René Descartes (1596 – 1650)

•Rationalist First –doubt everything. I think, therefore, I am. (Cogito, ergo sum)

I thence concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature consists only in thinking, and which, that it may exist, has need of no place, nor is dependent on any material thing; so that ‘I’, that is to say, the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body, and is even more easily known than the latter …

So why is he not a solipsists???

God has provided him with a working mind and sensory system and does not desire to deceive him. From this supposition, however, he finally establishes the possibility of acquiring knowledge about the world based on deduction and perception.

Rationalist

From there, he went on to conclude that there were a number of things equally certain:  God, time and space, the world, mathematics.  These things, he said, were innate -- in-born -- to the mind.  You derive them not from experience but from the nature of one’s mind itself. E.g., Ideas in his mind either come from within or from without. He is an imperfect, finite being. Therefore, his conception of God as a perfect, infinite being could have only come from without – from God. Therefore, God exists.

Mechanical-hydraulic theory of human behavior

Royal Automata

The Canard Digérateur (Digesting Duck) - an automaton in the form of a duck, created by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1739. The mechanical duck appeared to have the ability to eat kernels of grain, and to metabolize and defecate them. While the duck did not actually have the ability to do this—the food was collected in one inner container, and the pre-stored feces was 'produced' from a second, so that no actual digestion took place—Vaucanson hoped that a truly digesting automaton could one day be designed.

ReflexesHe was the first to note the idea of the reflex. The idea that some of our actions are reflexive leads inevitably to the possibility that all actions are reflexive.  Descartes theorized that animals (at least) have no need for a soul:  They are automatons.  Being a good Catholic, he exempted human beings.  We do have a soul, although he acknowledged that he did not know how the soul and the body interacted – although he did feel they interacted and thought this was mediated through the Pineal gland.

Pineal Gland

The Body- Mind Problem After Descartes

If Interactive dualism, how does an immaterial substance not occupying any space act upon the material, pineal gland or vise versa?

Arnold Geulinex (mid 1600’s) – Psychophysical Parallelism.

The Cartesians

fatalism [ˈfeɪtəˌlɪzəm] n

1. (Philosophy) the philosophical doctrine that all events are predetermined so that man is powerless to alter his destiny

2. (Philosophy) the acceptance of and submission to this doctrine

3. a lack of effort or action in the face of difficulty fatalist  n

Benedict SpinozaMonistic ParallelismEvery bodily event coexists with and is coordinated to a

mental event. Body and mind correlate, but they do not cause one another. The apparent interaction arises from ignorance on our part and shows only the coincidence of actions; an illusion.

God is the universe and all the mind and matter in it.

The body cannot determine the mind to thought. Neither can the mind determine the both to motion of rest. No interaction is necessary since both stem from the same reality.

Three basic emotions (joy, sorrow, and desire). 48 different emotions result from the interplay of these with pleasant or unpleasant stimuli.

Empiricists

• Rely on Experiments, experiences and good judgment (rejected Descartes's idea of innate ideas).

• Believe that that mind develops by empirical means; ideas are derived from experience.

Thomas Hobbes (1588 -1679)• Social contract theory Individuals came together and ceded some of their individual rights so

that others would cede theirs (e.g. person A gives up his/her right to kill person B if person B does the same). This resulted in the establishment of society, and by extension, the state, a sovereign entity which was to protect these new rights which were now to regulate societal interactions. Society was thus no longer anarchic.

• Monarchist

Thomas Hobbes on the Thoughts of Man

Concerning the thoughts of man . . . They are every one a representation of appearances of some quality or other accident of a body without us, which is commonly called an object . . . The origin of them all it that which we call sense. The rest are derived from that original.

Imagination being only of those things which have formally been perceived by sense . . . is simple imagination, as when one imagined a man or a horse, which he hath seen before. The other is compounded; as when, from the sight of a man at one time and of a horse at another, we conceive in our minds a centaur.

Calvin and Hobbes

We are basically aggressive animals.

Hobbes is proud to be an animal and seems to have a low opinion of humans in general. (when Calvin is wondering why people exist, Hobbes simply responds "tiger food")

According to Calvin, "Hobbes is always a little loopy when he comes out of the dryer."

According to Hobbes tigers need to learn physics, biology and artistic

expression to hunt.

“For there is no conception in man’s mind, which hath not first been begotten upon the organs of the sense.”-Thomas Hobbes

Spaceman Spiff

CAVALIERSCAVALIERS ROUNDHEADSROUNDHEADS

Supporters of the King

Supporters of Parliament

HobbesPhilosophical Absolutism

Witness to a very long and Blood Civil War

•View of Human Nature – Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish and Short unless there is a power that keeps us reigned in.

•Ideal Ruler – needs to be beyond challenge.

•Monarchist

John Locke 1632-1704

Philosophical ConstitutionalismLimitation of Government by lawsNatural Rights – Life, Liberty and Property (fruits of one’s labor).-Given to Adam by God

Social Contract (Government) Preserves Natural RightsIf Government does not do this, the people have the right of revolution.

Locke Strongly influenced Thomas Jefferson and the American Declaration of Independence.

Personal Life

Puritan (Minority and Victorious Rebels)

Never married – Had a love affair during his Oxford years that “robbed him of his use of reason”.

Essay Concerning Human Understanding (mental processes that the mind is capable of understanding)

- Thought it would take 1 page – 20 years

John Locke Cont.

Empiricist Humans are innately good.People are born equal in potential (Tabla Rasa)Advocated for religious equality for all (except Atheists, Unitarians and Muslims)

Education is essential.

John Locke Cont.

Developmental Issues Two Sources of ideas - Sensible and Reflective-Sensation is not always reliable-Reflective processes involve associations and abstractions.

Argued against Innate knowledge.

Primary and Secondary Qualities.

Primary – inseparable from the object (solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number).

Secondary – sensations that the primary qualities cause in us (smell, color, taste and sound).

Molyneux's question:

``Suppose a Man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a Cube and a Sphere of the same metal, and nightly the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and other, which is the Cube, which the Sphere. Suppose then the Cube and Sphere placed on a Table, and the Blind Man to be made to see.

Quaere, Whether by his sight, before he touch'd them, he could now distinguish, and tell, which is the Globe, which the Cube (Locke 1694, page 67)

Empiricist philosophers, like Locke, argued that we learn to perceive visual space by associating it with touch and muscular movement.

George Berkeley

“If a tree falls in the forest and no one it there, does it make a sound.”

Rationalist (immaterialism) – Matter does not exit in and of itself; it exists because it is perceived.

(Object Permanence????)

“To be, is to be perceived”

Video

•  God in the QuadA limerick by Monsignor Ronald Knox

• There was a young man who said, "God Must think it exceedingly odd If he finds that this tree Continues to be When there's no one about in the Quad."

REPLY • Dear Sir:

Your astonishment's odd: I am always about in the Quad. And that's why the tree Will continue to be, Since observed by Yours faithfully, GOD.

David Hume (1776) “I sense therefore I am.”

Pneumatic Philosophy

Advocated for a new science of human nature

• Use the methods of natural science

• Human thought is the product of mental processes and can be studied scientifically.

• Perhaps Hume is the father of Psychology!!

Gottfried Leibniz (Nativist)Metaphor of a block of veined Marble.

The veins represent the minds inborn dispositions. The sculptor’s hand frees a figure from this marble, but the figure was present before the chisel was ever lifted. Ideas are present in the mind at birth, and the role of experience is to allow them to emerge.