Philosophy/Psychology Outline

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Important Philosophers and Psychologists

Plato, 429–348

• the worldview of Plato (“metaphysical dualism”) involves a dualistic framework for reality: the immaterial “intelligible” world versus the material “perceptual” world. the former is eternal, consisting of ideal “forms,” while the latter was created, comprised of corrupt “copies.” Platonic protology involves the eternal ideal state and a debased material creation, which sets up its eschatological return to immateriality. salvation is thus found in transcending materiality by enlightenment and/or death

Rene Descartes, 1596–1650

• began with an attitude of universal doubt
• great confidence in mathematical reasoning and profound distrust of all that is not absolutely certain
• “I think, therefore I am.”

Gottfried Leibniz, 1646–1716

• understanding contains within itself certain innate principles, which it knows intuitively to be true, and which form the axioms from which a complete description of the world can be derived
• objects are Leibnizian monads, knowable only to the perspectiveless stance of ‘pure reason’
• monads cannot communicate with each other. they act according to a pre-established order
• all ideas are innate

David Hume, 1711–1776

• objects are Humean ‘impressions’, features of my own experience
• What philosophers affirm on the basis of observation and reason have no basis but are simply the result of irrational mental habits. Among such things that the mind takes for granted are fundamental notions as those of substance and of cause and effect.
• “The empiricists claimed that only that knowledge which is based on experience is true. But Hume pointed out that no one has ever seen or experienced what we call cause and effect. We have seen billiard balls interacting with each other and then we say that the movement of the first ball caused the movement of the other one. But the truth is that we have not seen any such thing. All that we have seen is a series of phenomena, and our mind has linked them by means of the notion of cause and effect. This last step, taken by any who sees a series of phenomena that are seemingly related, has no basis in empirical observation. It is rather the result of our mental habits. Therefore, according to the empiricists’ definition, it is not rational knowledge.”
• “The same can be said of the idea of substance. We say, for instance, that we see an apple. But in truth what our senses perceive is a series of attributes: form, color, weight, flavor, smell, and so forth. We also perceive that those attributes coincide in one place, and that they seem to cling together, as if something unites them. And then our mind, by one of those habits that are not truly rational, declares that all these attributes reside in a substance that we call apple. But, once again, we have not experienced the substance itself. Pure empirical reason does not allow us to affirm that there are such things as substances in which reside the various attributes that we perceive.”

Immanuel Kant, 1724–1804

• facts cannot be derived from values without an intermediary of process and structure
• such an intermediary is reliant on the action of fundamental axioms, which are not in themselves either facts or easily derivable from facts
• Neither experience nor reason is alone able to provide knowledge. The first provides content without form, the second form without content. Only in their synthesis is knowledge possible; hence there is no knowledge that does not bear the marks of reason and of experience together
• in describing experience, Kant referred to an ordered perspective on an independent world
• “Among true propositions, some are true independently of experience, and remain true however experience varies: these are the a priori truths. Others owe their truth to experience, and might have been false had experience been different: these are the a posteriori truths…. Kant argued that a priori truths are of two kinds, which he called ‘analytic’ and ‘synthetic’. An analytic truth is one like ‘All bachelors are unmarried’ whose truth is guaranteed by the meaning, and discovered through the analysis, of the terms used to express it”. This appears to be the mapping of one concept directly on to another, akin in some sense to the mapping of a fact onto a value (or at least onto another fact), where the second concept is truly implicit in or even identical to the first. “A synthetic truth is one whose truth is not so derived but that affirms something in the predicate that is not already contained in the subject”. It is such truths that require structure as a mediator, because the conclusion is not implicit in the premise. “What is original….is Kant’s insistence that the two distinctions (between the a priori and the a posteriori, and between the analytic and the synthetic), are of a wholly different nature. It is mere dogmatism on the part of empiricists to think that they must coincide.”
• There are two sources from which our knowledge is drawn: sensibility and understanding. The first is a faculty of intuitions: it includes all the sensory states and modifications that empiricists think to be the sole basis of knowledge. The second is a faculty of concepts. Since concepts have to be applied in judgments, this faculty, unlike sensibility, is active. It is a mistake of empiricism not to have understood this crucial point, and to have construed all concepts of the understanding on the model of sensations. The corresponding mistake of rationalism is to think of sensation as a kind of confused aspiration towards conceptual thought. There are two faculties here, irreducible the one to the other; they can supply objectively valid judgments of things only in conjunction with each other. If we understand experiences, then it is because they already contain within themselves the concepts that we supposedly derive from them. Whence came these concepts? Not from the senses. There must therefore be some repertoire of concepts contained within the understanding itself, and which defines the forms of its activity.
• distinguished the noumenal from the phenomenal. the former contains things that are not objects of empirical investigation, and hence are not objects of knowledge. God is in the noumenal realm. though God’s existence cannot be proved, it must be postulate of practical reason necessary for moral governance of our world

Friedrich Schleiermacher, 1768–1834

• Schleiermacher claimed that religion is based on a feeling of absolute dependence
• this feeling of absolute dependence is also a person’s feeling of identity
• feeling identical with what he labeled “immediate self-consciousness”. we are able to discern this feeling because self-consciousness involves thinking and willing which allow us to relate rationally to our world. through all this we can distinguish our feeling of absolute dependence in relation to God from a feeling of relative dependence to things in the world. this happens because in the latter a person stands in relations of community and reciprocity with nature and society, while in the feeling of absolute dependence there is no reciprocity present
• Religion is not a form of knowledge (as the rationalists and the orthodox believed), nor a system of morality (as Kant implied). religion is grounded neither in pure nor in practical or moral reason, but in feeling. this feeling is a profound awareness of the existence of the One on whom all existence depends — both ours and that of the world around us. thus, it is not an undefined or amorphous feeling, for its clear and specific content is our absolute dependence on God.
• Anything that cannot be shown to be related to the feeling of dependence has no place in theology.
• By insisting that religion is different from knowledge, Schleiermacher could interpret the central doctrines of Christianity in such a way that they did not contradict the findings of science.

Hegel, 1770–1831

• five distinct notions of God:
• 1) psychological projection. self-consciousness
• 2) a force or general consciousness uniting all finite consciousnesses
• 3) equal to the infinite. God is equivalent to transcending, all-encompassing thought. not necessarily a person
• 4) representation is the human use of language and thought to point to an object which is infinite. God is the object toward which religious representation points symbolically. he is totally transcendent and does not seem to act in the world. he may be personal, but he so totally other that it is impossible to know exactly how to describe him
• 5) God as Christ. Christ as uniting the infinite and finite in two ways. In Christ as incarnate, God and man are united, but beyond the incarnation, Christianity instructs its followers to believe in and follow Christ. this means that we should worship a person who is other than us and yet at the same time is the same as we. our relation to Christ illustrates the union of the transcendent and immanent
• reason is reality, the only reality there is. in thinking, we do not stand before a fixed idea in order to study it. on the contrary, we pose an idea, examine it so as to surpass it or deny it in favor of another, and finally reach a third idea that includes whatever there was of value in the two previous ones. this process of posing a thesis, questioning it by means of an antithesis, and finally reaching a synthesis, is “reason”. this is, therefore, a dynamic reason, a movement that is constantly advancing. the universal reason — the Spirit — is the whole of reality. all that exists is that dialectic and dynamic thought of the Spirit.
• the entirety of history is the thought of the Spirit. the various religions, philosophical systems, and social and political orders are moments in the Spirit’s thoughts. in that thought, the past is never lost but is always surpassed and included in a new synthesis. thus, the present includes all the past, for it sums it up, and all the future, for the future is the rational development of the present.

Soren Kierkegaard, 1813–1855

• being a Christian does not involve knowing a bunch of objective facts and performing a set of religious rituals. rather, it consists in becoming a spiritual contemporary with Christ
• believes historical research is an approximation of the truth. this isn’t enough for who would be so foolish as to rest their eternal destiny on something contingent that is at best an approximation of the truth
• for someone to receive the truth, God must bring the truth to the individual. this happens only when God in grace encounters the individual and gives him the truth and also the faith to grasp it. God gives us the truth in the person of Jesus Christ, who is given to us in personal encounter. through repeated encounters and our response of faith, we become spiritually contemporary with Christ. the faith God gives is not mere cold, intellectual agreement, but a passionate holding onto that which, rationally speaking, makes little or no sense.
• one’s eternal destiny should not rest on the dictates of reason. for someone who has experienced God through the personal encounter with Christ, how could a rational argument possibly make them more certain/uncertain of God’s existence? as for unbelievers, no argument or evidence could convince them, and given the contingency of our knowledge, why would they rest anything so important as their eternal destiny on such argumemnts
• true Christianity has to do with a person’s very existence and not merely with the intellect. Existence — actual, painful, human existence — is prior to essence, and much more important than it. existence is a constant struggle, a struggle to become, to be born. in placing existence at the heart of matters, one is forced to abandon, not only Hegelianism, but also every other system, and even all hope for a consistent system. although reality itself may be a system for God, it can never be seen as such from the perspective of one in the midst of existence.
• The tragedy of Christendom, of easy Christianity, is that existence has ceased to be an adventure and a constant risk in the presence of God, and has become a form of morality or a doctrinal system.

Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844–1900

• Master–Slave Morality. Master morality is the morality of the strong. The ‘good’ is the noble, strong, and powerful, while the ‘bad’ is the weak, cowardly, and timid. Masters create these values based on what they find helpful to themselves.
• Slave morality is the morality of the weak. Slaves respond to master-morality with their own morality that devalues that which masters values and slaves do not have. Slave morality is a reaction to oppression and vilifies master morality. Slave morality does not seek to transcend masters, but to make them slaves as well. Since the powerful are few in number compared to the masses of the weak, the weak gain power by corrupting the strong into believing that the causes of slavery are evil, as are the qualities they originally could not choose because of their weakness. By saying humility is voluntary, slave morality avoids admitting that their humility was in the beginning forced upon them by a master. Weaknesses become virtues. Weakness becomes goodness, sexlessness becomes purity, submission-to-people-one-hates becomes obedience, and not-being-able-to-take-revenge becomes forgiveness. Biblical principles of turning the other cheek, humility, charity, and pity are the result of universalizing the plight of the slave onto all humankind, and thus enslaves the masters as well.
• Nietzsche believed slave morality was harmful and unhealthy. It values self-sacrifice, frailty, and poverty, virtues to be rewarded only in the after-life. He believed this was an attempt to transcend our earthly selves which shifts focus away from experiencing this life as a full reality.
• An Übermensch (German for “Superman”) is a person who ignores promises of other-worldly hopes that would draw them away from the earth.
• (This goes back to the slave morality idea. The turn away from the earth is prompted by a dissatisfaction with life — a dissatisfaction that causes one to create another world to hope in.)
• The Übermensch is not driven into other worlds away from this one. He advances beyond master morality and slave morality and moral systems altogether. He creates and imposes his own values apart from an objective standard. These new values are motivated by a love of this world and of life.
• Death of God. Over the course of a thousand years, the European mind had trained itself to interpret everything that is known under a single coherent framework, namely, Christianity. This produced the kind of mind that was then capable of transcending its dogmatic foundations and concentrating on the natural world. Eventually Christianity died at its own hand. It spent a long time attuning people to the truth, but this spirit of truth turned on the roots of Christianity. People began to question how they came to believe in Christianity in the first place. This questioning and search for truth, along with scientific advancement, lead to Christianity’s death.
• ‘God is dead’ was not a triumph for Nietzsche because he understood that while God was the ultimate expression of other-worldly values, belief in God nevertheless did give meaning to life. ‘God is dead’ means that the idea of God can no longer provide a value system. Without a value system people are vulnerable to nihilism and ideologies, which is very dangerous.
• Therefore we need Übermensch. Whereas Nietzsche diagnosed the Christian value system as a reaction against life and hence destructive in a sense, the new values which the Übermensch will be responsible for will be life-affirming and creative.

Sigmund Freud, 1856–1939

• Freud popularized the idea of the unconscious mind. Your perceptions, actions, and thoughts are all informed and shaped by unconscious motivations that are not part of your voluntary control.

Carl Jung, 1875–1961

• After studying Freud, Jung believed that humans should not create their own value systems because humans can’t control themselves very well. Humans are deeply affected by things beyond their conscious control, things that nobody really knows how to conceptualize.

Paul Tillich, 1886–1965

• distinguishes between the sense and reference of “God”
• the sense is that God is the name for what concerns us ultimately. what is of ultimate concern to humans must be that which is determinative of our being or nonbeing
• as to the reference of “God” — Tillich says it is being-itself. being-itself is not just a being alongside of other beings, for beings are still subject to finitude. rather, God is the ground of being, the power of being, the structure of being. this is all we can say about God without lapsing into symbolism and metaphor
• this is a strange notion of God. on one hand, it pictures him as very immanent to all things. but there is no hint that he is personal, a God with whom we can establish any kind of relationship. moreover, Tillich’s claim that there is nothing we can literally say about God other than that he is being-itself gives his God a certain remoteness and distance
• Jesus is the bridge between us and God. Tillich speaks of the “new being” in Jesus as the Christ. new being is essential being under the conditions of existence, conquering the gap between essence and existence. we have in Jesus essential being under the conditions of existence. this is being-itself under the concrete conditions of finitude

Karl Barth, 1886–1968

• revelation does not come in propositions — but in a person. the content of revelation is God himself given to man in a nonverbal, personal encounter with Jesus
• the God who has revealed himself is the deus absconditus. this is the God to whom there is no way and no bridge, of whom we could not say or have to say one single word had he not, of his own initiative, met us at deus revelatus. the God who is revealed is not actually the deus absconditus, the transcendent God. rather the hidden God has taken on a form in order to reveal himself to us. God’s doing this is his distinguishing himself from himself, a being of God in a mode of existence, not subordinate as compared with his first hidden mode of being as God but just different. the fact that God takes on this mode of existence to reveal himself doesn’t mean that this mode fully reveals God. further, this mode of revelation is not the subject of revelation, because that would mean that God could be unveiled to us after all and that there was no longer any need of God (the hidden God) for his revelation after all. the transcendent God is important, even though we cannot know him in his transcendence
• orthodoxy maintains that God can be known in his transcendent character
• radical theologians say that the only God we can know is the deus revelatus in the form of Christ. he is the subject of revelation and does unveil the transcendent; hence the transcendent God is no longer needed
• Barth takes a mediating position between orthodoxy and the more radical theologians

Jean Piaget, 1896–1980

• constructivism
• knowledge is a process rather than state
• facts as tools rather than objective independent realities
• much of what you learn in biology today will be wrong in 20 years
• facts change over time. the only thing that doesn’t change is the manner in which people generate facts, rather than the facts themselves
• knowledge structures change over time and are embedded in the social world
• the manner in which they change over time have a structure
• abstraction is built bottom-up from action — “clean room” example
• “clean room” is too abstract, need to learn how to pick up toys and make bed first

Thomas Kuhn, 1922–1996

• an American physicist, historian, and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term “paradigm shift”
• Kuhn made several notable claims concerning the progress of scientific knowledge: that scientific fields undergo periodic “paradigm shifts” rather than solely progressing in a linear and continuous way, and that these paradigm shifts open up new approaches to understanding what scientists would never have considered valid before; and that the notion of scientific truth, at any given moment, cannot be established solely by objective criteria but is defined by a consensus of a scientific community. Competing paradigms are frequently incommensurable; that is, they are competing and irreconcilable accounts of reality. Thus, our comprehension of science can never rely wholly upon “objectivity” alone. Science must account for subjective perspectives as well, since all objective conclusions are ultimately founded upon the subjective conditioning/worldview of its researchers and participants.
• science is subjective (postmodernism)
• scientists bring own agendas/presuppositions to the subject of study

John Hick, 1922 — 2012

• ultimate reality (the Real) is beyond comprehension and inspection. we have God only as we experience and understand him
• the Real has been mediated through various means, including the natural world, to cultures at different times and places in history. each society conceptualizes its own notion of ultimate reality in the form of the particular god or gods worshiped in that society. all of these conceptions in all religions are human attempts to articulate human experience and understanding of the ultimate reality
• the Real does exist, but there is little we can say about the Real in itself
• God is both transcendent and immanent
• no religion is better or worse than any other. all point ot the same thing, the Real. which God you worship and which religion you folow is solely a function of your time and place in culture and history, but all roads lead to the same God. hence, there is no reason to evangelize people from other religions, for all of us actually worship the same God, and all will be saved. religious exclusivism is unnecessary

Jordan Peterson, 1962 — Present

• Apriori structure
• Let’s assume that the way and the truth and the life is a pattern of perception and action — a personality. Then let’s assume that this personality was fleshed out in the prophetic stories and elaborated in the clearest archetypal sense in the story of Christ: Ultimate responsibility for the suffering of being and forthright encounter with and defeat of evil, culminating in the transcendence of death itself (through death and rebirth). The a priori structures are neither propositions nor facts. They are personalities. (This was the great realization of the psychoanalysts.)
• Any simple “facts to values” hypothesis is certainly and definitively wrong, as the facts require an interpretive structure (which is why we need a brain: the facts do not speak for themselves).
• The interpretive structure is a structure of values (expressed in partially explicit forms in fiction of various levels of depth) and is much more accurately construed as a game, a personality or a story than as a fact (and such accurate construal is necessary if the problem of morality is to be solved solidly and permanently).
• The interpretive structure (the biological structure that undergirds motivation, perception, cognition and emotion) is a product of evolution, and has adapted to the facts, whatever they are, over an immense expanse of time. The facts that reveal themselves over the span of thousands or even millions of years are not the same “self-evident” facts that present themselves to individual observers in the course of the experience of a lifetime.
• The interpretive structure is hierarchical, emergent, socially-constructed (and the social landscape is so old that it is part of the environment that shaped the biology). Its structure needs to be understood — or at least considered — before any serious conversation about the derivation of values from facts can be undertaken.
• The structure of values has emerged bottom-up (reciprocity, trust, iterative games) starting with behavior, as shaped socially, through conflict and consensus and only then mapped in any articulate manner and rendered susceptible to rational inquiry — thus, as Nietzsche objected, ethics were not first derived rationally and then applied (and are unlikely to be derived in that manner in the present or future).
• The brain is actually adapted not only to the world of “facts” as revealed moment to moment but to the existence of the interpretive structure, instantiated social as well as psychologically (because that structure is functionally as old as the facts themselves).
• The brain uses narrative to guide actions in the world, as it cannot rely or even gain access to unmediated facts. The fact of that usage, and the fact of its selection by evolution, provides proof either of its necessity or its value (take your pick).

Rationalists, Empiricists, Hume, and Kant

Two premises from which people argued to arrive at knowledge are empiricism and rationalism. The empiricists generally believed that knowledge has to be arrived at through sense experience, the power of human reason is limited, and the world is not intelligible. They had a more modest idea of what science can accomplish. The British Empiricists include: John Locke (1632–1704), George Berkeley (1685–1753), and David Hume (1711–1776). On the other hand, the rationalists generally believed that knowledge can be arrived at through the use of reason and that the world is intelligible. The Continental Rationalists include: Rene Descartes (1596–1650), Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), and Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716).

Kant saw that rationalism was unable to overcome the difficulties posed by the problem of the communication of substances and that empiricism had led to Hume’s critique that, if only that knowledge is valid which is acquired through experience, there is no valid knowledge of such fundamental matters as the notion of cause and effect or the idea of substance. Kant proposed a radical alternative to both systems. He argued that we arrive at knowledge through intermediary structures fundamental to the mind. These structures are time, space, and the twelve categories (causality, existence, substance, etc.). “Time, space, and the twelve categories are not something that we perceive through the senses, rather, they are the structures that our mind has to use in order to organize the sensations that are fed to it by the senses. To make something thinkable, we must place it within the molds of our mental structures. The senses provide a chaotic multitude of sensations. It is only after the mind orders them within the structures of time, space, and the categories that they become intelligible experiences.” Consequently, in knowledge, what we have is not things as they are in themselves, but rather things as our mind is able to grasp them. Therefore, there is no such thing as purely objective knowledge.

“Kant’s work also meant that many of the arguments traditionally used in support of Christian doctrine were no longer valid. For instance, since existence is not a datum derived from reality, but rather one of the categories of the mind, there is no way to prove the existence of God or of the soul.” This does not mean an absolute denial of God of the soul. What it means is that, if such things are true, reason cannot know them, just as the eye cannot hear and the ear cannot see.

For Kant, the principle of practical reason is “to act in such a manner that the rule for your action can be made a universal rule.” Practical reason, as opposed to pure reason, does know the existence of God as the judge of all action, of the souls and its freedom as the occasion for moral action, and of life after death as the means for rewarding good and punishing evil.

Modernity and Postmodernity

Let’s first discuss modernity.

Human Consciousness

In modernity, God is no longer the starting point of philosophy, rather, human consciousness is. It is up to human consciousness to structure and certify whatever is true in regard to reality. Man then takes the function of God as the source of reality and intelligibility. The mind is active in structuring sense data and making a judgment about what is perceived. In this way, one’s understanding of the world is based on the human consciousness’ structuring of the world.

As a result, there is no more believing something because of tradition or authority. A modernist would reject the idea of believing in something just because it was taught in church or read in the Bible. Belief comes from the mind actively processing and certifying data. And God is not the starting point of thinking. What is needed for true understanding is evidence and argument.

Knowledge and Objectivity

Reason is deemed capable of grasping and interacting correctly with the world, and it is held that this is true for all people. The only beliefs that qualify as knowledge are beliefs supported by foundational beliefs that are self-evident, evident to the senses, or are incorrigible. The beliefs most capable of being justified are beliefs of science based on empirical data. Beliefs that are not a matter of pure reason nor open to sense perception are not objects of knowledge. Additionally, objectivity is possible and is most clearly seen in science.

As a result, this puts an end to metaphysics, for the subjects normally discussed in that discipline are beyond empirical investigation.

Human Freedom and Individuality

There is an emphasis on the individual, individual rights, and freedom. Authority and tradition is put aside in favor of the individual. Each person is encouraged to decide on the basis of evidence and argument what is right to believe and do.

The Goodness of Human Nature

In modernity, problems of modern culture do not stem from moral or spiritual inadequacies. Basic human nature is good (and can be tapped into through education), and people are rational enough to see what is in their best interests.

Science and Progress

Modernity rejects fatalistic acceptance of nature and history as reflecting God’s immutable ordering of the world. The modern spirit promises to liberate humanity from fate and all other restraints. The modern world is built on and relies heavily on science and technology. The predominant attitude is that they show human culture as continually progressing. Science and technology are seen by many as the saviors of society, having the capacity to lead humanity to utopia.

In response to modernity sprung up postmodernity.

Postmodern Epistemology

In postmodernity, each human consciousness must still structure its understanding of the world, but prospects of justifying one’s beliefs by properly basic beliefs are gone. Knowledge is seen as a web of interconnected beliefs. The beliefs can be coherent as a whole, but the possibility of knowing the beliefs are true is gone. Additionally, science does not operate with pristine objectivity and without bias in handling data. There are no theory-neutral observations. Scientists’ observations are colored by their conceptual framework, a framework that comes from their life situation, training as scientists, and knowledge of current scientific theory. It is impossible to put presuppositions aside.

As a result, there is no absolute truth, or at least, no one is in a position to know absolute truth. We are all products of our cultural and linguistic community and can not interpret reality objectively. We do not know the objects of knowledge directly or as they are, but through the filter of our own experience and setting.

Human Freedom in Community

Postmodernity places an emphasis on relatedness and community. Human freedom is used to further personal development as part of a larger program for growth of the whole community.

The Goodness of Human Nature

The 20th century atrocities disillusioned many about the goodness of human nature. Postmodernists have mixed feelings about this.

Power

Postmodernity asserts that because there is an infinite number of ways to interpret a complex set of phenomena (which is true), you can’t make a case that any of those modes of interpretation are canonical. And so if there is no canonical element based on some kind of reality, the interpretations serve some other master. And this master for the postmodernist is power. Postmodernists typically don’t believe in competence, in authority, or in an objective world (because everything is language-mediated). Everything is attributed to power and dominance.