Philosophy Out of the Box

January 26, 2010

Kepler Destroys the Universe

Filed under: Philosophy at-large — profgiles @ 10:49 am

It is almost impossible for us today to imagine the profound effect of Kepler’s theory of planetary motion (published in 1609). It was always an unquestioned assumption that everything in the heavens was pristine and perfect and that meant that the motion of heavenly bodies was circular. The paradigm of circular motion was so strong that it even tolerated the complicated theory of multiple epicycles – better to have dozens of more circles in heaven than no circles at all.

Ironically, it was Kepler who made the heavens more elegant and simpler by making the profound paradigm shift of imagining the planetary orbits as elliptical rather than circular. His system was so much more elegant than Copernicus’s. Suddenly no epicycles were needed and each planet moved in a single motion. However, it meant that God did not use perfect geometry in the Creation.

That shift in thinking, coupled with scientific work from many others, affected how intellectuals viewed their universe. If perfection was not the model for creation then the universe is a very different place. If we can’t argue from rational first principles to reality, but instead reality tells us something that violated our assumptions, then we have to change how we approach the universe. Knowledge had to be won by searching, not by reasoning to it.

Not that this changed everyone’s views. Spinoza, Leibniz still believed that truth was known through analytical logic and Hobbes still demanded that science proceed from first principles rather than observations. Even Kepler later tried to save a pristine geometrical model of the heavens by attempting to craft a solar system where the planetary orbits expressed perfect geometrical shapes, despite their imperfect ellipses.

Regardless, after Kepler, the perfect Ptolemaic universe was destroyed forever.

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January 16, 2010

Spinoza’s Proposition 1.5

Filed under: Metaphysics, Spinoza — profgiles @ 3:55 pm

Many students have trouble understanding Spinoza’s Proposition 1.5 and exactly what it is he is trying to prove. Here is what Spinoza said:

In Nature there cannot be two or more substances having the same nature or attribute.
If there were two or more distinct substances, they would have to be distinguished from one another by a difference either •in their attributes or •in their states (by Prop. 4). If they are distinguished only by a difference in their attributes, then any given attribute can be possessed by only one of them. Suppose, then, that they are distinguished by a difference in their states. But a substance is prior in nature to its states (by Prop. 1), so we can set the states aside and consider the substance in itself; and then there is nothing left through which one substance can be conceived as distinguished from another, which by Prop. 4 amounts to saying that we don’t have two or more substances ·with a single attribute·, but only one.

I think how you have to read it is to add the unspoken premise that even two distinct objects that in every other way are identical in their attributes would still be distinguishable by their different locations in space (That was Thomas Aquinas’s argument of individuation) and thus they can’t really have exactly the same attributes. So in that vein, if someone said “I have two apples, they are exactly alike in every attribute even the attribute of their location” that is really a metaphysical nonsense statement because we would not be able to discern any difference between these supposedly different apples and the speaker would be postulating imaginary entities.

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January 9, 2010

Descartes’ Circle Debunked

Filed under: Descartes — profgiles @ 4:22 pm

Almost since Descartes published his book Meditations he has been accused of committing a fallacy of circular reasoning with his argument that God is the guarantor of the truth of our belief in an external world. Descartes’ argument has ever since been derided as the “Cartesian Circle.”

The accusation is that Descartes’ asserts that the existence of God verifies that ideas that are clear and distinct must be true. So those who argue the “Cartesian Circle” position are claiming that Descartes is arguing the following:

As the Encyclopedia Britannica states it (I think a reasonable summation of the standard interpretation of the Cartesian Circle):

But Descartes cannot know that this proof does not contain an error unless he assumes that his clear and distinct perception of the steps of his reasoning guarantees that the proof is correct. Thus the criterion of clear and distinct perception depends on the assumption that God exists, which in turn depends on the criterion of clear and distinct perception.

This is a valid assessment of the argument stated above. The question though is whether that is an accurate portrayal of Descartes’ actual argument.

Garret Thomson in Bacon to Kant argues that it is not. The key to understanding Descartes’ argument is to discern the difference between particular experiences and the whole of experience.

Descartes uses the proposition “Ideas that are clear and distinct must be true” as his foundational principle. All else follows from that. The proposition is true independent of God. Any idea that can be said to be clear and distinct then must be accepted as true. The existence of God is not a “that X” proposition, it is a clear and distinct idea, God cannot be doubted. The existence of God does not support the proposition “Ideas that are clear and distinct must be true” it guarantees that our sensory perception is trustworthy, or as Thomson puts it on p. 35, “God is introduced to meet our general systematic doubts.” We can, as Descartes points out, doubt that the external world exists; we could be deceived. God ensures that we are not deceived because God is not a deceiver.

So, Descartes’ reasoning goes like this:

Descartes is not saying that he cannot be mistaken about particular propositions such as “that X” because he knows his will can overreach and lead him to error. But because he knows he is a mind and because he knows God would not let him be deceived, then knowledge from experience is possible. Thus, if he can reason correctly (his four rules of scientific method) then his mind is incapable of error because he can arrive at clear and distinct ideas.

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December 22, 2009

The Worst Philosophical Sin

Filed under: Metaphysics, Philosophy of Religion — profgiles @ 6:19 pm

Philosophy has no shortage of controversy, but there is perhaps one issue throughout philosophy that has raised more ire than any other. It is the simple metaphysical notion called pantheism–God and the Universe are One. The idea that God and the world are one is a thought that deeply disturbs some people. The Christian conception has traditionally been that God is absolutely separate from creation. This notion has been fiercely defended by religious authorities for centuries to the point of persecution of those who would commit the sin of pantheism.

The ninth century philosopher Erigena was a pantheist. Erigena believed that there is no separation between God and Creation. God “is called the One because God is is all things universally; for there is nothing in existence which does not participate in the One.” Everything came from God and all things will return to God. Deep within us is the desire to be unified again with God. He further believed in the priority of reason over the authority of tradition arguing that “authority indeed proceeds from true reason, reason never proceeds from authority.” While he did not reject the authority of Scripture or Church tradition, he believed there was nothing authority could tell us that could not be discovered through unaided reason.

The 17th century philosopher Spinoza had similar ideas. He also believed in the supremacy of reason, believing that it was both the foundation of reality and the means by which we understand reality. About God he made the ingenious argument that since God is completely self-contained and not dependent on anything else, nothing besides God could exist. If anything besides God existed, it would limit God (God would then be defined by what is not God) and this is absurd. Therefore, God is the only substance that exists and everything is simply a mode of God. Spinoza urged people to realize that we are all modes of God’s being and that everything that happens springs from God’s rational necessity; this, he believed, would bring us peace and happiness.

Then there was Giordano Bruno who argued that God is in all. “There is one simple Divinity found in all things, once fecund nature, preserving mother of the universe in so far as she diversely communicates herself, casts her light into diverse subjects, and assumes various names.” God is the universal intellect which manifests as world-soul in all things. All is God and we have the mind of God within us, we simply need to become more aware of it.

What is common in all three philosophers’ pantheism are two things: first, that everything in the world, including us, is divine; and two, that we can all come to know the essence of God ourselves with no need for church authority.

Erigena’s works were ordered burned by the Pope in 1225 and were declared “teeming with worms of heresy” and “the devil’s invention.” Spinoza was cursed and exiled by his Jewish community in Holland and his books were later banned by the Catholic Church. Bruno was convicted of heresy and burned at the stake. The reasons given for the persecutions were their “heretical” ideas that there is no separation between God and the world, specifically us. The doctrine preferred by conservative Christians has long been that we are separated from God by sin–a separation that can only be overcome through the church and clergy. Pantheism strikes at the heart of this doctrine threatening the need for church and clergy. The “sin” of pantheism is the “sin” of believing that an individual is already part of God and can heal what separation there is themselves.

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December 13, 2009

Hobbes: A Material Theist

Filed under: Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Religion — profgiles @ 4:57 pm

Thomas Hobbes is best known for his political theory of the Leviathan and to a lesser extent for his theories on empiricism. Both Hobbes’ political and empirical theories are founded on his belief that there exists nothing but matter. There is nothing but material bodies in motion, Hobbes believed.

This radical materialism had an interesting effect on Hobbes’ religious beliefs. He believed in God, did not question Christianity, though he, like many in his day, was critical of religious institutions. But that meant that he had to believe that God is made of matter, which he did. He reasoned that either something is matter or it is void. God could not be immaterial because immateriality is nothing. God exists, therefore God must be material. Of course, God is a different kind of matter than what rocks, plants, trees, and our bodies are made. Hobbes saw it as a rarefied matter, like a very fine mist, but still matter.

Not surprisingly, Hobbes’ theory met with great criticism in his time. Not just from religious authorities but from other philosophers and intellectuals. The idea that there is nothing but matter was not intellectual palatable and seemed to contradict common sense, especially the human mind. The preferred notion was from Hobbes’ contemporary, Descartes, who reasoned that there were two types of substance–mental and material. Mind and consciousness has no extension in space and thus could not be material. The same argument for a material God would have to made for a material mind and not surprisingly, Hobbes felt that mind was nothing but matter. But if mind is matter then what is consciousness? Would that lead to us denying the existence of consciousness?

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