the Good over the world of many temporary beings and desires. Socrates is challenged to give a positive account of justice, not just defeat opponents. Socrates argues that first they must construct the ideal or just city, and this will show how the ideal or just individual should be. Essentially, the just city is a caste system, with a three fold division. This division corresponds to the physical human being and the cosmic being.
Head is fire/reason/rulers,
Heart/chest is air/spirit/police,
Hands/Stomach is earth/desire/workers.
The individual, city and cosmos form a continuum, a set of Russian dolls.
Notice that authority and the good come from above, evil to be ordered from below.
Socrates argues (in reading) that each person is best suited to one thing, and should be assigned this one job. He argues that we will lie to the people and tell them a Phonecian story, which is that the classes are based on metals. The police and philosophers are made of silver and gold, so they are suited to be put above the others.(Why lie? Because the common will not understand philosophy, Plato’s system…this corresponds to the cave, where most will never leave, and need puppets to see anything).
All is sacrificed for the common good: no private property or partners or children, for any of the three classes. Socrates argues that the ruler who grabs for themselves will not be happy, filled with “horrid pains and pangs”, and will physically and mentally fall apart. This tyrant will never “taste true freedom or friendship”. Because this is not the order of the cosmos, it will not stick and will fall apart.
Socrates argues (and the interlocutors naively agree as simple yes men) that if they separate out the police and educate them as best as can be, and then take the philosophers out of the police and educate them as best as can be, no injustice will be possible.
There is the simple belief that the order itself will generate justice throughout the whole.
The police and philosophers will thus never be greedy or unjust to the people below.
(Plato elsewhere argues that this is how the Egyptians in Thebes did it: elevating priests as a class- he also says to imitate Sparta as well separating out the warriors)
Plato also suggests banning all art (music, poetry and theatre) that is counterproductive, which pretty much means everything that isn’t impressing the highest good and order.
The youth are to be taught that they must improve themselves for the good of the state, and that the gods never to injustice or desire. (Note move to solar monotheism, Heracl.)
The Allegory/Analogy/Story of the Cave:
This describes the masses and the assent of the philosopher beyond opinion of the earthly realm to knowledge of the heavenly and eternal realm, showing why the philosopher alone should have authority. Everyone is chained in a cave, watching shadows of puppets/models carried before a fire at the mouth of the cave. The people think that the shadows are reality, the real things. The one who escapes first sees that the shadows are shadows of puppets, and sees the fire that casts the shadows. Coming out of the cave and past the small fire, the seeker is at first blinded by the sunlight. The seeker first sees real things outside of the cave, and realizes that the puppet/models were just copies of the real things. Then the seeker can get adjusted and see that the sun is the cause of all these things, and that the world of the cave is a poor copy of the world outside the cave. This is the realization of the forms and then the all/light/reason/consciousness that produces the forms which are copied in the cave below. This is opinion to belief (cave) to knowledge to reason (outside). (Models and Puppet theatre and Theatre from Egypt into Greece)
The Timaeus:
(In America, this is almost forgotten: not published by itself, not in spell check- we seem to want to teach the Republic and Aristotle’s ‘science’ texts far more than the Timaeus or Aristotle’s On the Soul, central to Muslims and then Christians)
Socrates the day after says that he would like to talk more about the ideal state.
Then, Critas tells the story of Solon going to Egypt and that the Egyptians told him of the story of Atlantus (Plato made it up himself). The Egyptian Priest tells Solon that the Athenians repelled the Atlantians, who were threatening to take over the world (this today is seen as echo of Persia and Marathon). Notice (read quote) that the Egyptians have the Athenian forgotten history written down, that it is a priest who knows that Athens was the best ordered city.
Timaeus now speaks of the creation of the cosmos out of the all, showing the order already described of the elements and how the individual human was created as a microcosm of the macrocosm. This implies that you get in your proper order to be good, which is the order of the cosmos. The one sprouts the eternal order or model of things, which includes all eternal models or archetypes of things, and the demiurge, the sky father being that is the small fire at the mouth of the cave, then produces copies of the models in the ever changing world of earth below. The whole is a living creature, with the heavens as soul and the all as reason/intellect.
The demiurge fashions reason in soul, and soul in body in individuals. The demiurge then moves everything in a circle, bringing about the life and death in circles of earth beings from planetary orbits and starlight.
This is all done by sameness and difference. Sameness has the higher and encompassing role, difference being proportional downward. The 4 elements have certain shapes, which are then glued together by the fifth element, quintessence or ether. (Note Buddhist Stupa shows same shapes and order in India) This is the cosmology of Christianity and Europe well through the middle ages, up to Newton and Leibniz, who read Islamic scholar’s commentaries on the Timaeus. The Medieval Christians had to retranslate Plato, with central interest in the cosmology of the Timaeus, from Arabic into Latin.
2/17/2010
Eric Gerlach
Lecture on Socrates and Plato
Socrates (470-400 BCE) is a very famous yet very controversial and obscure figure. Like many great thinkers, he did not write his own thoughts down but rather Plato (430-350 BCE) and another student named Xenophon wrote about his teachings after his death. Plato was a playwright who wrote dialogues between Socrates and his students after failing at writing plays on other subjects. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (Plato’s student) are the three great Athenian thinkers, and before the rediscovery of the “presocratics” (like Heraclitus) they were considered to be the birth of philosophy in ancient Greece.
It is generally accepted by scholars today that Plato’s early dialogues are one of the best sources for understanding Socrates and his ideas, but in Plato’s later dialogues Socrates is a mouthpiece for Plato’s own ideas. We will consider Socrates and his thought first, then turn to two of Plato’s most important later dialogues, the Republic and the Timaeus, to study Plato’s thought. Socrates and Plato were both influenced by Heraclitus (our subject last week), and while Socrates seemed to have been quite similar to Heraclitus, Plato’s thought changed and he began putting quite different views into Socrates’ mouth.
The Dueling Views of Heraclitus and Parmenides
Consider that there are two polar opposite views one can have of reality and the world. In one view, everything changes constantly and permanence is an illusion. In the other opposite view, everything remains the same and change is the illusion. As we saw last week, Heraclitus was a famous champion of the first view. He argued that only Being, the One and All, the cosmic fire or energy, is eternal and all other beings are temporary in spite of what our judgments tell us. Another presocratic thinker named Parmenides (who lived sometime before 500 BCE) was a famous champion of the second and opposite view. He argued that there is one unchanging reality that is eternal and all change and temporary beings are the illusion in spite of what our judgments tell us.
Socrates and Plato were both influenced by Heraclitus, but in his later dialogues Plato has Socrates argue for views that sound much more like Parmenides. Originally, Socrates questioned everyone to show that we know very little and it is the job of the philosopher to show this to people. In Plato’s later dialogues, Socrates argues that there is one unchanging reality above the temporary perceivable world and it is the job of the philosopher to seek and understand this eternal reality.
Socrates and his Method of Questions
We know very little about Socrates’ early life other than the details supplied in Plato’s works. He mentions several influences, including two women: the witch/shaman Diotima who taught him about love (like Confucius, Socrates identified love with wisdom) and Aspasia, the mistress of the general Pericles, who taught him rhetoric. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle lived at a time when the glory days of Athens were in decline. Eventually, Alexander (Aristotle’s student) would conquer the city and the surrounding city-states. Socrates was a critic of Athenian society, called “the horsefly” because he believed in stinging Athens into action, and he was eventually condemned to commit suicide for corrupting the youth of the city.
Socrates’ career as a philosopher began when his friend Chaerephon went to the oracle of Delphi to ask if anyone was wiser than his friend Socrates. Socrates, with characteristic modesty, protests that this was a very crass question to ask of the great oracle. The oracle replied that no one was wiser than Socrates. This prompted Socrates to go out and seek someone wiser than himself to see if the words of the oracle were in fact true.
Socrates felt that he knew nothing, but as he questioned the experts of Athens he came upon a horrible discovery and paradox. The experts believed themselves to be wise and possess great knowledge, but when questioned it turned out they knew very little. Socrates knew that he himself knew nothing. Therefore, Socrates was wiser than the experts because he knew that he knew nothing, while the experts knew nothing but thought that they knew a great deal. Humble and modest Socrates was aware that mortal humans know nothing, but the politicians, artists and warriors were unaware of this great equality they shared with Socrates. The ignorance of Socrates was thus the greatest wisdom in all of Athens.
Notice the similarities between Socrates and Heraclitus, who argued that the experts believe themselves to know a great deal but do not understand that their knowledge and perspectives are mortal and we are all mere apes to the gods. Socrates argued, like Heraclitus, that the greatest wisdom is found in questioning oneself and others. Remember that great city-states and empires had risen along with increasingly specialized experts. Philosophy questions experts and the basis of our knowledge.
Socrates argued that the individual should accept their own ignorance and the guidance of the world through intuition. He believed that he had a spirit (a daemon in the Greek, a word which became “demon” as Christianity replaced the polytheism and spirits with monotheism and angels). This spirit was much like what we would call a conscience (a word which means “co-seeing”), an intuition that one should or should not do a particular thing. Socrates says that his daemon told him to stay out of politics. Not only did politics get Socrates killed in spite of this, but Plato has Socrates get increasingly political in his later dialogues, particularly in the Republic where Socrates debates the best form of the city. Socrates also praised the divinity of poetry, mysticism, love and getting drunk with friends (as he does at the Symposium, a dialogue about a drinking party that turns into a philosophical discussion about the nature of love).
Plato’s Thought, The Republic and The Timaeus
Plato was long assumed to be a student of Socrates simply because Plato writes as much in many of his dialogues. As Socrates is about to die, Plato has Socrates ask where the young Plato is, to which another student replies that Plato was sick and thus could not be there at the time. Scholars now are critical of this, and think that Plato had a habit of writing himself and his family into Socrates’ circle in his dialogues. Because they are our best sources on Socrates, it is difficult to tell whether or not Plato’s older cousin Critias or Plato himself were actual students of Socrates or whether they were simply influenced by this figure who became quite famous following his trial and death.
Plato’s actual name was Aristocles, but according to the story his wrestling instructor named him Platon or “Broad” because he had a wide figure. This may be merely a story, because Plato was known to have a wide “breadth” of knowledge covering all subjects of ancient thought. Plato’s father died when he was young, and his step-father became the Athenian ambassador to the Persian royal court (remember that Persia was a great source of ancient world cosmology at the time).
Long after his attempts to become an established playwright, after his dialogues about Socrates had gathered some fame, Plato founded his Academy in 385 BCE, an open area near a tree grove where he, his students and other lecturers would teach and debate matters of philosophy and cosmology. Academy in fact means “porch”, an open area in front of a building, a fact it took scholars long to understand for they believed that the Academy must have been a building itself. Scholars made a similar error looking for the famed Library of Alexandria (an Egyptian center of ancient world knowledge), when in fact the Library was a shelf that ran along a hall that connected two buildings.
To examine Plato’s thought (in its later and mature form) we will look at his two most influential dialogues which both come from his later period. By this point, Socrates was no longer sharing much of the conversation with other debaters, but dominates the texts with monologues that are now believed to be Plato’s own Parmenides-like views. Plato believed that Heraclitus was right about the world below, but Parmenides was right about the eternal world above, the unchanging model, form, order and cause of the ever-changing world below. Plato has Socrates argue that those who think they know the world below have mere opinions, but the one who knows the world above, the true eternal pattern of reality, has true knowledge.
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates debates with others on justice and the Good. Socrates debunks several common views, then constructs an ideal model of the city. The well ordered city is compared to the well ordered soul (3 layers in their places). Thus, the Good is proper order of the elements (perfectly in accord with ancient cosmology). The Timaeus, which is supposed to be the discussion the day after the Republic, has a student of Socrates named Timaeus lecture on the cosmos, showing Plato’s particular views on cosmology. Just as the individual is a microcosm to the city, the city is a microcosm to the cosmos, and again the elements must be separated and put in their places. The cosmos is ordered in its unfolding, producing the ideal order of the soul and the city.
One should order the self and order the city the way the cosmos are ordered.
Both are supposed to have been written about 360 BCE.
The Republic:
Socrates talks to several “interlocutors” and argues against their concepts of justice.
This is Socrates acting like the original Socrates.
Polemarchus argues that justice is paying debts, helping friends and harming enemies. Socrates argues that in some situations, helping friends and harming enemies are wrong.
Thrasymachus argues that justice is ‘the good of the stronger’.
Glaucon similarly argues that without threat of punishment, no one would do good. Socrates argues that the strong will corrupt themselves if they only act for their own interests and not for the good of the whole. (Remember the politics of the time- Many tyrants came and fell)
Starting with book 2, Socrates now turns into Plato, advocating an eternal form of the Good over the world of many temporary beings and desires. Socrates is challenged to give a positive account of justice, not just defeat opponents. Socrates argues that first they must construct the ideal or just city, and this will show how the ideal or just individual should be. Essentially, the just city is a caste system, with a three fold division. This division corresponds to the physical human being and the cosmic being.
Head is fire/reason/rulers,
Heart/chest is air/spirit/police,
Hands/Stomach is earth/desire/workers.
The individual, city and cosmos form a continuum, a set of Russian dolls.
Notice that authority and the good come from above, evil to be ordered from below.
Socrates argues (in reading) that each person is best suited to one thing, and should be assigned this one job. He argues that we will lie to the people and tell them a Phonecian story, which is that the classes are based on metals. The police and philosophers are made of silver and gold, so they are suited to be put above the others.(Why lie? Because the common will not understand philosophy, Plato’s system…this corresponds to the cave, where most will never leave, and need puppets to see anything).
All is sacrificed for the common good: no private property or partners or children, for any of the three classes. Socrates argues that the ruler who grabs for themselves will not be happy, filled with “horrid pains and pangs”, and will physically and mentally fall apart. This tyrant will never “taste true freedom or friendship”. Because this is not the order of the cosmos, it will not stick and will fall apart.
Socrates argues (and the interlocutors naively agree as simple yes men) that if they separate out the police and educate them as best as can be, and then take the philosophers out of the police and educate them as best as can be, no injustice will be possible.
There is the simple belief that the order itself will generate justice throughout the whole.
The police and philosophers will thus never be greedy or unjust to the people below.
(Plato elsewhere argues that this is how the Egyptians in Thebes did it: elevating priests as a class- he also says to imitate Sparta as well separating out the warriors)
Plato also suggests banning all art (music, poetry and theatre) that is counterproductive, which pretty much means everything that isn’t impressing the highest good and order.
The youth are to be taught that they must improve themselves for the good of the state, and that the gods never to injustice or desire. (Note move to solar monotheism, Heracl.)
The Allegory/Analogy/Story of the Cave:
This describes the masses and the assent of the philosopher beyond opinion of the earthly realm to knowledge of the heavenly and eternal realm, showing why the philosopher alone should have authority. Everyone is chained in a cave, watching shadows of puppets/models carried before a fire at the mouth of the cave. The people think that the shadows are reality, the real things. The one who escapes first sees that the shadows are shadows of puppets, and sees the fire that casts the shadows. Coming out of the cave and past the small fire, the seeker is at first blinded by the sunlight. The seeker first sees real things outside of the cave, and realizes that the puppet/models were just copies of the real things. Then the seeker can get adjusted and see that the sun is the cause of all these things, and that the world of the cave is a poor copy of the world outside the cave. This is the realization of the forms and then the all/light/reason/consciousness that produces the forms which are copied in the cave below. This is opinion to belief (cave) to knowledge to reason (outside). (Models and Puppet theatre and Theatre from Egypt into Greece)
The Timaeus:
(In America, this is almost forgotten: not published by itself, not in spell check- we seem to want to teach the Republic and Aristotle’s ‘science’ texts far more than the Timaeus or Aristotle’s On the Soul, central to Muslims and then Christians)
Socrates the day after says that he would like to talk more about the ideal state.
Then, Critas tells the story of Solon going to Egypt and that the Egyptians told him of the story of Atlantus (Plato made it up himself). The Egyptian Priest tells Solon that the Athenians repelled the Atlantians, who were threatening to take over the world (this today is seen as echo of Persia and Marathon). Notice (read quote) that the Egyptians have the Athenian forgotten history written down, that it is a priest who knows that Athens was the best ordered city.
Timaeus now speaks of the creation of the cosmos out of the all, showing the order already described of the elements and how the individual human was created as a microcosm of the macrocosm. This implies that you get in your proper order to be good, which is the order of the cosmos. The one sprouts the eternal order or model of things, which includes all eternal models or archetypes of things, and the demiurge, the sky father being that is the small fire at the mouth of the cave, then produces copies of the models in the ever changing world of earth below. The whole is a living creature, with the heavens as soul and the all as reason/intellect.
The demiurge fashions reason in soul, and soul in body in individuals. The demiurge then moves everything in a circle, bringing about the life and death in circles of earth beings from planetary orbits and starlight.
This is all done by sameness and difference. Sameness has the higher and encompassing role, difference being proportional downward. The 4 elements have certain shapes, which are then glued together by the fifth element, quintessence or ether. (Note Buddhist Stupa shows same shapes and order in India) This is the cosmology of Christianity and Europe well through the middle ages, up to Newton and Leibniz, who read Islamic scholar’s commentaries on the Timaeus. The Medieval Christians had to retranslate Plato, with central interest in the cosmology of the Timaeus, from Arabic into Latin.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Logic Lecture Feb 17: Jain and Buddhist Skepticism
BCC Logic
Eric Gerlach
2/17/2010
Lecture on Indian Skepticism: Jain and Buddhist Logic
Kanada and Gotama, our last two thinkers, have shown us Indian logic in its positivistic form, much like Aristotle (who we will get to soon) and Russell (who we will get to in the second half of the course when studying modern European logic). Positivist thinking asserts categorical differences between objects and values (ex: “What is good can not be bad, because it is good”). Skepticism, however, tends to attach positivistic categorical judgements with relativity and shades of grey between the black and the white.
Consider the two sides of the Nyaya form of debate, which also happen to be the two sides of a dialectical investigation according to Plato and Aristotle: “X is Y” vs. “X is not Y” (ex: the self is eternal vs. the self is temporary). Notice that the subject is shared, but there is a categorical black vs. white disagreement about it.
IF the world came in such simple forms, then the Nyaya proof by difference obviously follows (as does Aristotle’s syllogisms and Wittgenstein’s truth tables, both of which we will study soon). If we KNOW that things are EITHER Y OR –Y AND NEVER BOTH, then we can discover and understand constant atomic truths about our world.
HERE IS THE PROBLEM: are things ever entirely Y or –Y?
Skeptical thinking says: X can be SOMETIMES Y, SOMETIMES not Y. We can see positivistic and skeptical thinking in India, Greece, China, especially on logical matters. Today, we look at major concepts of the Jains and Buddhists, Indian religions/philosophies that enjoyed logical debate but maintained skeptical positions on the nature of the world and our abilities to make judgments about it.
For both Aristotle and Gotama, we need to get above some/some to know something above merely having an insecure opinion (both are thus positivists). However, a skeptical counter argument always will be: X is only very much Y, never entirely Y. X is very much Y here in space and now in time, generally and to a degree, but never perfectly or fully.
For example, consider that we can all agree that fire is hot but any fire we have seen is cold compared to a star. If we imagine Y and –Y as horizons that have no boundaries (Light vs. Dark) then X can be VERY Y or VERY –Y, but we would not be able to experience a thing as the pole of any opposition in itself (we can imagine something lighter or darker, like adding 1 to any number or subtracting to demonstrate the concept of infinity).
Not only do we try to CLOSE our inferences, judgments and concepts into black vs. white, but we also constantly like questioning black vs. white and revealing it to be shades of grey. No matter our beliefs, we all do both to attack and defend points of view or perspectives.
The Two Principles of Jain Skepticism:
Anekantavada: The multiplicity of Reality, or “non-one-ended-ness”.
Syadvada: The principle of postulation (all views are partial views, as we do not see all).
Jain or proto-Jain teachers and jungle dwelling sages gave these powerful principles to Buddhism and Hinduism, formulating them from the deeper passages of the Upanishads.
Buddhist Qualifications of the Nyaya Debate:
The Buddhists, who enjoyed debate on the nature of reality, took Gautama’s teachings on logic and developed them further. They added that X can be Y ALWAYS or SOMETIMES (and not Y sometimes), and X can be Y EVERYWHERE or SOMEPLACE (and not Y someplace).
Nagarjuna’s Four Things:
Nagarjuna (150-250 CE), the central logician of Buddhism.
His catuskoti (also called the tetralemma) will help with understanding contradiction.
As a Buddhist, he takes the Jain insights to their deepest level as one of the top Logicians of the Buddhist tradition, meaning he was EXPLICITLY following the teachings of Gotama’s Nyaya school and extending it with Buddhist skepticism (like adding the skeptic some/some to the Nyaya form of the two sides of a debate).
To help, use a X as cross (it lends itself here quite nicely) with four points of Y, not Y, (Y and not Y) and not (Y and not Y). Y is positive, not Y is negative, (Y and not Y) is some and some not positively, a contradiction of opposites affirmed, and not (Y and not Y) is some and some not negatively, and strangely can be called the formula of the ‘principle of non-contradiction’.
Nagarjuna’s point is that everything thought in logic or said in grammar must be one of these four things, and not one of them describes reality. Nagarjuna believes that all equally are and are not the All. Notice how this is a beautiful extension of the skeptical position as an extension to the Nyaya sides of debate.
Eric Gerlach
2/17/2010
Lecture on Indian Skepticism: Jain and Buddhist Logic
Kanada and Gotama, our last two thinkers, have shown us Indian logic in its positivistic form, much like Aristotle (who we will get to soon) and Russell (who we will get to in the second half of the course when studying modern European logic). Positivist thinking asserts categorical differences between objects and values (ex: “What is good can not be bad, because it is good”). Skepticism, however, tends to attach positivistic categorical judgements with relativity and shades of grey between the black and the white.
Consider the two sides of the Nyaya form of debate, which also happen to be the two sides of a dialectical investigation according to Plato and Aristotle: “X is Y” vs. “X is not Y” (ex: the self is eternal vs. the self is temporary). Notice that the subject is shared, but there is a categorical black vs. white disagreement about it.
IF the world came in such simple forms, then the Nyaya proof by difference obviously follows (as does Aristotle’s syllogisms and Wittgenstein’s truth tables, both of which we will study soon). If we KNOW that things are EITHER Y OR –Y AND NEVER BOTH, then we can discover and understand constant atomic truths about our world.
HERE IS THE PROBLEM: are things ever entirely Y or –Y?
Skeptical thinking says: X can be SOMETIMES Y, SOMETIMES not Y. We can see positivistic and skeptical thinking in India, Greece, China, especially on logical matters. Today, we look at major concepts of the Jains and Buddhists, Indian religions/philosophies that enjoyed logical debate but maintained skeptical positions on the nature of the world and our abilities to make judgments about it.
For both Aristotle and Gotama, we need to get above some/some to know something above merely having an insecure opinion (both are thus positivists). However, a skeptical counter argument always will be: X is only very much Y, never entirely Y. X is very much Y here in space and now in time, generally and to a degree, but never perfectly or fully.
For example, consider that we can all agree that fire is hot but any fire we have seen is cold compared to a star. If we imagine Y and –Y as horizons that have no boundaries (Light vs. Dark) then X can be VERY Y or VERY –Y, but we would not be able to experience a thing as the pole of any opposition in itself (we can imagine something lighter or darker, like adding 1 to any number or subtracting to demonstrate the concept of infinity).
Not only do we try to CLOSE our inferences, judgments and concepts into black vs. white, but we also constantly like questioning black vs. white and revealing it to be shades of grey. No matter our beliefs, we all do both to attack and defend points of view or perspectives.
The Two Principles of Jain Skepticism:
Anekantavada: The multiplicity of Reality, or “non-one-ended-ness”.
Syadvada: The principle of postulation (all views are partial views, as we do not see all).
Jain or proto-Jain teachers and jungle dwelling sages gave these powerful principles to Buddhism and Hinduism, formulating them from the deeper passages of the Upanishads.
Buddhist Qualifications of the Nyaya Debate:
The Buddhists, who enjoyed debate on the nature of reality, took Gautama’s teachings on logic and developed them further. They added that X can be Y ALWAYS or SOMETIMES (and not Y sometimes), and X can be Y EVERYWHERE or SOMEPLACE (and not Y someplace).
Nagarjuna’s Four Things:
Nagarjuna (150-250 CE), the central logician of Buddhism.
His catuskoti (also called the tetralemma) will help with understanding contradiction.
As a Buddhist, he takes the Jain insights to their deepest level as one of the top Logicians of the Buddhist tradition, meaning he was EXPLICITLY following the teachings of Gotama’s Nyaya school and extending it with Buddhist skepticism (like adding the skeptic some/some to the Nyaya form of the two sides of a debate).
To help, use a X as cross (it lends itself here quite nicely) with four points of Y, not Y, (Y and not Y) and not (Y and not Y). Y is positive, not Y is negative, (Y and not Y) is some and some not positively, a contradiction of opposites affirmed, and not (Y and not Y) is some and some not negatively, and strangely can be called the formula of the ‘principle of non-contradiction’.
Nagarjuna’s point is that everything thought in logic or said in grammar must be one of these four things, and not one of them describes reality. Nagarjuna believes that all equally are and are not the All. Notice how this is a beautiful extension of the skeptical position as an extension to the Nyaya sides of debate.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Intro Philosophy Lecture Feb 11: Heraclitus and the Beginnings of Greek Philosophy
BCC Intro Philosophy
Eric Gerlach
2/11/2010
Lecture on Heraclitus and the Beginnings of Greek Thought
We must start with the Greeks the way that we started with Egypt: with modern understandings of race and identity. This is because just like Egypt, the identity of the Greeks is a political problem that must be discussed. The Egyptians were an African people, and although they did not call themselves “black”. Likewise, the Greeks and Romans did not call themselves “white”. The terms “white” and “black” have a complicated history, as both were used by the Chinese and Muslims before Europe rose to power. Indian, Chinese, Persian and then European writers have used the term “white” to describe themselves favorably and have used the term “black” to describe other people unfavorably, but the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans did not use these terms. It is likely that the terms originated in Asia, amongst the Indians and the Chinese, where they are sometimes still used today. In fact, the Chinese portray the Buddha, who was Indian, to be Chinese and sometimes call Indian people “black”. The use of the terms passed through the middle east and the Islamic empires into Europe. Today, Europeans use the term “white” to describe themselves and “black” to describe Africans, though at times the Irish and Russians have been “blacks”. The British also used the term to describe Indians and other peoples.
As Europe rose in the wake of Islamic empire, Renaissance artists presented the Israelites, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans to look like themselves. This is very much like Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people presenting the Buddha and other Indian figures to look like themselves and not Indian. The Europeans began to refer to themselves, as well as the Greeks and Romans, as “white”. We can see from this complicated history that it is more accurate to describe the Greeks, Romans, and Germanic Europeans as interrelated but distinct ethnicities. The word “white” does not cover the differences. The Greeks and the Romans presented themselves as a bronzed and olive-skinned Mediterranean people, and neither the Greeks nor the Romans identified with the Germanic tribes to the North and West.
During the Renaissance, the Italians in each warring city state (Florence, Venice, and Rome) were convinced that they were each the original Roman Catholic Christian people though they often did not identify with each other. They also read Greek to read the Christian New Testament of the Bible (written in Greek and often translated into and read in Latin). Thus, the Greeks and Romans have been portrayed by Western Germanic Europeans (like myself) as European “white” people from the Renaissance up until the present time.
However, the Greeks were not always considered to be the birth of reason, politics, or science as they often are today, even by the Germanic peoples themselves. Renaissance thinkers, like Ficino and Pico, believed that Greek thinking originated in Egypt and Persia, speaking proudly of standing in the same tradition of philosophy with Zarathustra and Hermes (known to be the Greek version of Thoth, the Egyptian god of knowledge and scribes).
In Germany during the protestant Reformation there was a rejection of Rome and the Catholic Church and intellectuals of the time turned to Greek sources such as the original Greek New Testament. The Protestant scholars took Greek texts and made leaps in Biblical studies, philosophy, history, science and mathematics. This was not a rediscovery of their own people, as it was often misrepresented, but a rediscovery of the wider Christian tradition that included people of many different ethnicities such as the Greeks and the Romans. This situation rose along with Europe’s wealth and power, such that in the late 1700s, in the time of Hegel and the rise of German thought (archeology, philosophy and theory of history) the Greeks were called the birthplace of civilization. Many scholars even theorized that the Greeks were descended from the North (the Germanic slave peoples who the Greeks called uncivilized and stupid). While many of these scholars’ theories have been debunked, the impact of this theorizing remains with us today. This is the theory that we can disprove but we still believe and enshrine in museums, textbooks and most importantly, fictional and nonfictional cinema.
In this process, the Greeks ceased to be part of Christian heritage and became the birth of secular society, philosophy and science. They became the origin of the modern European nation state as these states ceased to be officially part of Christian empires. After WWII and the horrors of the Holocaust, the ‘’European Race’’ that was spoken of by scholars openly became an eyesore. In academic speak, ancient Greece, ancient Rome and modern Europe ceased to be “the European Race” and became “The West”. This is the story of our identity today. Notice that there is still the understanding of a European race underneath the new vocabulary, but today it is most often spoken of as “Western Culture” and also “the Western Mind”. These terms hide all of the differences between cultures and ethnicities. Notice also that Germanic people, like myself, are in fact the ancestors of the Celts and Germanic tribes, but these cultures are not celebrated as the origins of anything modern or European. The Germanic people, like the Arabs, came to inherit civilization from more ancient peoples and then wrote up the history books as if they themselves were civilization’s origins.
The Beginnings of Greek Philosophy: The Pre-Socratics
Now that we have talked about race, identity and “Western” history, it is time to talk about Heraclitus and the beginnings of Greek thinking which starts in modern day Turkey, the Eastern half of ancient Greece, the half that is not known as Greece today. Like Italy during the Renaissance, Greece was a set of city-states which did not often identify with each other, territories circling the Aegean sea in what is today Greece and Turkey. Athens, the birthplace of Socrates and home to Plato and Aristotle was one of these city-states, and Ephesus, the birthplace of Heraclitus and other thinkers active before Socrates, was another.
We only have fragments of the pre-Socratic (before Socrates) thinkers’ thought and writings. These thinkers were believed to have been active between 600 and 400 BCE. We have no writings of Socrates and only some of the writings of Plato and Aristotle. As best as we know, Greek thought began with Thales, the first thinker/philosopher/scientist of whom we have fragments from other ancient authors who write about him and his theories. Thales and several other early Greek thinkers lived in the ancient city-state of Miletus (in modern day Turkey). Thales believed that the cosmos and all things are made of water. Miletus is quite close to Ephesus, where Heraclitus, who was born just before 500 BCE and shortly after Thales, believed that all things are made of fire. Both cities had been provinces of the Persian empire, and so it was under the influence of Zoroastrianism (developed about 1000 BCE) and the cultures of the Persian empire.
The Skepticism of Heraclitus
Heraclitus’ most famous idea is a memorable image: you can never step in the same river twice. Just as a river is always flowing and changing, so is reality always flowing and changing, such that nothing stays exactly the same for any two moments. You step in a river, then step out, then step back in the same river, but it is no longer ‘the same river’. Heraclitus says this is also true of himself.
According to one source, Heraclitus was a king who abandoned the title to become a philosopher. This has been identified as a close resemblance to the story of the Buddha in India, and some scholars have argued that Heraclitus was in fact the Buddha from India while others have argued that the Buddha was in fact Heraclitus from Greece. Both thinkers were mythologized as a king who left powerful king position and became a sage, and both believe in the enlightening sun rising above the watery chaos of reality and human perception, but it is quite likely the two were not the same individual.
Heraclitus is a very skeptical thinker. This does not mean he saw all things as negative. He was convinced that wisdom and inquiring within show us that all is one big cosmic fire, and things that unify the community and the individual bring wholeness and true happiness. However, he believed that humans are often foolish and let their minds divide themselves from the whole and from each other such that their understandings are disjointed and ignorant.
This is very typical thinking of skeptics the world over. A positivist would say that there are specific truths that are certain and must be separated from the uncertain, specific goods that must be separated from the evil. A skeptic would say, like Heraclitus and the Daoists from China, that the truth and the good is the whole and the great One, and the tendency of the mind to divide the good and the true from the rest is the opposite of true understanding and wisdom.
Heraclitus was not a fan of experts and specialists, and he ridiculed the cultural leaders of his time. He says that the common people are completely asleep, but far more dangerous are the experts who have a small piece of the puzzle and say that they know the entire truth. He calls the poets (Hesiod and Homer) and the Pythagoreans frauds, and says that there are no permanent truths or laws other than the constant formation of watery chaos by the sun and cosmic fire. Notice that this does not question the set up of the cosmos as we have studied it everywhere (and what the Persians gave to the Eastern Greek city states). Many often ask, “Why, then, should I listen to Heraclitus, since he is simply an expert?”. Heraclitus replies as most skeptics do: don’t take my word for it, but look into the world and within yourself and you will find that it is true.
This is a psychological skepticism that is criticizing the human ability to know particular things as permanent that are able to be separated from the One and All (the cosmic fire). Only the All is permanent. All the other things are wandering temporal forms. The many beings arise from the energy of Being, and then they fall back into the fire and disappear. The cosmos resembles the chaos yet order of the human community centered on authority by spoken word. The LOGOS, the word/plan/order/command, is the formative force in the cosmos, the force of fire and light in the watery chaotic world. The cosmic fire speaks with its ever-present Logos (fire over air) and this brings about the firmament in the chaos (the earth rising out of the water). This process, however, does not bring about eternal or stable beings, but chains of beings that are in flux and interdependent.
This goes also for laws, which Heraclitus says have to be defended as if they were city walls. This is sometimes read that Heraclitus thought human law was important and had to be defended, which he did, but in fact he is also telling us that human laws are impermanent like walls made out of earth. They may seem eternal and permanent, but as any former citizen or city of the Persian empire knows, empires fall and impressive city states are overthrown and change hands. The eternal word of the fire forever forms the cosmos, but human speech and walls are temporary, and therefore take force and effort to maintain. As a skeptic, Heraclitus believes that the divisions made by the mind are mortal, not eternal, like the human body. Our knowledge and laws are impermanent like mounds of dirt.
Heraclitus was one of the most famous thinkers of the Greek and Roman world. He was a big influence on Plato, though Plato is very much opposed to his thinking as we will see next week. Both Heraclitus and Plato were big influences on Christianity which initially flourished not in Israel but in Greece and Syria. If a primal speaking of the Word or Logos sounds familiar, Heraclitus was a central influence on the Greek and Roman stoics, and the author of the Gospel of John was almost certainly a Greek stoic writing in Roman times. The opening of the Gospel of John famously reads: the Logos/Word/Order was with God (Fire/Cosmos), and God spoke (“let there be light”) and light was separated from darkness.
It was only in the late 1700s and 1800s that German scholars rediscovered the presocratics and gave them attention and study. Before this time, Greek Philosophy was considered to have originated with Socrates (hence, “presocratics”) and most scholars were only versed in the surviving writings of Plato and Aristotle. Schleiermacher, one of the most famous and central protestant theologians and an opponent of Hegel, was a major force in bringing popularity to Heraclitus and a major translator of Plato. The philosopher Hegel, who we will study later, saw Heraclitus as a skeptic who is put in balance with Plato and other positivists by the course of history itself. Nietzsche, the great skeptical philosopher who we will also study, wrote that he felt closer to Heraclitus than any other thinker. Nietzsche believed, like Heraclitus, that we are proud of our learning and achievement but we are in fact little better than apes.
Eric Gerlach
2/11/2010
Lecture on Heraclitus and the Beginnings of Greek Thought
We must start with the Greeks the way that we started with Egypt: with modern understandings of race and identity. This is because just like Egypt, the identity of the Greeks is a political problem that must be discussed. The Egyptians were an African people, and although they did not call themselves “black”. Likewise, the Greeks and Romans did not call themselves “white”. The terms “white” and “black” have a complicated history, as both were used by the Chinese and Muslims before Europe rose to power. Indian, Chinese, Persian and then European writers have used the term “white” to describe themselves favorably and have used the term “black” to describe other people unfavorably, but the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans did not use these terms. It is likely that the terms originated in Asia, amongst the Indians and the Chinese, where they are sometimes still used today. In fact, the Chinese portray the Buddha, who was Indian, to be Chinese and sometimes call Indian people “black”. The use of the terms passed through the middle east and the Islamic empires into Europe. Today, Europeans use the term “white” to describe themselves and “black” to describe Africans, though at times the Irish and Russians have been “blacks”. The British also used the term to describe Indians and other peoples.
As Europe rose in the wake of Islamic empire, Renaissance artists presented the Israelites, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans to look like themselves. This is very much like Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people presenting the Buddha and other Indian figures to look like themselves and not Indian. The Europeans began to refer to themselves, as well as the Greeks and Romans, as “white”. We can see from this complicated history that it is more accurate to describe the Greeks, Romans, and Germanic Europeans as interrelated but distinct ethnicities. The word “white” does not cover the differences. The Greeks and the Romans presented themselves as a bronzed and olive-skinned Mediterranean people, and neither the Greeks nor the Romans identified with the Germanic tribes to the North and West.
During the Renaissance, the Italians in each warring city state (Florence, Venice, and Rome) were convinced that they were each the original Roman Catholic Christian people though they often did not identify with each other. They also read Greek to read the Christian New Testament of the Bible (written in Greek and often translated into and read in Latin). Thus, the Greeks and Romans have been portrayed by Western Germanic Europeans (like myself) as European “white” people from the Renaissance up until the present time.
However, the Greeks were not always considered to be the birth of reason, politics, or science as they often are today, even by the Germanic peoples themselves. Renaissance thinkers, like Ficino and Pico, believed that Greek thinking originated in Egypt and Persia, speaking proudly of standing in the same tradition of philosophy with Zarathustra and Hermes (known to be the Greek version of Thoth, the Egyptian god of knowledge and scribes).
In Germany during the protestant Reformation there was a rejection of Rome and the Catholic Church and intellectuals of the time turned to Greek sources such as the original Greek New Testament. The Protestant scholars took Greek texts and made leaps in Biblical studies, philosophy, history, science and mathematics. This was not a rediscovery of their own people, as it was often misrepresented, but a rediscovery of the wider Christian tradition that included people of many different ethnicities such as the Greeks and the Romans. This situation rose along with Europe’s wealth and power, such that in the late 1700s, in the time of Hegel and the rise of German thought (archeology, philosophy and theory of history) the Greeks were called the birthplace of civilization. Many scholars even theorized that the Greeks were descended from the North (the Germanic slave peoples who the Greeks called uncivilized and stupid). While many of these scholars’ theories have been debunked, the impact of this theorizing remains with us today. This is the theory that we can disprove but we still believe and enshrine in museums, textbooks and most importantly, fictional and nonfictional cinema.
In this process, the Greeks ceased to be part of Christian heritage and became the birth of secular society, philosophy and science. They became the origin of the modern European nation state as these states ceased to be officially part of Christian empires. After WWII and the horrors of the Holocaust, the ‘’European Race’’ that was spoken of by scholars openly became an eyesore. In academic speak, ancient Greece, ancient Rome and modern Europe ceased to be “the European Race” and became “The West”. This is the story of our identity today. Notice that there is still the understanding of a European race underneath the new vocabulary, but today it is most often spoken of as “Western Culture” and also “the Western Mind”. These terms hide all of the differences between cultures and ethnicities. Notice also that Germanic people, like myself, are in fact the ancestors of the Celts and Germanic tribes, but these cultures are not celebrated as the origins of anything modern or European. The Germanic people, like the Arabs, came to inherit civilization from more ancient peoples and then wrote up the history books as if they themselves were civilization’s origins.
The Beginnings of Greek Philosophy: The Pre-Socratics
Now that we have talked about race, identity and “Western” history, it is time to talk about Heraclitus and the beginnings of Greek thinking which starts in modern day Turkey, the Eastern half of ancient Greece, the half that is not known as Greece today. Like Italy during the Renaissance, Greece was a set of city-states which did not often identify with each other, territories circling the Aegean sea in what is today Greece and Turkey. Athens, the birthplace of Socrates and home to Plato and Aristotle was one of these city-states, and Ephesus, the birthplace of Heraclitus and other thinkers active before Socrates, was another.
We only have fragments of the pre-Socratic (before Socrates) thinkers’ thought and writings. These thinkers were believed to have been active between 600 and 400 BCE. We have no writings of Socrates and only some of the writings of Plato and Aristotle. As best as we know, Greek thought began with Thales, the first thinker/philosopher/scientist of whom we have fragments from other ancient authors who write about him and his theories. Thales and several other early Greek thinkers lived in the ancient city-state of Miletus (in modern day Turkey). Thales believed that the cosmos and all things are made of water. Miletus is quite close to Ephesus, where Heraclitus, who was born just before 500 BCE and shortly after Thales, believed that all things are made of fire. Both cities had been provinces of the Persian empire, and so it was under the influence of Zoroastrianism (developed about 1000 BCE) and the cultures of the Persian empire.
The Skepticism of Heraclitus
Heraclitus’ most famous idea is a memorable image: you can never step in the same river twice. Just as a river is always flowing and changing, so is reality always flowing and changing, such that nothing stays exactly the same for any two moments. You step in a river, then step out, then step back in the same river, but it is no longer ‘the same river’. Heraclitus says this is also true of himself.
According to one source, Heraclitus was a king who abandoned the title to become a philosopher. This has been identified as a close resemblance to the story of the Buddha in India, and some scholars have argued that Heraclitus was in fact the Buddha from India while others have argued that the Buddha was in fact Heraclitus from Greece. Both thinkers were mythologized as a king who left powerful king position and became a sage, and both believe in the enlightening sun rising above the watery chaos of reality and human perception, but it is quite likely the two were not the same individual.
Heraclitus is a very skeptical thinker. This does not mean he saw all things as negative. He was convinced that wisdom and inquiring within show us that all is one big cosmic fire, and things that unify the community and the individual bring wholeness and true happiness. However, he believed that humans are often foolish and let their minds divide themselves from the whole and from each other such that their understandings are disjointed and ignorant.
This is very typical thinking of skeptics the world over. A positivist would say that there are specific truths that are certain and must be separated from the uncertain, specific goods that must be separated from the evil. A skeptic would say, like Heraclitus and the Daoists from China, that the truth and the good is the whole and the great One, and the tendency of the mind to divide the good and the true from the rest is the opposite of true understanding and wisdom.
Heraclitus was not a fan of experts and specialists, and he ridiculed the cultural leaders of his time. He says that the common people are completely asleep, but far more dangerous are the experts who have a small piece of the puzzle and say that they know the entire truth. He calls the poets (Hesiod and Homer) and the Pythagoreans frauds, and says that there are no permanent truths or laws other than the constant formation of watery chaos by the sun and cosmic fire. Notice that this does not question the set up of the cosmos as we have studied it everywhere (and what the Persians gave to the Eastern Greek city states). Many often ask, “Why, then, should I listen to Heraclitus, since he is simply an expert?”. Heraclitus replies as most skeptics do: don’t take my word for it, but look into the world and within yourself and you will find that it is true.
This is a psychological skepticism that is criticizing the human ability to know particular things as permanent that are able to be separated from the One and All (the cosmic fire). Only the All is permanent. All the other things are wandering temporal forms. The many beings arise from the energy of Being, and then they fall back into the fire and disappear. The cosmos resembles the chaos yet order of the human community centered on authority by spoken word. The LOGOS, the word/plan/order/command, is the formative force in the cosmos, the force of fire and light in the watery chaotic world. The cosmic fire speaks with its ever-present Logos (fire over air) and this brings about the firmament in the chaos (the earth rising out of the water). This process, however, does not bring about eternal or stable beings, but chains of beings that are in flux and interdependent.
This goes also for laws, which Heraclitus says have to be defended as if they were city walls. This is sometimes read that Heraclitus thought human law was important and had to be defended, which he did, but in fact he is also telling us that human laws are impermanent like walls made out of earth. They may seem eternal and permanent, but as any former citizen or city of the Persian empire knows, empires fall and impressive city states are overthrown and change hands. The eternal word of the fire forever forms the cosmos, but human speech and walls are temporary, and therefore take force and effort to maintain. As a skeptic, Heraclitus believes that the divisions made by the mind are mortal, not eternal, like the human body. Our knowledge and laws are impermanent like mounds of dirt.
Heraclitus was one of the most famous thinkers of the Greek and Roman world. He was a big influence on Plato, though Plato is very much opposed to his thinking as we will see next week. Both Heraclitus and Plato were big influences on Christianity which initially flourished not in Israel but in Greece and Syria. If a primal speaking of the Word or Logos sounds familiar, Heraclitus was a central influence on the Greek and Roman stoics, and the author of the Gospel of John was almost certainly a Greek stoic writing in Roman times. The opening of the Gospel of John famously reads: the Logos/Word/Order was with God (Fire/Cosmos), and God spoke (“let there be light”) and light was separated from darkness.
It was only in the late 1700s and 1800s that German scholars rediscovered the presocratics and gave them attention and study. Before this time, Greek Philosophy was considered to have originated with Socrates (hence, “presocratics”) and most scholars were only versed in the surviving writings of Plato and Aristotle. Schleiermacher, one of the most famous and central protestant theologians and an opponent of Hegel, was a major force in bringing popularity to Heraclitus and a major translator of Plato. The philosopher Hegel, who we will study later, saw Heraclitus as a skeptic who is put in balance with Plato and other positivists by the course of history itself. Nietzsche, the great skeptical philosopher who we will also study, wrote that he felt closer to Heraclitus than any other thinker. Nietzsche believed, like Heraclitus, that we are proud of our learning and achievement but we are in fact little better than apes.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Logic Assignment: Indian Logic, Kanada & Gautama
BCC Logic NAME__________________________
Eric Gerlach
2/10/2010
Indian Logic Assignment
1) According to Modus Tollens, if we know “If p then q”, we also know:
2) According to Modus Tollens, if we know “If there is rain there are clouds”, we also know:
3) Give the form of Nyaya debate (both sides) using x and y as variables.
4) Give an example of a Nyaya debate (both sides).
5) Give the four sources of knowledge according to the Nyaya Sutra, with an example for each.
6) Give an example of a Nyaya proof (rule, example, reason, conclusion).
7) What is the difference between a fallacy and quibbling? Give an example of each.
Eric Gerlach
2/10/2010
Indian Logic Assignment
1) According to Modus Tollens, if we know “If p then q”, we also know:
2) According to Modus Tollens, if we know “If there is rain there are clouds”, we also know:
3) Give the form of Nyaya debate (both sides) using x and y as variables.
4) Give an example of a Nyaya debate (both sides).
5) Give the four sources of knowledge according to the Nyaya Sutra, with an example for each.
6) Give an example of a Nyaya proof (rule, example, reason, conclusion).
7) What is the difference between a fallacy and quibbling? Give an example of each.
First Philosophy Club Meeting for Spring on the 19th
The first meeting of the Berkeley City College Philosophy Club will be on Friday February 19th at noon in room 315. We will be meeting every Friday from noon to 1pm.
Monday, February 8, 2010
BCC Philosophy Club Spring 2010
Hey Everybody,
Last semester, we started a philosophy club at Berkeley City College. This semester, I have decided we should meet from 12-1 pm every Friday (rather than 2 hours every other Friday) as this seems to fit the schedules and the needs of everyone much better. We will be meeting every Friday at noon in room 315. Come to discuss issues and hang out with your fellow students. The theme for this year is Ethics and Institutions.
Eric
Last semester, we started a philosophy club at Berkeley City College. This semester, I have decided we should meet from 12-1 pm every Friday (rather than 2 hours every other Friday) as this seems to fit the schedules and the needs of everyone much better. We will be meeting every Friday at noon in room 315. Come to discuss issues and hang out with your fellow students. The theme for this year is Ethics and Institutions.
Eric
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Logic Lecture Feb 8: Gautama and the Nyaya Sutra
BCC Logic
Eric Gerlach
2/7/2010
Lecture on Gautama and the Nyaya Sutra
Gautama and the Nyaya School of Debate
Medhatithi Gautama, who lived sometime about 550 BCE, is considered the founder of the Nyaya school and the author of the Nyaya Sutra, a textbook and manual on logical debate. The Nyaya Sutra was not the first Indian text concerned with logical argument and analysis, but it became one of the most popular and thus foundational for the Nyaya school. It is believed that the Jains and Buddhists, who are more skeptical thinkers about logic but very involved in debate, later took much from the Nyaya Sutra and school. Nyaya means “right”, “just”, “justified” or “justifiable”, the same way we use ‘logical’ to mean ‘right debate or speech’. The school reached its height in 150 CE, but it traces itself back to Gautama and his teachings.
Gautama is also called ‘Akshapada’, ‘Eyes in the Feet’, from a legend that he was so deeply absorbed in thought one day on a walk that he fell into a well, and God (Brahma) gave him eyes in his feet to prevent this from happening again. Notice that, like the Vaisheshika ‘particular’ school, Nyaya is concerned with putting particular things into categories and relationships. Objects and substances can be called the ‘feet’ of things, and their families or causes (generalities) the head or mind of things.
The Buddha, who also lived sometime around 550 BCE is also called Gautama or Gotama. Some scholars used to argue that Gautama may have been the Buddha himself, but in fact they were two different founders of two different schools who were both from the Gautama region in Northern India which is how they share the name. Gautama, Buddha and Mahavira (the founder of Jainism), were also of the warrior caste, the second class in the Indian caste system beneath the first class Brahmins, the Vedic priests and scholars. This shows that the period produced new thinkers with new ideas that were questioning the established Vedic tradition, and the schools of this period are known to have become very popular because they were open to people of all castes including the lowest. A story from the period says that a scholar who gave up on the Vedas and turned entirely to logic turned into a Jackal. This story was obviously told by Vedic scholars and priests who found the new systems a threat to the old established traditions. Like science in Europe, however, the new ways were gradually added to the old ways, until the new system was an old standard alongside the Vedic traditions.
The Nyaya Sutra is one of many debate manuals that was written for Indian philosophical or cosmological debates. Questions asked included: “Is the self/soul/mind eternal or temporary?”, “Is the world and its laws eternal or temporary?”, “Is it better to renounce or indulge in luxuries?”, “Are there particular things which are sacred or is everything equally sacred?”, and, a question seen last week in Kanada’s text, “Is sound (and thus the oral tradition of the Vedas) eternal or temporary?”. This last question is central to the Nyaya text and Gautama’s form of proof that we will study.
It is noticeable that many of these debates are concerned with distinguishing the eternal from the temporary. In ancient world cosmology, the eternal was the sacred and the object of true knowledge. If one could determine which things and laws are eternal, one would grasp the ways of the cosmos.
Notice that these debates (vadas) are also all of the form: Is object X in group Y or group not Y? We will call this the Form of Nyaya Debate or Nyaya Vada. If one could justifiably claim that all Xs are Ys, one could then argue for further truths based on the established truths. Jains and Buddhists also took this form as fundamental. For instance, the Vedic priests argued that the self/soul/mind was eternal, while the Jains and Buddhists argued that it is temporary. In Greek thought, particularly with Plato and Aristotle, this arguing back and forth between opposite positions is called “Dialectic”.
Later, in Buddhist debates about 200 BCE, just after Nyaya hits its height, three areas of debate for a proposition were conducted in order: “Is X always Y?”, “Is X everywhere Y?” and “Is X Y in everything?”.
In ancient India, a king, authority or rich patron would organize a debate and banquet, invite participants from various schools of thought to debate (often the teachers of competing rival schools, like a competition in a Kung Fu movie). Women were not unheard of as debate participants, but not nearly as common as male debaters (one can unfortunately say this of American and British philosophical departments today).
Debate manuals like the Nyaya Sutra were designed to introduce students and scholars to typical forms of argument as well as methods of attack and defense. They also listed fallacies, types of false arguments that sound solid but have flaws. The Nyaya Sutra tells us that the best debater will not take cheap moves, ‘quibbles’ or ‘clinchers’, but one is free to make them at one’s own risk. The text is surprisingly honest and insightful on this point. By using deceptive reasoning, you could win the debate but you could also could lose if your opponent points out your errors or shortcuts. This is still true of argument today even in the most casual setting, and a good reason that looking into old Logic texts like the Nyaya Sutra is still useful today. Aristotle’s Organon, his ‘Tool’, are six books that cover different areas of debate and knowledge, similarly dealing with construction of argument and fallacies. Aristotle also must straddle the sometimes contrary goals of arguing truth and winning the debate.
The Nyaya Sutra and System
The Four Sources of Knowledge are Perception, Inference, Comparison, and Testimony. All of these can potentially give valid knowledge, but there are problems with each. Perception is seeing or experiencing something for oneself.
Perception can only be valid if it tells you something determinate that doesn’t vary or change. Two examples of false perception given in the text are confusing smoke and dust, and thinking that the hot earth is wet when in fact this is a mirage.
Inference is knowledge of an object produced by perception. This shows Induction of perception passing into Deduction of inference which is still held in Philosophy and Psychology today. There are two kinds of inference that one can have based on perception of associations (like rain always falling from clouds).
First, there is inference from perception of cause the knowledge of possible and potential effect. For example, if one sees dark rain clouds, one can infer that it may possibly rain. According to Kanada, Gautama and Modus Tollens (a basic form of Logic we saw first last week with Kanada), this is knowledge of a possibility, a potential, but not a certainty. If one sees clouds, it is wise to get ready for rain but it is not certain that it will rain.
Second, there is inference from perception of effect to knowledge of cause. For example, if one sees rain one knows there are clouds or if one sees a swollen river one knows that it must have rained. According to Kanada, Gautama and Modus Tollens this sort of knowledge is certain provided that one is not deceived. For example, if one sees smoke and it is not in fact dust then one knows that there is fire.
Comparison is knowledge of a thing by comparing it to something else that is similar or different. For example, if one knows that cows are mortal and temporary, one is quite justified in believing that horses, quite similar to cows in many ways, are mortal and temporary. Comparisons can often lead to valid beliefs, but there is the possibility of error. An example is believing wrongly that a horse has four stomachs because one knows this is true of a cow.
Testimony is instructive words from a reliable person or authority. There are two types, testimony of the perceived and testimony of the unperceived. The text gives the example of a physician saying butter makes you stronger as perceived and a priest saying you win over heaven with horse sacrifices as unperceived. Notice that, like Kanada’s text, this is a subtle attack on the older Vedic ways and suggests that they are uncertain compared to inferences drawn from perception. The Nyaya school is founded on the idea that valid deductive inferences must be based on regular and invariable perception, quite comparable to the modern scientific method.
The Form of Nyaya Proof
Some authors have claimed that Aristotle’s syllogisms are deductively valid but the Nyaya proof is not and based on induction. Actually, Aristotle has many syllogisms he admits are not deductively valid on their own and he also believes that one can only argue based on what one perceives and one can be mistaken exactly like the Nyaya School and Gautama. We can see induction and deduction working together in both Aristotle’s syllogisms and Gautama’s form of proof. As can see in the text, there are five steps but as the Buddhists correctly perceived the first and second are identical to the fifth and the fourth.
To make it easier, I have boiled it down to two steps. The first is a general rule backed by an example. The second step is a reason which leads to a conclusion. The text gives us an example:
Wherever there is smoke there is fire (rule), as in a kitchen (example).
Because there is smoke on the hill (reason), there is fire on the hill (conclusion).
For each of these parts, there are particular sorts of questions or doubts one can raise. If one is in a debate against an opponent, it is critical to know the sorts of doubts that one can raise against the opponent’s argument as well as the doubts one’s opponent can raise against one’s own argument.
The text gives us examples that can be used against its own example of proof. One can argue that an iron ball is on fire, but there is no smoke as a counter example to the rule “Wherever there is smoke, there is fire”, or one can argue that dust can be confused with smoke, so “There is smoke on the hill” may be misperception.
There is also two types of proof, positive homogeneous (proof by sameness) and negative heterogeneous (proof by difference).
Example of Proof By Sameness:
Whatever is produced is not eternal, as a pot.
Because it is produced, sound is not eternal.
Notice we saw this in Kanada’s text, and scholars have suggested it attacks the older Vedic tradition. The example above concerning fire on the hill is also a proof by sameness. This is quite similar to the structure of Aristotle’s most famous and basic syllogism:
If B, then C (plus example D), (If smoke then fire)
If A then B, then (if hill has smoke)
A then C (hill has fire)
Example of Proof By Difference:
Whatever is eternal is not produced, as in the soul.
Because it is produced, sound is not eternal.
Doubts, Fallacies and Quibbling
Doubt comes from five sources. There is doubt by sameness (ex: seeing in twilight, can’t tell bush or man), by difference (ex: seeing two men in twilight, and thinking still one is a tree), by conflicting testimony (ex: Hinduism says there is an eternal soul or self, while Buddhism says there is no eternal self or soul), by irregular perception (ex: one sees a horse with horns attached to its head and questions whether horses can have horns), and by irregular non-perception (ex: one sees a cow with its horns removed and questions whether cows can have no horns).
Fallacies are false arguments. Examples include changing the thesis, contradicting the thesis, meaningless utterance, incoherent speech (‘colorless sleep furiously green’ is a famous example by Noam Chomsky), repetition, silence, ignorance (failing to understand typically), evasion (‘I am called by nature’, ‘I have another appointment’), sharing the fault (problem with both sides), overlooking fallacies, pointing out false fallacies.
Quibbling is objecting to an argument as a fallacy when it is not actually a fallacy. Quibbling can lose a debate just as surely as giving a fallacious argument. The text gives three types: Term (ex: Someone claims to have a new (“nava”) blanket, but this is confused with the claim of nine (also “nava”) blankets), Genus (ex: Someone claims Brahmins are educated but the opponent objects that some Brahmins are two years old), Metaphor (ex: Someone claims poetically, “The scaffolds cry out”, and the opponent objects, “Impossible, they are inanimate objects”).
Eric Gerlach
2/7/2010
Lecture on Gautama and the Nyaya Sutra
Gautama and the Nyaya School of Debate
Medhatithi Gautama, who lived sometime about 550 BCE, is considered the founder of the Nyaya school and the author of the Nyaya Sutra, a textbook and manual on logical debate. The Nyaya Sutra was not the first Indian text concerned with logical argument and analysis, but it became one of the most popular and thus foundational for the Nyaya school. It is believed that the Jains and Buddhists, who are more skeptical thinkers about logic but very involved in debate, later took much from the Nyaya Sutra and school. Nyaya means “right”, “just”, “justified” or “justifiable”, the same way we use ‘logical’ to mean ‘right debate or speech’. The school reached its height in 150 CE, but it traces itself back to Gautama and his teachings.
Gautama is also called ‘Akshapada’, ‘Eyes in the Feet’, from a legend that he was so deeply absorbed in thought one day on a walk that he fell into a well, and God (Brahma) gave him eyes in his feet to prevent this from happening again. Notice that, like the Vaisheshika ‘particular’ school, Nyaya is concerned with putting particular things into categories and relationships. Objects and substances can be called the ‘feet’ of things, and their families or causes (generalities) the head or mind of things.
The Buddha, who also lived sometime around 550 BCE is also called Gautama or Gotama. Some scholars used to argue that Gautama may have been the Buddha himself, but in fact they were two different founders of two different schools who were both from the Gautama region in Northern India which is how they share the name. Gautama, Buddha and Mahavira (the founder of Jainism), were also of the warrior caste, the second class in the Indian caste system beneath the first class Brahmins, the Vedic priests and scholars. This shows that the period produced new thinkers with new ideas that were questioning the established Vedic tradition, and the schools of this period are known to have become very popular because they were open to people of all castes including the lowest. A story from the period says that a scholar who gave up on the Vedas and turned entirely to logic turned into a Jackal. This story was obviously told by Vedic scholars and priests who found the new systems a threat to the old established traditions. Like science in Europe, however, the new ways were gradually added to the old ways, until the new system was an old standard alongside the Vedic traditions.
The Nyaya Sutra is one of many debate manuals that was written for Indian philosophical or cosmological debates. Questions asked included: “Is the self/soul/mind eternal or temporary?”, “Is the world and its laws eternal or temporary?”, “Is it better to renounce or indulge in luxuries?”, “Are there particular things which are sacred or is everything equally sacred?”, and, a question seen last week in Kanada’s text, “Is sound (and thus the oral tradition of the Vedas) eternal or temporary?”. This last question is central to the Nyaya text and Gautama’s form of proof that we will study.
It is noticeable that many of these debates are concerned with distinguishing the eternal from the temporary. In ancient world cosmology, the eternal was the sacred and the object of true knowledge. If one could determine which things and laws are eternal, one would grasp the ways of the cosmos.
Notice that these debates (vadas) are also all of the form: Is object X in group Y or group not Y? We will call this the Form of Nyaya Debate or Nyaya Vada. If one could justifiably claim that all Xs are Ys, one could then argue for further truths based on the established truths. Jains and Buddhists also took this form as fundamental. For instance, the Vedic priests argued that the self/soul/mind was eternal, while the Jains and Buddhists argued that it is temporary. In Greek thought, particularly with Plato and Aristotle, this arguing back and forth between opposite positions is called “Dialectic”.
Later, in Buddhist debates about 200 BCE, just after Nyaya hits its height, three areas of debate for a proposition were conducted in order: “Is X always Y?”, “Is X everywhere Y?” and “Is X Y in everything?”.
In ancient India, a king, authority or rich patron would organize a debate and banquet, invite participants from various schools of thought to debate (often the teachers of competing rival schools, like a competition in a Kung Fu movie). Women were not unheard of as debate participants, but not nearly as common as male debaters (one can unfortunately say this of American and British philosophical departments today).
Debate manuals like the Nyaya Sutra were designed to introduce students and scholars to typical forms of argument as well as methods of attack and defense. They also listed fallacies, types of false arguments that sound solid but have flaws. The Nyaya Sutra tells us that the best debater will not take cheap moves, ‘quibbles’ or ‘clinchers’, but one is free to make them at one’s own risk. The text is surprisingly honest and insightful on this point. By using deceptive reasoning, you could win the debate but you could also could lose if your opponent points out your errors or shortcuts. This is still true of argument today even in the most casual setting, and a good reason that looking into old Logic texts like the Nyaya Sutra is still useful today. Aristotle’s Organon, his ‘Tool’, are six books that cover different areas of debate and knowledge, similarly dealing with construction of argument and fallacies. Aristotle also must straddle the sometimes contrary goals of arguing truth and winning the debate.
The Nyaya Sutra and System
The Four Sources of Knowledge are Perception, Inference, Comparison, and Testimony. All of these can potentially give valid knowledge, but there are problems with each. Perception is seeing or experiencing something for oneself.
Perception can only be valid if it tells you something determinate that doesn’t vary or change. Two examples of false perception given in the text are confusing smoke and dust, and thinking that the hot earth is wet when in fact this is a mirage.
Inference is knowledge of an object produced by perception. This shows Induction of perception passing into Deduction of inference which is still held in Philosophy and Psychology today. There are two kinds of inference that one can have based on perception of associations (like rain always falling from clouds).
First, there is inference from perception of cause the knowledge of possible and potential effect. For example, if one sees dark rain clouds, one can infer that it may possibly rain. According to Kanada, Gautama and Modus Tollens (a basic form of Logic we saw first last week with Kanada), this is knowledge of a possibility, a potential, but not a certainty. If one sees clouds, it is wise to get ready for rain but it is not certain that it will rain.
Second, there is inference from perception of effect to knowledge of cause. For example, if one sees rain one knows there are clouds or if one sees a swollen river one knows that it must have rained. According to Kanada, Gautama and Modus Tollens this sort of knowledge is certain provided that one is not deceived. For example, if one sees smoke and it is not in fact dust then one knows that there is fire.
Comparison is knowledge of a thing by comparing it to something else that is similar or different. For example, if one knows that cows are mortal and temporary, one is quite justified in believing that horses, quite similar to cows in many ways, are mortal and temporary. Comparisons can often lead to valid beliefs, but there is the possibility of error. An example is believing wrongly that a horse has four stomachs because one knows this is true of a cow.
Testimony is instructive words from a reliable person or authority. There are two types, testimony of the perceived and testimony of the unperceived. The text gives the example of a physician saying butter makes you stronger as perceived and a priest saying you win over heaven with horse sacrifices as unperceived. Notice that, like Kanada’s text, this is a subtle attack on the older Vedic ways and suggests that they are uncertain compared to inferences drawn from perception. The Nyaya school is founded on the idea that valid deductive inferences must be based on regular and invariable perception, quite comparable to the modern scientific method.
The Form of Nyaya Proof
Some authors have claimed that Aristotle’s syllogisms are deductively valid but the Nyaya proof is not and based on induction. Actually, Aristotle has many syllogisms he admits are not deductively valid on their own and he also believes that one can only argue based on what one perceives and one can be mistaken exactly like the Nyaya School and Gautama. We can see induction and deduction working together in both Aristotle’s syllogisms and Gautama’s form of proof. As can see in the text, there are five steps but as the Buddhists correctly perceived the first and second are identical to the fifth and the fourth.
To make it easier, I have boiled it down to two steps. The first is a general rule backed by an example. The second step is a reason which leads to a conclusion. The text gives us an example:
Wherever there is smoke there is fire (rule), as in a kitchen (example).
Because there is smoke on the hill (reason), there is fire on the hill (conclusion).
For each of these parts, there are particular sorts of questions or doubts one can raise. If one is in a debate against an opponent, it is critical to know the sorts of doubts that one can raise against the opponent’s argument as well as the doubts one’s opponent can raise against one’s own argument.
The text gives us examples that can be used against its own example of proof. One can argue that an iron ball is on fire, but there is no smoke as a counter example to the rule “Wherever there is smoke, there is fire”, or one can argue that dust can be confused with smoke, so “There is smoke on the hill” may be misperception.
There is also two types of proof, positive homogeneous (proof by sameness) and negative heterogeneous (proof by difference).
Example of Proof By Sameness:
Whatever is produced is not eternal, as a pot.
Because it is produced, sound is not eternal.
Notice we saw this in Kanada’s text, and scholars have suggested it attacks the older Vedic tradition. The example above concerning fire on the hill is also a proof by sameness. This is quite similar to the structure of Aristotle’s most famous and basic syllogism:
If B, then C (plus example D), (If smoke then fire)
If A then B, then (if hill has smoke)
A then C (hill has fire)
Example of Proof By Difference:
Whatever is eternal is not produced, as in the soul.
Because it is produced, sound is not eternal.
Doubts, Fallacies and Quibbling
Doubt comes from five sources. There is doubt by sameness (ex: seeing in twilight, can’t tell bush or man), by difference (ex: seeing two men in twilight, and thinking still one is a tree), by conflicting testimony (ex: Hinduism says there is an eternal soul or self, while Buddhism says there is no eternal self or soul), by irregular perception (ex: one sees a horse with horns attached to its head and questions whether horses can have horns), and by irregular non-perception (ex: one sees a cow with its horns removed and questions whether cows can have no horns).
Fallacies are false arguments. Examples include changing the thesis, contradicting the thesis, meaningless utterance, incoherent speech (‘colorless sleep furiously green’ is a famous example by Noam Chomsky), repetition, silence, ignorance (failing to understand typically), evasion (‘I am called by nature’, ‘I have another appointment’), sharing the fault (problem with both sides), overlooking fallacies, pointing out false fallacies.
Quibbling is objecting to an argument as a fallacy when it is not actually a fallacy. Quibbling can lose a debate just as surely as giving a fallacious argument. The text gives three types: Term (ex: Someone claims to have a new (“nava”) blanket, but this is confused with the claim of nine (also “nava”) blankets), Genus (ex: Someone claims Brahmins are educated but the opponent objects that some Brahmins are two years old), Metaphor (ex: Someone claims poetically, “The scaffolds cry out”, and the opponent objects, “Impossible, they are inanimate objects”).
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