Philosophy the power of ideas 9th edition pdf

Philosophy

The Power of Ideas

TENTH EDITION

Brooke Noel Moore and Kenneth Bruder with Anne D’Arcy, Feminist Philosopher

California State University, Chico

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PHILOSOPHY: THE POWER OF IDEAS, TENTH EDITION

Published by McGraw-Hill Education, 2 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121. Copyright © 2019 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Previous

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ISBN 978-1-259-32052-1

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Moore, Brooke Noel, author. | Bruder, Kenneth, author.

Title: Philosophy : the power of ideas / Brooke Noel Moore, California State

University, Chico Kenneth Bruder, California State University, Chico.

Description: TENTH EDITION. | Dubuque, IA : McGraw-Hill Education, 2017. |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017043986 | ISBN 9781259320521 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy—Textbooks.

Classification: LCC BD21 .M66 2017 | DDC 100—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017043986

The Internet addresses listed in the text were accurate at the time of publication. The inclusion of a website does not indicate an endorsement by the authors or McGraw-Hill Education, and

McGraw-Hill Education does not guarantee the accuracy of the information presented at these sites.

mheducation.com/highered

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https://lccn.loc.gov/2017043986
http://mheducation.com/highered
To Marianne Moore; Kathryn Dupier Bruder and Albert Bruder; and Xandria iii

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Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 Dark Blue Velvet Goombas

Questions

Pressing or Fundamental?

Misconceptions

Tool Kit

Argument

The Socratic Method

Thought Experiments

Reductio ad Absurdum

Fallacies

Divisions of Philosophy

The Benefits of Philosophy

Checklist

Key Terms and Concepts

Questions for Discussion and Review

Links

Suggested Further Readings

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Part One METAPHYSICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY: EXISTENCE AND KNOWLEDGE

Chapter 2 The Pre-Socratics The Milesians

Pythagoras

Heraclitus and Parmenides

Empedocles and Anaxagoras

The Atomists

Checklist

Key Terms and Concepts

Questions for Discussion and Review

Suggested Further Readings

Chapter 3 Socrates, Plato Socrates

Plato

Plato’s Metaphysics: The Theory of Forms

Plato’s Theory of Knowledge

Plato’s Theory of Love and Becoming

SELECTION 3.1 Plato: Apology

SELECTION 3.2 Plato: Republic

SELECTION 3.3 Plato: Meno

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Checklist

Key Terms and Concepts

Questions for Discussion and Review

Suggested Further Readings

Chapter 4 Aristotle What Is It to Be?

Actuality and Possibility

Essence and Existence

Ten Basic Categories

The Three Souls

Aristotle and the Theory of Forms

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Aristotle’s Theory of Knowledge

Logic

SELECTION 4.1 Aristotle: The Categories

Checklist

Key Terms and Concepts

Questions for Discussion and Review

Suggested Further Readings

Chapter 5 Philosophers of the Hellenistic and Christian Eras Metaphysics in the Roman Empire

Plotinus

The Rise of Christianity

St. Augustine

Augustine and Skepticism

Hypatia

The Middle Ages and Aquinas

SELECTION 5.1 St. Augustine: Confessions

SELECTION 5.2 St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica: How God Is Known by Us

Checklist

Key Terms and Concepts

Questions for Discussion and Review

Suggested Further Readings

Chapter 6 The Rise of Modern Metaphysics and Epistemology Descartes and Dualism

Skepticism as the Key to Certainty

The “Clear and Distinct” Litmus Test

Hobbes and Materialism

Perception

The Alternative Views of Conway, Spinoza, and Leibniz

The Metaphysics of Anne Conway

Spinoza

Leibniz

The Idealism of Locke and Berkeley

John Locke and Representative Realism

George Berkeley and Idealism

Material Things as Clusters of Ideas

Berkeley and Atheism

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SELECTION 6.1 René Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy

SELECTION 6.2 Benedictus de Spinoza: Ethics

SELECTION 6.3 George Berkeley: Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge

Checklist

Key Terms and Concepts

Questions for Discussion and Review

Suggested Further Readings

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Chapter 7 The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries David Hume

The Quarter Experiment

Hume on the Self

Hume on Cause and Effect

Immanuel Kant

The Ordering Principles of the Mind

Things-in-Themselves

The Nineteenth Century

The Main Themes of Hegel

Arthur Schopenhauer

SELECTION 7.1 David Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

SELECTION 7.2 Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason

SELECTION 7.3 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Philosophy of History

Checklist

Key Terms and Concepts

Questions for Discussion and Review

Suggested Further Readings

Chapter 8 The Continental Tradition Brief Historical Overview of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Existentialism

Psychoanalysis

Two Existentialists

Albert Camus

Jean-Paul Sartre

Sartre and Kant on Ethics

You Are What You Do

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Phenomenology

Edmund Husserl

Martin Heidegger

Poetry

Eastern Philosophy

Emmanuel Levinas

An Era of Suspicion

Jürgen Habermas

Michel Foucault

Structuralism versus Deconstruction

Jacques Derrida

Gilles Deleuze

Alain Badiou

Non-Philosophy

Checklist

Key Terms and Concepts

Questions for Discussion and Review

Suggested Further Readings

Chapter 9 The Pragmatic and Analytic Traditions Pragmatism

Richard Rorty

Analytic Philosophy

What Analysis Is

A Brief Overview of Analytic Philosophy

Language and Science

Experience, Language, and the World

Antirepresentationalism

Wittgenstein’s Turnaround

Quine, Davidson, and Kripke

Willard Van Orman Quine

Donald Davidson

Saul Kripke

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Ontology

Meta-Ontology

Philosophical Questions in Quantum Mechanics

Checklist

Key Terms and Concepts

Questions for Discussion and Review

Suggested Further Readings

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Part Two MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Chapter 10 Moral Philosophy Skepticism, Relativism, and Subjectivism

Egoism

Hedonism

The Five Main Ethical Frameworks

The Early Greeks

Plato

Aesara, the Lucanian

Aristotle

Epicureanism and Stoicism

Epicureanism

The Stoics

Christianizing Ethics

St. Augustine

St. Hildegard of Bingen

Heloise and Abelard

St. Thomas Aquinas

Hobbes and Hume

Hobbes

Hume

Value Judgments Are Based on Emotion, Not Reason

Benevolence

Can There Be Ethics after Hume?

Kant

The Supreme Principle of Morality

Why You Should Do What You Should Do

The Utilitarians

Bentham

Mill

Friedrich Nietzsche

SELECTION 10.1 Plato: Gorgias

SELECTION 10.2 Aristotle: Ethics

SELECTION 10.3 Immanuel Kant: Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals

SELECTION 10.4 John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism

Checklist

Key Terms and Concepts

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Questions for Discussion and Review

Suggested Further Readings

Chapter 11 Political Philosophy Plato and Aristotle

Plato

Aristotle

Natural Law Theory and Contractarian Theory

Augustine and Aquinas

Hobbes

Two Other Contractarian Theorists

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John Locke

Locke and the Right to Property

Separation of Power

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

U.S. Constitutional Theory—Applied Philosophy

Natural Law and Rights in the Declaration of Independence

Natural Law and Rights in the U.S. Constitution

The Right to Privacy

Classic Liberalism and Marxism

Adam Smith

Utilitarianism and Natural Rights

Harriet Taylor

John Stuart Mill

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Marxism

The Means of Production versus Productive Relations

Class Struggle

Capitalism and Its Consequences

Alienation

Capitalism Is Self-Liquidating

Marxism and Communism

Anarchism

SELECTION 11.1 Plato: The Republic

SELECTION 11.2 Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan

SELECTION 11.3 John Stuart Mill: On Liberty

Checklist

Key Terms and Concepts

Questions for Discussion and Review

Suggested Further Readings

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Chapter 12 Recent Moral and Political Philosophy G. E. Moore

Normative Ethics and Metaethics

Emotivism and Beyond

John Rawls, a Contemporary Liberal

The Fundamental Requirements of the Just Society

The Veil of Ignorance and the Original Position

The Two Principles of Social Justice

The Rights of Individuals

Why Should I Accept Rawls’s Provisions?

Robert Nozick’s Libertarianism

A Minimal State Is Justified

Only the “Night-Watchman” State Does Not Violate Rights

The Rights of Individuals

Communitarian Responses to Rawls

Alasdair MacIntyre and Virtue Ethics

Martha Nussbaum

Herbert Marcuse, A Recent Marxist

The Objectivism of Ayn Rand

“Isms”

Checklist

Key Terms and Concepts

Questions for Discussion and Review

Suggested Further Readings

Part Three PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: REASON AND FAITH

Chapter 13 Philosophy and Belief in God Two Christian Greats

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Anselm

The Ontological Argument

Gaunilo’s Objection

Aquinas

The First Way

The Second Way

The Third Way

The Fourth and Fifth Ways

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Mysticism

Seventeenth-Century Perspectives

Descartes

Descartes’s First Proof

Descartes’s Second Proof

Descartes’s Third Proof

Leibniz

Leibniz and the Principle of Sufficient Reason

Leibniz and the Problem of Evil

Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Perspectives

Hume

Hume and the Argument from Design

Hume and the Cosmological Argument

A Verbal Dispute?

Kant

What Is Wrong with the Ontological Proof?

What Is Wrong with the Cosmological and Teleological Proofs?

Belief in God Rationally Justified

Kierkegaard

Nietzsche

James

More Recent Perspectives

God and Logical Positivism

Mary Daly: The Unfolding of God

Intelligent Design or Evolution?

God, the Fine-Tuner

Who Needs Reasons for Believing in God?

SELECTION 13.1 St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica

SELECTION 13.2 Friedrich Nietzsche: The Joyful Wisdom

Checklist

Key Terms and Concepts

Questions for Discussion and Review

Suggested Further Readings

Part Four MORE VOICES

Chapter 14 Feminist Philosophy The First Wave

The Second Wave

The Third Wave

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The Fourth Wave

The Fifth Wave

Analytic Feminist Philosophy

Continental Feminist Philosophy

Feminist Moral Theory

Sexism and Language

Feminist Epistemology

Two Contemporary American Feminist Philosophers

Mary Daly

Judith Butler: Gender, Sex, and Performativity

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French Feminist Philosophy and Psychoanalytical Theory

Simone de Beauvoir

Luce Irigaray

Julia Kristeva (1941–)

Hélène Cixous (1937–)

“Laugh of the Medusa”

Feminist Perspectives on Important Philosophers

Aristotle

Augustine

Descartes

Kant

Nietzsche

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ayn Rand

Jacques Derrida

SELECTION 14.1 Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Checklist

Key Terms and Concepts

Questions for Discussion and Review

Suggested Further Readings

Chapter 15 Eastern Influences Hinduism

Buddhism

Buddha

Taoism

Lao Tzu

Sun Tzu

Chuang Tzu

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Confucianism

Confucius

Mencius

Hsün Tzu

Zen Buddhism in China and Japan

Hui Neng

Buddhism in Japan

Murasaki Shikibu

Dōgen Kigen

The Philosophy of the Samurai (c. 1100–1900)

The Influence of Confucius

The Influence of Zen Buddhism

Philosophy East and West

SELECTION 15.1 Confucius: The Analects of Confucius

Checklist

Key Terms and Concepts

Questions for Discussion and Review

Suggested Further Readings

Chapter 16 Postcolonial Thought Historical Background

Africa

Oral and Traditional Philosophy

Person

Historiography

The Nature of Philosophy

The Good Life

The Americas

African American Thought

Social Justice

Feminism

Afrocentrism

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Social Activism

Latin American Thought

Ontology

Metaphysics of the Human

Gender Issues

South Asia

Satyagraha

Metaphysics

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Checklist

Key Terms and Concepts

Questions for Discussion and Review

Suggested Further Readings

Chapter 17 Four Philosophical Problems Free Will

Psychological Determinism

Neuroscientific Determinism

Causal Determinism

Consciousness

Dualism

Behaviorism

Identity Theory

Functionalism

Zombies

The Ethics of Generosity: The Problem of The Gift

What Is Art? and Related Problems in Aesthetics

What Is Art?

A Paradox of Fiction

The Puzzle of Musical Expression

Envoi

Checklist

Key Terms and Concepts

Questions for Discussion and Review

Suggested Further Readings

Index/Glossary xvi

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Preface

This is a straightforward ungimmicky introduction to philosophy written especially for first- and second-year university students. It contains separate historical overviews of the main subjects of Western philosophy and includes both the Analytic and the Continental traditions. It also covers Eastern philosophy, postcolonial philosophy, and feminist philosophy and contains a chapter devoted to major philosophical problems. We hope readers will learn that thinking deeply about almost anything can lead them into philosophy.

The following are important changes in the tenth edition:

Revised and updated first chapter, making philosophy appealing to today’s students

New introduction to Analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy (Chapter 8; The Continental Tradition)

New section on Non-Philosophy (non-philosophie) by Francois Laruelle in Chapter 8

Substantially revised Chapter 14 (Feminist Philosophy), with new sections on The Fifth Wave, Analytic feminist philosophy vs Continental feminist philosophy, and Mary Daly; and revised treatment of Judith Butler, Simone de Beauvoir, and Ayn Rand

New section covering feminist perspectives on major philosophers (Chapter 14)

New Box on the Philosophy and The Simpsons (Chapter 17)

Philosophy—Powerful Ideas

We concluded years ago that most people like philosophy if they understand it and that most understand it if it isn’t presented to them in exhausting prose. In this text, we strive to make philosophy understandable while not oversimplifying.

Which is not to say that everyone who understands philosophy is attracted to it. Philosophy is just not for everyone, and no text and no instructor can make it so. We do hope, however, that readers of this book will at least learn that philosophy is more than inconsequential mental flexing. Philosophy contains powerful ideas, and it affects the lives of real people.

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Philosophy: A Worldwide Search for Wisdom and Understanding

Until the middle of the last century, most philosophers and historians of ideas in American and European universities thought philosophical reflection occurred only within the tradition of disciplined discourse that began with the ancient Greeks and has continued into the present. This conception of philosophy has changed however, first through the interest in Eastern thought, especially Zen Buddhism, in the 1950s, then through the increasingly widespread publication of high-quality translations and commentaries of texts from outside the Western tradition in the following decades. Of course, the availability of such texts does not mean that unfamiliar ideas will receive a careful hearing or even that they will receive any hearing at all.

Among the most challenging threads of the worldwide philosophical conversation is what has come to be known in recent years as postcolonial thought. The lines defining this way of thinking are not always easy to draw—but the same could be said for existentialism, phenomenology, and a number of other schools of thought in philosophy. In any event, in many cultures and subcultures around the world, thinkers are asking searching questions about methodology and fundamental beliefs that are intended to have practical, political consequences. Because these thinkers frequently intend their work to be revolutionary, their ideas run a higher-than-usual risk of being lost to philosophy’s traditional venues. We include in this book a small sample from such writers.

Women in the History of Philosophy

Histories of philosophy make scant mention of women philosophers prior to the latter half of the twentieth century. For a long time it was assumed that lack of mention was due to a deficit of influential women philosophers. Scholarship such as that by Mary Ellen Waithe (A History of Women Philosophers) suggests that women have been more important in the history of philosophy than is often assumed. To date, we lack full-length translations and modern editions of the works of many women philosophers. Until this situation changes, Waithe argues, it is difficult to reconstruct the history of the discipline with accuracy.

This text acknowledges the contributions of at least some women to the history of philosophy. We include women philosophers throughout the text in their historical contexts, and we also present a chapter on feminist philosophy. In it, among other things, we now include a section on feminist perspectives on some of the important Western philosophers.

Features

Among what we think are the nicer attributes of this book are these:

Separate histories of metaphysics and epistemology; the Continental, pragmatic, and Analytic traditions; moral and political philosophy; feminist philosophy; and the philosophy of religion

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A chapter on selected perennial philosophical problems, including the problem of free will, the problem of consciousness, the problem of the gift (ethics of generosity), and problems in aesthetics

A section comparing philosophy East and West

A section on philosophical issues in quantum mechanics

A section on zombies

Coverage of postmodernism and multiculturalism

A section titled “More Voices,” which contains chapters on Eastern influences, feminist philosophy, and postcolonial thought

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Recognition of specific contributions of women to philosophy

A generous supply of easy, original readings that don’t overwhelm beginning students

Boxes highlighting important concepts, principles, and distinctions or containing interesting anecdotes or historical asides

Biographical profiles of many of the great philosophers

Online checklists of key philosophers, with mini-summaries of the philosophers’ leading ideas

End-of-chapter questions for review and reflection and online lists of additional sources

A pronunciation guide to the names of philosophers

A brief subsection on American Constitutional theory, never more controversial than today

A glossary/index that defines important concepts on the spot

Teachable four-part organization: (1) Metaphysics and Epistemology, (2) Moral and Political Philosophy, (3) Philosophy of Religion, and (4) More Voices

A section on arguments and fallacies

For instructors, online detailed lecture ideas for each chapter

The tenth edition of Philosophy: The Power of Ideas is now available online with Connect, McGraw-Hill Education’s integrated assignment and assessment platform. Connect also offers SmartBook for the new edition, which is the first adaptive reading experience proven to improve grades and help students study more effectively. All of the title’s website and ancillary content is also available through Connect, including:

A full Test Bank of multiple choice questions that test students on central concepts and ideas in each chapter.

An Instructor’s Manual for each chapter with full chapter outlines, sample test questions, and discussion topics.

Lecture Slides for instructor use in class.

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Acknowledgments

Special thanks go to Zanja Yudell for writing a section on philosophical problems in quantum mechanics and to Rachel Steiner who provided art for this and some of the previous editions of the book.

Many friends and colleagues at California State University, Chico have helped us on this and earlier editions: Maryanne Bertram, Judy Collins-Hamer, Marcel Daguerre, Frank Ficarra, Jay Gallagher, Eric Gampel, Tony Graybosch, Ron Hirschbein, Tom Imhoff, Marie Knox, Scott Mahood, Clifford Minor, Adrian Mirvish, Anne Morrissey, Jim Oates, Richard Parker, Dick Powell, Michael Rich, Dennis Rothermel, Robert Stewart, Greg Tropea, Alan Walworth, and Wai-hung Wong.

Also, for their wise and helpful comments on the manuscript for earlier editions, we thank Ken King, previously Mayfield/McGraw-Hill; John Michael Atherton, Duquesne University; Stuart Barr, Pima Community College; Robert Beeson, Edison State College; Sherrill Begres, Indiana University of Pennsylvania; W. Mark Cobb, Pensacola Junior College; Gloria del Vecchio, Bucks County Community College; Ronald G. DesRosiers, Madonna College; Mark A. Ehman, Edison Community College; Thomas Eshelman, East Stroudsburg University; Robert Ferrell, University of Texas at El Paso; James P. Finn Jr., Westmoreland County Community College; Raul Garcia, Southwest Texas State University; Brenda S. Hines, Highland Community College; Chris Jackway, Kellogg Community College; August Lageman, Virginia Intermont College; Bernal Koehrsen Jr., Ellsworth Community College; Henry H. Liem, San José City College; Kenneth A. Long, Indiana University–Purdue University at Fort Wayne; Adrienne Lyles-Chockley, University of San Diego; Curtis H. Peters, Indiana University Southeast; Adrienne Regnier, Jefferson Community and Technical College; Richard Rice, La Sierra University; Harry Settanni, Holy Family College; William C. Sewell, Michigan Technological University; Douglas Thiel, Moorpark College/Oxnard College; and Chris Weigand, University of Central Oklahoma.

For the ninth edition, we are indebted to Edward M. Engelmann, Merrimack College; William Ferraiolo, San Joaquin Delta College; Daniel G. Jenkins, Montgomery College; Gonzalo T. Palacios, Prince George’s Community College; A. J. Kreider, Miami Dade College; James Craig Hanks, Texas State University; Clinton F. Dunagan, Northwest Vista College; and Christa Lynn Adams, Lakeland Community College.

For their sage advice on the tenth edition, we are indebted to Theresa Catalano-Reinhardt, Macomb Community College; Bryan Hilliard, Mississippi University for Women; Dr. Edward J. Grippe, Norwalk Community College; Robert E. Birt, Bowie State University; William S. Jamison, University of Alaska Anchorage; Robert Ferrell, El Paso Community College; Daniel G. Jenkins, Montgomery College; Chris Jakway, Kellogg Community College; Joe Mixie, Southern Connecticut State University; Bernal F. Koehrsen, Jr., Ellsworth Community College of the Iowa Valley Community College District; Elizabeth Shaw, Catholic University of America; Robert Paul Churchill, George Washington University; Matthew Kent, University of St. Thomas; and Michael Matthiesen, Miami Dade College.

We also thank the following McGraw-Hill staff and freelancers for their excellent work on the tenth edition: Sarah Merrigan Paratore, Arpana Kumari, Craig Leonard, Laura Wilk, and Lisa Bruflodt. Special thanks are due to Anita Silvers for putting us in touch with Dominic Mclver Lopes, to Ellen Fox for material on feminist philosophy, to Gregory Tropea for material on postcolonial thought, to Mary Ellen Waithe for explaining the thought of important women in the history of philosophy, and to Emerine Glowienka for helping us with Aquinas’s metaphysics.

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W

1 Dark Blue Velvet

hat is philosophy? What do you know about it? Did you know that before there was science, literature, or mathematics there was only philosophy? It’s the umbrella discipline from which most other disciplines have evolved. The ancient Greeks, who invented philosophy, thought of any person who sought knowledge in any area as a philosopher. Thus, philosophy once encompassed nearly everything that counted as knowledge.

This view of philosophy persisted for more than two thousand years. In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton, universally regarded as one of the most important scientists of all time, set forth his renowned theories of physics, mathematics, and astronomy in the famous book Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. At that time physics was still thought of as a variety of philosophy.

In fact, at some point nearly every subject currently listed in your university’s catalog would have been considered philosophy. If you continue your studies and obtain the highest degree in psychology, mathematics, economics, sociology, history, biology, political science, or practically any other subject, you will be awarded a PhD, the doctorate of philosophy. If you wear an academic gown for commencement or other ceremonies, regardless of your discipline, it will be trimmed in the dark blue velvet that represents philosophy. On your sleeves will be three blue velvet stripes, again representing that you have earned a doctorate of philosophy, regardless of your specific field.

Understanding the complete history of your own academic subject in most cases means knowing something about the history of philosophy. That’s what this book is intended to give you, a fairly detailed introduction to the history and problems of philosophy.

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GOOMBAS

Would you be surprised to learn that you’ve been doing philosophy since you were a little boy or girl? Think about what you enjoyed then. Did you pretend you could wave a magic wand and sprinkle fairy dust on things? Did you imagine you had super powers and could fly? Did you read the book The Velveteen Rabbit—the one about the stuffed bunny who desperately wants to be real? Did you think about what is imaginary and what it is to be really real? Philosophy has plenty to say about that question—what it is to be really real and how we know it.

Did you play Super Mario and race through the Mushroom Kingdom and fight off Goombas? Then you were exploring power. Philosophy looks at the nature of power and at social relationships more generally. It also has plenty to say about ethics, acceptable behavior, and justice. Did you get in trouble when you did something that caused harm? Then you were looking at distinguishing right from wrong and building values to live by. Perhaps your parents taught you that there isn’t any objective principle that describes right and wrong, that you would have to form your own sense of it, your own ethics, as you grew older, but in the meantime you had to do as they said. Are there such things as correct values, or is it all relative? What about different cultural values? Is it all a matter of where you happened to be born when it comes to values? Is there such a thing as ethical principles that apply to all situations? All these questions belong in the discipline of philosophy.

Did your parents teach you to tell the truth? Philosophy explores the nature of truth. Did you learn from your mistakes? Then you gained knowledge. Philosophy examines what knowlege is and whether knowing truth is possible. Did you think twice before telling a fib the next time? Thinking twice is a form of reasoning. Philosophy asks if we can trust reason, how to reason carefully, and use evidence to support our arguments when we take a position.

Did you like to draw or sing or maybe use a music app or play an instrument? Philosophy explores questions like what is art? and what is music? It wonders, why do some arrangements of sights and sound qualify as art or music while others don’t?

If you’re leaving your teens, you may have unanswered questions about life. You may be examining the values you grew up with, the ones you were taught, and now you wonder if you are merely conditioned to adopt the rules and opinions of your family. How will you assess which is your opinion and which is theirs? You may be asking yourself, “Who am I?” If you are not a person of faith, you may be questioning whether God exists, whether there is such a thing as a soul, whether life has meaning if you don’t believe in God, and what is the meaning of life anyhow? What, if anything, happens after death? Where does your consciousness go, if anywhere? Is there such a thing as free will? Advances in neuroscience suggest that our brains make decisions before we’re conscious of the decisions. How does that change the concept of free will? In order to contemplate these questions, wouldn’t you have to know who you are, and what the self is? Philosophy is fascinated by these questions.

Well, then, what is philosophy? The word philosophy1 comes from the Greek word philein, which means “to love,” and sophia, which means “knowledge” or “wisdom.” This isn’t too helpful. We take the approach that you best understand what philosophy is by

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looking at the questions it asks. You might be pleased to hear that philosophy also offers methods of inquiry for dealing with its questions and ways to attempt to arrive at conclusions you can accept.

QUESTIONS

The following are some of the philosophical questions we have already mentioned:

• What is it to be really real?

• How do we know what is really real?

• How do we know anything? What is knowledge?

• What is truth?

• What is the self? What is consciousness?

• Does life have meaning, a purpose?

• What happens, if anything, after death?

• Is there free will?

• What makes some actions right and others wrong? Is it all relative?

• What is art?

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To this list we might add a few others:

• What is time?

• What is justice?

• Do people have natural rights?

• What are the ethically legitimate functions and scope of government?

• Do we have moral obligations to people we don’t know? To nonhuman living things? To the environment?

Clearly, it is possible to go through life without spending much time wondering about such questions. But most of us have at least occasional moments of reflection about one or another of them. In fact, it is difficult not to think philosophically from time to time. Whenever we think about a topic long enough, if our thinking is the least bit organized, we may end up engaged in philosophy.

For example, situations arise in which we must balance our own needs against the needs of others we are concerned about—an aging parent might require care, for instance. Of course, we will try to determine the extent of our obligation. But we may go beyond this and ask what makes this our obligation, or even more generally, what makes anything our obligation. Is it simply that it strikes us that way? Or is there some feature of situations that requires a certain response?

If we are led to questions like these, the rest of the university curriculum will be of little help. Other subjects tell us how things are or how they work or how they came about, but not what we should do or why we should do it. Unfortunately, when most people reach this point in their reflections, they really don’t know what to think next.

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To take quite a different example of how philosophical questions crop up in everyday contexts, sci-fi movies often portray robots that think like people. Naturally, after seeing such a movie, or maybe just talking to Siri or Alexa, you might wonder if it may someday be possible to build a robot that can actually think? The question calls for a philosophical response. Of course, you might just wait and see what Google comes up with, but will that help? You can’t just observe whether robots are thinking. Even if scientists succeed in building a robot that walks and talks and acts like Ava or Kyoko in the movie Ex Machina, one still might reasonably deny that the robot actually thinks. “It isn’t made out of flesh and blood,” you might say. But then beings from other galaxies might think even though they are not made out of flesh and blood, so why must computers be made out of flesh and blood to think? Is it perhaps because machines don’t have souls or aren’t alive? Well, what is a soul, anyway? Why aren’t machines alive? What is it to be alive? These are philosophical questions. Philosophers have spent a great deal of time analyzing and trying to answer them.

Often, too, philosophers ask questions about things that seem so obvious we usually might not wonder about them—for example, the nature of change. That things change is obvious, and we might not see anything puzzling in the fact. If something changes, it becomes something different; so what?

For one thing, if we have a different thing, then we seem to be considering two things: the original thing and the new, different thing. Therefore, strictly speaking, shouldn’t we say not that something changed but rather that it was replaced? Suppose George Washington puts a new head on his axe. It’s still the same axe. Suppose the next year he replaces the handle. Still the same axe? Certainly George Washington thinks so; there can be no question about what he has in mind if he asks someone to bring him his axe. But is this right? Suppose we find the old handle and stick the old head on it. Isn’t that George Washington’s axe?

Perhaps this all seems to be a question of semantics and of no practical interest. But over the course of a lifetime, every molecule in a person’s body may possibly be replaced. Thus, we might wonder, say, whether an old man who has been in prison for forty years for a murder he committed as a young man is really the same person as the young man. Since (let us assume) not a single molecule of the young man is in the old man, wasn’t the young man in fact replaced? If so, can his guilt possibly pertain to the old man, who is in fact a different man? What is at stake here is whether the old man did in fact commit murder, and it is hard to see how this might be simply a matter of semantics.

PRESSING OR FUNDAMENTAL?

Philosophical questions, like the ones we have talked about, are among the most fundamental you can ask. That, of course, does not necessarily mean they are pressing questions. “How can I get this computer to run right?”—this is an example of a question that can be pressing in a way in which philosophical questions rarely are. You rarely have to drop what you are doing to answer philosophical questions.

But let’s look more carefully at this question: How can I get my computer to run right? Notice that the question relates to the quality of your life. Not knowing how to get

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your computer working diminishes your ability to function efficiently. It impacts your life unfavorably. But what kind of life should you live in the first place? This is a philosophical question. And there is a sense in which it is more fundamental than the question about how to

get your computer to run right, because there are lives you might live in which you might not own a computer. Notice now that this question (what kind of life should you live?) implies that the life you live is up to you. However, is this really correct? Is it true that the life you live is

up to you? “Excuse me,” you may be saying. “What do you mean, is the life I lead up to me? Obviously it is up to me. Whatever I do is up to me. Nobody is making me read this book,

for example. I’m reading it because I want to read it.” No doubt most people think our voluntary actions are up to us. That’s sort of what it means to say than an action is voluntary. But what about our desires and values? Are

these up to us? After all, our voluntary actions stem from our desires and values. This question—are our desires and values really up to us?—is deeply philosophical. As an experiment, you might try to change a desire or a value by an act of will. Will yourself to believe, for example, that it is actually right or good to hurt kittens. Can you do it? We can’t either. Well, then, think of something you desire. Can you make yourself not desire it by an act of will? If you try such an experiment, it may not be so clear after all that your desires, values, actions, or the life you lead really is up to you.

MISCONCEPTIONS

You might think that something as old as philosophy would be fairly well understood by many or most people. Would you be surprised to learn that misconceptions of philosophy are common?

One misconception is the idea that one person’s philosophy is as correct as the next person’s and that any philosophical position is as good, valid, or correct as any other opinion. This idea is especially widespread when it comes to values. If one person thinks that people should contribute 10% of their income to their church, and another person disagrees, it may at first seem reasonable to say, Well, the first person’s view is true for that person, and the second person’s view is true for the other person. But if you look carefully, you will notice that the two may be disagreeing about whether people in general should contribute 10% of their income. If so, they cannot both be correct. If people in general should do such and such, then it cannot be that they need not do it.

Or let’s say you think hunting is cruel and inhumane, but your roommate doesn’t. He might say something like, Well, that’s okay for you, but that’s not what I think. What does he mean? Possibly he means just that it’s fine with him if you don’t like hunting, but he doesn’t think there is anything wrong with it. But let’s look at this more closely. When you said that hunting is cruel and inhumane, you probably didn’t mean just that it would be cruel and inhumane for you to hunt. You may well have meant that hunting is cruel and inhumane, period. You may well have meant that, in your view, it is cruel and inhumane for him to hunt, and he shouldn’t do it. If so, your opinion (that it is cruel and

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inhumane for him to hunt) and his opinion (that it isn’t), cannot both be correct. Sometimes, when it seems as if opposing positions could both be correct, then closer inspection may disclose that in fact they couldn’t.

Another misconception about philosophy is that it is nothing but opinion. In fact, we should distance ourselves from this notion. This is because philosophy requires opinions to be supported by good reasoning. If you express your opinion without providing supporting reasoning, your philosophy teacher is apt to say something like, “Well, that is an interesting opinion,” but he or she won’t say that you have produced good philosophy. Philosophy requires supporting your opinions—which, by the way, can be hard work.

Another idea people sometimes have when they first enter into philosophy is that “truth is relative.” Now, there are numerous things a person might mean by that statement. If he or she means merely that people’s beliefs are relative to their perspectives or cultures, then there is no problem. If, however, the person means that the same sentence might be both true and not true depending on one’s perspective or culture, then he or she is mistaken. The same sentence cannot be both true and not true, and whatever a person wishes to convey by the remark, “Truth is relative,” it cannot be that. Of course, two different people from two different cultures or perspectives might mean something different by the same words, but that is a separate issue.

Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound when nobody is around to hear it? Never mind that! Is there even a forest if there is nobody to observe it? ©konradlew/Getty Images

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A different sort of misconception people have about philosophy is that it is light reading, something you relax with in the evening after all the serious work of the day is done. In reality, philosophical writing generally takes time and effort to understand. Often it seems to be written in familiar, everyday language, but that can be deceiving. It is best to approach a work in philosophy with the kind of mental preparedness and alertness appropriate for a textbook in mathematics or science. You should expect to be able to read an entire novel in the time it takes to understand just a few pages of philosophy! To understand philosophy, you have to reread a passage several times and think about it a lot. If your instructor assigns what seem to be short readings, don’t celebrate. It takes much time to understand philosophy.

TOOL KIT

Philosophy isn’t light reading, and it isn’t mere expression of opinion. Philosophers support their positions with arguments, which (ideally) make it plain why the reasonable person will accept what they say.

Argument

When you support a position by giving a reason for accepting it, you are making an argument. Giving and rebutting arguments (a rebuttal of an argument is itself an argument) are the most basic of philosophical activities; they distinguish philosophy from mere opinion. Logic, the study of correct inference, is concerned with whether and to what extent a reason truly does support a conclusion.

To illustrate, if you tell someone you believe that God exists, that’s not philosophy. That’s just you saying something about yourself. Even if you add, “I believe in God because I was raised a Catholic,” that’s still just biography, not philosophy. If, however, you say, “God must exist because the universe couldn’t have caused itself,” then you have given an argument that God exists (or existed). This remark counts as philosophy.

But if you want to be good at philosophy, you must also consider challenges to and criticisms of your arguments. Such challenges are known as counterarguments. Suppose, for example, someone challenges your argument with “Well, if God can be self-caused, then why can’t the universe?” You are now being called upon to defend your assumption that the universe could not be self-caused. Good philosophizing requires the ability to reason correctly, to defend assumptions, and to anticipate and rebut rebuttals.

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The Socratic Method

Philosophers have spent much time over the centuries trying to arrive at a proper understanding of several important concepts: truth, beauty, knowledge, justice, and others you will be reading about shortly. One of the most famous of all philosophers, the Greek philosopher Socrates [SOK-ruh-teez] (c. 470–399 B.C.E.), championed a method for doing this, which is now called the Socratic method. To see how this works, imagine that you and Socrates are discussing knowledge:

You: You’re asking me what knowledge is? Well, when you believe something very strongly, that’s knowledge.

Socrates: But that would mean that kids who believe in fairies actually know there are fairies, if they believe this strongly.

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Y: That’s a good point. To know something, then, isn’t just to believe it very strongly. The belief also must be true.

S: That still doesn’t sound quite right. That means a mere hunch is knowledge, if a person believes it strongly, and it turns out to be correct.

Y: Well, you’re right again. So, for one to know something, one must believe it strongly, it must be true, AND it must NOT be a mere hunch. In other words, it must be based on good evidence or solid reasoning.…

The exchange might continue until you offer an analysis of knowledge with which Socrates cannot take issue. So, the Socratic method as practiced by Socrates involves proposing a definition, rebutting it by counterexample, modifying it in the light of the counterexample, rebutting

the modification, and so forth. Needless to say, the method can be practiced by one person within his or her own mind. Clearly, the method can help advance understanding of concepts, but it can also be used to improve arguments or positions.

If you are reading this book as part of a class in philosophy, you may see your instructor utilizing the Socratic method with the class.

Thought Experiments

When we asked you to try to make yourself think, through an effort of willing, that it is good to hurt kittens, we were asking you to conduct a thought experiment. Thought experiments are not uncommon in science; in philosophy, they are among the most common methods used to try to establish something. You will encounter thought experiments in this book, and although some of them may seem far-fetched, you shouldn’t discount them for that reason. For example, to establish whether time travel is possible, a philosopher might ask us to imagine someone stepping into a time machine, going back in time to before she was born and, while there, accidentally killing her parents. The thought experiment seems to show that, on one hand, the person existed at the time she entered the time machine; but, on the other hand, because her parents never gave birth to her,

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she could not have existed at that or any other time. The thought experiment thus shows, or seems to show, that time travel leads to contradictions and therefore is impossible.

Reductio ad Absurdum

Philosophers will often attempt to establish a thesis by using the reductio ad absurdum—demonstrating that the contradictory of the thesis is or leads to (i.e., “reduces to”) an absurdity. The thought experiment about time travel is an example of this method as well as an illustration of a thought experiment.

The most famous reductio ad absurdum in the history of philosophy is St. Anselm’s ontological proof that God exists. As we shall see in detail in Chapter 13, St. Anselm (c. 1033–1109) began his famous proof by assuming—merely for the sake of argument—that God, a being “greater than which cannot be conceived,” does not exist. This assumption, Anselm argued, leads to the absurd result that a being greater than which cannot be conceived is not a being greater than which cannot be conceived. In other words, the idea that God does not exist “reduces” to an absurdity; therefore, God exists. Likewise, in the foregoing dialog between you and Socrates, Socrates argued that the assumption that knowledge is identical with strong belief leads to an absurd result; which means that knowledge is not identical with strong belief.

Fallacies

A fallacy is a mistake in reasoning. Some mistakes are so common they have earned names, many in Latin. You won’t often find philosophers making these mistakes, but you will often find them referring to the mistakes, so you should at least be familiar with the more common specimens.

• Switching the burden of proof: Logically, you can’t prove your position by asking an opponent to disprove it. You don’t prove God exists by challenging a listener to prove God doesn’t exist.

• Begging the question: These days, you frequently hear people assert that something “begs the question.” Generally, when people say this they mean the thing invites some question. However, this is not what “begging the question” means to logicians or philosophers. To them, you beg the question when you assume the very thing you are trying to prove, which means your “proof” doesn’t go anywhere. For example, if you want to give a reason for thinking that God exists, and your reason is that “It says so in the Bible, and the Bible is the word of God,” you are assuming that God exists, when that is what you were supposed to prove. It’s like trying to prove that someone committed a crime because “he was the one who did it.”

• Argumentum ad hominem (argument against the person): This fallacy amounts to transferring the qualities of a spokesperson to his or her insights, arguments, beliefs, or positions. For example, thinking that a person’s position is frightening because the person himself is frightening would be an obvious mistake in reasoning, an argumentum ad hominem.

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It is especially important to note that when someone—Susan, let us say—has changed her mind about something, it doesn’t mean that what she now thinks is incorrect. That Susan has contradicted herself doesn’t mean that what she has just said is contradictory. If a critic of a war supported the war at an earlier time, that fact doesn’t mean her criticism is defective. The earlier support and the present criticism are logically unrelated. That someone has changed positions is a fact about the person, not his or her position. Confusing these two things is perhaps the most common mistake in reasoning on this planet.

From time to time, you hear someone ask an opponent if he or she really believes what he or she has said. That question is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of what the person has said. In his book Republic, Plato portrayed Socrates as conversing with the Athenian general Thrasymachus. Socrates asks Thrasymachus whether he really believes his own argument. Thrasymachus responds by saying,

What difference does it make to you whether I believe it or not? Why don’t you test the argument?2

Thrasymachus’s response is 100% correct, in response to a question like Socrates’s.

• Straw man: This fallacy occurs when you think you have refuted a view by distorting, misrepresenting, or exaggerating it. When the Irish philosopher George Berkeley maintained that physical objects really exist only in the mind, the English writer Samuel Johnson “refuted” Berkeley by kicking a rock and proclaiming, “I refute him thus!” But Samuel Johnson misrepresented Berkeley, for Berkeley never maintained that rocks aren’t solid; Berkeley’s position was that solid things like rocks (and legs and boots) exist only in the mind.

Suppose we argue that there is no such thing as free will, because our decisions are predetermined by our heredity and environment. If an opponent then points out that people obviously can choose what they do, the opponent has brought in a straw man. Our position wasn’t that people don’t make choices but that choices were predetermined by heredity and environment. What we said was X; our opponent acts as if we had said Y.

• False dilemma (either–or fallacy): This is the fallacy of offering two choices when in fact more options exist. Suppose someone says, “Either God exists, or there is no explanation for the universe.” This is a false dilemma because it ignores a third possibility, namely, that there is an explanation of the universe that does not involve God.

• Appeal to emotion: This is trying to establish a point by arousing pity, anger, fear, and so on. Suppose we try to “prove” that God exists with the “argument” that “if you don’t believe in him, you will burn in hell.” We haven’t really given an argument; we are just trying to scare the listener into agreeing with us.

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Philosophy begins in amazement and curiosity. ©Ingram Publishing/SuperStock

• Red herring: When someone brings an irrelevancy into a conversation, it is called a red herring. As you can see, many of the fallacies just discussed qualify as red herrings.

If you are reading this book as part of a course, there could be lots of discussion in class, and the discussion will involve disagreements. In addition, people will defend their positions with arguments. Perhaps you will find examples of these fallacies among the arguments you hear. You may even find an example or two in the arguments you read in this book.

DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY

Most philosophical questions tend to fall into one of these five areas:

• Questions related to being, existence, or reality. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with these questions. Basic questions of metaphysics include, What is being? What is real? What are the fundamental features and properties of reality? Metaphysics has little to do with astrology, Tarot cards, the occult, or similar things.

• Questions related to knowledge. Epistemology, the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with these questions. What is the nature of knowledge, and what are its criteria, sources, and limits? These are basic questions of epistemology, and thus it includes such questions as: What is truth? and Is it possible to know anything with absolute certainty?

• Questions related to values. Included under this heading are primarily (1) moral philosophy (ethics), the philosophical study of moral judgments; (2) social philosophy, the philosophical study of society and its institutions; (3) political philosophy, which

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focuses on the state and seeks to determine its justification and ethically proper organization; and (4) aesthetics, the philosophical study of art and of value judgments about art.

• Questions pertaining to the theory of correct inference, otherwise known as logic, which seeks to investigate and establish the criteria of valid reasoning and demonstration.

• Feminist philosophy, which seeks to explore the questions raised earlier from a feminist perspective.

Part One of this book is devoted to metaphysics and epistemology, which are closely related. Part Two is concerned with questions of values, especially moral and political values. We talked a bit about logic earlier in this chapter.

Although philosophy has four main branches, they do not each contain an equal number of theories, concepts, or words. Your library probably has more holdings under political philosophy than under the other areas and the fewest under epistemology or aesthetics.

There are other ways of dividing philosophy. Many universities offer philosophy courses that examine the fundamental assumptions and methods of other disciplines and areas of intellectual inquiry, such as science (philosophy of a science), language (philosophy of language), and religion (philosophy of religion). Philosophy of science and philosophy of language are covered in Part One because most of the issues in these two areas are either metaphysical or epistemological issues. Part Three is devoted entirely to the philosophy of religion, with emphasis on the question of whether God’s existence can be proved.

The fourth part of this book is called “More Voices,” and in it we consider feminist philosophy, as well as influences and traditions beyond mainstream Western philosophy. Also in this part of the book is a chapter on four important philosophical controversies: the problem of free will, what is consciousness, the problem of the gift, and what is art (and related issues in aesthetics).

THE BENEFITS OF PHILOSOPHY

What can you do with a background in philosophy? As our friend Troy Jollimore said, the list of things you can’t do with a background in philosophy is shorter than the list of things you can do. Life favors people who have the skills philosophy students tend to have in abundance. Do an online search for something like Undergraduate Majors of Applicants to ABA-Approved Law Schools and you will find philosophy majors scoring at or near the top of the list of high scores on the LSAT. The LSAT is the law school aptitude test. The ABA is the American Bar Association. You may have no intention of becoming a lawyer, but you know that, to be a lawyer, you must first be admitted to a law school, which requires no little mental ability. You will get similar results if you check out scores by major on the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), the

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Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), or the Graduate Management Aptitude Test (GMAT). You will find that philosophy majors do better on these aptitude tests than other majors in the humanities, business majors, political science majors, or just about any other major you can think of. This suggests that philosophy students have exceptional aptitude for some of the most useful of all skills, including analytical thinking, critical thinking, careful reasoning, problem solving, and communication. Now, one of the things you learn when you study philosophy is that cause and effect is difficult to establish, and it is an open question whether studying philosophy makes students better

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thinkers or whether better thinkers are attracted to philosophy in the first place. But philosophical training does emphasize the aforementioned skills. Finding answers to philosophical questions involves being good at exposition and logic, making nuanced distinctions, recognizing subtle similarities and differences, and detecting unstated assumptions.

More than this, those who have learned their philosophical lessons well may not be as prone as others to superficiality and dogmatism. Philosophy requires objectivity, reasonableness, and an open mind. These general attributes, along with the critical thinking skills that come with the practice of philosophizing, can stand one in good stead when faced with the problems life generously provides.

CHECKLIST

To help you review, a checklist of the key philosophers of this chapter can be found online at www.mhhe.com/moore10e.

KEY TERMS AND CONCEPTS

aesthetics

appeal to emotion

argument argumentum ad hominem

begging the question counterargument

epistemology

fallacy

false dilemma

logic

metaphysics

moral philosophy (ethics)

philosophy

political philosophy red herring reductio ad absurdum

social philosophy

Socratic method

straw man

switching the burden of proof

thought experiment

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND REVIEW

1. Why do you want to study philosophy?

2. Now that you’ve read this chapter, is philosophy what you expected it to be?

3. Why is it that the most advanced degree in so many fields is the doctor of philosophy?

4. Which of the questions raised in this chapter is most interesting to you? What do you think the answer is?

5. Can two people both be correct if one says, “Recreational hunting is immoral,” and the other says, “Recreational hunting is not immoral”? Explain.

6. If, by the time you become an adult, every molecule in your body has been replaced with a different one, are you-the-adult the same person as you-the-child?

7. Are all philosophical questions unanswerable? How about the question you mentioned in question 4?

8. Does it matter if God exists? Take a position, and defend it with an argument.

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9. Does what is true depend on what your society believes is true? Was the world flat when people believed it was flat?

10. “2 + 2 = 4.” Was this true before there were people (or other beings) around to think it? Explain.

LINKS

http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/guidelines/writing.html A guide to writing philosophy papers. We strongly encourage you to read it before you write your first paper.

http://www.ditext.com/encyc/frame.html This resource enables you to compare topics listed in major Internet encyclopedias of philosophy.

http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html An excellent encyclopedia of philosophy. You can look up most philosophical topics here.

http://www.askphilosophers.org Ask a question, get an answer, maybe.

SUGGESTED FURTHER READINGS

Go online to www.mhhe.com/moore10e for a list of suggested further readings.

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1 When you see a word or phrase in bold print in this book, it is defined in the index/glossary at the back of the book. 2 Plato, Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6, translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.

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http://www.mhhe.com/moore10e
http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/guidelines/writing.html
http://www.ditext.com/encyc/frame.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html
http://www.askphilosophers.org
http://www.mhhe.com/moore10e
Part One

Metaphysics and Epistemology: Existence and Knowledge

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Y

2 The Pre-Socratics

You cannot know what is not, nor can you express it. What can be thought of and what can be—they are the same. —Parmenides

It is wise to agree that all things are one. —Heraclitus

ou don’t generally find metaphysics and epistemology very far apart. Metaphysics, as you now know from reading Chapter 1, is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and fundamental properties of being or ultimate reality (we will use these concepts interchangeably). Epistemology is the branch that explores the sources, nature, limits, and criteria of knowledge. These days, when a philosopher makes a metaphysical assertion, he or she will generally consider whether it is the kind of assertion that could possibly be known; that’s why metaphysics and epistemology go together. However, the first philosophers were mainly metaphysicians, so we shall begin by discussing metaphysics. When we look at Plato, whose vast philosophy covered all subjects, we shall take up epistemology.

In its popular usage, the word metaphysics has strange and forbidding associations. “Metaphysical bookstores,” for example, specialize in all sorts of occult subjects, from channeling, harmonic convergence, and pyramid power to past-life hypnotic regression, psychic surgery, and spirit photography. However, the true history of metaphysics is quite different. Given the way in which the term was originally coined, you may find its popular association with the occult somewhat amusing. Here is the true story.

Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) produced a series of works on a wide variety of subjects from biology to poetry. One set of his writings is known as the Physics, from the Greek word physika, which means “the things of nature.” Another set, to which Aristotle never gave an official title but to which he referred occasionally as “first philosophy” or “wisdom,” was called simply “the books after the books on nature” (ta meta ta physika biblia) by later writers and particularly by Andronicus of Rhodes, who was the cataloger of

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Aristotle’s works in the first century B.C.E. The word metaphysics, then, translates loosely as “after the Physics.”

The Nature of Being

When a philosopher asks, What is the nature of being (ultimate reality)? he or she may have in mind any number of things, including one or more of the following:

Is being a property of things, or is it some kind of thing itself? Or is there some third alternative?

Is being basically one, or are there many beings?

Is being fixed and changeless, or is it constantly changing? What is the relationship between being and becoming?

Does everything have the same kind of being?

What are the fundamental categories into which all existing things may be divided?

Is there a fundamental substance out of which all else is composed? If so, does it have any properties? Must it have properties?

What is the world like in itself, independent of our perception of it?

What manner of existence do particular things have, as distinct from properties, relations, and classes? What manner of existence do events have? What manner do numbers, minds, matter,

space, and time have? What manner do facts have?

That a particular thing has a certain characteristic—is that a fact about the thing? Or is it a fact about the characteristic?

Several narrower questions may also properly be regarded as questions of metaphysics, such as: Does God exist? Is what happens determined? Is there life after death? Must events occur

in space and time?

Some of these questions are none too clear, but they provide signposts for the directions a person might take in coming to answer the question, What is the nature of being? or in

studying metaphysics. Because the possibilities are so numerous, we will have to make some choices about what topics to cover in the pages that follow. We cannot go on forever.

The subjects Aristotle discussed in these works are more abstract and more difficult to understand than those he examined in the Physics. Hence, later authorities determined that their proper place was indeed “after the Physics,” and thus Metaphysics has stuck as the official title of Aristotle’s originally untitled work and, by extension, as the general name for the study of the topics treated there—and related subjects. Aristotle’s works are the source of the term metaphysics, but Aristotle was not the first metaphysician. As we’ll show in this chapter, philosophers before Aristotle had also discussed some of these things.

The fundamental question treated in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and thus the fundamental metaphysical question, can be put this way: What is the nature of being? A number of different subjects might qualify as “related” to this question, and in contemporary philosophical usage metaphysics is a rather broad and inclusive field. However, for most philosophers it does not include such subjects as astral projection, psychic surgery, or UFOs. Instead, it includes such questions as those in the box “The Nature of Being.”

What is the nature of being? One of the authors used to ask his introductory classes to answer that question. The most common response, along with “Huh?” “What?” “Are you serious?” and “How do you drop this class?” was “What do you mean, ‘What is the nature of being?’” People are troubled by what the question means and are uncertain what sort of thing is expected for an answer. This is the way, incidentally, with a lot of philosophical questions—it is difficult to know exactly what is being asked or what an answer might look like.

In this chapter, we explore several different approaches that have been taken to this question.

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The first philosophers, or first Western philosophers at any rate, lived in Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor, during the sixth century B.C.E. They are known collectively as the pre-Socratic philosophers, a loose chronological term applied to the Greek philosophers who lived before Socrates (c. 470–399 B.C.E.). Most left little or nothing of their own writings, so scholars have had to reconstruct their views from what contemporaneous and later writers said about them.

Experience indicates that it is sometimes difficult to relate to people who lived so long ago. However, the thinking of these early philosophers has had a profound effect on our world today. During this period in Western history—ancient Greece before Socrates—a decisive change in perspective came about that ultimately made possible a deep understanding of the natural world. It was not inevitable that this change would occur, and there are societies that exist today whose members, for lack of this perspective, do

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not so much as understand why their seasons change. We are not arguing for the virtues of advanced technological civilization over primitive life in a state of nature, for advanced civilization is in some ways a mixed blessing. But advanced civilization is a fact, and that it is a fact is a direct consequence of two developments in thought. One of these, which we will not discuss, is the discovery by the Greeks of mathematics. The other, which we are about to discuss, is the invention by the Greeks of philosophy, specifically metaphysics.

THE MILESIANS

Tradition accords to Thales [Thay-leez] (c. 625–547 B.C.E.), a citizen of the wealthy Ionian Greek seaport town of Miletus, the honor of being the first Western philosopher. And philosophy began when it occurred to Thales to consider whether there might be some fundamental kind of stuff out of which everything else is made. Today we are so accustomed to thinking of the complex world we experience as made up of a few basic substances (hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and the other elements) that we are surprised there ever was a time when people did not think this. Thales deserves credit for helping to introduce a new and important idea into Western thought.

Thales also deserves credit for helping introduce a nonmythological way of looking at the world. The Greeks thought their gods were in charge of natural forces; Zeus, for example, the supreme god, was thought to sometimes alter the weather. Our own belief that nature runs itself according to fixed processes that govern underlying substances began to take shape about this time, and Thales’ philosophizing contributed to this important change in outlook.

What is the basic substance, according to Thales? His answer was that all is water, and this turns out to be wrong. But it was not an especially silly answer for him to have come up with. Imagine Thales looking about at the complicated world of nature and reasoning: “Well, if there is some underlying, more fundamental level than that of appearances, and some kind of substance exists at that level out of which everything else is made, then this basic substance would have to be something very flexible, something that could appear in many forms.” And of the candidates Thales saw around him, the most flexible would have been water—something that can appear in three very different

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states. So we can imagine Thales thinking that, if water can appear in these three very different forms that we know about, it may be that water can also appear in many other forms that we do not understand. For example, when a piece of wood burns, it goes up in smoke, which looks like a form of steam. Perhaps, Thales might have speculated, the original piece of wood was actually water in one of its more exotic forms.

According to legend, Thales predicted a bumper crop of olives and became wealthy. ©Design Pics/Ken Welsh

We are guessing about Thales’ reasoning, of course. And in any case Thales did come to the wrong conclusion with the water idea. But it was not Thales’ conclusion that was important—it was what Thales was up to. Thales attempted to explain the complex world that we see in terms of a simpler underlying reality. This attempt marks the beginning of metaphysics and, for that matter, of science. Science is largely just an effort to finish off what Thales started.

Two other Milesians at about this time advanced alternatives to Thales’ theory that the basic stuff is water. One of these was Anaximander [an-nex-im-AN-der] (610–c. 547 B.C.E.), a pupil of Thales, who maintained that the basic substance out of which everything comes must be even more elementary than water and every other substance of which we have knowledge. The basic substance, he thought, must be ageless, boundless, and indeterminate. From the basic stuff, a nucleus of fire and dark mist formed; the mist solidified in its center, producing the world. The world is surrounded by fire, which we see as the stars and other heavenly bodies, through holes in the mist. The seasons change as powers of heat and cold and wetness and dryness alternate. Anaximander, as you can see, proposed a theory of the universe that explained things in terms of natural powers and processes.

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The third great Milesian philosopher was Anaximenes [an-nex-IM-in-eez] (fl. c. 545 B.C.E.), who pronounced the basic substance to be air and said that air becomes different things through processes of condensation and rarefaction. When it is rarefied, air becomes fire; when it is condensed it becomes first wind, then (through additional condensation) clouds, water, earth, and, finally, stone. He said that the earth is flat and floats on air. It isn’t hard to imagine why Anaximenes thought that air is the basic substance; after all, it is that which enables life to exist. Anaximenes attempted to explain natural occurrences with his theory, and his attempt to identify the basic principles of transformation of the underlying substance of the world continues to this day.

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PYTHAGORAS

Quite a different alternative was proposed by Pythagoras [puh-THAG-uh-rus] (c. 580–c. 500 B.C.E.) and his followers, who lived in the Greek city of Crotona in southern Italy. The Pythagoreans kept their written doctrines pretty secret, and controversy remains over the exact content of these doctrines. Pythagoras is said to have maintained that things are numbers, and we can try to understand what this might mean. Two points make a line, three points define a surface, solids are made of surfaces, and bodies are made out of solids. Aristotle, a primary source of information about the early philosophers, reported in his Metaphysics that the Pythagoreans “construct natural bodies, things that have weight or lightness, out of numbers, things that don’t have weight or lightness.” However, Theano, the wife of Pythagoras, had this to say:

Many of the Greeks believe Pythagoras said all things are generated from number. The very assertion poses a difficulty: How can things which do not exist even be conceived to generate? But he did not say that all things come to be from number; rather, in accordance with number—on the grounds that order in the primary sense is in number and it is by participation in order that a first and a second and the rest sequentially are assigned to things which are counted.

In other words, things are things—one thing ends and another thing begins—because they can be enumerated. If one thing can be distinguished from another thing, it is because things were countable. Also, in Theano’s account, it would not matter whether a thing were a physical object or an idea. If we can delineate it from another of its type—if it can be enumerated—it is a thing; and if it is a thing, it can be enumerated.

So, according to Theano, Pythagoras meant there is an intimacy between things and numbers. Whatever the thing, whether it is physical or not, it participates in the universe of order and harmony: it can be sequenced, it can be counted, it can be ordered. And in the Pythagorean philosophy, the idea of orderliness and harmony applies to all things.

The Pythagorean combination of mathematics and philosophy helped promote an important concept in metaphysics, one we will encounter frequently. This is the idea that the fundamental reality is eternal, unchanging, and accessible only to reason. Sometimes this notion about fundamental reality is said to have come from Plato, but it is fair to say it originated with the Pythagoreans.

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PROFILE: Pythagoras (c. 580–c. 500 B.C.E.)

Pythagoras was born on the Greek island of Samos. You may safely disregard the reports that he descended from the god Apollo; he was the son of a prominent citizen named Mnesarchus.

Not much is known for certain about the life of Pythagoras, although it is known that eventually he traveled to southern Italy, where he founded a mystical-scientific school in the Greek-

speaking city of Crotona. The Pythagoreans believed in the transmigration of the soul, shared their property, and followed a strict set of moral maxims that, among other things, forbade

eating meat.

Unfortunately, the Pythagorean community denied membership to a rich and powerful citizen of Crotona named Cylon. After Pythagoras retired to Metapontium to die, Cylon had his

fellow Crotonians attack the Pythagoreans and burn their buildings to the ground. Worse still, from the Pythagoreans’ point of view, he had all the Pythagoreans killed except two.

The Pythagorean school was eventually restarted at Rhegium, where it developed mathematical theorems, a theory of the structure of sound, and a geometrical way of understanding

astronomy and physics. To what degree these ideas actually stem from Pythagoras is a matter of conjecture.

The Pythagorean theorem: a2 + b2 = c2.

©Hemera Technologies/Getty Images

Despite having written nothing, Pythagoras for many centuries was among the most famous of philosophers. Today, outside philosophy, he is remembered mainly for the Pythagorean

theorem, which, in fact, the Babylonians had discovered much earlier.

HERACLITUS AND PARMENIDES

Another important pre-Socratic philosopher was Heraclitus [hayr-uh-KLITE-us] (c. 540–c. 480 B.C.E.), a Greek nobleman from Ephesus, who proposed yet another candidate as the basic element. According to Heraclitus, all is fire. In fixing fire as the basic element, Heraclitus was not just listing an alternative to Thales’ water and Anaximenes’ air. Heraclitus wished to call attention to what he thought was the essential feature of reality; namely, that it is ceaselessly changing. There is no reality, he maintained, save the reality of change: permanence is an illusion. Thus, fire, whose nature it is to ceaselessly change, is the root substance of the universe.

Heraclitus did not believe that the process of change is random or haphazard. Instead, he saw all change as determined by a cosmic order that he called the logos, which is Greek for “word.” He taught that each thing contains its opposite, just as, for example, we are simultaneously young and old and coming into and going out of existence. Through the logos there is a harmonious union of opposites, he thought.

Heraclitus is famous for the remark attributed to him, “You cannot step in the same river twice.” The remark raises the important philosophical problem of identity or “sameness over change”: Can today’s river and yesterday’s river be the same, since not

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a single drop of water in yesterday’s river is in today’s river? The question, obviously, applies not just to rivers, but to anything that changes over time: rivers, trees, chickens, and the World Wide Web. It also, significantly, applies to people, and this is the problem of personal identity: you are not quite the same person today that you were yesterday, and over a lifetime it begins to seem that we should just drop the qualifying word quite. The atoms in George Bush Senior are not the same atoms as in George Bush Junior, and

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so we have two different people there—but the atoms in George Bush Senior in 2005 likewise are not the same atoms as in George Bush Senior in 1959. So why do we count this as one person and not as two?

Today tourists flock to Greek beaches, but not necessarily to read philosophy. ©Creative Touch Imaging Ltd./NurPhoto via Getty Images

Change seems to be an important feature of reality—but is it really? A younger contemporary of Heraclitus, Parmenides [par-MEN-uh-deez], considered the question very carefully, and came to a remarkable conclusion. Parmenides’ exact dates are unknown, but he lived during the first quarter of the fifth century B.C.E.

Parmenides was not interested in discovering the fundamental substance that constitutes everything or in determining what the most important feature of reality is. His whole method of inquiry was quite unlike that of his predecessors. In all probability the Milesians, Heraclitus, and the Pythagoreans reached their conclusions by looking around at the world and considering possible candidates for its primary substance or fundamental constituents. Parmenides, by contrast, simply assumed some very basic principles and attempted to deduce from these what he thought must be the true nature of being. For Parmenides it would have been a complete waste of time to look to the world for information about how things really are.

Principles like those Parmenides assumed are said in contemporary jargon to be a priori principles, or principles of reason, which just means that they are known prior to

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experience. It is not that we learn these principles first chronologically but rather that our knowledge of them does not depend on our senses.

On Rabbits and Motion

Parmenides’ most famous disciple, Zeno [ZEE-no] (c. 495–c. 430 B.C.E.), devised a series of ingenious arguments to support Parmenides’ theory that reality is One. Zeno’s basic approach

was to demonstrate that motion is impossible. Here are two of his anti-motion arguments:

1. For something, let’s say a rabbit, to move from its own hole to another hole, it must first reach the midway point between the two holes. But to reach that point, it must first reach the

quarter point. Unfortunately, to reach the quarter point, it must reach the point that is one-eighth the distance. But first, it must reach the point one-sixteenth the distance. And so on and so

on. In short, a rabbit, or any other thing, must pass through an infinite number of points to go anywhere. Because some sliver of time is required to reach each of these points, a thing would

require an infinite amount of time to move anywhere, and that effectively rules out the possibi-lity of motion.

2. For a rabbit to move from one hole to a second hole, it must at each moment of its travel occupy a space equal to its length. But when a thing occupies a space equal to its length, it is

at rest. Thus, because the rabbit—or any other thing—must occupy a space equal to its length at each moment, it must be at rest at each moment. Thus, it cannot move.

Well, yes, it seems obvious that things move. Which means either there is a mistake in Zeno’s logic or that rabbits, and just about every other thing, are not really the way they seem to

be. Zeno favored the second alternative. You, perhaps, will favor the first alternative. So what is the mistake in Zeno’s logic?

For example, consider the principle “You can’t make something out of nothing.” If you wished to defend this principle, would you proceed by conducting an experiment in which you tried to make something out of nothing? In fact, you would not. You would base your defense on our inability to conceive of ever making something out of nothing.

Parmenides based his philosophy on principles like that. One of these principles was that, if something changes, it becomes something different. Thus, he reasoned, if being itself were to change, then it would become something different. But what is different from being is nonbeing, and nonbeing just plain isn’t. Thus, he concluded, being does not change.

What is more, being is unitary—it is a single thing. If there were anything else, it would not be being; hence, it would not be. (The principle assumed in this argument is similar to “a second thing is different from a first thing.”)

Further, being is an undifferentiated whole: it does not have any parts. Parts are different from the whole, and if something is different from being, it would not be being. Hence, it would not be.

Further, being is eternal: it cannot come into existence because, first, something cannot come from nothing (remember?) and, second, even if it could, there would be no explanation as to why it came from nothing at one time and not at another. And because change is impossible, as already demonstrated, being cannot go out of existence.

By similar arguments Parmenides attempted to show that motion, generation, and degrees of being are all equally impossible. For examples of arguments demonstrating the impossibility of motion, see the box “On Rabbits and Motion.”

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Heraclitus envisioned being as ceaselessly changing, whereas Parmenides argued that being is absolutely unchanging. Being is One, Parmenides maintained: it is permanent, unchanging, indivisible, and undifferentiated. Appearances to the contrary are just gross illusion.

EMPEDOCLES AND ANAXAGORAS

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The philosophies of Parmenides (being is unchanging) and Heraclitus (being is ceaselessly changing) seem to be irreconcilably opposed. The next major Greek philosopher, Empedocles [em-PED-uh-kleez] (c. 490–430 B.C.E.), thought that true reality is permanent and unchangeable, yet he also thought it absurd to dismiss the change we experience as mere illusion. Empedocles quite diplomatically sided in part with Parmenides and in part with Heraclitus. He was possibly the first philosopher to attempt to reconcile and combine the apparently conflicting metaphysics of those who came earlier. Additionally, Empedocles’ attempt at reconciliation resulted in an understanding of reality that in many ways is very much like our own.

According to Empedocles, the objects of experience do change, but these objects are composed of basic particles of matter that do not change. These basic material particles themselves, Empedocles held, are of four kinds: earth, air, fire, and water. These basic elements mingle in different combinations to form the objects of experience as well as the apparent changes among these objects.

The idea that the objects of experience, and the apparent changes in their qualities, quantities, and relationships, are in reality changes in the positions of basic particles is very familiar to us and is a central idea of modern physics. Empedocles was one of the first to have this idea.

Empedocles also recognized that an account of reality must explain not merely how changes in the objects of experience occur but why they occur. That is, he attempted to provide an explanation of the forces that cause change. Specifically, he taught that the basic elements enter new combinations under two forces—love and strife—which are essentially forces of attraction and decomposition.

This portrayal of the universe as constituted by basic material particles moving under the action of impersonal forces seems very up to date and “scientific” to us today, and, yes, Empedocles was a competent scientist. He understood the mechanism of solar eclipses, for example, and determined experimentally that air and water are separate substances. He understood so much, in fact, that he proclaimed himself a god. Empedocles was not displeased when others said that he could foresee the future, control the winds, and perform other miracles.

A contemporary of Empedocles was Anaxagoras [an-ak-SAG-uh-rus] (c. 500–c. 428 B.C.E.). Anaxagoras was not as convinced of his own importance as Empedocles was of his, but Anaxagoras was just as important historically. For one thing, it was Anaxagoras who introduced philosophy to Athens, where the discipline truly flourished. For another, he introduced into metaphysics an important distinction, that between matter and mind.

Anaxagoras accepted the principle that all changes in the objects of experience are in reality changes in the arrangements of underlying particles. But unlike Empedocles, he

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believed that everything is infinitely divisible. He also held that each different kind of substance has its own corresponding kind of particle and that each substance contains particles of every other kind. What distinguishes one substance from another is a preponderance of one kind of particle. Thus, fire, for example, contains more “fire particles” than, say, water, which presumably contains very few.

Whereas Empedocles believed that motion is caused by the action of two forces, Anaxagoras postulated that the source of all motion is something called nous. The Greek word nous is sometimes translated as “reason,” sometimes as “mind,” and what Anaxagoras meant by nous is apparently pretty much an equation between mind and reason. Mind, according to Anaxagoras, is separate and distinct from matter in that it alone is unmixed. It is everywhere and animates all things but contains nothing material within it. It is “the finest of all things, and the purest, and it has all knowledge about everything, as well as the greatest power.”

Before mind acted on matter, Anaxagoras believed, the universe was an infinite, undifferentiated mass. The formation of the world as we know it was the result of a rotary motion produced in this mass by mind. In this process gradually the sun and stars and moon and air were separated off, and then gradually, too, the particles that we recognize in the other objects of experience were configured.

Mythology

Western philosophy was born against a backdrop of Greek mythology. Thales spoke of all things being full of gods. Xenophanes objected to anthropomorphizing gods. Heraclitus disliked

Homer and Hesiod for using myths that in his opinion led to misunderstandings about the true nature of things. Conversely, Plato made frequent and fruitful use of myths. The allegory of the

cave in the Republic (see Chapter 3) provides a key for understanding both his metaphysics and his epistemology. In the Symposium, heavenly and earthly love are different, just like the two

Aphrodites. Plato’s own creation theory in the Timaeus is couched in mythological terms.

In the Principles of a New Science Concerning the Common Nature of All Nations (1725), Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico placed myths at the early stages of civilization in what he

called the “age of the gods.” A more scientific approach to the interpretation of myths began in the middle of the nineteenth century and continues to the present day. Western thinking is

constantly being renewed by the discovery of new and hidden meanings in the Greek myths. An important modern example is the founding of psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud, which to no

small degree is based on his unique interpretation of the Oedipus myth.

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©Don Paulson Photography/Purestock/Alamy

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According to Anaxagoras, mind did not create matter but only acted on it. Notice also that Anaxagoras’s mind did not act on matter for some purpose or objective. These are strong differences between Anaxagoras’s mind and the Judaeo-Christian God, although in other respects the concepts are not dissimilar. And, although Anaxagoras was the first to find a place for mind in the universe, Aristotle and Plato both criticized him for conceiving of mind as merely a mechanical cause of the existing order.

Finally, Anaxagoras’s particles are not physical particles like modern-day atoms. If every particle is made of smaller particles, as Anaxagoras held, then there are no smallest particles, except as abstractions, as infinitesimals, as idealized “limits” on an infinite process. For the idea that the world is composed of actual physical atoms, we must turn to the last of the pre-Socratic philosophers, the Atomists.

THE ATOMISTS

The Atomists were Leucippus [loo-SIP-us or loo-KIP-us] and Democritus [dee-MOK-rut-us]. Not much is known of Leucippus, although he is said to have lived in Miletus during the mid-fifth century B.C.E., and the basic idea of Atomism is attributed to him. Democritus (c. 460–c. 370 B.C.E.) is better known today, and the detailed working out of Atomism is considered to be the result of his efforts. He was also a brilliant mathematician.

The Atomists held that all things are composed of physical atoms—tiny, imperceptible, indestructible, indivisible, eternal, and uncreated particles composed of exactly the same matter but different in size, shape, and (though there is controversy about this) weight. Atoms, they believed, are infinitely numerous and eternally in motion. By combining with one another in various ways, atoms compose the objects of experience. They are continuously in motion, and thus the various combinations come and go. We, of course, experience their combining and disassembling and recombining as the generation, decay, erosion, or burning of everyday objects.

Some qualities of everyday objects, such as their color and taste, are not really “in” the objects, said the Atomists, although other qualities, such as their weight and hardness, are. This is a distinction that to this day remains embodied in common sense; yet, as we will discuss in Chapter 6, it is totally beset with philosophical difficulties.

Anyhow, the Atomists, unlike Anaxagoras, believed there is a smallest physical unit beyond which further division is impossible. And also unlike Anaxagoras, they saw no reason to suppose the original motion of atoms resulted from the activity of mind; indeed, they did not believe it necessary in the first place to explain the origin of that motion. As far as we can tell, they said in effect that atoms have been around forever, and they have been moving for as long as they have been around. This Atomist depiction of the world is quite modern. It is not such an extravagant exaggeration to say that, until the convertibility of matter and energy was understood in the twentieth century, the common scientific view of the universe was basically a version of atomism. But the Atomist theory did run up against one problem that is worth looking at briefly.

The Greek philosophers generally believed that for motion of any sort to occur, there must be a void, or empty space, in which a moving thing may change position. But

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Parmenides had argued pretty convincingly that a void is not possible. Empty space would be nothingness—that is, nonbeing—and therefore does not exist.

The atomic theory of matter originated in Greek philosophy. National Archives and Records Administration (NWDNS-80-G-396229)

The Atomists’ way of circumventing this problem was essentially to ignore it (although this point, too, is controversial). That things move is apparent to sense perception and is just indisputable, they maintained, and because things move, empty space must be real—otherwise, motion would be impossible.

One final point about the Atomist philosophy must be mentioned. The Atomists are sometimes accused of maintaining that chance collisions of atoms cause them to come together to form this or that set of objects and not some other. But even though the Atomists believed that the motion of the atoms fulfills no purpose, they also believed that atoms operate in strict accordance with physical laws. Future motions would be completely predictable, they said, for anyone with sufficient information about the shapes, sizes, locations, direction, and velocities of the atoms. In this sense, then, the Atomists left nothing to chance; according to them, purely random events, in the sense of just “happening,” do not occur.

The view that future states and events are completely determined by preceding states and events is called determinism. Chapter 17 contains a discussion of the problem of free will. Determinism runs counter to a belief in free will.

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To sum up this chapter, despite the alternative theories the pre-Socratics advanced, an important common thread runs through their speculation, and it is this:

All believed that the world we experience is merely a manifestation of a more fundamental, underlying reality.

That this thought occurred to people represents a turning point in the history of the species and may have been more important than the invention of the wheel. Had it not occurred, any scientific understanding of the natural world would have proved to be quite impossible.

The desire to comprehend the reality that underlies appearances did not, however, lead the various pre-Socratic philosophers in the same direction. It led the Milesians to consider possible basic substances and the Pythagoreans to try to determine the fundamental principle on which all else depends. It led Heraclitus to try to determine the essential feature of reality, Parmenides to consider the true nature of being, and Empedocles to try to understand the basic principles of causation. Finally, it led Anaxagoras to consider the original source of motion and the Atomists to consider the construction of the natural world. Broadly speaking, these various paths of inquiry eventually came to define the scope of scientific inquiry. But that was not until science and metaphysics parted ways about two thousand years later.

CHECKLIST

To help you review, a checklist of the key philosophers of this chapter can be found online at www.mhhe.com/moore10e.

KEY TERMS AND CONCEPTS

a priori principles/principles of reason

Atomism

determinism

epistemology logos

metaphysics

myths nous

pre-Socratic philosophers

problem of identity

problem of personal identity

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND REVIEW

1. Explain the derivation of the word metaphysics.

2. Provide possible interpretations of the question, What is the nature of being?

3. Compare and contrast the metaphysics of the three Milesians. Whose metaphysics seems most plausible to you, and why?

4. The Pythagoreans theorized that all things come to be in accordance with number. What does that mean?

5. Compare and contrast the metaphysics of Heraclitus and Parmenides.

6. Explain and critically evaluate Parmenides’ arguments that being is unitary, undifferentiated, and eternal.

7. Compare and contrast the metaphysics of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists. Whose views are the most plausible, and why?

8. “The behavior of atoms is governed entirely by physical law.” “Humans have free will.” Are these statements incompatible? Explain.

9. Is it true that something cannot come from nothing? How do you know?

10. “What can be thought of and what can be are the same.” Was Parmenides correct in believing this?

SUGGESTED FURTHER READINGS

Go online to www.mhhe.com/moore10e for a list of suggested further readings.

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http://www.mhhe.com/moore10e
http://www.mhhe.com/moore10e
I

3 Socrates, Plato

Thus the soul, since it is immortal and has been born many times, and has seen all things both here and in the other world, has learned everything that is. —Plato, Meno

Love [is] between the mortal and the immortal.… [It is] a grand spirit which brings together the sensible world and the eternal world and merges them into one great whole. —Diotima in Plato’s Symposium, 202e

I [Socrates] affirm that the good is the beautiful. —Plato’s Lysis, 216d

f you have heard of only one philosopher, it is probably one of the big three: Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle. These three were the most important philosophers of ancient Greece and in some respects the most important, period. Plato was the pupil of Socrates, and Aristotle was the pupil of Plato. This chapter covers Socrates and Plato; the following chapter, Aristotle.

SOCRATES

In the fifth century B.C.E., the center of Western civilization was Athens, a city-state and a democracy. This period of time was some three centuries after the first Olympic Games and the start of alphabetic writing, and approximately one century before Alexander the Great demonstrated that it is possible to conquer the world or what passed for it then. Fifty thousand citizens of Athens governed the city and the city’s

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empire. Athenians did not settle disputes by brawling but rather by discussion and debate. Power was not achieved through wealth or physical strength or skill with weapons; it was achieved through words. Rhetoricians, men and women with sublime skill in debate, created plausible arguments for almost any assertion and, for a fee, taught others to do it too.

These rhetoricians, the Western world’s first professors, were the Sophists. They were interested in practical things, and few had patience with metaphysical speculation. They demonstrated their rhetorical abilities by “proving” the seemingly unprovable—that is, by attacking commonly held views. The net effect was an examination and a critique of accepted standards of behavior within Athenian society. In this way, moral philosophy began. We will return to this topic in Chapter 10.

At the same time in the fifth century B.C.E., there also lived a stonemason with a muscular build and a keen mind, Socrates [SOK-ruh-teez] (470–399 B.C.E.). He wrote nothing, but we know quite a bit about him from Plato’s famous dialogues, in which Socrates almost always stars. (Plato’s later dialogues reflect Plato’s own views, even though “Socrates” is doing the speaking in them. But we are able to extract a reasonably detailed picture of Socrates from the earlier dialogues.)

Given the spirit of the times, it is not surprising that Socrates shared some of the philosophical interests and practices of the Sophists. We must imagine him wandering about the city, engaging citizens in discussion and argument. He was a brilliant debater, and he was idolized by many young Athenians.

But Socrates did not merely engage in sophistry—he was not interested in arguing simply for the sake of arguing—he wanted to discover something important, namely, the essential nature of knowledge, justice, beauty, goodness, and, especially, traits of good character such as courage. The method of discovery he followed bears his name, the Socratic method. To this day, more than twenty centuries after his death, many philosophers equate proficiency within their own field with skill in the Socratic (or dialectic) method.

The method goes like this: Suppose you and Socrates wish to find out what knowledge is. You propose, tentatively, that knowledge is strong belief. Socrates then asks if that means that people who have a strong belief in, say, fairies must be said to know there are fairies. Seeing your mistake, you reconsider and offer a revised thesis: knowledge is not belief that is strong but belief that is true.

Socrates then says, “Suppose the true belief, which you say is knowledge, is based on a lucky guess. For instance, suppose I, Socrates, ask you to guess what kind of car I own, and you guess a Volvo. Even if your guess turns out to be right, would you call that knowledge?”

By saying this, Socrates has made you see that knowledge cannot be equated with true belief either. You must therefore attempt a better analysis. Eventually you may find a definition of knowledge that Socrates cannot refute.

So the Socratic/dialectic method is a search for the proper definition of a thing, a definition that will not permit refutation under Socratic questioning. The method does not imply that the questioner knows the essential nature of knowledge. It only demonstrates that the questioner is skilled at detecting misconceptions and at revealing them by asking the right questions. In many cases the process may not actually disclose the

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essence of the thing in question, and if Plato’s dialogues are an indication, Socrates himself did not have at hand many final, satisfactory definitions. Still, the technique will bring those who practice it closer to this final understanding.

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Socrates’s prison—or what is left of it. ©Bettmann/Getty Images

The Delphi Oracle is said to have pronounced Socrates the wisest of people. (An oracle is a shrine where a priest delivers a god’s response to a human question. The most famous oracle of all time was the Delphi Oracle, which was housed in the great temple to Apollo in ancient and Hellenistic Greece.) Socrates thought the pronouncement referred to the fact that he, unlike most people, was aware of his ignorance. Applying the Socratic method, one gets good at seeing misconceptions and learning to recognize one’s own ignorance.

Socrates was not a pest who went around trapping people in argument and making them look idiotic. He was famous not only for his dialectical skill but also for his courage and stamina in battle. He staunchly opposed injustice, even at considerable risk to himself. His trial and subsequent death by drinking hemlock after his conviction (for “corrupting” young men and not believing in the city’s gods) are reported by Plato in the gripping dialogues Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. These dialogues portray Socrates as an individual of impressive character and true grit. Although it would have been easy for him to escape from prison, he did not do so, because, according to Plato, by having chosen to live in Athens he had implicitly promised to obey the laws of the city.

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Richard Robinson summarizes the greatest value of Socrates, as we perceive him through Plato, as lying in Socrates’s clear conception of the demands placed on us by reason:

[Socrates] impresses us, more than any other figure in literature, with the supreme importance of thinking as well as possible and making our actions conform to our thoughts. To this end he preaches the knowledge of one’s own starting-points, the hypothetical entertainment of opinions, the exploration of their consequences and connections, the willingness to follow the argument wherever it leads, the public confession of one’s thoughts, the invitation to others to criticize, the readiness to reconsider, and at the same time firm action in accordance with one’s present beliefs. Plato’s Apology has in fact made Socrates the chief martyr of reason as the gospels have made Jesus the chief martyr of faith.

PLATO

When we pause to consider the great minds of Western history, those rare individuals whose insight elevates the human intellect by a prodigious leap, we think immediately of Socrates’s most famous student, Plato (c. 428–347 B.C.E.), and Plato’s student, Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.). Both Plato and Aristotle were interested in practically every subject, and each spoke intelligently on philosophical topics and problems. Platonic metaphysics formed the model for Christian theology for fifteen centuries. This model was superseded only when translations of Aristotle’s works were rediscovered by European philosophers and theologians in the thirteenth century A.D. After this rediscovery, Aristotle’s metaphysics came to predominate in Christian thinking, although Christianity is still Platonic in many, many ways.

Plato’s Metaphysics: The Theory of Forms

Plato’s metaphysics is known as the Theory of Forms, and it is discussed in several of the two dozen compositions we have referred to as Plato’s dialogues. The most famous dialogue is the Republic, from the so-called middle period of Plato’s writings, during which Plato reached the peak of his genius. The Republic also gives Plato’s best-known account of the Theory of Forms.

According to Plato’s Theory of Forms, what is truly real is not the objects we encounter in sensory experience but, rather, Forms, and these can only be grasped intellectually. Therefore, once you know what Plato’s Forms are, you will understand the Theory of Forms and the essentials of Platonic metaphysics. Unfortunately, it is not safe to assume Plato had exactly the same thing in mind throughout his life when he spoke of the Forms. Nevertheless, Plato’s concept is pretty clear and can be illustrated with an example or two.

The Greeks were excellent geometers, which is not surprising, because they invented the subject as a systematic science. Now, when a Greek geometer demonstrated some property of, say, circularity, he was not demonstrating the property of something that

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could actually be found in the physical world. After all, you do not find circularity in the physical world: what you find are things—various round objects—that approach perfect circularity but are not perfectly circular. Even if you are drawing circles with an excellent compass and are paying close attention to what you are drawing, your “circle” is not perfectly circular. Thus, when a geometer discovered a property of circularity, for example, he was discovering something about an ideal thing. Circularity does not exist in the physical world. Circularity, then, is an example of a Form.

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PROFILE: Aristocles, a.k.a. Plato (c. 428–347 B.C.E.)

Plato was the nickname of an Athenian whose true name was Aristocles. The nickname, which means “broad shoulders,” stuck, and so did this man’s philosophy. Few individuals, if any,

have had more influence on Western thought than Plato.

Plato initially studied with Cratylus, who was a follower of Heraclitus, and then with Socrates. He was also influenced by the Pythagoreans, from whom he may have derived his great

respect for mathematics. Plato thought that the study of mathematics was a necessary introduction to philosophy, and it is said that he expelled from his Academy students who had difficulty

with mathematical concepts.

Portrait of Plato. Eyes were not the artist’s specialty, perhaps.

©Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com

Plato founded his Academy in 387, and it was the first multisubject, multiteacher institution of higher learning in Western civilization. The Academy survived for nine centuries, until the

emperor Justinian closed it to protect Christian truth.

Plato’s dialogues are divided into three groups. According to recent respected scholarship, the earliest include most importantly the Apology, which depicts and philosophically examines

Socrates’s trial and execution; the Meno, which is concerned with whether virtue can be taught; the Gorgias, which concerns the nature of right and wrong; and the first book of the Republic.

The dialogues from the middle period include the remaining books of the Republic, Phaedo, Symposium, Phaedrus, Cratylus, Parmenides, and Theaetetus. In the most famous of these, the

Republic, Plato explains and interrelates his conceptions of justice, the ideal state, and the Theory of Forms. Plato’s later dialogues include most notably the Timaeus, which is Plato’s account

of the creation of the universe; the Sophist, which examines the nature of nonbeing; and the Laws, which is concerned with what laws a good constitution should contain. The Laws is Plato’s

longest dialogue and the only dialogue in which Socrates is not present.

Here is another example. Consider two beautiful objects: a beautiful statue and a beautiful house. These are two very different objects, but they have something in common— they both qualify as beautiful. Beauty is another example of a Form. Notice that beauty, like circularity, is not something you encounter directly in the physical world. What you encounter in the physical world is always some object or other, a house or a statue or whatever, which may or may not be beautiful. But beauty itself is not something you meet up with; rather, you meet up with objects that to varying degrees possess beauty or, as Plato said, “participate” in the Form beauty. Beauty, like circularity, is an ideal thing, not a concrete thing.

You may be tempted to suppose that the Forms are just ideas or concepts in someone’s mind. But this might be a mistake. Before any people were around,

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there were circular things, logs and round stones and so on—that is, things that came close in varying degrees to being perfectly circular. If there were circular things when there were no people around, or people-heads to have people-ideas in, it would seem that circularity is not just an idea in people’s heads. It may be more difficult to suppose that there were beautiful things before there were people to think of things as beautiful, but this difficulty might only be due to assuming that “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.” Whether that assumption truly is justified is actually an unsettled question. (It is a question that belongs to the aesthetics branch of philosophy.)

Sometimes Plato’s Forms are referred to as Ideas, and the Theory of Forms is also said to be the Theory of Ideas. But Idea is misleading because, as you can see, Plato’s Forms are not the sort of ideas that exist in people. We will stick with the word Forms.

Forms have certain important and unusual features. We will begin by asking, How old is circularity? Immediately on hearing the question, you will realize that circularity is not any age. Circular things, sand dollars and bridge abutments and so on, are some age or other. But circularity itself has no age. The same thing is true of beauty, the Form. So we can see that the Forms are ageless, that is, eternal.

They are also unchanging. A beautiful house may change due to alterations or aging, but that couldn’t happen to beauty itself. And you, having learned that the circumference of the circle is equal to π times twice the radius distance, aren’t apt to worry that someday the circle may change and, when it does, the circumference will no longer equal 2πr.

Finally, the Forms are unmoving and indivisible. Indeed, what sense would it make even to suppose that they might move or be physically divided? When you think of these various characteristics of Forms and remember as well that Plato equated the Forms with true reality, you may begin to see why we stated that

Plato’s metaphysics formed the model for Christian theology. You may also be reminded, we hope, of what Parmenides said about true being (i.e., that it is eternal, unmoving, unchanging, and indivisible). Of course, you should also remember that for Parmenides there is only one being, but for Plato there are many Forms.

But why did Plato say that only the Forms are truly real? A thing is beautiful only to the extent it participates in the Form beauty, just as it is circular only if it participates in the Form circularity. Likewise, a thing is large only if it participates in the Form largeness, and the same principle would hold for all of a thing’s properties. Thus, a large, beautiful, round thing—a beautiful, large, round oak table, for instance—couldn’t be beautiful, large, or round if the Forms beauty, largeness, and circularity did not exist. Indeed, if the Forms oak and table did not exist, “it” wouldn’t even be an oak table. Sensible objects—that is, the things we encounter in sensory experience—are what they are only if they sufficiently participate in their corresponding Forms. Sensible objects owe their reality to the Forms, so the ultimate reality belongs to the Forms.