Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy
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them?
Josh Goldman
How else would i read this book written by another person? In des carte wildest fancy could i be so creative as to dream up the contents of this book? Is tghat possible? Is it likely?
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past?
Josh Goldman
While one taking consequences into account to make plans appears to be the future effecting the past, it is actually recalling experience and choosing desired outcomes accordingly; the past influencing the present
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question.
Josh Goldman
The advent of science informs that the other questions likewise have empirical solutions which render older and purely speculativsolutions less useful and important
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‘objectively’ true, or merely the outcome of our own perspective, or our own ‘take’ on a situation.
Josh Goldman
Definition of objective vis a vis subjective
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being able to avoid confusion, detect ambiguities,
Josh Goldman
:)
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In philosophy the lens is itself the topic of study.
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Fatalism, or the belief that the future is fixed whatever we do,
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their relations with each other become different.
Josh Goldman
Even if its merely an academic explanation for subconscious behavior, a mere label rather than a plan of action?
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Hobbes (1588–1679) memorably called ‘the war of all against all’.
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on.
Josh Goldman
Alterntively, past experience of instances of swindling inform these wise precautions
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better.
Josh Goldman
Ambiguous in that this applies to the former presumption of selfish intentions
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believed
Josh Goldman
SOocrafties and plato agree that virtue is knowledge and sin follows forgetfulness or misunderstanding harm to be benefit and the talmud sotah agrees a man sins by dint of a Foreign and foolish spirit
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Convictions are infectious,
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it is ideas for which people kill each other.
Josh Goldman
I tgink this isnt in the end but still in the middle. In the end the killing is for the impulse of self interest like hoarding resources for my country to the exclusion of another or forcig slave labor for my benefit. Tje ideology enshrouding such a behavior is merely a justification for this impulse. Maybe to resolve cognitive dissonance. Then again inasmuch as these mysanthropic behaviors arise from us vs. Them, ideas may play a role in defining these two groups and who is in which group
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the sleep of reason, critical awakening is the antidote.
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Some are fearful that their ideas may not stand up as well as they would like if they start to think about them.
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identified critical self-reflection with freedom,
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1619.
Josh Goldman
Parmenides reasoned the the world of change is an illusion and reality is static. I supose he imagined it is also very different from e.g. A snapshot of the world frozen in time where i am standing still because my own existance is a change from 36 years ago bef my birth
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Nor did Descartes come to his enterprise with a totally innocent mind: he himself had an intense education
Josh Goldman
:)
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Descartes was also a pious Catholic.
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Descartes also intends to rescue the modern world view from the charge of atheism and materialism.
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we start with Descartes because he was the first great philosopher to wrestle with the implications of the modern scientific world view.
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I should totally cease to exist....
Josh Goldman
Becausde till now he hasnt disproved anything with evidence but only cast doubt on it in lieu of evidence this should read i should ceasde to have evidence that i exist
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in.
Josh Goldman
?
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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).
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Whereas to open the way to Descartes’s major doubts, it would seem that he needs ‘we cannot distinguish even over time and with care whether our senses are deceiving us’. And this last does not seem to be true.
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awake?
Josh Goldman
Even if all these bizarre suspicions were so, whats their consequence? Do they suggest that nothing matters? No because even in the suspected dream, our behavior has consequences, wise planning and effort is rewarded and sloth or cfrime have ill effects.
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it is psychologically impossible to keep doubt about the external world alive outside the study. But that does not matter. The doubt is worth bothering about because of the task he is engaged upon. This is the task of finding foundations of knowledge, of ensuring that his beliefs are built on a sound footing. Descartes’s inquiry is made for purely intellectual reasons.
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I am not
Josh Goldman
This is only a fallacy bec the author forgot the word doubt in the coclhusion. I doubt im the man to get bad news later.
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on’.
Josh Goldman
?
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Our reasonings are apt to be even more fallible than our senses.
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Knowledge achieved by this kind of rational insight is known as ‘a priori’: it can be seen to be true immediately, without any experience of the way of the world.
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perfection.
Josh Goldman
?
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trusting only clear and distinct ideas.
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Perhaps we can only touch God’s supposed qualities by way of definition, but cannot comprehend them.
Josh Goldman
How r tgese diifferent things?
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Descartes. He was undoubtedly more optimistic about the trademark argument than we can be because he inherited a number of ideas from previous philosophical traditions. One very important one is that genuine causation is a matter of the cause passing on something to an effect. Causation is like passing the baton in a relay race. So, for example, it takes heat to make something hot, or movement to induce motion. This is a principle that surfaces again and again in the history of philosophy,
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it seems as though Descartes (once more influenced by ideas from previous philosophical traditions) may have slipped into thinking that an idea of X actually shares X. So an idea of infinity, for instance, would be an infinite idea.
Josh Goldman
I think this is true. Inasmuch as true infinity cant be conceived; we cant picture in lour minds an inumerable amount of objects; at best we can imagine a series of individual objects or a limited group of them in succession but tgis is not true infinity. Or else we can imagine the idea of negating finitude; we could comment that an object is limited bt tgis is not the same as infinity. likewisde its true for any x. I arrived at this comment after reflecting that any thought in our minds is a nmuemonic and neurological analog of an experienced, sensed, object as in the bok to build a mind by ray kurtzweil
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the infamous ‘Cartesian circle’.
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memory
Josh Goldman
How is a memory a proof
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I may recognize something as a Pomeranian, or a member of the Rolling Stones, or my wife, without knowing any general principles that ‘justify’ the verdict.
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Socrates’ procedure is only apt to give philosophers a bad name.
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Some of us may have the dark suspicion that it is because mention of God clouds the mind rather than clarifying it.
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no reasoning could ever bring us to a state of assurance
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pessimism
Josh Goldman
The author repeatedly confuses these two. Descartes only suggests doubt. Never evidence contrary to something. Actually to this end its in a way self abrogative. It leaves the philosopher with no more yet no less than bef he began
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non-rational or natural foun-dationalism.
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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,
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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
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the champion of British empiricism, John Locke (1632–1704),
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‘God’ simply labels whatever it is that ensures this harmony between belief and the world.
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But, as Hume says in the passage just quoted, we do not find a need to raise this question in normal life. The hyperbolic doubt, and the answer to it, is in this sense unreal.
Josh Goldman
:)
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