Philosophy in the Modern World - Chapter 8 synopsis

The reading for HCJ this week is chapter 8 from Anthony Kenny's book Philosophy in the Modern World. The following is a synopsis of the key points in the chapter in preparation for my seminar paper this week.

Bentham on Intention and Motive:

• Bentham explored the effect of moral character depending on the presence or absence of different cognitive and affective elements.
• His approach reflects Aquinas' but he differs in terminology and moral evaluation.
• Aquinas believed that an act is intentional if it chosen as a means to an end. If an action is an unavoidable consequence or accompaniment to such a choice it was not intentional but only voluntary.
• Bentham argued that 'voluntary' was the wrong word for Aquinas to use and he should have used 'intentional'.
• Bentham believed in the same distinctions as Aquinas, but said that they were distinctions of intention.
• A consequence is either directionally intentional or obliquely intentional.
• A directly intentional action is either ultimately or immediately intentional depending on whether the action was a motive or not.
• Bentham wanted to define intention in cognitive terms
• He believed that intention is a key criteria for moral and legal evaluations of actions.
• Intentions are not good or bad in themselves, the consequences make them good or bad.
• Consequences are dependent on circumstances, and circumstances are either known or unknown by the agent.
• If the circumstances are known by the agent an act is an advised act. An unadvised act is when the circumstances are not known by the agent.

Reason, Understanding and Will:

• Both humans and animals have a sense of understanding and sensation.
• Only humans have the ability to reason and a capacity for reflection which allows us to have language, freedom and science.
• Abstract knowledge can be retained and shared.

Schopenhauer:

• Both humans and animals have wills but only humans can deliberate.
• Ethics is based on morals but morals are abstract
• Will is present and active in the universe.
• All will rises from a want, which implies a deficiency in something and therefore all will comes from suffering
• The definition of a genius is someone who is 'imaginative and restless...dislikes mathematic and lives on the borderline of madness.'
• Rejects the idea of the dualism of mind and body
• 'The body is nothing more than the objectification of the will and its desires.'

Experimental Vs Philosophical Psychology:

• The science of the mind was introduced in the 19th century though empirical and experimental methods.
• Professor of psychology, Wilhelm Wundt introduced the science of the mind in 1879 in Leipzig.
• In 1878 William James set up a psychology lab in Harvard University - the first doctorate was awarded.

William James:

• Wrote Principles of Psychology in 1980 - a summary of new findings in psychology.
• Theory of emotions - proposed emotions are perceptions of bodily processes; all states of consciousness can be called 'feelings'.
• Some feelings are cognitive and some are not.
• For a feeling to be cognitive there must be in the world another entity resembling the feeling in its quality and the feeling must be directly or indirectly operate upon this entity.
• Consciousness is essentially a private, internal phenomenon, capable of existing in isolation from any body.

The Freudian Unconscious:

• In his book Introductory Lecture of Psychoanalysis, Freud stated that the greater part of our mental life is unconscious.
• Only a fraction of what we know and believe is present to consciousness in the sense of being an object of our immediate attention.
• Freud believed that there are three sets of phenomena that reveal the existence of the unconscious:

1. Trivial everyday mistakes: Freud suggests that these mistakes are not accidental, they reveal the hidden motives of the unconscious
2. Reports of dreams: Freud called dreams 'the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind' but we cannot interpret our own dreams, we need a psychoanalyst. He believed that dreams are our repressed wishes and are coded, but when stripped down they are usually sexual. Dream codes are unique to each dreamer, they cannot be universalised.
3. Neurotic symptoms: The interpretation of neuroses by a psychoanalyst is dependant on the patient accepting the interpretations, but often patients do not accept this.

• Freud explained that mental harmony is dependant on the conflict between the ID, Ego and Superego.

Philosophical Psychology in the Tractatus:

• Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was written by Ludwig Wittgenstein.
• Wittgenstein tried to explain the model of the mind.
• He accepted that psychology is genuine empirical science and thought that philosophy of the mind was on a par with psychology.
• In Tractatus he states that a thought is a logical picture of facts.
• Wittgenstein identified thoughts with propositions which could be either a sign/sentence or a thought. A sign or sentence is a relation between spoken words. A though is a relation between physical elements.
• Thinking a thought involved a psychic element in the sense of mental images or internal impressions.
• Meaning is conferred on signs by us and our conventions - these are not facts of science.

Intentionality:

• Brentano reintroduced intentionality into philosophy in the 19th century.
• In his book Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874) Brentano wanted to marl off physical from physical phenomena.
• He claimed that there are two kinds of action:

1. Transient: Actions that change their object
2. Immanent: Actions that change the agent not the object

• Brentano's distinction between physical and physical phenomena corresponds to the distinction between immanent and transient actions.
• Husserl took this over from Brentano.
• Husserl tells us that consciousness consists of 'intentional experiences or acts'.
• Every mental acts is a certain kind belonging to a certain species.
• He called individual acts the noesis and the specific content the noema.
• Acts have matter and qualities - so do imaginations, perception, emotion and volition. For example, seeing Rome and imagining Rome have the same content (Rome) but different qualities (imagining and seeing).

Wittengstein's Later Philosophy of Mind:

• Wittengstein's later philosophy was a direct reaction to Bertrand Russell, who ignored intentionality.
• Wittgenstein believed that intentionality was all important in understanding and language.
• He thought that the human mind is not a spirit and that there is not such thing as the self.
• Thought and understanding are not processes - there are different criteria of 'thought' and 'understanding'
• He demolished the concept that the connection between consciousness and expression is merely contingent - if this was true then theoretically everything in the universe could be conscious.
• The only evidence that humans are conscious is that we all consciousness in ourselves.
• Experiences one can have is dependent on how one can behave.
• It is wrong to identify the mind with behaviour - it is even more wrong to identify the mind with the brain.
• Connection between mind and brain is contingent, discoverable by empirical science.

Face REALITY Book

Unbelievably, today I am going to write about a topic that is inspired by something I heard while watching Glee! It was an observation about how "when students are bored they update their Facebook status." This stuck with me because it is completely relevant to my own life. I am not ashamed to admit that when I am bored with nothing better to do, Facebook is the first thing I turn to.

I, like many others am hooked, but why is Facebook so popular? Is it because it gives people a chance to post their lives online? Or is it because it gives people the chance to look at the lives of others?

I would argue that Facebook is not really about being able to speak you mind and tell your stories to other people, I think Facebook has become so popular because it gives you the chance to portray your life the way you want to, regardless of what your life is like in reality.

I highly doubt that anyone ever updates their status by honestly answering the question "what is on your mind?" , instead they create a status that answers "what would you like people to think is on you mind?"

The same is true with images, events and groups. They are all centered around what you want people to know your doing, where you've been, where you're going, and what you want people to think you look like.

So where has this obsession with creating our "realities" come from? It is human nature to try and impress others, or to try and hide what your reality is. Hiding your reality can cover anything from lying about yourself to the extremes of plastic surgery; but nothing has ever been as easy, cheap and successful as hiding your reality on Facebook.

Jeremy Bentham believed that people should only do acts which will result in the greatest happiness for the greatness number of people, and I think that the majority of Facebook users act in this way. We create status updates that we hope will amuse other people, we post pictures because we want others to look at them and have a reaction, thousands of groups are created purely with the intention of causing amusement and happiness in other people. I would challenge anyone to say that they don't consider the reaction of others when updating their Facebook in any way.

It is, after all, impossible to be part of something that millions of people around the world are part of, and still try to use it as a completely individual programme.