Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

by Simon Blackburn

This is what we aim at when we investigate the structures that shape our view of the world. Our concepts or ideas form the mental housing in which we live. We may end up proud of the structures we have built. Or we may believe that they need dismantling and starting afresh. But first, we have to know what they are.

Human beings are relentlessly capable of reflecting on themselves.

What Backburn says makes us unique.

We might wonder whether what we say is ‘objectively’ true, or merely the outcome of our own perspective, or our own ‘take’ on a situation.

A historian, for example, is more or less bound at some point to ask what is meant by ‘objectivity’ or ‘evidence’, or even ‘truth’, in history.

at that point, whether they recognize it or not, they become philosophers.

How is philosophy learned? A better question is: how can thinking skills be acquired?

doing it well is not primarily a matter of acquiring a body of knowledge. It is more like playing the piano well.

To process thoughts well is a matter of being able to avoid confusion, detect ambiguities, keep things in mind one at a time, make reliable arguments, become aware of alternatives, and so on.

To sum up: our ideas and concepts can be compared with the lenses through which we see the world. In philosophy the lens is itself the topic of study.

Reflection matters because it is continuous with practice. How you think about what you are doing affects how you do it,

The Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus (1473–1543) reflected on how we know about motion. He realized that how we perceive motion is perspectival: that is, whether we see things as moving is the result of how we ourselves are placed and in particular whether we ourselves are moving.

It is the most commonplace fact, for instance, that thinking of some things (mental) can cause people to blush (physical). Thinking of a future danger can cause all kinds of bodily changes: hearts pound, fists clench, guts constrict.

Examples of mental states causing physical responses .

So the middle-ground answer reminds us that reflection is continuous with practice, and our practice can go worse or better according to the value of our reflections. A system of thought is something we live in, just as much as a house,

Goya believed that many of the follies of mankind resulted from the ‘sleep of reason’.

Reflection enables us to step back, to see our perspective on a situation as perhaps distorted or blind, at the very least to see if there is argument for preferring our ways, or whether it is just subjective.

Since there is no telling in advance where it may lead, reflection can be seen as dangerous. There are always thoughts that stand opposed to it. Many people are discomfited, or even outraged, by philosophical questions.

How can we know that the world as we take it to be, is the world as it is? How do we begin to think about the relation between appearance and reality:

These are problems of the self, and its mortality, its knowledge, and the nature of the world it inhabits; problems of reality and illusion. They are all raised in the oldest philosophical texts we have, the Indian Vedas, stemming from about 1500 BC.

Copernicus and Galileo

If science tells us all that there is, what becomes of the human soul, human freedom, and our relationship with God?

He himself was one of the leaders of the scientific revolution,

But Descartes was also a pious Catholic. So for him it was a task of great importance to show how the unfolding scientific world—vast, cold, inhuman, and mechanical—nevertheless had room in it for God and freedom, and for the human spirit.

we start with Descartes because he was the first great philosopher to wrestle with the implications of the modern scientific world view.

Why he starts with Descartes: first modern philosopher. Meaning, first one that deals with consequences of science (like Copernicus and Galileo). Greeks and medieval philos never had to.

start right from the foundations.

For he has found that even his senses deceive him,

dreams,

paintings.

‘there is not one of my former beliefs about which a doubt may not properly be raised’.

malicious demon

An evil demon could be deceiving Descartes.

The second Meditation begins with Descartes overwhelmed by these doubts.

I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind.

Having saved his ‘self’ out of the general seas of scepticism, Descartes now asks what this self is.

The senses sometimes deceive us.

An argument is valid when there is no way—meaning no possible way—that the premises, or starting points, could be true without the conclusion being true (we explore this further in Chapter 6). It is sound if it is valid and it has true premises, in which case its conclusion is true as well.

The senses sometimes deceive us.

Is this premise true? Is it true that we cannot distinguish occasions of error—things like illusions, delusions, misinterpretations of what we are seeing—from others?

But we only know that the senses sometimes deceive us because further investigations—using the very same senses—show that they have done so. We find out, for instance, that a quick glimpse of shimmering water misled us into thinking there was water there. But we discover the mistake by going closer, looking harder, and if necessary touching and feeling, or listening.

Perhaps anticipating this kind of criticism Descartes introduces the topic of dreams.

We might try saying that events in everyday life exhibit a scale and a sheer coherence that dreams do not exhibit.

Descartes is not asking you to believe in the possibility of the Evil Demon. He is only asking you to consider it—en route to getting clear how to dismiss it.

it is not obviously useful to argue against the Evil Demon hypothesis by citing the coherence and scale of everyday experience.

I think, therefore I am. (A better translation is ‘I am thinking, therefore I am’. Descartes’s premise is not ‘I think’ in the sense of ‘I ski’, which can be true even if you are not at the moment skiing. It is supposed to be parallel to ‘I am skiing’.)

Demon’s point of view.

it is not logically possible for him to deceive me into thinking that I exist when I do not.

I cannot think that I am thinking when I am not. For in this case (and only this case) the mere fact that I think that I am thinking guarantees that I am thinking. It is itself an example of thinking.