Philosophical answers

A:

Hi, I just wanted to double check something on the Reason and Experience unit. I've been looking into Hume and have come across people giving alternative explainations for a couple of things. Could you just explain what exactly Hume's Fork is and what Hume believes about the 'self'. Many thanks.

Hume’s Fork consists in a dichotomy between uninformative reason and informative experience, i.e. the claim that there are only two possible ways of justifying our beliefs: firstly by empirical means (which is informative) and secondly through a priori reasoning (which is trivial and uninformative, telling us only the implications of what we already assume). Hume denies the possibility of any third option of the kind favoured by rationalists: that is a priori reasoning which is informative and gives us knowledge of the world.

Hume’s belief about the self is to deny the existence of the self on the empirical ground that no self can be observed. He argues that if we observe our inner experience we find mental events of various kinds, but no matter how much we observe we can never observe a self that possesses these mental events. Descartes’ argument is that mental events necessarily require a possessor of those mental events, which is a self or soul, but Hume exposes this alleged necessity for a self as no more than an assumption. Given that he accepts empirical grounds alone for any assertion, the lack of observability of a self  implies that there is no self.

Hume’s Fork is important for the ‘Reason and Experience’ topic at AS, but Hume’s view of the self is not essential to it – it just offers a possible illustration of the differing implications of empiricism and rationalism in a particular area. If you do want to use it for illustrative purposes, I can recommend Introducing Persons by Peter Carruthers (Routledge) for some very clear and interesting discussion of the Descartes vs Hume argument on the self, with helpful examples.

A:

The private language argument is extremely complex and has a very extensive secondary literature. There is ongoing disagreement about how to interpret the argument appropriately so the best you will do is to find a reasonable way of reading it. In basic terms, it is the case that Wittgenstein claims public language is required for words to be meaningful and the meaning of words cannot explained by reference to private mental objects. It is widely agreed that Wittgenstein thinks that reference to private mental objects is unsatisfactory and disagreement how he supports this view.

Re (1) it is clear that Wittgenstein holds that one cannot know ones mental states prior to the acquisition of language. If the private language argument is correct how would such knowledge be possible- that is to say, how would it be possible to find ways of conceiving of such mental states? Re (2) it follows from the private language argument and other aspects of Wittgenstein’s writings that thought depends upon the acquisition of public language. However, a number of contemporary philosophers, such as Jerry Fodor, dispute this claim so it is by no means uncontroversial. For reading you could try Stuart Candlish’s article on private language in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/).The bibliography lists a good number of standard secondary literature items should you wish to investigate further.

A:

Just to make sure we are on the same page, let's say internalism is the thesis that moral judgments are intrinsically motivating (so, to judge that it's good, just, fair etc to do A is to be motivated, pro tanto, to do A - which doesn't mean one actually WILL do A, as there could be other competing motivations too); externalism is the negation of this thesis. (If this isn't roughly the definition you are working with, the rest of this probably won't be helpful.) I see what you mean about utilitarianism and externalism. Mill felt the need to write a special chapter of 'Utilitarianism' to explain how people could be motivated to do their utilitarian moral duty, so surely he's thinking 'It's one thing to prove to people that utilitarianism is the correct criterion of right action. But believing that has got nothing to do with being motivated to do as the utilitarian criterion requires.' So it sounds as if he was an externalist. Well, maybe he was. But it's worth remembering two things. First, in his 'Sanctions' chapter, Mill says utilitarianism can make use of the same psychological resources as any other ethical theory - this doesn't show he wasn't an externalist, but it does imply that he didn't think there was a *special* link between externalism and utilitarianism. And (and this is the second point) that seems right. It seems wrong to me to say some ethical theories are more 'externalist' than others. After all, internalism and externalism are theories about ANY moral judgment, whereas ethical theories are theories about which moral judgments, or which general moral principles, are correct. So whatever my ethical theory tells me it's right to do - whether that's to perform the happiness-maximizing action, or the just action, or whatever it is - internalism says that my judging *that* is pro tanto motivating, while externalism denies that.

I am not sure about the link between emotivism and externalism. Emotivism is not an ethical theory on a par with (say) utilitarianism - it's a meta-ethical theory. Usually, it's claimed as a merit by emotivists that it fits in with internalism about motivation (which I guess is the majority view these days): non-cognitive attitudes motivate (it's said), internalism says moral attitudes motivate, so if moral attitudes are non-cognitive attitudes (as emotivism says) we can make good sense of the truth of internalism.

A:

Functionalists hold that the content of a mental state is determined by its causal role - it is a function from inputs to outputs and other mental states. Teleological functionalism says that the content of a mental state is determined by the causal role that it is **supposed to** play (i.e. that it is its function to play). The best place to look for more is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online) - look at the articles entitled 'Functionalism' and 'Teleological Theories of Mental Content'.

A:

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Hi Tim,

I take it that the part of the unit to which you are referring is this:

Students should consider what is meant by 'religion', whether it is a well defined or integrated phenomena and the relation between 'religion' and other kinds of discourse and activity.

Having taken quick look at topics of Unit 3 on the A2 syllabus, I would imagine that this kind of question is specifically inviting reflection on the social sciences’ approach to religion – and I see that Routledge have a downloadable pdf on this topic on their resources website (linked to the BPA resource bank):

http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/philosophy/resources-a2.asp

In brief, I think students would be expected to discuss here whether the term ‘religion’ denotes one core activity or practice (is there, for example, a single defining characteristic shared by all religions?), or whether instead there are various ‘religions’ that have no one thing in common, even if there are overlapping features. Is there such a thing as ‘religion’, or are there only ‘religions’? And what features distinguish religious practice(s) from other forms of activity, such as scientific and philosophical discourse? Are the claims of religion to be understood as empirical claims, or are they better understood as expressions, or commitments? Does religious belief and activity arise from human beings’ attempts to explain the world around them – is religion thus a cognitive activity, a pseudo-science – or is it rather that religious practice serves a fundamental emotional and social function?

I think this is the ground that students are expected to cover here, and the Routledge materials I mention above give a nice overview of the accounts of religion by social scientists such as Durkheim and Weber. Hope this is useful.

A:

I suspect this refers to Hume’s distinctions among impressions. We gain knowledge of the external world through the five outwardly-directed senses, and also of our own states (emotions etc.) through a kind of inner sense. These are “impressions of sensation”, but there are also “impressions of reflection” such as those of desire or aversion which arise in us when we reflect upon ideas (e.g. of particular kinds of pain or pleasure) which “return upon the soul” after being formed (copied) from original impressions of sensation. All this is a posteriori  knowledge – it does not precede experience and has to be justified by reference to it.

A:

Hello Mary,

Wow, big questions and issues!

(i) Beetle in the box.  The idea - roughly, and trying to put things in a non-controversial way - is that there is (may be?) no way to check exactly what is going on in someone's else's mind.  But, that doesn't really matter.  Indeed, it points to a more positive view, namely that part of what the mind is (or, more extreme, all of what the mind is) is captured in a public fashion.  The strong conclusion would say that there is no internal, non-public thing called the mind.

While thinking about this I came across this, which might be of use:

http://www.philosophyonline.co.uk/pom/pom_behaviourism_wittgenstein.htm

(ii) Tove.  This is concerned with definitions of things, and the applications of concepts, and links to Wittgenstein's thoughts on rule-following. 

LW is arguing against the idea that one can uniquely pick out objects prior to or separate from the use of identifying descriptions.  LW thinks this gets things round the wrong way.  You might think that there are good counter-examples to this, e.g. (famously) ostensive definition.  So, I point at something and say 'this is Simon' or 'this is tove'.  Supposedly I name or highlight the object, and then the definition can follow.  But, LW tried to show, at length, that ostension works only in a certain context.  E.g. a context where you point at me names the person and not the action, or my jumper, or names this person on this day (rather than that day) and so on.

I hope this helps.  there is a lot of philosophy of language going on in the background to all of this.  Here is something I came across when thinking about how to answer this for you.  This is more complicated and detailed than the previous page, but I hope it won't confuse too much:

http://www.humboldt.edu/~essays/paper2.html

I hope this helps,

Best wishes, Simon

A:

Dear Andrew,

I think you should take this back to AQA, as we are not able to give advice on course structuring in relation to AQA's specific requirements. Here are some links and E-mail addresses that may help:

philosophy@aqa.org.uk

http://web.aqa.org.uk/askaqa.php

AJohnson@aqa.org.uk

martinlucas.butler@virgin.net

I hope you can find some clear advice through at least one of these routes.

Regards,

Howard Simmons

A:

Dear Adam,

As indicated on our home page, it is best to direct questions relating to AQA's marking policies to AQA themselves. Perhaps you could E-mail them at philosophy@aqa.org.uk

Regards,

Howard Simmons

A:

Yes, it’s rationalist to hold that there are innate ideas, but, yes, you could be a rationalist and not hold there were innate ideas as such.

Let’s assume that all ideas derived from or grounded in experience are empirical ideas, so those who hold that this is the only source of ideas are empiricists. Further assume that any idea is either an an empirically grounded idea or it is not. A rationalist believes that there are ideas which are not empirically grounded which are a source of knowledge. Many rationalists hold that these ideas are not only entirely independent of experience but are also held prior to experience. It is this latter condition which makes the ideas ‘innate’. To hold that there are such innate ideas is to adopt a rationalist stance towards knowledge. Descartes held a straightforward version of this position.

Leibniz, responding to Locke’s critique of innate ideas, presents a more nuanced view when he says ‘we must not imagine that we can read the eternal laws of reason in the soul as in an open book’; he’s going not for Descartes’s fully formed innate ideas but innate dispositions which will mould ideas (but whose content may be supplied by the senses) that would not otherwise be formed if these dispositions weren’t possessed innately. So you could say that Leibniz is not committed to ideas that are entirely independent of experience and held prior to experience, but that he is still a rationalist because of the role of ‘the eternal laws of reason’ in the operation of the innate dispositions. Leibniz is a rationalist who does not rely on the existence of innate ideas.

A:

Nominalism says there exist such particular things as red balls, red flags and red blood, but no such thing as “the property of redness” which all these particulars share. Nominalists then owe us an account of what we mean when we use a universal term like “red” independently of reference to any particulars (e.g. when we say things like “Blue goes better with green than it does with orange”). Conceptualism says that there are actually existing things that we are referring to and talking about here, but they are mental things – they are the abstract ideas of the different colours which we have in our minds. So conceptualism isn’t really implied by nominalism, in fact strictly it contradicts it (though a lot here turns on what you want to mean by thing!). On the other hand, nominalism seem to lead naturally to conceptualism (we have to save the meaningfulness of our general terms somehow), and since there are famously problems with conceptualism as pointed out by e.g. Berkeley and Hume (is your abstract idea of blue light blue or dark blue?), it leads naturally to being suspicious of nominalism too.

There is a good article about this stuff in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy under the heading of Platonism in Metaphysics, see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/

A:

You might consider OCR's GCSE Religious Studies Specification B (philosophy and applied ethics). 

A:

The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies, part of the Higher Education Academy, has useful resources for students thinking about reading for a philosophy degree on its website.

For students interested in an introduction to the study of the subject, their book, ‘Doing Philosophy: A Practical Guide for Students’ may be useful. Details of the book, including the first chapter, ‘Introduction to the Study of Philosophy’, are available here:

http://prs.heacademy.ac.uk/publications/doing_philosophy.html

For students wondering what value their potential philosophy degree may have in terms of the world of work, their employability guide gives details of the skills a philosophy undergraduate can expect to gain, and how they can be useful to employers in various careers. The guide can be downloaded in its entirety here:

http://prs.heacademy.ac.uk/publications/emp_guides.html

The BPA has a list of successful people who have studied philosophy:

http://www.bpa.ac.uk/resources/careers-and-success-stories/

The Subject Centre has a forthcoming leaflet Why Study Philosophy?. This will be available as a download from their website as well as in hard copy.

A:

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Let me try to reply to the second and third questions first. The categorical imperative should not lead you to think of the consequences at all. Were you to think of the consequences, you would be employing an hypothetical imperative: ‘If you want consequences C, then follow maxim M’. Clearly hypothetical imperatives cannot be universalised because the grounds are ones which some might want but others don’t want or have no interest in. This then provides a negative answer to your third question: if the imperative concerns the consequences of actions, if it makes reference to empirical facts, if it expresses our inclinations, then it is not universalisable. The positive answer is that an imperative is only universalisable if it is dictated by reason alone, where it would be irrational not to obey it. So the categorical imperative can never have the form: ‘Always follow maxim M, if ...’, only the form ‘Always follow maxim M’.

Now, to your first question. Kant thinks there is only one moral categorical imperative, so each formulation of it is, as it were, taking a perspective on the same thing. Think of the categorical imperative as a criterion for choosing amongst maxims: which ones are moral – should direct duty – and those which are merely practical or prudential. The statement of the categorical imperative that concerns you is the one that views it from the perspective of autonomy. It is the recognition that rational beings not only have to obey the categorical imperative, but they are each the author of it. The analogy is with a rationally perfect legislature composed of perfectly rational beings. Such an institution would only produce moral law. Kant recognises that this isn’t coextensive with the legal institution of law because he recognises that some such law can be nonmoral or even immoral – he calls such law ‘heteronomous’, meaning the grounds for the law lie outside of it. The moral law has an intrinsic ground for obeying it. The ‘kingdom of ends’ is the body of rational beings that both obey and author the categorical imperative.

A:

You will find all our teaching resources in the resources section, but we do not have any RS material at present (though there are some philosophy of religion exam answers related to philosophy 'A' level).  It is anticipated that some RS material will be developed in due course. What you have requested is very specific. You might try EDEXCEL's website, if you haven't already done so.

A:

The normative dimensions of belief have to do with the way beliefs are governed by norms or ethical requirements. One such such norm would be the principle that we ought not to believe anything on insufficient evidence. This would obviously be of great relevance when considering the credibility of miracles.

Religious pluralism normally means that more than one religion is true, e.g, both Christianity and Islam (though since these religions are strictly speaking incompatible--one asserts the divinity of Jesus and the other denies it--one might have to settle for their both being PARTIALLY true). I suppose the relevance of this to miracles is that if one was prepared to accept religious pluralism, one would be able to grant some validity to the miracles of several different religions. For example, a Moslem might be able to accept miracles from the Christian tradition.

As for potential incommensurability, I'm not quite sure what the syllabus writers had in mind here. Perhaps you could contact philosophy@aqa.org.uk for help with this.

A:

From the perspective of the examination board all these assumptions would benefit from further elucidation. A response from one of their officers indicated that for the cosmological argument the epistemological assumption is that on the basis of our knowledge of the nature of the universe we can gain knowledge of the nature of its cause. The ontological assumption is that nothingness is somehow the natural state of affairs and that the existence of something needs explaining in causal terms. The semantic assumption is that we can talk meaningfully about something which must by definition be outside the universe given that it was the cause of the universe. This is an assumption about the reach of meaningful language. The epistemological and ontological assumptions seem reasonably easy to arrive at. However, the semantic assumption runs the risk of generating confused ideas about the nature of meaning.

As regards the argument from religious experience the epistemological assumption is that the nature and content of particularly powerful and moving experiences, that is, 'religious experiences' allow us to infer their cause. Furthermore, we can know from the content of an experience that it is indeed ‘religious’. The assumption is potentially problematic because it is directly connected to the fundamental difficulty with the argument from religious experience, namely, whether it is possible to produce a good non-circular version of the argument. The ontological assumption is that 'religious experiences' have and indeed require a cause beyond the physical. In other words the nature of the experience requires a particular kind of entity as an explanation. The semantic assumption is that we meaningfully describe the cause on the basis of the nature of the religious experience.

A:

Descartes does have a version of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities.  And he probably held a representative-realist account of perception:  that is, he probably thought that we perceive external objects by being directly aware of mental representations of them.  I say ‘probably’ because I’m not sure whether he ever says this explicitly, or even addresses the issue.  But it’s what I would expect him to say.

I can’t see how anyone could take him to be an idealist, though.  Idealism is the view that material things are somehow ultimately mental, or mind-dependent, or unreal.  Descartes sees the mental and the physical as utterly distinct.  And he’s very much concerned to establish the reality of material things, most famously in Meditation 6.  Material things may be EPISTEMICALLY suspect--they’re less well-known, on his view, than the mental.  But they are equally real, and completely independent of the mind.  If there really is evidence that Descartes was an idealist, I’d be amazed.

A:

1. Utilitarianism allows the right course of action to vary in differing circumstances, but it does not apply different principles according to culture, time, place etc as would a moral relativist. There is a distinction between taking the culture etc. of the subject of the decision into account insofar as it affects the consequences of the action, and allowing that culture etc. to determine the nature of the principle that is applied.

Personally I think utilitarianism is a moral absolutism, because the principle of utility is invariable, even though its application varies. Absolutism does not have to be deontological. An alternative could be to argue that it is a universalism but not a relativism, and that to assume all normative theories must be either relativist and absolutist involves a false dichotomy. Either way, utilitarianism is certainly not relativism.

2. This one is very much a matter of opinion, so I can only give you my opinion, which is that there is such a distinction. I would see an objective moral judgement (not a truth) as one that is justifiable in terms of experience. This depends on seeing objectivity as an attitude rather than as an absolute guarantee: an objective attitude tries to take further conditions beyond one’s own immediate preferences into account, in contrast to a subjective attitude that does not. A relatively objective moral judgement can thus take more of such conditions into account than a relatively subjective one, without being absolutely guaranteed.

However, much of the weakness of mainstream analytic moral philosophy at present, in my (probably controversial) view, is that it doesn’t provide grounds for making any distinction between moral objectivity and moral absolutism. This is because it tends to use convention as the only basis of moral judgement, and to reject psychological grounds for judgements of objectivity.  

A:

According to Marcuse, tolerance is not a valid ideal when it fails to serve the goals of developing a freer and more humane society. Marcuse is sceptical of Mill’s ‘marketplace of ideas’, in which it is expected that the truest or best ideas will win out by means of rational debate. He points out that this is not a fair playing field—the defenders of the status quo have the means to manipulate public opinion en masse. (Think of Rupert Murdoch.) The truly progressive voices can easily be drowned out. ‘Repressive desublimation’ also fits in here.  The term is an oxymoron. In Freudian psychology, ‘desublimation’ involves the defeat of repression and the consequent fulfilment of basic needs. In practical terms, repressive desublimation refers to the way in which the ruling class distracts the populace from seeking freedom and autonomy by creating a society based solely on the satisfaction of trivial desires (a system of which advertising is obviously an essential part). The link with the idea of repressive tolerance is that the mere ‘availability’ of richer ideas of personal freedom is not enough to distract the masses from fulfilling the ‘needs’ which a consumerist culture tells them they have.

I think Compass’s ‘liberating’ call for a ban on advertising in public places could indeed be seen as making a nod in Marcuse’s direction. Conventional liberals would view the right to advertise as essential to free speech, but Marcuse would argue that advertising is mainly used to dull the masses into consumerist subservience to the ‘military-industrial complex’.

Despite the fact that the left is normally thought of as favouring rather than opposing tolerance, Marcuse’s idea can be see as left-wing, in that he believes that tolerance is only acceptable when it favours the progressive cause of liberating human beings. It follows that Marcuse probably would have supported a ban on the BNP, at least in principle, since to tolerate them would be to tolerate beliefs and ideals which we know to be false and reactionary.

If I had to predict where Mill’s counter-attack would strike, I think it would be in relation to this idea of ‘knowing’ what is good and/or true. Marcuse might believe he knows the truth about how to arrange human affairs so as to bring about ‘human liberation’, but in reality it is a very complex and uncertain matter. Even rather unwelcome views need to be listened to, for while they may not be in possession of the whole truth, they could help to reveal important parts of it and thus contribute to the debate. (And even if what they say is wholly false, they are still worth hearing, according to Mill, as they help us gain a livelier appreciation of the truth.) Of course, as Mill would have been the first to acknowledge, there are risks in such an approach. But he would also have pointed out that it is equally risky to suppose that any group has a monopoly on truth.

In preparing this answer I have found the following very helpful: http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/65repressivetolerance.htm (by Marcuse himself).

See also http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/theory-frankfurt-school/1998m10/msg00016.htm for the idea of ‘repressive Desublimation’.

I hope this is of some help.

For the BPA,

Howard Simmons

A:

Determinism is the theory that given a complete set of initial conditions and fixed laws of nature, only one outcome is possible. Fatalism is the claim that certain important aspects of our futures are fixed independently of anything we do--for example, I am predestined to die unhappy and there is nothing I can do about this. The key difference is that determinism does not deny that certain conceivable actions of mine could affect such aspects of my life. In relation to the example above, a determinist (unlike the fatalist) needn't deny that if I go and live abroad this could prevent me from dying unhappy. True, a hard determinist would say that I cannot ultimately control whether I do go and live abroad. (Although I may go and live abroad if I choose to, I can't determine whether I will choose to--that's decided by a combination of my genes and my environment.) But at least a determinist--even a hard determinist--can allow that my actions could make a difference and this is different from the fatalist's theory.

Although many people think of hard determinism as a very uncongenial theory, fatalism seems to be worse. Fatalism places fundamental limitations on what human actions can achieve (beyond what science and common sense tell us), but hard determinism places no such limitations. True, if the hard determinist is right, we cannot ultimately control what actions we carry out, but at least we often do know of certain critical actions that we will carry them out and of others we do not know that we will not, which leaves us room for hope.

I hope this helps.

Howard Simmons

A:

The question these theories are meant to answer is roughly this:  What’s the difference between genuine knowledge and mere true belief?  Suppose I believe something, and it happens to be true, but I was only guessing and got lucky.  My belief isn’t knowledge.  Suppose you really do know the fact in question.  Then you’ve got something that I haven’t got, something beyond the true belief that we share.  Philosophers call that extra something ‘justification’ or ‘warrant’ or ‘grounds’:  you’ve got some justification for your belief, or some grounds or warrant, and I haven’t.  It’s also possible to have justification or warrant for a belief even if it turns out to be false:  you can have a belief that would be knowledge, if only if were true.  The question, then, is what this justification or warrant amounts to.

Internalists say that justification--what turns true belief into knowledge--has to be something we’re aware of or can have immediate access to on reflection.  To know whether a belief is justified, you don’t need to leave the armchair.  You need only reflect.  Externalists deny this:  they say that whether a belief is justified can hinge on matters you are entirely unaware of and have no way of knowing about.  

I know that it’s now raining outside my window.  What makes my true belief knowledge?  An internalist might say:  I’m having a certain sort of visual experience, and I remember that whenever I’ve had such experiences in the past, it’s been raining.  That gives me grounds for believing that it’s raining now--grounds enough, when combined with the proposition’s truth, to give me knowledge.  Note that all the factors that enter into my grounds--my experience and my memory of past circumstances--are ‘internal’ to me, and open to introspection.  So whether my belief is justified or warranted does not depend on anything outside my direct awareness (though of course whether the belief is true depends on something outside me).

Externalists needn not dispute that I can have this sort of ‘internal’ grounds for my beliefs, or that such grounds can make the difference between true belief and knowledge.  But they think a belief could also be warranted by something not in any way internal to me.  Suppose it’s a fact that whenever I have visual experiences like I’m having now, it’s raining, and that I never, or rarely, have such experiences in dry weather.  My visual system is an accurate detector of rain.  Then externalists are likely to say that my belief is warranted, and I know that it’s raining.  Internalists will reject this, because the fact that my visual system is accurate is not accessible to me just by reflecting.  It’s a fact partly about my surroundings.  I’d need to leave my armchair to discover it.  Internalists will say that I have to KNOW that my visual system is accurate, or have a justified belief that it is, for this to be relevant to my knowing that it’s raining, or for my belief to be warranted.  Externalists say that the bare fact of its accuracy, whether I know it or not, is enough to give me warrant or knowledge.

Internalism and externalism diverge in cases where, as we say, you know something but you don’t know how you know it.  According to legend, certain people can distinguish male from female chicks with great accuracy, even though the two sexes are indistinguishable to the rest of us.  And the experts themselves can’t explain how they tell them apart.  In fact they don’t know themselves how they do it.  Externalism allows that the ‘chicken-sexers’ know whether a given chick is male or female.  What's more, they could know it even if they are unaware of their special ability.  Internalism implies that they could know this only if they they know that their hunches are reliable.  The mere ability to tell reliably whether a chick is male or female doesn't give knowledge, because this ability is not introspectively accessible to them.

Here’s an example where the theories diverge in the opposite way.  Suppose you’re Descartes worrying about whether you’re being deceived by an evil demon.  Are you warranted or justified in believing that you have hands?  According to internalism, this belief can be warranted (though not true) even if an evil demon really is deceiving you and you don’t have hands, because you may still have all the ‘internal’ evidence supporting your belief that you could possibly have.  Externalists may say that whether your belief is warranted depends on how reliable your beliefs about physical objects are in the circumstances.  That means that if you really are being deceived, your belief is probably unwarranted.  (This shows that according to externalism, you’re not always in a position to know whether a belief of yours is justified, whereas according to internalism you normally are.)

A:

It’s not clear that there is an agreed definition of functionalism of any kind (teleological or not). But the following would do: functionalists hold that the content of a mental state is determined by the causal role that it actually or typically plays. If that would do for functionalism generally, the following will do for teleological functionalism: the content of a mental state is determined by the causal role that it is supposed to play (i.e. that it is its function to play).

However, teleologists can disagree with each other about how to specify the causal role (they can be holists or not; they can be externalists or internalists). And they can disagree about what functions are and how a mental state, such as belief, gets to have the function to play a particular causal role.

Functionalism (and therefore teleological functionalism) can also be a theory of mental categories, rather than of content (i.e. addressing the question ‘what's the difference between a belief and a desire?’, not ‘what’s the difference between believing that p and believing that q?’) . So you could have a teleological functionalist theory of mental categories too.

A:

Hello,

It depends what sort of int and ext you are after.  Here are two contrasts.

(a) Internalism about moral motivation: when one makes a moral judgement then motivation (of some strength) to act appropriately on that judgement is a necessary part of it.  

Externalism about moral motivation: when one makes a moral judgement then it is not necessary that there be motivation to act appropriaely on that judgement.  If such motivation is present, then this is a contingent matter, normally dependent on an individual's particular psychology. 

(So: we both might say that giving to a particular charity is morally good.  But, whilst you are motivated to give, I feel no motivation at all.  Whilst externalists would be happy with this, internalists will say that something has gone wrong with my judging and although it appears to be the same as yours, really it isn't.)

(b) Internalism about moral reasons: if someone is subject to a demand, or has a reason that applies to them, then the ground of that reason  - why there is a reason in the first place - lies in something that the agent accepts, or something that we can reasonably imagine them accepting.  ('Accepatnce' here is wide-ranging: commitments, desires, wants, ideals, etc.) 

Externalism about moral reasons: an agent can be subject to a moral reason and the ground of that reason may lie in something completely external to anything the agent does not or could not believe, desire, be committed to, etc.

So: we might think that agent A should do something, such as give to charity.  Why does this reason apply to A?  Internalists about reason believe that it applies to A only if A himself agrees now that it applies, or there is something else he is committed to (or some way in which we could reasonably imagine him changing his commitments) which entails that he should give to charity.  However, if it turns out that there is nothing about A now or a reasonably imagined different A in the future that would justify this reason applying, then it doesn't apply.  Externalists disagree.  There are some reasons that apply to us no matter what else we are committed to, desire, etc.  (Of course, a lot of the weight of the distinction is put on the 'reasonably imagined' new As.)

The person who started all of the modern debate on int and ext about reasons is Bernard Williams.  He denied the existence of external reasons (strictly, he said that external reasons statements are false.).

Altruism: well, it depends what one means by altruism.  (Sorry - but it's true!)  If one thinks that altrusm means: helping others (perhaps at some sacrifice to oneself), then it is possible to combine this with some degree of self-interestedness.  One might sacrifice something, but gain something else, but if one's prime motivation is to help others, then this still might be counted as altruistic.  However, if one has a stricter definition of altruism whereby one's prime and *only* motivation is to help others, then some of the cases you may have in mind don't count as altrusitic.  And, what of an even more exterme definition?  An altruistic action is that where one's only goal is to help others *and* it doesn't turn out that, inadvertently, you help yourself and/or harm someone.  That would rule out many cases as altruistic.  Indeed, it might be hard to think of a significant action that would be altrusitic if we adopt this definition. 

Any good?  Hope this helps.

Best wishes, Simon

A:

There is a distinction here – it’s a bit hard to spot, as it's quite subtle. Think of it this way:

To argue for the existence of God on the basis that the world is designed, you need to perform two steps:

1.    show that the world is designed

2.    show that the cause of this design must be God

The first step will require an argument for design – you must convince everyone that the complexity of the world should be understood in terms of being a design, a plan, showing purpose, etc. Paley’s watchmaker example is thus an argument for design.

The second step is where the argument from design comes in – now you must convince everyone that the design apparent in the world has been brought about (designed) by God. You have already argued for there being design in the world, now you are arguing from the fact of this design to the existence of a designer.

That’s the distinction, as I see it – a distinction between the two steps or stages in the overall “Design” argument. I should say I’m not familiar with the AQA materials (I’m in Scotland, so know the Scottish Higher instead), but I think this is right. Hope this helps.

A:

The article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is very clear and deals distinctly with nominalism, conceptualism and realism. It's at http://www.iep.utm.edu/universa/ 

Hope this helps.

Howard Simmons

A:

Hello,

Thanks for yours. 

Analysis, interpretation and evaluation is often half the battle.  The key thing to convey to your students is that philosophy is primarily an activity, not a body of knowledge.  It has lots of 'things' that need to be known, obviously, like most subjects.  But, it is not as if there are only two standard responses to Descartes' cogito, say, and then one learns them and one has sorted the debate.  (From your question, I see you can appreciate this readilyl!)  At that stage, with some of our first years who still might think in this dull way, I might ask them what they mean by thinking that a response is 'standard'.  Why are there two responses, rather than three?  Are these really two different ideas, or are they at root the same thing?  Which one is more important?  Which one should Descartes be worried about?  (Obviously these questions can work for lots of debates.)  As well as getting them to answer these questions directly, I try to get them to see that philosophers can ask these questions endlessly because this is what philosophy is about.  We are after people thinking creatively about such things.

As for exercises, you could try getting them to argue for points of view different from their own.  Also challenge them to come up with a point that is not in the material that you have given them or in the standard books they have read.  Also, if you are in a position where they are just trotting out lots of responses, get them to think about which is the most important response or idea and get them to defend why it is the most important one.  Get them, then, to think hard about how Descartes or a Cartesian would reply.    

To help with all of this, it might be worth you presenting them with two rival interpretations of the same passage or idea.  Get them to see that there may be no right answer that everyone agrees on.  Get them to debate the interpretations and idea.  All being well, that might help their powers of interpretation, and evaluation.

As I said, this is half the battle, and what I've said here may not work.  If you need any more advice, feel free to email us - or me - back.  Good luck.  Best wishes,

Simon - s.t.kirchin@kent.ac.uk

A:

I don't think Schneewind is mentioned in the 'A' level philosophy syllabus and I am not actually familiar with his work. By all means tell your students about him if you think he is relevant but don't over-emphasize any figure that is not explicitly mentioned in the syllabus.

A:

1. I can’t say what the AS examiners would expect, but here’s a professional philosopher’s opinion.  That certainty is ‘confined to introspection and the tautological’ is definitely a claim that empiricists typically endorse (if you define ‘tautological’ generously enough to include mathematical knowledge).  And rationalists characteristically accept that we can have synthetic a priori knowledge.  In fact, that claim is a good definition of rationalism.  However, rationalism as such does not say that we can have CERTAIN knowledge about these matters.  Even if certain famous historic rationalists such as Descartes and Kant said that we can have certain knowledge of the synthetic a priori, latter-day rationalists are much more likely to say that our knowledge of these matters is fallible and not absolutely certain.

You ask whether empiricists deny that we can have a posteriori certainty about anything other than our own mental states.  Well, this is a common  view (though Kant and Wittgenstein denied it).  However, I don’t know whether it’s more common among empiricists than among rationalists.  In discussing whether we can have certain knowledge about, say, the external world, it would certainly be appropriate to discuss Descartes’ sceptical arguments or the problem of induction.  I doubt whether the examiners would require this in a good answer to a question about certainty, but I can’t speak for them with any authority.

2. Innate ideas--concepts ‘hard-wired’ into us that we don’t have to learn--are an important theme in Plato, Descartes, Locke, Kant, and, more recently, Chomsky.  And it’s true that in past centuries, those who believed in innate ideas were generally those who thought we could have certain knowledge of synthetic a priori truths, and vice versa.  That said, neither claim obviously entails the other.  I suppose I can be certain that all barking dogs bark, even though neither BARKING nor DOG is an innate concept.  And even if (as Chomsky argued) basic grammatical concepts are innate, it doesn’t follow that grammatical knowledge is certain.  

3. The term ‘synthetic a priori’ refers to knowledge of synthetic propositions--truths.  A conceptual scheme consists only of concepts, such as the concept DOG.  Concepts are not propositions, and cannot be true or false.  So Kant’s claim that certain concepts (such as cause and identity) are innate and cannot be learned because they are presupposed in experience is not a claim about knowledge of propositions, and thus not about synthetic a priori knowledge.  However, Kant did say that we can know a priori that every event has a cause (for example), which is a synthetic proposition.

4. I hope not!  ‘Rationalism’ is a term used in many different ways.  Most commonly it means the view that we can have a priori knowledge of certain interesting, important, substantive truths--something like Kant’s synthetic a priori.  However, the claim that we have certain innate concepts is sometimes also called rationalism, even though it’s entirely different.  The fact that both claims were historically accepted or rejected together (accepted by Descartes, Leibniz and Kant; rejected by the British empiricists), and were not always distinguished, doesn’t help matters.  I teach my students to distinguish the two claims.  But I find that they have an almost irresistible urge to conflate them.

A:

The following comment was received by an AQA philosophy subject officer:

"There will not be a question that asks specifically about Kantian or Linguistic versions of  conceptual schemes (or any other version).  However, they need to be clear about the a priori/a posteriori distinction and they should know that a conceptual scheme might be acquired or it might be innate. They would certainly not be asked to debate the relative merits of a Kantian and Linguistic version - although such a debate might be relevant.  More important is an understanding  why it seems that a conceptual scheme of some sort is important.   

A:

Hello Hayley (if I may),

Thanks for yours.  Yes, this can be a hard subject to teach ansd there is no definitive, structured, settled sides or arguments.  This isn't quite my area, also.  However, I've just had a look on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the entry on toleration:

http.//plato.stanford.edu/entries/toleration

This seems as if it might be some help, particularly the second section.  Think about - and get your students to think about - two key elements: (i) what exactly it is that is being tolerated (and odes this mean one tolerates the whole view, or just some aspect of a view), and how exactly the stance of those tolerating can be characterized.  You might also think about (iii) what practical action this results in and how it affects one's attitutde to third parties (who might not wish to see the view under consideration being tolerated.)

I hope this is of some help.

By the way, if you have never used it, the Stanford Encyclopedia is an excellent resource.  Some of the pieces might be too much for your students, but some are well written and easily accessible, and most should be os some use to you as a teacher.

If you want to email me again, you can use this site or email me directly: s.t.kirchin@kent.ac.uk

Best wishes,

Simon

A:

There is one PGCE course in Philosophy and Religious Studies offered by Liverpool Hope. There is no Philosophy PGCE because Philosophy is not a national curriculum subject. The Religious Studies PGCE would be quite a good staging area for philosophy teaching as things stand. It is possible that there will be more routes to philosophy teaching through the PGCE in the future, but that at this stage that is only under discussion.

A:

Dear Bonnie,

What I would take to be significant about the differences between the 3 types of compatibilism is this:

1. The first just identifies freewill as consisting in a single link, between choice and action, regardless of what is going on outside this process.
2. The second identifies freewill as an absence of constraint, so this potentially takes us back further in the causal process creating the action. If my action is unconstrained, then a certain identifiable immediate condition creating or preventing that action is absent (e.g. hypnosis, paralysis etc). One’s action could be constrained in this sense but not in no.1, e.g. if I was hypnotised to stop smoking, but didn’t know this when I chose to not have a cigarette, and this led to my actually not doing so.
3. Frankfurt’s sense goes one step back from no.1 by locating freewill in the consistency between first order desires and second order desires, as well as between first order desires and actions. (A development of this, which makes rather more sense to me, would be to see freewill as the relative quality of integration of our desires – that is, how consistent they are generally).

These three options only represent 3 types of naturalist compatibilism. The distinction between naturalist compatibilism and rationalist compatibilism is more profound and interesting – for that I recommend Thomas Pink’s Freewill: a very short introduction (Oxford). So, to answer your question, I’d say there are 2 basic views, with different versions of each of them.

However, having said all this, I wouldn’t necessarily go into these distinctions with AS students, unless you have a pretty able group. Most students have enough trouble grasping the basic theory of one type of naturalist compatibilism. It is number 2 that I always teach, and which seems to me most typical and important. If I do go into different types with more able students, I distinguish between naturalist and rationalist types. If you’re not confident with that, it’s really not essential, so I’d suggest sticking to no.2 naturalist compatibilism to start with.

Best wishes,

Robert Ellis

A:

In its simplest form, utilitarianism says that our sole moral duty is to maximize utility.  ‘Utility’ is taken to be a psychological state:  pleasure, or happiness, or perhaps the satisfaction of desires.  (The assumption is that this is the fundamental good--that all things are good only insofar as they promote utility--and that it is in some sense quantifiable.)  

So think of all the courses of action available to you in the circumstances.  For each course of action, consider its consequences:  what would happen if you did it.  Work out the total utility of those consequences, adding up all the pleasure the world would contain if you performed the action and subtracting all the suffering.  The action with the highest overall utility is what you ought to do.

This implies that it’s morally permissible for us to kill someone or something if, and only if, doing so would result in more overall utility than anything else we could do.  To simplify a bit, killing is right just when it would result in greater overall utility, in the circumstances, than not killing.  

So is it all right to kill an unborn foetus?  That depends on how much pleasure and suffering would come about, in the circumstances, if we did so, and how much would come about if we didn’t.  This in turn will depend on what the unborn person’s life would be like, and one what the lives of the mother and others affected would be like if she did and if she didn’t have the abortion.  The calculation is guaranteed to be messy!

Is it all right to kill someone, or help her kill herself, for her own benefit?  Again, it depends on what would happen if we did it and what would happen if we didn’t.  Suppose it makes no difference to anyone else’s utility which we do.  Then utilitarianism says that euthanasia is right if the remainder of the person’s life would otherwise contain a net utility of less than zero--that is, if her suffering during that period would outweigh her pleasure or happiness.  If the remainder of her life would otherwise have positive utility, euthanasia is wrong.  But of course, acts of euthanasia always have important consequences for the utility of others--as does refusal to grant requests for euthanasia.  So although utilitarianism supports euthanasia in some cases, there’s plenty of room for debate about whether it supports euthanasia in real life, or whether it supports a law allowing euthanasia.  It all depends on what the consequences would be.

A:

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.
 
Kant is talking about the fundamental preconditions for our being able to have experiences at all, consisting in the fact that we are able to conceptualise them in terms of space, time, causality etc. Kant's is an a priori theory--he is saying that on general philosophical grounds, our thinking MUST be like this. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis seems to be more of an empirical theory, based on differences that can be found to obtain between the ways in which different languages 'carve up' the world. I think Sapir-Whorf is easier for students to grasp, and as the section of the syllabus that mentions conceptual schemes doesn't refer to any particular author, I guess you could talk about that instead of Kant, if you thought it would work better with your students.
 
I hope this helps.
 
Yours sincerely,
 
Howard Simmons, BPA schools team

On re-reading your question, I noticed that it appeared to be asking for reading material. I have found the following helpful in relation to Sapir-Whorf:

   Geoffrey Leech, 'Semantics' (Pelican), pp. 28-32.

  A.P. Martinich (ed.), 'The Philosophy of Language', fourth edition (OUP), pp. 23-5.

Sincerely,

Howard

A:

A very good introduction is Stephen Law’s The Philosophy Gym. It takes a series of issues in turn and deals with them in an accessible and often humorous way.

Jostein Gaarder’s novel Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy is a very unusual, but very stimulating introduction. It takes the form of a story about a 14- year-old girl who is introduced to philosophy by a mysterious mentor. Philosophers discussed include Socrates, Descartes, Spinoza and Hegel. The story has a fascinating twist, which itself raises philosophical questions.

Philosophy: The Basics is a pretty comprehensive introduction by Nigel Warburton. Topics covered include God, right and wrong, politics, scepticism, science, philosophy of mind and art.

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar...: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein combines comedy and introductory philosophy in a very appealing way.

Much of the The Philosopher’s Magazine would be accessible to brighter students and would give a good idea of what philosophy is all about. Its website is at http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/.

For a more extensive list of introductory books, see our guide www.philosophyadvice.net/bibliography.doc

A:

One way that you could do this is by asking the students how they might go about starting a new society from scratch. They could be divided into small groups to discuss this question, and then asked to report back towards the end of the lesson.

Rough lesson plan:

       Introduce topic and explain activity.

Question: If you had to start a new society from scratch, what decisions would you make about the following:

• Who should be in charge? How do you decide this? How do you change it subsequently—assuming you can? (Come to think of it, should there be anybody in charge?)
• Assuming that there are some people in charge do they have absolute power to pass any laws or edicts they want, and if not what sort of controls should be imposed on them?
• How, broadly speaking, are goods and services to be distributed e.g. a free market, a command economy, some mixture of the two or some other option altogether?
• What do you do about people who don’t obey the laws or edicts? Do you punish them and if so how is their culpability decided and how is a suitable punishment determined? Or will you have some other way of dealing with them, e.g. rehabilitation of some sort?

 All this will keep them very busy!

Divide class into suitable groups (about 3 or 4 each). Students begin discussing questions, with teacher listening in and making suggestions if things are stalling.

Students report back with their findings. (A spokesperson can be chosen by each group.) Teacher comments encouragingly. (Don’t be crushing about any suggestion, though of course it is in order to raise questions and/or objections.) When suggestions match existing ideas in political philosophy, mention philosophers concerned—especially if they relate to any of the set texts.

Bring the discussion to a suitable conclusion. Obviously, this will depend to some extent on what has happened in the rest of the lesson. 

I think that this activity could work with students of a wide range of abilities, but a weaker group will perhaps need more initial suggestions to stimulate their discussions. With a strong group you might actually give fewer suggestions than those indicated above. For example, you could leave out the reference to specific options for distributing goods and services and just see what they come up with.