The Norton Introduction to Philosophy

There’s a line between rewriting information from a textbook or summarizing a primary text. I aim to figure out how to maximize my learning. Let’s take a look at Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning:

• Knowledge, or remembering facts: By taking notes and writing these things down, it’s easier to recall them later. I’m also researching these philosopher’s backgrounds by reading through their respective wikipedia pages. But I don’t say anything or test myself on them. I need a good system for this, maybe inspired by Gwern’s Spaced Repetition post.
• Comprehension: Hopefully achieved by answering questions from the textbook.
• Application: How do you apply philosophy?
• Analysis, or breaking into component parts: The introduction of the book taught the structure of philosophical arguments which helps break down primary text. The Reader’s Guide after each section does a good job of doing the same, so I can test my understanding against it.
• Synthesis, or building a structure or pattern from diverse elements: This can be done in the “free discussion” part of each section by drawing analogies to other readings.
• Evaluation or judgements: No idea.

Chapter 1: Does God Exist?

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274): The Five Ways, from Summa Theologica (Article 3)

From the textbook: “Aquinas’s arguments are designed to establish the existence of a being that differs radically from ordinary objects in various important respects.” The first two ways are versions of the cosmological arguments.

“The existence of God can be proven in five ways.”

1. The Argument of the Unmoved Mover (where motion is a transit from potentiality to actuality)
   • Whatever is in motion must have been put in motion by another.
   • It is necessary to arrive at a first mover, and this everyone understands to be God.
2. The Argument of the First Cause (the thing whose activity brings an object into being or produces an event)
   • Nothing is the efficient cause of itself.
   • It is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.
3. The Argument from Contingency, “from possibility and necessity”
   • Things in nature are either possible to have not existed, or impossible to have not existed (contingent beings vs necessary beings)
   • It is impossible for contingent beings to always exist.
   • If everything is a contingent being, there is a possibility that at one point nothing existed.
   • If at one point nothing existed, nothing could exist afterwards since nothing can come from nothing.
   • Therefore there must exist a necessary being (something that is impossible to have not existed)
   • All necessary beings must have had their necessariness caused by another necessary being.
   • Therefore there must be some being that has bestowed upon itself its necessariness, this all men speak of as God.
4. The Argument from Degree (Graduation)
   • Among beings, there are some more or less “good,” “true,” “noble,” etc.
   • “More” and “Less” the different ways something is the maximum, as in something “hotter” than another item is closer to the maximum “hottest,” same goes for “truest” and “noblest” (as written in Aristotle’s Metaphysics)
   • The maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus, such as fire which is the maximum heat is the cause of all hot things.
   • Therefore there must be a “greatest” or “noblest” which is the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection and this we call God.
5. Argument from Final Cause or Ends, a Teleological argument (Governance of the World)
   • Things that lack intelligence act for an end, evident in nearly always acting in the same way to achieve best result.
   • So it is not by fortune but design they achieve their end.
   • Whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end unless directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence.
   • Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end which we call God.

Questions:

In the First Way, Aquinas claims that “whatever is in motion is put in motion by another.” Briefly state the argument for this claim.

• A change in something that could potentially be something must be initiated by something that is already in actuality.

In the Second Way, Aquinas argues for the existence of a “first cause.” Say what this means.

• Something that caused itself to exist and can cause other things to exist
• Answers say “but which is not itself caused to exist”

In the Third Way, Aquinas distinguishes between “things that are possible to be and not to be” (i.e., contingent beings) and necessary beings. Explain the distinction with examples.

• Something contingent is something like me, who could possibly have not existed if my parents died early or met other people. Necessary beings have no potential to have not existed, such as God.
• I swear I came up with that example for contingent beings before looking at the answers.

True or false: In The Five Ways, Aquinas assumes that God is an absolutely perfect being.

• True, since in the fourth reason “there must be a greatest or noblest which is the cause of every other perfection” and it is reasoned that as the genesis of perfection he must be the most perfect, or “absolutely” perfect.
• The answers section of the textbook says false, so maybe the problem lies in that “Aquinas assumes” that God is an absolutely perfect being? Or maybe that he is not “absolutely” perfect and instead is the “most” perfect?

Things I’m Liking

• Taxation in the United States (Wikipedia): I’m going to be doing my taxes by hand this year to get a better understanding of the whole system. This wikipedia article is surprisingly complex and full of fun graphs.
• RateYourMusic: A beautiful, functional website that lets you explore people’s opinions about music and see their collections/lists. “The IMDB of music,” complete with genre tags and descriptors (“raw,” “nocturnal,” “energetic) but the structure of the site is simple and reminds me of the Unix philosophy. As with any art it’s easy to be caught up in the “Fantano effect” or hipsterish culture signalling competitions, but that’s easy to overlook since the site is such a wealth of information about music. There’s nothing like it. I had an old account from high school and it was fun to look back at what music I liked during that time. I’m going through the Best of 2018 to see what I missed during my time in China.
• Kirsten Gillibrand’s Mandarin: A 2020 Democratic candidate speaking some () Mandarin.
• John Bartholomew: Using the Clock as a Weapon: This is the fifth episode of his 3+0 games. He’ll play five games an episode to try working on one of his weaknesses: Time management. Over the series, you can tell he’s improving and his confidence is increasing.

Misc

I am spending some time in the east side library today, and walked towards the “kids table” to grab some scratch paper. They were playing flash games, and after sneakily watching over their shoulders I realized they were the same games I played in grade school like Papa’s Pizzeria. You’d think they would be playing something newer.

Chess is on my radar again, but I’ve played a few games (mostly 3+0s and 10+0s) with no wins. Every time I lose, this review of Halcali’s Halcali Bacon