A History of Western Philosophy: Modern Philosophy II

God \ Mind \ Matter: For Descartes, extension is the essence of matter; for Spinoza, only God alone; Leibniz rejected extension as the attribute of substance, and a denial of the reality of matter

The conception of Substance: derived from subject and predicate. Some words can be either subjects or predicates; others can only occur as subjects -- these words are held to designate substances.

Descartes

- Principia Philosophaie 1644 -- regarded the bodies of men and animals as machines; animals he regarded as devoid of consciousness; men have a soul which comes into contact with 'vital spirits', and though the soul cannot affect the quantity of motion in the universe, it can alter the direction of motion. 'My arm moves when I will that it shall move, but my will is a mental phenomenon and the motion of my arm a physical phenomenon. Why...does my body behave as if my mind controlled it? ...Suppose you have two clocks: whenever one points to the other hour, the other will strike, so that if you saw one and heard the other, you would think the one caused the other to strike'

- the idea was that the soul was in a sense, wholly independent of the body.**This theory explained the appearance of interaction while denying its reality. The first law of motion - a body left to itself will move with constant velocity in a straight line, but there is no action thereafter. All interaction if of the nature of impact.

- Discourse on Method 1637, Meditation 1642 -- 'I think therefore I am'. I may have no body or be deceived by my surroundings, but nothing could deceive me if I did not exist. I am a thing that thinks. The process by which this argument is reached is called 'Cartesian doubt'. The qualities of an object can change, but the essence of the object, can still be understood by the mind, hence the conclusion that the perception of external things is acquired by the mind, and not the senses. 

Spinoza

-Ethics -- sets forth an ethic baed on metaphysics and the psychology of the will

- God \ Mind \ Matter -- mind and matter were independent substances, but were both attributes of God. There is no free will as everything that happens is a manifestation of God's nature. The mind has knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God but the passions distract and obscure our intellectual vision of the whole. Passions are governed by self-preservation until we realize that what is real and positive is what unites us to the whole. When man grasps the sole reality of the whole, he is free. 'The mind can bring it about, that all bodily modifications or images of things may be referred to the idea of God'. There is something in the human mind that is eternal, and in God an idea which expresses the essence of this, and this idea is the eternal part of the mind.

- It is important to distinguish Spinoza's ethics from his metaphysics. His metaphysic can be called 'logical monism' - that the world as a whole is a single substance, and the belief that every proposition has a single subject and predicate, which leads us to the conclusion that relations and plurality is illusory. 

- In his ethics, he shows how it is possible to live nobly even when we realize the limits of human power - e.g. 'nothing that a man can do will make him immortal, and it is therefore futile to spend time in fears and lamentations over the fact that we must die'

Leibniz

- extension involves plurality and therefore belongs to an aggregate of substances; an infinite number of substances, which he called 'monads' . Monads form a hierarchy, in which some are superior to others in the clearness and distinctness which they mirror the universe; a human body is composed of monads, but there is one dominant monad, the soul. 

- Arguments for the existence of God: 

1) in the case of God, essence implies existence, because it is better that a Being who possesses all perfection exists that not, and a perfection is defined as a quality which is positive and absolute

2) refers back to Aristotle's argument of the unmoved mover. Everything finite has a cause, which in turn had a cause, and so on. But the first term must not be uncaused, and that is God. Kant - if the existence of the world can only be accounted for by the existence of a necessary Being, then there must be a Being whose essence involves existence. And if so, then reason alone, without experience, can define such a Being. There must be a reason for this contingent world, and this reason must be sought among eternal truths; hence a reason for existence must exist, and can only exist as eternal truths as thoughts in the mind of God, the single cause that regulated the minds. 

A History of Western Philosophy: Modern Philosophy 1

- 'Modern history: - the diminishing authority of the Church, and the increasing authority of science; states replaced the Church as the authority that controls culture
- Science prevails by its intrinsic appeal to Reason. Arguments are made on a basis of probability and regarded as liable to modification 
- Theoretical Science is an attempt to understand the world // Practical Science is an attempt to change the world
- Modern Philosophy retains an individualistic and subjective character; marked in Descartes who builds up all knowledge from the certainty of his own existence
- Italian Renaissance (15th C): broke down the scholastic system, revived the study of Plato, demanded independent thought and intellectual activity as a delightful social pursuit
- 5 important states: Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papal Domain, Naples
- The Reformation and Counter-Reformation represent the rebellion of less civilised nations against the intellectual domination of Italy -- Luther, Calvin, Loyola. Luther and Calvin reverted to Saint Augustine with the purpose of diminishing the power of the Church. By the doctrine of predestination, the fate of the soul after death was made wholly independent of the actions of the priests.
- Copernicus believed that all celestial motions must be circular and uniform. The merits of the new astronomy were the recognition that what one believed since ancient times could be false; second, the test of scientific truth is a collection of facts, combined with speculations
- Kepler's discovery of his 3 laws of planetary motion (1609): 1. the planets describe elliptic orbits, of which the sun occupies one focus; 2. the line joining a planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times; 3. the square of the period of revolution of a planet is proportioned to the cube of its average distance from the sun
- 1. the substitution of ellipses for circles involves the abandonment of an aesthetic bias which has governed Greek astronomy 2. the varying velocity of the planet at different points of its orbit appeared shocking and asymmetrical 3.
- Galileo: explained the importance of acceleration (change of velocity) in dynamics; any change, either in rapidity or direction, is due to the action of 'force' -- this is later enunciated by Newton as the 'first law in motion'. Galileo established the law of falling bodies: 'when a body is falling freely, its acceleration is constant' -- what he proved was there was no measurable difference of velocity based on the size of the same substance. If a body were not falling, it would cover a certain horizontal distance in flight, and fall vertically with a velocity proportional to the time during which it has been in flight -- Parabola
-Newton: defined 'force' as the cause of change of motion. 'Every body attracts every other with a force directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them'
-17th C:
1) removal of almost all traces of animism from the laws of physics. The first law of motion proposed that lifeless matter, once set moving, will continue to move unless stopped by some external cause. The solar system will keep going by its own momentum without the need of outside interferences.
2) conception of man's place in the universe. In Newtonian world, the earth was a minor planet rather than the centre of heavens
3) abandonment of absolute space and time



Machiavelli
- Political Philosophy (uses scientific techniques, values process over ends) -- Machiavelli's philosophy is scientific and empirical, based upon his own experience of affairs, concerned to set forth the means to assigned ends, regardless of whether the ends are good or bad
- The Prince: concerned with how principalities are won, how they are held and lost. It is necessary for a prince to  be 'a great feigner and dissembler...'
- Discourses: discussion of the papal powers. Begins by placing eminent men in an ethical hierarchy: 1st the founders of religion, 2nd the founders of monarchies, then literary men. He holds that religion should have a prominent place in the State, not on the ground of truth, but as a social cement. His criticism of the Church are that its conduct has undermined religious belief, and the temporal powers of the popes prevents the unification of Italy. His political arguments are not based on Christian grounds as compared to medieval writers who had a conception of a 'legitimate' power , which was that of the Pope and Emperor. In Machiavelli, power is for those who have the skill to seize it in a free competition. 
- He prides national independence, security, and well-ordered constitutions. The best constitution is one which apportions legal rights among prince, nobles and people in proportion to their real power.
- To achieve a political end, power is necessary; it can be advantageous to seem more virtuous than your adversary

Erasmus and More
- the Northern Renaissance was associated with piety and virtue, in applying standards of scholarship to the Bible
- Erasmus, The Praise of Folly: two kinds of Folly - one praised ironically, the other praised seriously i.e. Christian simplicity
- More, Utopia: all things are held in common; the government is a representative democracy; family life is patriarchal

Francis Bacon
-The Advancement of Learning 'knowledge is power'
-he believed that while reason could show the existence of God, everything else in theology could only be known by revelation. 'double truth' -- that of reason and revelation
-'idols' -- bad habits of mind that cause people to fall into error

Hobbes
-empiricist like Locke, but also an admire of mathematical method, inspired by Galileo
-Leviathan:
- declares that life is a motion of the limbs, therefore automata have an artificial life
- the commonwealth, which he calls Leviathan, is a creation of art and is an artificial man
- sensations are caused by the pressure of objects like sound, color, and not the object itself. the qualities in objects that correspond to our sensations are motions. the succession of our thoughts is governed by laws sometimes those of association, sometimes those of purpose. \\there is nothing universal but names and without words we would not conceive any general ideas. without language, there would be no truth or falsehood as those words are attributes of speech.\\
-reason is not innate but developed by industry
-we call a thing 'good' when it is an object of desire and 'bad' when it is an object of aversion. 'will' is the last aversion remaining in deliberation -- it is merely the strongest in the case conflict (Hobbes denies free will)
-all man are naturally equal. every man desires to preserve his own liberty and to acquire dominion over others. his desires are dictated by the impulse to self-preservation.
-social contract: when a number of people come together to choose a sovereign (a supreme power) which exercises authority over them. the covenant is not an agreement between the citizens and the ruling power; it is a covenant to obey the ruling power as chosen by the majority.
-a multitude so united is called a commonwealth. this 'leviathan' is a mortal god
-the laws of property are to be entirely subject to the sovereign
-liberty is the absence of external impediments to motion. it is consistent with necessity.
- the right of self-preservation is regarded as absolute and subjects have the right of self-defense, even against monarch. in addition, a man has no duty to a sovereign who cannot protect him.
- the best form of State, according to Hobbes, is monarchy. this reflects his contention that powers of the State should be absolute
- to note that Hobbes always considers the national interest as a whole with the implicit assumption that all citizens are the same