Philosophy of Berkeley, Descartes, Russell, and Plato - Assignment Example

Part 1) Plato’s theory of recollection involved his belief that the soul was separate from the body, and that knowledge recollected from the soul was pure knowledge that the soul acquired before the time when it was in a body. Plato felt that the body came equipped with all kinds of knowledge before it was born because of the soul, and he points to examples such as geometry and other mathematics. Take for example mathematical theorems and ideas that exist purely in the mind such as line segments and lines. Lines and line segments are objects that are one-dimensional, but in our real life experience we have never seen a one dimensional object. Further more, a line, in its geometric sense, does not have a beginning or an end and is technically supposed to be infinite. Humans cannot experience infinity, but still this idea of infinity exists within our minds, and Plato felt that it had to have come from somewhere, so he determined that it came from knowledge that our souls had before they were attached to our bodies. Therefore, all knowledge that is recollected comes from a time before the body was attached to a soul, and physical experience cannot gain true knowledge because the body encumbers the spirit too much. 3) “We cannot acquire true knowledge through the senses.” Plato would agree with this statement. Plato felt that true knowledge rested in what he referred to as the Forms, which were idealized perfect examples of objects that we see around us. Plato felt that the reason that we can recognize a tree when we see one is because we have knowledge of the Forms, this allows us to see all different kinds of trees and still recognize them as trees. Because true knowledge rested in forms, everything else was basically just a reflection of these forms. As the objects that we see are simply reflections of the perfect Forms which we cannot directly experience, we cannot gather true knowledge from sensory perception. Plato felt that knowledge could be gained through reasoning because that was a closer form of knowledge to the Forms. Because our thoughts are not dependent upon the reflections of perfect forms, we can therefore use them to gain knowledge that is more true than knowledge gained through the senses. Plato didn’t state whether or not true knowledge could actually be gained, but he certainly felt that it existed and that reasoning was a more reliable way to reach it if possible. Descartes felt that after going through his method of doubt, that knowledge could be gained through sensory perception. At first in the Meditations Descartes felt that everything that could be doubted should, including whether the sun would rise the next day. His final reason for stating this was because he stated that we did not know whether or not there was a great deceiver who tricked us into having incorrect sensory perceptions. However, the one thing that he felt could not be doubted was that we exist because we have perceptions of our own thoughts. Once this realization was made, he determined that he had an idea of God in his head, and because he had this idea of a perfect being, there necessarily had to be this perfect being to have put this idea in his head in the first place, and perfect being, God, would not allow for a great deceiver to trick us, so the experiences that we had through our senses could be trusted. 4) Plato felt that it was better to suffer an injustice rather than commit one himself. In Plato’s view, the correct way of living involved always attempting to do what was right and to always examine one’s reason for doing things. This is what Plato referred to as the examined life. In leading the examined life, it is necessary to always question what one is doing, and if one were to do so, then naturally a person could find no justification for committing an injustice. Socrates personified this attitude in his death. He was given the choice to either give up teaching people and attempting people to examine their own lives, or he would be put to death. Socrates thought it was an injustice to not leas the examined life, so he chose to allow an injustice to be done to him when he allowed himself to be put to death. Socrates felt that an unexamined life was simply not worth living, so instead of committing the injustice of living an unexamined life, he chose to be put to death. Socrates also did not attempt to escape his fate at the urging of his friends. When given the opportunity to escape, Socrates stated that the city had passed judgment upon him, and he did not feel that it was right to contradict the law because if there was no law, everything would be chaos. So, because Socrates led the examined life, he knew that he had to respect the laws of his society, even if he was being unfairly put to death for doing what he knew to be the right thing to do. Besides, death should not be something that should be feared, and the fear of death runs contradictory to philosophy. Plato felt that the mind was able to experience the true forms once it became unencumbered from the body, so since any philosopher had a love for knowledge, death would not be greeted as a band thing because it was an opportunity to partake of the Forms and therefore true knowledge. Part 2 5) Berkeley stated that we are simply minds, and that the only thing that counts is being perceived. All we are are our senses, and knowledge can only be gained through the senses. Berkeley felt that the idea that there was some sort of unperceivable matter was ridiculous. Take for instance atoms. Berkeley would state that we are unable to experience atoms with our senses, and we should not concern ourselves with such matters. This is because there is no way to experience the world without our senses. We might want to stay in our mind and attempt to discern the way that the world works from inside our mind, but if we want to do so, we still have to turn to our senses in order to be able to perceive anything. We cannot get beyond our senses if we are attempting to experience the world; our minds cannot directly experience the world. Because Berkeley feels that the act of perceiving things proves that that object exists, we can only know that we exist by being perceived. In this idea the basis of our reality rests not in ourselves but in other people. Basically, because the only way we perceive is through our senses, their is no theoretical middle man, such as sound waves, because we cannot experience the sound waves, only the sound. 6) The idea of God functions very differently for Descartes and Berkeley. Descartes was a rationalist, and he depended upon his reason to prove to himself that he could trust sensory perceptions. Basically, Descartes determined that the only thing that could be known on one’s own was that we are thinking, sentient beings. Once Descartes has gone through his methodological doubt system, he determines that the only other thing that he knows is that he has a sense of God, and because he could not have out this perfect idea in his own head because he is an imperfect being, God must necessarily exist because it had to have been God that put the idea of God in Descartes head. Basically, God is used as the structure through which everything is built back up upon. We can use the example of the house and the foundation. To Descartes, simply using ones own experience was a faulty foundation upon which to attempt to build up knowledge, just like a weak foundation for a house would result in house as an end structure. By tearing down the house and refinishing the foundation with an irrefutable base, it would be possible to thus gain knowledge, but it was because we went through our reason that we were able to determine that our senses could be trusted, and it was because of God that we were inevitable able to build up a very solid foundation of knowledge. Berkeley, on the other hand, felt that rationality could not be used as a foundation of knowledge because the only way we can experience anything is through our senses. Whereas Descartes felt that we existed because we think, Berkeley felt that we existed be we were perceived by others. This scenario begs the question as to why then when no one is around us to we continue to exist? Berkeley here uses this gap in logic to introduce the idea of God. Because we only exist in and through perception, and because not everything is noticeably perceived at all times, God is the eternal perceiver who is responsible for all things continuing to exist. Of course, now Berkeley is asking us to accept the idea that God exists when God is even less perceivable to our perceptions than sound waves. Apparently the mere fact that we exist and don’t vanish in a puff of smoke when we are being perceive is proof that God exists, but that would only be true in the case that Berkeley’s assumption that we are only being perceived is to exist is true. Basically, Descartes uses God as a foundation to build up knowledge of the external world, and Berkeley uses God as a crutch to fill a gap in his logic that we have no other way of testing. 7) Descartes shows that actual objects exist because he attempts to prove that God exists and would not let our sensory perceptions mislead us. Through Descartes methodological doubt, he determines that the only thing that cannot be doubted is that he is thinking as is obvious because he is doubting, and that because he is thinking he knows that he exists. Because he is thinking, Descartes tries to think of something else that cannot be doubted, and he determines that he cannot doubt that he has a perception of the perfection of God in his mind. Descartes thinks that he is an imperfect being that is able to determine anything beyond his own existence on his own, so he thinks that there is no way that he could have possibly come up with the idea of the perfect being on his own, so therefore the perfect being which is God necessarily has to exist in order to have put the idea of the perfect being in his head in the first place. Because this perfect being exists, Descartes determines that such a being would never allow an evil demon to exist that would trick us through our sensory perceptions, and because of this, we are able to determine that what our senses experience is a true experience, and then sine we can trust our senses we are then able to determine that actual objects do in fact exist. The entire point of this rational exercise was to be able to determine whether or not we can trust our senses and to know that physical objects are in existence. 8) Berkeley made a difference between what he referred to as primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities were dependent are considered to be that which is in an object itself and not dependent upon our perception. The motion of an object or its location is not dependent upon whether it is being perceived. Next the secondary characteristics are those that are dependent upon perception, which would be sound or touch, anything that is perceived through our five senses. Berkeley attempted to show that primary characteristics are dependent upon senses as much as secondary characteristics. Take for instance motion. If a person was to watch a person in a car throwing a ball and catching it, it would look like the person was throwing it forward and catching up to it, while the person who was catching the ball would think that the ball was going straight up and down. Now consider this person gets out of the car and drops the ball straight down. To the person, the ball would appear to fall straight down, but to an observer from space, the ball would appear to travel thousands of miles in the short amount of time it traveled through the air as the Earth travels at an extremely fast speed through space. Now while to one observer these objects appeared to be moving, another observer saw them as merely moving up and down. In considering this, we can see how objects are reliant upon their perceptions in regards to their surroundings as far as their motion goes. Descartes would object to primary characteristics being dependent upon perception because he would feel that this are the sort of characteristics that are dependent upon rationality to know exist. Objects are not to be considered to be the same thing as their characteristics, and as such, and a ball exists outside of the fact that it is being perceived. One person viewing an object as being thrown up and down doesn’t have anything to do with a person who views the ball as moving in an arc. The object exists outside of its motion, and the perceived motion of various people does not change the fact that the ball exists and has an actual location and motion through space. Part 3 9) To paraphrase Russell, the point of doing philosophy was to take a simplistic idea that it seems pointless in even having to state it, and then to use that to develop a thought that is so strange and paradoxical that people will simply disbelieve it upon hearing it. The point is not to develop outlandish ideas that people will right off; instead, the point is to make people think. In order to do so Russell realized that the outlandish idea could not be the lead off in the argument. This is because people will react negatively to an outlandish idea on its own, and the idea will simply be written off as ridiculous. In the matter of writing it off, there will be no thought put into the idea; it is simply ignored. The entire point of the what Russell is saying is that there needs to be a simple, basic premise, and while the simple premise on its own will not lead to knowledge, it will encourage people to think. This is because if you take a simple, basic idea, and use it to develop a paradoxical idea, then it will intrigue people because they will want to figure out how such a simple premise spawned such a complicated one. Even if the final product is eventually discarded, it still accomplished it purpose by getting people to think, and the more that people think through difficult problems, the more that people will gain knowledge through the process. 10) Russell was intrigued with the question of whether an object, such as a table, existed beyond his own experience. Obviously the table exists in our perception on it as we can see the color of it, touch it, and smell the odor of whatever material it is made out of. But the question is whether or not the matter of the table that exists beyond our perception of it actually exists. Taking what we know of science, there are molecules that make up the table, and on a smaller level there are atoms, and on a smaller level there are protons, neutrons, electrons, and there are further levels beyond that as well. However, we do not experience these levels directly through our senses. A philosopher such as Berkeley would state all that we can state exists is the sensory perception of the table since we cannot experience the other levels of the table directly. He would state that there is no point in considering something that does not exist. However, Russell would state that all Berkeley had done was to show that he could in fact doubt whether the matter of the table existed, and this is not the same thing as proving that the matter of the table does not exist. Russell would then state that Berkeley was stating that the existence of the matter of the table and the existence of the sensory perception of the table are two different things, and Russell felt that the sheer mention of the independence of the two implied that there obviously was in fact reason to believe that the matter of the table existed. The difference between philosophers that came before Russell was his acceptance of anything less than absolute. While Russell could not prove beyond any doubt that the matter of the table existed, he felt that there were many good reasons to admit to the existence of the matter of the table. Read More