Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

by Simon Blackburn

One of the series of satires etched by the Spanish painter Goya is entitled ‘The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters’. Goya believed that many of the follies of mankind resulted from the ‘sleep of reason’. There are always people telling us what we want, how they will provide it, and what we should believe. Convictions are infectious, and people can make others convinced of almost anything. We are typically ready to believe that our ways, our beliefs, our religion, our politics are better than theirs, or that our God-given rights trump theirs or that our interests require defensive or pre-emptive strikes against them. In the end, it is ideas for which people kill each other. It is because of ideas about what the others are like, or who we are, or what our interests or rights require, that we go to war, or oppress others with a good conscience, or even sometimes acquiesce in our own oppression by others. When these beliefs involve the sleep of reason, critical awakening is the antidote.

R12501292226 Reminded me of someone

Goya’s full motto for his etching is, ‘Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the source of her wonders.’

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

of rationalism: the power of pure unaided reason.

The emphasis on natural ways of forming belief chimes in with another strand in Hume and other British philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which is their distrust of the power of unaided reason. For these philosophers, the best contact between mind and the world is not the point at which a mathematical proof crystallizes, but the point at which you see and touch a familiar object. Their paradigm was knowledge by sense experience rather than by reason. Because of this, they are labelled empiricists, whereas Descartes is a card-carrying rationalist.

four options in epistemology (the theory of knowledge). There is rational foundationalism, as attempted by Descartes. There is natural foundationalism, as attempted in Hume. There is coherentism. And brooding over all of them, there is scepticism, or the view that there is no knowledge.

with our own selves and our own minds as special, intimate, objects of immediate knowledge. Or rather, each of us is left with his or her own mind as a special, intimate, object of immediate knowledge. For even if I can climb out of the seas of doubt onto the Cogito, I cannot climb out onto the nature of your mind.

Thinkers about mind and matter have not got much beyond Locke and Leibniz.

Analysis tells us what is meant by statements made in one form of words, in terms of statements made in other words.

Behind or above the evolutions of brain and body, there is the Real Me, receiving information, and occasionally directing operations. There will be times when left to themselves the brain and body would move one way. But with direction from the Real Me, they will go the other way. I can take over, and interfere with the way things would otherwise have gone. This is where my freedom lies.

R12504171628 As portrayed in media (eg Inside Out, Black Mirror). Also one would think of life simulation video games (eg Sims)

People are sometimes largely powerless, politically, or even psychologically (because we are not flexible, but are indeed brainwashed, or in the grip of strange obsessions that we cannot shake). When we are powerless, fatalism may be a natural frame of mind into which to relapse. If our best efforts come to nothing often enough, we need consolation, and thoughts of unfolding, infinite destiny, or karma, are sometimes consoling.

one branch is the old Turnpike Way, or whether both are, or whether neither

Because of this, what is said is immune from criticism as true or false. At best, we might scrutinize the states of mind involved, and try to see whether they are admirable or

‘existence is not a predicate’,

R12504171944 It cannot insist upon itself?

Religious belief, reduced to its respectable core, turns out to be completely inert. It has no consequences.

we are reflecting on the argument, perhaps because we are reluctant to accept the conclusion, we have two options. First, we might reject one or more of the premises. But second, we might reject the way the conclusion is drawn from the premises.

Induction is the process of taking things within our experience to be representative of the world outside our experience.

Thomas Kuhn (1922–96) argued that indeed they can.

R12404181241 Hegelian?

Paradigms can be asked to show their worth, and some of them do not stand up.

‘Internalizing’ a set of values is very close to internalizing the gaze or voice of others. Recognizing that they have a complaint against you is regarding yourself as having fallen short in their eyes, and to have internalized their voice means finding that itself weighing with you.