 Rwy'n credu ond mor hwnna, a dwi'n credu, ond rydyn ni'n defnyddio'n ffilosofi, ac yn gallu digwydd o'n ffilosofi, ac rwy'n credu ond rydyn ni'n ffilosofi o'n ffilosofi o'n dweud. Rydyn ni'n credu iddyn ni'n credu i gydag am ffilosofi a'r ddwy i ddim yn cael ei ddweud o'r hyn. Rwy'n credu i'r wych i'n ei edrych y ffrif. Mae'r hunan yn ysgolwyr yma, dwi'n credu i'r hyn. ac mae'n ei wneud o'r 26 oedd eich pryd yn newid ystod yn ystod y cyd-wyrsio eich cynllun a'r pryd yn oed o'r cwrs o'r Uned Ffnol, ffantyfyn yw'r unrhyw o'r un oedd yn ffilosofi, ac mae'r ddweud y dyfodol cyfos advancedd. Mae'r bod y cwrs yw'r maes oedd yn ymdweud o'ch cyd-wyrsio i'n mynd i'r byw. I sat up all night working on it and I thought, actually I really enjoyed that, and then I did quite well on it which always helps doesn't it. I started reading more and the more I read the more I thought this is what I want to do. I ended up going full time to London University then came on here to do my graduate work. I just for three years at Bedford College in London I was walking on air. I couldn't believe that actually the government in those days was paying me to study this absolutely fascinating and fantastic subject. And as I say, three years walking on air, I've come down to earth a little bit since then, that was quite a few decades ago. But I still adore philosophy and my aim in these lectures is to convey to you some of the enthusiasm that I have for the subject, some of the love I have for the subject. The thing I like most about it is that there are all these things that you might have thought about as you're lying in bed, things like, does space come to an end? Somebody, the barman in a pub once told me that he often lay in bed wondering if space came to an end. But I'm actually never getting anywhere because how do you think about something like that if you haven't been trained to think about things like that? And I explained to him that there was a whole subject devoted to the study of such things as that. And it's philosophy. So does space come to an end? Well, if it does, it means you get to a point where you can't put your arm out. What's in its way? There's just no space to put your arm into, is there? Is space a box or does it carry on to infinity? That's the question that fascinated him. But I'm sure you wouldn't be here if you didn't have a few things like that. And I hope that sometime over the next five weeks I might address the question that bothers you. And if not, just ask me about it because there's going to be plenty of opportunity for you to ask. What we're going to do today is I build it and I continue to build it as a romp through the history of philosophy. It really is a romp because look at all the things I'm going to do and we've got one and a half hours. I could spend six weeks talking about this lot, so it really will be a romp. But I hope what I'll do is show you a bit about how these people thought and why they thought what they thought. And that'll introduce us to the different areas of philosophy, which is what we'll be studying after today. Okay, we're going to start with the chap at the top, a chap called Democritus. He was a pre-socratic. In other words, he lived before Socrates in the 5th century BC. Those are his dates and he was an atomist. I should tell you something about what is it that makes a philosopher. The first philosophers were actually also the first scientists. They were the first people who looked for explanations of things that were natural. So instead of looking to God or the supernatural in some form or another, they looked for explanations that were earthbound, if you like. So Democritus was the pupil of somebody called Leucopus. He took most of his theory from him or started it, but Democritus developed it in a big way. He came from the idea that nothing comes from nothing. The idea that nothing either comes into existence or goes out of existence because everything that exists just exists, it is or it isn't. Anything that isn't isn't, so it's not very interesting. If you have a view of the universe like that, that nothing comes into existence and nothing goes out of existence, then you've got a problem, haven't you? You've got a problem with change. Things are changing all the time. Surely things are coming out of existence, coming into existence all the time. I don't know how many grandchildren you have, but there's something that's come into existence. Surely it's complete nonsense to think that things don't come into existence. Well, Democritus and the other atomists explained this. That was the question they set themselves. How do we explain change, given that nothing comes into or goes out of existence? Their answer was that what exists is the void and within that void there are indivisibles. There's a set number of things that have different shapes, different properties, etc. But they exist and they are changeless. In other words, they don't come into existence or go out of existence. What they do do is form and reform into different sorts of aggregates. You have the indivisibles, the things that are as they are and don't change, the atoms. They come together to create things like you and things like this chair here and things like this flipchart and things like this microphone and so on. Can you see how an atom becomes an explanatory particle? It's what explains change. Can you also see that that explanation is a completely natural explanation? It's not postulating God or anything supernatural. It's just saying that there exists the void and there are atoms within the void. Why do you think they're indivisible, these things? I've given you the answer and what I've said actually. Why are they indivisible atoms? I know these days that atoms aren't indivisible at all. But why would they think they were? Anyone? No? If you can't come into existence and go out of existence, if you can't change, how could the atoms change? How could they divide and come back together? If these are the things that enter into new combinations all the time, then they can't themselves change, can they? So they are the indivisibles. Somebody else had another way of describing this. Who was it? Ah, Zeno. He said, take a stick, chop it in half, chop it in half again, chop that half in half, chop that half in half and that half in half and so on. Carry on. You can only get to two possibilities. One is that it's infinitely divisible, isn't it? You can keep on going into halves. And the other is that you reach a point where as you chop it, you no longer have wood. What you have is something that isn't wood. You've cut it beyond the point where it's wood. And that was another argument for atomism. OK, so that's the presecratics. You've had 10 minutes of the presecratics, so that's your lot. I should tell you a little bit more. This chap wrote over 60 books. He was hugely unpopular. He was known as the laughing philosopher, which makes it sound as if he ought to be popular. But he was laughing because he was laughing cynically at everyone else and their stupidity. So he doesn't strike me as a nice sort of chap. But he wrote all these books, and all we have of him now is the fragments. They are literally fragments of parchment. We have a couple of pieces by people who also propounded his theories. But we have a huge amount of stuff by his detractors, the people who didn't like him. So remember, as you're reading something like that, you've got to bear in mind that they don't like this chap. OK, well that's the presecratics. So let's move on a bit here. Let's move on to the post-secratics, if you like. Plato, of whom you will, of course, have heard, an Aristotle. Aristotle was Plato's pupil. And Plato was the pupil of Socrates. Socrates himself didn't write anything ever. Everything we know about Socrates comes down either from Plato or Socrates was also mentioned by a few of Aristophanes and a few other people who wrote plays. But Plato himself wrote in dialogue form, and he's very easy to read. I really do recommend that if you like reading dialogue form, if you're interested in philosophy, Plato is actually a good place to start. Aristotle is his pupil. He has the reputation amongst his peers of being very easy to read. But the works that we have are his lecture notes. Sadly we don't have any of his books. We have his lecture notes. And if you were to read my lecture notes, you wouldn't find them very easy to read. And Aristotle's work is also not at all easy to read. It's a shame because Plato is fantastic. And we believe that Aristotle was fantastic in the books he wrote. But let's have a look at a dispute that they had between them. Can you imagine incidentally a school where Plato was the teacher and Aristotle was a pupil? It must have been completely extraordinary, mustn't it? Okay, let's look at this particular thing. Think about the word red. Okay, what's the meaning of the word red? How do you understand the word red? Anyone prepared to have a go? Which red? Well, I'm talking about the word red. Remember there's a big difference between that and that. Okay, that with the quotes refers to the words, doesn't it? And that refers to the colour. Okay, so the person who said which red, okay, were you talking about which colour? Oh, I see. My apologies, I hadn't thought of that. I had that in mind. Okay, no, I mean that red. Okay, the colour red. Okay, so taking the word red, how do you understand its meaning? What do you understand by the word red? Anyone prepared to tell me? It's a colour, okay. But that's not going to help me much if I don't know the meaning of the word red, do I? I mean let's assume I know the meaning of the word colour. Would that tell me the meaning? Yes, that's interesting, isn't it? Because the other thing is that here's a little thought experiment for you. Did you hear the lady said it's a certain wavelength, which of course it is in one sense, but is that how you understand the word? That's what people tell you, it's not how you understand it. There may be people in this room who don't know that, and yet they understand the word red. So that tells us that can't be the meaning of the word red, as you rightly said. You get red coming out of you? I mean in one sense I suppose you do. Yes, if you refine that a bit, it's the colour of what comes out of you when you cut yourself. Yep, okay, good. So you're talking about it by description. Is that part of the meaning of it though? Is it part of the meaning in China, for example? No, we've got two things here, haven't we? There's the word and there's the concept, which is what you think when you understand the word. So when I say the word red, you're immediately entertaining your concept of red. If I say elephant, you're immediately entertaining your concept of elephant, even though there isn't an elephant within miles, I should say. That's what the lady there said. Does it mean danger? I don't think it does mean danger, because it might do in our society, but I'm not sure it would in a society where there wasn't the correlation between red traffic lights, red berries, et cetera. I mean it means love in China, doesn't it? Isn't it the bridal colour? It's the colour of India, isn't it? Well, wherever it is. You're taught what red is, okay, so tell me what it is. Same as something else that's red. Same as something else that's red. Okay, let's take that one for a bit. Here's a way of describing red. I mean, the lady over there described it. She said it's the colour of what comes out of you when you cut yourself. Well, okay, that's a good way of understanding, isn't it? As long as somebody knows what comes out. Here's another way. This is jumper, roughly. I mean, maybe it's orange, but let's pretend. Right, certainly the colour of that gentleman's cardigan, but he's wearing a jacket, so you can't see it. Okay, I've given an ostensive definition, but was it you who said it's the same as something else called red? Why should you get the colour when I point at that? I mean, I'm pointing at lots of things apart from the colour, aren't I? Are we agreed on it? Do you know that what you see when you look at this gentleman's jumper is what I see when I look at this gentleman's jumper? Do you? You don't know. Well, no, not necessarily, because that's exactly what I'm asking. What is the colour of which you have a concept? Cos I point to that. Let's think about a child learning the concept red. So what do you do when you're explaining what red means to a child? You point to lots of other, lots of different sorts of red. That's red. The lining of your jacket is red. My skirt is sort of red. Red there, red there, and so on. Do you pick lots of jumpers to point to? Why not? No, I'm talking about red jumpers. So let's say they are all red. Why would you not point to lots of jumpers? Exactly. You might think that red means jumper instead of, or even red jumper rather than just red. So you point to lots of different things. And you also point to things that are not red. What you're trying to do is to give the child the conditions under which that is red are true. And you also want to say things like, is that red pointing to this lady's jumper? And what do you hope the child says? No. Send that man out. You hope the child says no. So the way you do it is you point to lots of different things and you hope that the child abstracts out what it is you're talking about. That you're not talking about a person, you're not talking about a jumper, that you're talking about that particular quality. Now, Plato and Aristotle were interested in how you explain our ability to learn language and our ability to apply concepts. Concepts are hugely important to human beings. Do you remember I said elephant a minute ago? And you all immediately had an elephant in mind, even though there isn't an elephant around here at all. That's the difference between a percept and a concept. A percept is a constituent of a perception. So if I look at this chair, a constituent of the perception I have is the colour blue. I can see the blwness of the chair, and so can you presumably. But when I think of elephant, I'm not seeing an elephant at all, am I? Instead I'm having a thought about an elephant and the thought has a conceptual content and part of that conceptual content is elephant. So what makes us different from animals, arguably, what enables us to think is that we can form concepts. We can pull apart our thinking about the world from the way the world is. So we can think about the way the world might be as well as the way the world is. You can imagine me wearing yellow now, can't you? Go on, imagine it. It doesn't suit me at all, does it? But what you're doing is you're pulling apart the percept you see of me wearing black and red, and you're replacing the black and red with yellow. That's what enables us to be creative, what enables us to be imaginative, what enables us to form plans so we can imagine ourselves going swimming this evening, whether we actually make that a reality, it depends on willpower, but we can indeed imagine it, and that's what it is to form goals, goals that you can then put into action. Are we sure animals can do it? No, I'm not going to get into that. I am, but I don't expect you to believe me at this point. No, we'll maybe get into that at some point. Plato said, this is the problem he was dealing with. How do we understand words? How do we form concepts? Words obviously stand for, if you like, concepts, so the word red, the meaning that you entertain when you think about red is your concept of red, not your percept, your concept. You've got to have the percept before you have the concept perhaps. He says, well, how do we do this? What he says is that when you look, or when you as a child looked at different sorts of red as your mother was telling you, or father was telling you the meaning of the word red, what you did is you were reminded of something you saw before birth. This is Plato's theory of an amnesis or memory. He thinks that before we're born our soul exists before birth, and it exists in the realm of being, which is where the forms are, form with a capital F. The form is the meaning of the word red, so there's the form of good, which is what we are reminded of. When we see a good act, when we see somebody do something good, we think, good, that's good. What we're doing is we're reminded of the form, which is pure goodness, and the form of red is pure redness, and the form of blue is pure blwness, and so it goes on. This says Plato is how you managed to teach a child red. You point to that, you point to that, you point to that, you point to that. Why does pointing to all these different things cause the child to form one concept? Answer, it reminds him of the form. That was Plato's theory. What's wrong with that theory? I'm telling you this theory now, and I can see some of you are thinking, eh? Why? Why are you thinking, eh? What's wrong with this theory? You can't prove it, but there are a lot of theories you can't prove. With theories we tend to give reasons for believing theories rather than proofs of theories. We hope to find proofs, but we're not always successful. No, they have to be reminded by the things that they see in this world. No, they can't think of it without being reminded, but that's reasonable, as we'll see in a minute. I'm not going to explain you the new concepts. Carburetor, for example. I'm the only one who just happens to subscribe to Plato. Carburetor. Feminism. Okay, the same way this lady did explain red, by description. Actually, I have no idea what a carburetor is. In terms of Plato's theory, we have encountered all these things. Well, okay, think of unicorn. You certainly haven't come across any unicorns, but you've still got the concept unicorn. So how would Plato explain your acquisition of the concept unicorn assuming that there isn't a form of a unicorn? Come on. Right, you've gone back to my previous question. Can I come back to you in a second? Now I've forgotten this question. What was it? Unicorn. That's a good question. Unicorns don't exist, do they? But how can you think about a unicorn if they don't exist? And how did they imagine it? Remember what I said about concepts? You pull them apart. We've seen pictures, so we've perceived it. We've seen pictures. We haven't perceived a unicorn, though. We've perceived a combination of horse, whiteness, horn, whatever. Do unicorns have wings? They don't, do they? That's pegasus. Right, okay. So what we've seen is the now, think back to democratists and the atoms. We can't think of anything that we haven't come across, you might think. But what we can do is we can take the bits that we've come across and recombine them in various ways. So you've come across birds that fly and you've come across me because you're looking at me right now. You can now imagine that I could fly, I hope. I can imagine that I can fly. Sadly, I can't do it. So what we're doing is we see the forms. There are only forms of the simple things and you put those back together again. It's a completely different understanding of this. Aristotle completely rejected the Platonic forms. He argued that we don't need to postulate such... Going back to the question I asked earlier, what's wrong with this theory? Well, one thing that's wrong with it is it's ontology. Ontology is a section of metaphysics. Metaphysics is to do with the nature of things, what there is and what its nature is. And ontology is your list of things that exist. So who believes in ghosts here? Oh, you've got no imagination any of you. Somebody over here. Okay, if you believe in ghosts, your ontology has things like chairs, people, glasses, necklaces, ghosts on it. If you believe in gods, gods on it. If you believe in fairies, fairies are on it and so on. That's your list of what there is. Aristotle says, the thing about Plato's theory is it explodes your ontology. Not only is there redness, which is a colour, there's also the form of red. So we're doubling everything up. Have you heard of a chap called Ockham? What's Ockham famous for? His razor. Ockham, who wasn't born then, of course, or even thought of, would have said we've just got to slash through this ontology. We mustn't postulate entities that are not needed for explanation. Aristotle thought, well, we can understand words and form concepts and so on because we see commonalities, samenesses, similarities between objects that exist. So instead of redness being a form up there that you were new before birth, as Plato said, redness is a commonality between different objects. Much simpler, isn't it? And if that explains, understanding the word red, why should we accept Plato's theory? Because that one's much simpler, doesn't require us to postulate anything that is other than things we can see in front of us, things we can touch. But let me ask you a question to distinguish between these two theories. If redness didn't exist, could you still have the concept of red? If redness didn't exist at all, could we still have the concept of it? And whose theory does that favor? Aristotle. So you only want Plato if you don't think Aristotle's theory can explain everything. There are some concepts, and we'll get onto them in a minute, that are very difficult to explain in terms of commonalities between things. So any concept we have that can't be explained in that way might take us back towards Plato's theory. Do you see why? Because if you have two theories, one of which is much simpler than the other, you definitely go for the simpler one, only if it can actually explain everything you want to explain. If in order to explain everything, you need to appeal to the richer one, then you have to go for the richer one. It's no good having a theory that doesn't explain anything, is it? Who's speaking? Well, it doesn't require you to decide. It does say, because any theory you postulate, whether it's scientific or philosophical, will have various ramifications. I mean, it might postulate theoretical entities like forms, or notice that Aristotle does postulate something. He postulates the existence of what? Objects, certainly, but also something else. No. Commonalities, who said that? Absolutely right. He postulates commonalities, universals, in other words, properties. Now, there's a huge question in philosophy as to whether universals actually exist. Are there both properties, sorry, objects and things that have properties, and the properties, or are there only objects and relations between them? Ah, okay, abstract objects. I wonder if you would. A commonality, actually a truth is a commonality between sentences, isn't it? There are some sentences that are true and others that aren't. Okay, let's move on from Plato and Aristotle, and we're going to get lost, but we're not going to leave this subject, because we're going to move, we've come quite a few centuries on now, we're going to talk about the rationalists and the empiricists. Notice that the empiricists were all British, Charlie and Hume. It's like a jingoistic little cheer then. Okay, the rationalists, Descartes, Leibniz and Sampinoza, the difference between these two sets of philosophers is that the rationalists believe that many of our concepts are innate. In other words, we're born with them. Whereas the empiricists believe that all our concepts come from experience, that we're born as blank slates. You've probably heard that saying. So, okay, let's think about this for a minute. First of all, can you tie these people up with Plato and Aristotle? Who do you think the rationalists are more like? Plato, absolutely. Plato said that we're born with the memory of the forms. The rationalists don't say we remember the forms, but they do say that when we're born, our mind is already stocked. Now, there are different sorts of rationalists, and instantly there are some modern philosophers, a chap called Fodor, for example, who actually thinks that we're born these days with the concept of carburetta and feminism. What? No, no, it didn't to me either. I haven't got that one. Okay, but the idea is we're born with knowledge. We've already got some knowledge of what some things are. And concepts that are candidates for things like that are concepts like causality or rationality. So, let's take causality. This is something that Hume famously talked about. If you're a rationalist, you believe that the concept of cause is a concept you're born with. If you're an empiricist, you think that all your concepts come from experience. Therefore, you must have some experience of causation that gives you your concept of causation. Can you think of what your experience of causation might be? Can anyone tell me what your experience of causation might be? Very difficult questions, incidentally. Actually, that's a complicated one because you might want to say that that's a reason rather than a cause. Actually, I don't. I think it is a cause. Can I leave that on one side? Think about causation not involving us. How about one billiard ball rolling into another and the other rolls off? Okay, do you experience causation when that happens? Do you see or otherwise experience the causal relation between the billiard balls here or not? Do you? Who said no? Why not? Good. That's right, isn't it? What you actually see is one event which is a ball rolling and it's touching another and the other ball going off. Now, if you didn't know that there was force involved there, could you work it out from what you saw? Could you? Put your hand up if you think you can't. If you could feel it, yes. That's why I wanted to use an example that we weren't actually involved in. Okay, two billiard balls. Think about this. He would have called this a necessary connection. He said the idea of causation involves, firstly, events, so the relator of the causal relation are events and one event happens before another event. It's the event before that's the cause. So there's temporal priority. There's spatial contiguity. One billiard ball must actually hit the other before the other rolls off. But then there's something else, isn't there? This something else says Hume, necessary connection. When you see one billiard ball hitting another, the reason you think that one event causes the other event, you think, had the first not happened, the second would not have happened either. Is that right? Okay, let me say that again, because that's a counterfactual. Had the first event not occurred, the second event would not have occurred either. Now that's a claim not about this world, because in this world that event did happen and so did the other. It's a claim about all possible worlds. In other words, there is no world in which that second event would have happened without that first event having happened. Does that make sense? So what you're seeing, if you're claiming to be able to see that, is a necessary connection. A connection between types of events that covers all sorts of different possible worlds. How can you see that? I don't believe you. I don't think you can see that at all. I think that this is your theory of causation. In other words, we're suggesting that causation is a theoretical relation. So if you think, those of you who know anything about the Higgs boson and the accelerator in CERN, the Higgs boson is a theoretical particle. It's a particle that's postulated within a theory. The theory says that if you do this, you will see the Higgs boson or at least see traces of the Higgs boson. If we do, that will confirm the theory. We're so sure of the theory we're spending millions of pounds to test it. In this case, we're saying the theoretical relation is causation. We don't actually see causation. We postulate it. One question over here. Sorry, can you speak up? No, because you could believe with Leibniz that there's no such thing as causation that what you have instead is lots of events that happen that are quite separate from each other and don't causally interact at all, but which are arranged in such a way that we can predict them. That's what Leibniz thought. It's a theory. It's actually quite a convincing theory but I'm not going to tell you. Take us too long. Yes, but does that mean there's nothing in between? Well, something has to be touching. Actually, this is an open question now. The question of whether there is action at a distance is disputed. But why does the moon cause the tides to change? Can anyone tell us? Gravity? Okay, where was I? Here we have this concept, causation. The concept involves several things that we can see and experience and this strange force or necessary connection that we don't seem to be able to see. Is it the empiricists or the rationalists who are winning on causation, the concept of causation? Ah, that's different. Okay, we've got here a concept that we seem to have. Okay, it's not a problem. So if we have it, it must come from experience according to the empiricists. But what I'm asking you is, can you experience necessary connection? Can you experience it to be the case that had the first ball not hit the second ball, the second ball would not have run off? Do you experience that or not? You don't, do you? Are you winning? The rationalists. Yeah, that's not what I'm asking. Let me ask you again. Come on, let's be precise here. Had the first ball not hit it, the second ball would not have rolled off? That's causation, isn't it? Okay, do you see that had the first ball not hit it, the second ball would not have rolled off? You see that. You can see if you're actually watching. Right, I don't think you can and I think you should think about that because what you're seeing in seeing that is things in different possible worlds, not in this world. You're seeing had the ball not hit it, but of course the ball did hit it, didn't it? So in this world, you haven't got a situation in which the ball didn't hit and therefore the ball didn't go off. Can I see causation in one instance? Can we see it in 100? So you might say, well, okay, I don't see causation the first time it happens. The ball hits, the ball rolls off. But when I see this happen all the time, then I see causation. Can I see in the 100 instance something I can't see in one? Good, and that's exactly what Hume says. Hume. Now look, if you're an empiricist here, and you're going here, so you've claimed that all concepts come from experience, you've found a concept that apparently doesn't come from experience. What are you going to claim? Sorry? You could claim you do experience it anyway and some people do claim that, but you could also claim that there's no such thing as causation. And that's exactly what Hume claims. What Hume claimed is that causation is an idea in our minds. It's the expectation we form when we've seen 100 billion balls hit each other and roll off. We still haven't seen causation, because if you don't see it in one, you don't see it in 100 either. But what we do form is a mental expectation that if a billion ball hits, the other one will go off. And to Hume, that was all that causation is. There's no relation in the world of causation, no force. All there is is an expectation in our minds. We project onto the world this expectation. That's what causation is. Who's winning? The rationalists or the empiricists? Right. No wonder the empiricists were British. I think it's got to be the rationalists at this point. Unless you're prepared to believe there isn't any such thing as causation. You're prepared to believe that. Actually, I'm not knocking that. There are quite a few people who do believe that. Leibniz is one of them, which is interesting, given that he's a rationalist. Now, that's an interesting question. Okay, let's pick up what the lady at the back said. When we ourselves are involved, okay, look, I'm moving this jug here. Now, I can feel that force, can't I? Okay, I can experience the fact that I'm having an effect on the world. I had a reason for doing that. It was to show you that I can move something to and have an experience. Was my action caused or was it reasoned? Was it a rational action, one that I performed for a reason? The other concept that the rationalists say can't be explained except through an innate concept is the concept of reason. How do I form the idea of a reason? Where do we get the idea of rationality? I don't see your reasons for acting, do I? I see what you do, but I can't see your reasons for doing them. How could I have a concept of my own reasons for acting unless I have a concept of your reasons for acting? If we assume that a reason is a theoretical concept that I apply in explanation of your behaviour. Actually, I lost myself in that sentence, so I probably lost you too. Shall we start again? Okay. Right, if you remember, we were looking at Plato and Aristotle, and the question we were posing ourselves is where do we get concepts from? How do we acquire knowledge of the meaning of a word? If you explain knowledge of a meaning of a word in terms of a concept, then it just pushes the question back one. What's a concept and where do we get concepts from? Plato says we recognise the forms or rather we contemplate the forms before birth, and then after birth we're reminded of these forms in instances we see around ourselves. Aristotle says there's nothing before birth. We come into being as a blank slate. We see instances and that is the forming of a concept. Rationalists and empiricists, here they are hundreds of years later, still quarreling about the same thing, and you'd better believe it, we're still quarreling about it, because there are still rationalists and there are still empiricists, and it hasn't been decided at all. The rationalists, Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza, we're really only quarreling now about key concepts in relation, rationality, space is another one. Actually, space is quite a good one. Do you think that when a baby is born, as it first starts to experience things, does it experience things at a distance or does it experience everything in two dimensions and it's only as it starts to move that it puts together things at a distance? Here you are, you're a baby, you're lying in your cot, you see this two-dimensional array, there's the bars that we know, the bars of the cot in your mother's face and so on and so forth, but all the baby sees is this two-dimensional array, but it's moving its limbs like this and at one point it hits out and something goes ow! Now the baby starts to correlate the owl with that bit of the two-dimensional array and it's movement like that and it soon starts to learn that actually in order to touch something that looks like that, I've got to move like this, do this and if I touch you hard enough, you'll go ow! Or you might say, if I say something when I touch you. See, it works. But you see, I could either be born seeing things at a distance or I could construct my concept of space from the experience of correlating what I see, how I move and what I hear, touch, et cetera. Oh, yes, I've read about it. Well, that's one argument for that would be rationalism, that there's some sort of innate fear of falling. Okay, let's move on from, sorry, this is a romp. If you want to know more about these people, you're going to have to come and do some lectures. Right, let's move on to something completely different. Let's move on to ethics or ethics and politics. Okay, the utilitarians and the deontologists. The utilitarians believe that the right action is the action that produces the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Okay, let's think about this. What does this mean? This means that, okay, if we're looking at what is it for something to be right? Okay, what is it for an action to be the morally right action? Utilitarians say, look for the action that produces the greatest happiness of the greatest number and that'll be the right action. Okay, what do people think about that theory? Certainly true, we've got to start defining things because what is happiness? There's a question for you. What is happiness? Anyone want to have a go at that? I can't resist this. We're having a romp, so I'm going to do it anyway. Okay, two theories about happiness. One of them is that it's a subjective experience, okay, a certain feeling, and the other is that it's both a certain feeling and the beliefs that cause that feeling. Okay, so the beliefs that cause the feeling must be true. Here's an answer. You believe yourself to be very happily married. Okay, you're delirious. Everything's going well for you, et cetera. Then you discover that your partner, your spouse has been playing away. Okay, has that taken away the happiness you had before? In other words, were you happy and then you stopped being happy when you learned this? Or were you not happy all along? Put up your hand if you think that you were happy before and you're not now. Okay, anyone prepared to take the Aristotelian view, apart from me? No? You've got no courage. Okay, Alton. I mean there isn't one unitary thing which is what people understand as being happiness. Is that true? Think about it. I mean there are lots of things that make us happy. Temporary experience, a sense of joy perhaps. Well that's what I'm talking about as a subjective experience. It can also be a general... Okay, well I'm putting those together. Marriage business is a contentment because it's different to the joyous. Okay, but do you see that there's a subjective experience in both of them? Let me put the Aristotelian question to you in another way. You see Aristotle comes up everywhere. Let's say that some famous scientist comes to the government, comes to the Prime Minister and says, I have a machine such that if we attach everybody to it, they will become deliriously happy. They can either let them off the machine every now and again so that they can do things and keep people alive, or we can leave a few of them off the machine permanently, do all the stuff and leave everyone else attached to the machine. Now if you're a utilitarian Prime Minister, ought you to say yes to attaching everyone to this machine? Okay. Now let's say that this machine causes you to believe that you're doing things like going to philosophy lectures, people talk about philosophy, I don't know what else, seeing your grandchildren or making weddings for your children, all that sort of thing. Okay, so you believe that you've had the sort of life. Let's make it exactly your sort of life. These are the beliefs you have. But actually all you've ever done is be attached to this machine. Okay, because that's making you happier than anything else would. Are you happy? Who thinks you are happy? Oh, well done. Okay, only two of you now. But listen, if happiness is nothing other than a subjective feeling in your own head, you must be happy. Because you've got that, haven't you? So those of you who thought that happiness was a subjective feeling inside your own head ought to be putting your hands up here if you're going to be consistent. But actually none of us believe that you are, well, I'm sorry, two of you believe that you would be happy under that circumstance. Of course it does, and that's what we're actually doing. These thought experiments are precisely designed to test what happiness is or what you understand by the word happiness. I'm with our subtle on this one. I think that if you were attached to the happiness machine you would falsely believe you were happy, but you wouldn't be happy. Because happiness involves the truth of the beliefs on which your happiness is based. Okay, that's Aristotle. Is there always a sort of law judgement which wasn't in the earlier... Yes, as I said, we moved. I mean, we are romping through... We've been doing metaphysics and epistemology and philosophy of language, and we're now doing ethics and political philosophy. Okay. Or it's 18th century philosophy that has its element. No, I'm just... At random picking out things that I think you'll find interesting because my job is to enthuse you with the idea that philosophy is a good thing. So this is entirely arbitrary, the choice. I'm choosing things because I think you'll enjoy them. Actually philosophy is quite hard work as you might have already discovered. You have to do a lot of thinking. But yeah, we've moved to ethics here. Ethics and politics. Okay, that's the utilitarian. The right action is the action that produces the greatest happiness to the greatest number. And you said, what's happiness? And we then digressed for 10 minutes on what happiness is because I couldn't resist it. It's a good one, that one, isn't it? Let's go back to this. Is the right action the one that produces the greatest happiness to the greatest number? Why not? Can anyone think of a counter example? It's hanging. Okay, you could say that to bring back hanging would make more people happy than not. Does that make it right? Well, if you're a utilitarian, you would presumably have to say that it would. But if you don't say that, you might prefer to be a day ontologist. A day ontologist is someone who says that there is something called the moral law and the right action is that which accords with the moral law. So, you might say, let's take an example like there's a sheriff in a western town. I hate this example, but it happens to have come to mind, so I'll go on with it. There's been some raping and pillaging around this town and everyone's very upset and there's about to be riots and so on. And you have in your cells a tramp who doesn't have any family, he's very depressed, he wants to die and you think, I know, sorry, I've got to write into that the person who's been perpetrating these rapes has died and you can't prove that, but what you do think is if I hang this tramp, I'm giving him what he wants, he's going to be happy. I'm giving everyone else what they want, I'm going to say he committed the rapes and I'm going to hang him. It's going to make everyone happy. Should I do it? Should I hang an innocent man? No. So utilitarianism has got to be wrong. What are we going on? Are we saying thou shalt not kill an innocent person? Don't get me on to that. The moral law is universal, that would be the idea. It pertains to everyone whether they know it or not. Whether they believe it or not. You mean if they knew that he was innocent, they wouldn't be happy? It's certainly true, you're right, you've got to build in certain epistemological things, in other words things to do with knowledge. Yes, if you found out that he had hung an innocent man, you wouldn't be happy, would you? So you've got to write into the thought experiment that you wouldn't find out, which I agree is... Yeah. Okay, a deontologist, the right action is that which records with the moral law. Take thou shalt not kill, and that looks to be the moral law on which the you shouldn't hang an innocent man is based, doesn't it? Well, is it true? Should you not kill? I mean, is there any circumstance in which killing would be the right thing to do, do you think? War. Let's put war on one side, because let's look at the laws you shouldn't kill an innocent in peacetime, shall we? How about that? Killing an innocent in peacetime would be the right thing to do. Right, let's scrub animals too. Let's talk about human beings. Okay, or we might even put that on one side. Let's make things really hard for the deontologists. I'm looking for a time when it would be right to kill a perfectly healthy, ordinary adult human being. Have I left anything out? Not in wartime, who is innocent. Okay, I think that counts as war actually. Let me tell you a circumstance, because I think this might go on too long. Okay, this was a true story. There was a ship that was on fire just off the coast of Australia. This was a few years ago. The only way of saving this ship, on which there were hundreds of sailors, was by turning off the oxygen in the engine room. Turning off the oxygen in the engine room meant killing the four sailors who were in the engine room. Should the captain have turned off the oxygen in the engine room? Put your hand up if you think he should. Okay, I'm amazed that not all of it, usually everyone puts their hands up, but okay, if you think that he should kill those sailors, they're innocent, it's wartime, but the fact is killing those four means saving the hundreds. Most people at that point swing straight into utilitarianism. That's true, but the fact is you're still killing, you're breaking the moral law, if that's what the moral law is, by saying, by killing those four, in which case we're moving over to utilitarianism. The utilitarian thinks that the only rights that you have as a human being are not inviolable. In other words, that you have the rights that you have because it leads to the greatest happiness to the greatest number for you to be treated as if you have rights. But if killing you is what's going to produce the greatest happiness to the greatest number, then your right disappears. In fact, it becomes my duty to kill you if your life is standing in the way of the greatest happiness to the greatest number. It's my duty to turn off the oxygen in the engine room if that's the only way I can save the hundreds of other people. So, what we see is, whereas the deontologists can recognise a right that's inviolable, the utilitarians can't. For the utilitarian, it's always secondary to the greatest happiness, the greatest number. Who here is thinking that they're a utilitarian? Put your hands up. Well, if you don't know, I've done my job, actually. If you hadn't turned the oxygen off, you'd have been killing everybody on the boat. Well, I wouldn't, because I wouldn't have done anything, would I? Yes, but by not acting, acting is still making a taking choice. Therefore, it will be violating a moral or a much greater scale. It depends whether you think of acts and omissions as the same thing. Actually, if you're a deontologist and you go for don't kill, you probably also have a distinction between acts and omissions where your acts can be morally culpable but your omissions can't be. Which is an interesting one. Well, if you think about it, my eucalyptus tree died. It died of lack of water. Queen Elizabeth didn't water it, so she used to blame for the death of my eucalyptus tree. Had she watered it, it would have lived. Isn't that true? Isn't that a causal relation? Therefore, Queen Elizabeth is responsible for the death of my eucalyptus. That's true, but she's still responsible. If you're responsible for your omissions, I mean, it's true she didn't water it, isn't it? It's true it's dead. OK. I mean, you mean the deontologist introduced the concept of the moral of the war. But somehow you're not utilitarian because you're completely different. No. Do you remember before we were talking about what the question was? How do we get the meanings for our words? How do we form concepts? The one we're looking at here is what is it for an action to be right? We all distinguish between actions that are right and actions that are wrong, don't we? That's a very human thing. Humans are moral agents. We divide the world up into things that are right and things that are wrong. The thing that a philosopher wants to know is how do we do this? What is it that makes an action right? What is it that makes an action wrong? These are two different theories about that. One theory says what makes an action right is that it produces the greatest happiness, the greatest number. And the other theory says no. What makes an action right is in effect just that it is right. It's laid down by the moral law. Do you see that? So they are talking about the same thing, but you're also right that they're different because they're giving different explanations of the same thing. And they're contradictory explanations so they can't both be true. And whether the moral law used to be universal, therefore it's before time. The moral law, if you believe in the Ten Commandments, you think that the moral law comes from God and that it's revelation that tells you what it is. If you're a Kantian, you believe that the moral law is something that's perceived by human beings through intuition. In other words, we have five senses that enable us to perceive the world, but we have another, it's not a sense, but it's a way of discerning what's right and wrong. So you actually see an action and you get a strong feeling of approbation or disapprobation. That's your moral intuition at work and it's your moral intuition that tells you what is and what isn't the moral law. You have the same difficulty as the issue about Plato and the Forms. It's adding in an unnecessary lift from home. Well, is it unnecessary? No, hang on. I can see being a sixth sense or something has derived from God or some other postulated thing which is unnecessary. It could actually just come through our experience of empathy with other people. Absolutely. The moral law, you might say, here's another way of looking at the moral law. If you think of absolutism versus relativism, the relativist says that all moral truth is relative to something or other, relative to an individual or relative to a community or a culture or something like that. Whereas the absolutist will say that there are certain things that are true everywhere for everyone at every time whether they know it or not. Now, if I ask you whether you're relativists or absolutists, most of you will probably put up your hand to say you're relativists. But what I'll then point out, you'll see that I'm speeding up because I've got two things to get through and it's not going to happen. Here are two different sorts of moral law. Don't kill or produce the greatest happiness or the greatest number. Notice that utilitarianism is an absolutist moral creed. It's not a relativist moral creed. Here's the Kantian one. Never treat yourself or another solely as a means to your own ends. What Kant says is that the categorical imperative, the only thing that is the moral law is the claim that I must treat you as an end in yourself, which means I must allow you to make up your own mind about how you want to live your life. If I want you to carry my suitcase for me, I can ask you to do it. That's treating you as a means. But if I'm allowing you to say no, I'm also treating you as an end. Whereas if I trick you into carrying my suitcase, I'm treating you as nothing more than a means to my end. It's my ends that are important. What the day ontologist says is that if you're an end in yourself, you have intrinsic value. In virtue of having intrinsic value, you have rights that are inviolable, that can't be overruled. The utilitarian won't say that because there's no such thing as a right that can't be overruled for the utilitarian. Just to put this in a slightly different way of looking at it, the utilitarian is thinking of actions. When they think that something's right, they're always thinking of actions. Whereas the day ontologist are always thinking of will, willing and intention. If you think of an action as it goes back to what we were saying about reasons, every action has an intention. The action itself and a consequence. You don't get an action that hasn't got an intention. Where you have causation, there isn't intention. But when there's a reason, there is intention. The utilitarians are concerned only with consequences, whereas the day ontologists are concerned only with intentions. Kant, for example, says that a good will is the only thing that's good in itself. Consequences are only good secondarily. The intention is the only thing that's good in itself. What your job is is to obey the moral law as you understand it. Sincerely, in other words, you mustn't be self-serving in doing that. You mustn't say, lying is going to get me out of a hole here, therefore I'm going to lie. That is not the moral law. You think, what's the right thing? What should I do here? You do that thing. It's the duty that takes you into the area of morality. That's another big difference between these two. Let's go back to the core thing linking up with what this gentleman here said. What you've got is a question. What is it that makes an action right? Or what is it that makes an action wrong? As with any question, you're going to have postulated answers. People are going to put forward answers. These answers are theories that you're putting forward in the hope of answering a question. Once again, this is a live debate. We don't know which is the right theory. But there are arguments. I've just given you a tip of an iceberg of the arguments giving you arguments for and against these two different theories. As a matter of fact, we have no idea which is the right theory. Sometimes in one situation, one theory looks right. Sometimes in another situation, another theory looks right. Your job as philosophers is to look at the arguments on both sides and wave them up against each other. You'll probably find as I have over my philosophical career. I started off as a utilitarian. I then became a Kantian. I went back to utilitarian. I then went back to Kantianism. At the moment, I have absolutely no idea. The more you learn about the theory and how it works, the more strengths you see in it. It does become actually quite difficult to decide. At least you know you're not setting up straw men. Sometimes people say it's blindingly obvious that utilitarianism is wrong because of that sheriff example. That seems pretty conclusive, didn't it? But think about utilitarianism. Could it justify genocide? It may be Hitler was a good utilitarian. It's just that he didn't count Jews. Do you count animals? Maybe our grandchildren are going to say of us, they ate lamb for Sunday lunch. It depends on who you count as a unit of something that can have happiness. If you don't count Jews, then Hitler, did he do the right thing? If you don't count women, surely it's all right to abort females just because they're female and so on. Is it judging? Now you're into the area of moral truth, which is a major area, in case you didn't guess that. I'll just leave you with one thought before I move on to utilitarianism. What's your name, sir? Michael. I don't think you said that first, did you? You were being kind to me, weren't you? Michael believes that Marianne is wearing black. There's one sentence there, isn't there? And then there's another sentence there. So Marianne is wearing black is one sentence that could be true or false. Michael believes that Marianne is wearing black is another sentence, right? Could they both be true? That's probably the actual situation, isn't it? Could they both be false? Come on. If Michael wasn't here, he wouldn't have any beliefs about me, would he? So it would be false that he believes I'm wearing black. Could I be wearing yellow? Yes, I could be wearing yellow. So they could both be false. Could that be true and that false? So Michael believes that Marianne's wearing black, but Marianne isn't wearing black. He's colourblind or something. And could that be true and that false? So it's true Marianne's wearing black, but as Michael didn't turn up today, he doesn't believe I'm wearing black. Now let's change that to mugging elderly ladies is okay. So we've got Michael believes that mugging elderly ladies is okay. What was that? Let's leave that on one side. We're doing logic at the moment, so we're looking at possible worlds rather than the actual one. Okay, we've still got one sentence within another, haven't we? Okay, could they both be true? Could they both be false? Could they both be... We've got exactly the same possibilities, haven't we? The thing is that the truth of that belief, whether it's Marianne's wearing black or mugging elderly ladies is okay, is determined by something quite different from what determines the truth of that. That sentence is made true or false by Michael's beliefs, whereas that sentence is made true or false by what I'm wearing or by whether it's okay to mug elderly ladies. So you've got to distinguish the epistemology, in other words, what we know or believe from the truth of our beliefs or what actually is the case, okay? So you mustn't become a relativist just because you've made that logical blunder, must you? No, definitely not. Okay, that's sort of distinction that philosophers have to use. Next week we're going to look at logic and argument and we'll be looking very much at that sort of thing because if you're not thinking clearly, you can't think about this sort of abstract thing at all. Philosophers do it in the head. You know, they can't go into the laboratory and apply the rules of nature. What they're applying the whole time is the rules of logic, the laws of logic, and that's a good example of how logic can help you clarify something. Okay, let's move on to Wittgenstein. Okay, there's early Wittgenstein, late Wittgenstein, this is such thing as Wittgenstein. Well, there was, but he changed his mind all the time which of course is a sign of intellectual honesty. The early Wittgenstein said, and notice we're back to the Plato-Aristotle empiristist rationalist problem, early Wittgenstein thought words get their meaning by standing for objects. So what does chair mean? That, okay? What does person mean? What does purple mean? That and so on. And he believed that language is... The reason we get meaning is we pick up something he called strict and literal truth conditions. Okay, we... Okay, why do we think this? Let's take... What's your name, right at the back? Margaret. Let's say this is the fifth lecture and Margaret has come in late to every single lecture. Okay, so we've started the fifth lecture, it's 10 minutes into it, door flies open and I say hello Margaret, early again. Okay, what's the meaning of what I've said? That she's late, isn't she? Now isn't that interesting? What you've got here is you all understood a certain meaning, but it was put in a certain context and what you did is you took one meaning and inverted it, didn't you? How do you explain language if that's what you can do? Well, here's one way you might explain it. Language is composed of strict and literal truth conditions, conditions of truth and falsehood. So do you remember I said talking about red? You're teaching a child to learn the conditions under which this is red is true and this is red is false. So you've got acetoric sentences like this is red, then you've got the force, so you can say this is red or is this red or make that red or so you apply a different force, you do something different with the sentence. Then you can add tone. So early again, okay, the tone was sarcasm in that case, but I mean there are all sorts of other ones. I'm not angry! You see, we've turned it round again. And then this context, you all laughed because I told you the story about Margaret coming in late every session, which is why when I said early again, Margaret, you laughed. Okay, so the early Wittgenstein thought that meaning was made up only of that. Okay, and that what that did was link a word with an object. Okay, so if you go back to atomism, the democratist and the atoms, the idea was that every word gets meaning by standing for an object and Wittgenstein drew huge metaphysical claims from this. He said words get meaning, sorry, words have meaning. It's a necessary condition of words having meaning that objects stand for objects. Therefore, words must, sorry, objects must exist. So much for scepticism. That's the end of scepticism, isn't it? Words do have meaning, and if it's a necessary condition for words having meaning that objects exist, well then we know that objects exist, don't they? Bingo. I mean it's good arguments, actually, as long as you do know that your words have meaning. But of course if they didn't, how would you be understanding a word that I'm saying now? Okay, the later Wittgenstein thought this was rubbish. What he thought is that words get meaning from the way they're used. In other words, all of this is meaning. Okay, so it isn't just that there's weak meaning and strong meaning, which is the way I put it. So here's a sentence. Can you read that? Okay, James is tall is what it says. Okay, do you understand that sentence? Yeah, okay. So it has meaning, does it? Okay, do you know whether it's true or false? Why not? You don't know who I'm talking about, do you? In fact, I'm not talking about anyone. Even if there is someone called James here, I'm not talking about them. The thing is, this is a sentence used, but it's not being used. Do you see what I mean? I'm talking about a sentence rather than using a sentence. Because I'm talking about a sentence, it doesn't actually have meaning, does it? It has potential meaning. Maybe. So you could call that meaning the weak meaning, the strict and literal meaning. Or you could say that that actually doesn't have meaning because it doesn't have conditions of truth or falsehood. You don't know the meaning of that sentence because you don't know how to determine whether it's true or false. And the fact is it's not true or false. It's neither true nor false because I'm not actually using the sentence at all. So the early Wittgenstein thought that that had meaning because each of these stood for an object. It could only have meaning because there's something that was being picked out by James and there is something, a property as Aristotle would say, that's being picked out by his tool. Therefore, this has meaning. The later Wittgenstein says, no, that's not true. It doesn't have meaning until you actually use it. It doesn't have meaning at all. It's only in use. So what's the meaning of hello Margaret early again? No, hang on. The use I made that particular token sentence had the meaning you're later again Margaret, didn't it? I asked you what's the meaning of hello Margaret early again. I mean, actually it has a different meaning, doesn't it? Depending on the context in which I use it and depending on the tone I use. So I'm not angry. What does that mean? Yes, it's all in the tone, isn't it? Yeah, in that one. So that's why the early Wittgenstein, you could see, I mean you went for his theory when I asked you if that had meaning. But then you went for the other theory when we put it in context. So once again you have a question which is how do words get meaning? What's the nature of the meaning of a word? And we have two different theories this time postulated by the same chap at different times in his life. And the question is which is the right term? And there are good reasons actually on both sides. And of course you've got to ask yourself could it be that these two theories are actually consistent? That you need both of them for different aspects of meaning. I think in this case that certainly is a real runner. It hasn't been in some of the other things and this one it is. You're absolutely right that humour on logic. This is philosophy of language and logic. And you don't get humour without the logic being right. The grammar being right. Again perhaps next week we'll give you some example of that. I'm going to move on to the last one. Let's link this with what I was saying earlier about happiness. Let me ask you a question. Do you all have a belief about me? You might have several beliefs about me but just one will do any belief about me. Do you think you could have that very belief even if I didn't exist? If I didn't exist you couldn't have that belief. Your belief would be different. Maybe it wouldn't exist at all but at least it would be different. Remarkable consensus that. Let me tell you another story. You've heard of Descartes. Descartes argued that the world could be completely other than we take it to be. We all think that we're in a lecture room. We're looking at a lecturer, we're listening to a lecture etc. Could it be with you exactly as it is now and yet that belief be false? So what's your reason for thinking you're in a lecture hall? Because you are. Do you know that? Your senses tell you you can see me, you can hear me etc. That's another way of testimony of others. Could it be with you that you believe you see me but you don't? Could you give me an example? Let's make it realistic. You could wake up any minute and think I've got to go to that lecture this afternoon. What a bore. So it could be with you exactly as it is now and yet you're not being in a lecture theatre. You're having a lucid dream. Descartes went one further than that because you believe don't you that you're having experiences and that your experiences are being caused by something. You're having an experience as of a lecturer and that experience is being caused by a lecturer. Don't you? What makes you think that? Can you get outside your experiences to see what's causing them? No? Well then how do you know? I wouldn't be here if you didn't want me to be. Believe me I wouldn't be here if you didn't want me to be. No, that's not true either. You might not need me here at all and I'm about to still be. No. Because there's only two minutes to go I'm going to draw this. Do you remember we talked about causation? If you're going to know that that causes that you need to see that they're correlated. That these types of events are correlated. If you think that this is similar to that you need to be standing here, don't you? You need to be able to see both. Now you think that your experiences of P are caused by P. Okay? Can you stand here with respect to your experiences? No. Where are you standing with respect to your experiences? Here. Okay? You cannot get outside your experiences to determine what's causing those experiences. So and nevertheless you believe very strongly that not only are your experiences being caused by something external to them, but also that your experiences are a good guide to the cause of those experiences. And what Descartes did he said why do you believe that? Not why do you believe that but what's your justification for believing that? Could it be that instead of your experiences being caused by a philosopher standing here lecturing to you there's an evil demon of some kind who is twiddling your thought processes and causing you to think so your experiences are caused by something but the cause is completely other than you take it to be? Is that a possibility? Can you tell me that that isn't the case? Well, let's think about your own body. Okay, you think you've got a body, don't you? Could the demon get in between you and your body? Could it be that you although you think you have a hand actually you don't you think you have a body and actually you don't. There's just your thoughts and experiences and the causes of them which is the demon. Do you see what I mean? The brain isn't going to help you here and neither are other people actually because your brain is on the other side of the demon and so are your other people. So what Descartes did is he opened up a gap it may look like a pussy cat but it's a demon and this is the world and this is your mind Descartes showed that this could be or at least he argued rather this could be exactly as it is whilst this could be totally other or might not even exist. So what's Descartes an internalist or an externalist? Is he what? He's an internist exactly so. He believes that our thoughts could be exactly as they are even if the world were completely different. Now let's go back to the question with which I started this little bit of the session. You have a belief about me could you have that very belief if I didn't exist? What would you have to say if you were an internalist? Yes. Does that make you an externalist then? You're sort of nodding I'm not very sure about this. Does that mean you're rejecting the Cartesian thought experiment? Yes. You are if you're an externalist that's right. Do you think the Cartesian thought experiment is incoherent? You do. Would you like to tell me what's incoherent about it? Can you be sure that the world is as you experience it? Sure that is. We're talking about certainty here if you're an externalist it's unknowable yes well if it is unknowable then you're with the internalists aren't you? Because if you're an externalist your beliefs are the way they are because the world is the way it is in other words your belief about me is a relation between you and me okay it's not something that's going on in your head completely independently of me it's a relation between you and me therefore if I don't exist you couldn't have that belief and all your intuitions were that way initially but then I told the Descartes story the Cartesian story which is pretty convincing isn't it? So your homework this week is to go away and worry about the Cartesian story and ask yourself whether you're an internalist or an externalist. We've gone slightly over time if there are any questions I'm happy to take them but if anyone wants to leave they're most welcome to do so. Thank you very much.