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<title>The career of epistemological philosophy</title>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font color="#993366"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>T<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="TtsOtkCRS10_09" align="right" hspace="5" width="250" height="42" border="0">he
career of epistemological philosophy.</b></font></font> Pre-Socratic
philosophy was a radical random variation on the arguments of
rational level culture, and it may also have been tried out in other
civilizations. But only in Western civilization did it give rise to
epistemological philosophy and put the linguistic structures
generating social institutions on the philosophical level of
neurological organization. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">A<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="TtsOtkCRS10_10" align="right" hspace="5" width="250" height="23" border="0">ncient
and medieval epistemological philosophy. </font>Epistemological
philosophy began when Plato discovered a convincing way of
constructing an argument that would explain the validity of all first
level arguments based on perception and desire. It was also an
explanation of everything, but it was not based on a theory about
change and diversity, that is, about efficient causes. Instead, it
was a theory about the nature of reason based only reflective
understanding, or the capacity of subjects to use rational
imagination to explain rational causation. It did entail an
explanation of the nature of the substances constituting the world,
but that was an afterthought, for its approach to philosophy was
epistemological. The theories about the nature of reason and the
nature of consciousness that we have derived from our ontological
foundation fit together as a way of understanding the basic structure
of epistemological arguments. We need only consider what rational
subjects had to work with, when they turned to reflective
understanding for a theory about how we know about the world, because
there are only certain ways that those elements can be used to
explain the validity of the reasons used in the ordinary arguments of
rational level culture. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">What
represents the current scene to the subject are the telesensory
images that are currently being used (in conjunction with input from
the current bodily condition) to construct a <i>local image</i>, and
together with the representation of the body itself, that is the
subject’s perception of the world. But the local image (and the
body image to which it is related) generated from current sensory
input are embedded within a faculty of rational imagination, and
thus, rational subjects are able to see actual states against the
background of what is possible by efficient causation by using covert
behavior to call up all sort of images in relation to them. Consider
the aspects of the world that are represented in rational
imagination. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><i>Spatial
imagination </i>makes it possible to call up sequences of images
representing the effects of the locomotion (or motion) in relation to
other objects within the local scene and to call up sequences of
<i>local images </i>(that have been recorded in memory as a map of
one’s territory) representing locomotion beyond the local scene. Or
spatial imagination can be used more generally to think about the
effects locomotion and turning (or motion and change of direction)
within the local scene, in relation to a purely imaginary local
scene, or in the abstract (because the same behavioral schemata are
used relative to different <i>local images</i>).</font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><i>Structural
imagination </i>makes it possible to call up sequences of telesensory
images, or <i>object images,</i> representing the effects of
manipulating objects in the local scene, such as rotating and
twisting them, and it too can be used abstractly to think about the
geometrical structures of objects in space.</font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><i>Naturalistic
imagination</i>, which comes with the ability to use natural
sentences, makes it possible to call up sequences of images, or
<i>naturalistic images, </i>representing the states of affairs that
make natural sentences true, so that together with (particular and
general) beliefs about regularities (which are either built into the
structure of imagination or acquired from experience), rational
imagination can represent their effects in the natural world.</font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><i>Rational
imagination</i>, which comes with the ability to use psychological
sentences, makes it possible to call up sequences of images as
psychological predicates (or <i>psychological images</i>) and to
predicate them of objects in space that are subjects, and this
ability to think about psychological states is the ability to
understand how they are causes or effects of other psychological
states, including their role as reasons (or causes that are
represented as causes as part of the process of causing beliefs or
behavior). </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Perception
and rational imagination both have an appearance to the subject.
These images are certain configurations of neurons firing in various
2-D arrays of neurons that are connected by projections between the
thalamus and neocortex (or between regions of neocortex), and their
firings are all synchronized by the thalamus insofar as they have to
do with the same objects. That is, the brain processes the
information contained as patterns of firing in 2-D arrays of neurons,
and thus, what happens in the brain is a highly structured in both
space and time. But what is more, the joint firings of those neurons
is like a complex antenna that generates a steam of photons, and the
intrinsic natures of the photons being given off by the active brain
are phenomenal properties which make the rational subject conscious. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Perception
and rational imagination have different appearances, because the
images they involve are caused in basically different ways.
Perceptual images come from sensory input (and involve projections
from the sensory organs through the thalamus to the neocortex),
whereas images of rational imagination come from covert behavior
operating on memory (and involve only regions of neocortex beyond
those registering sensory input). This makes these two kinds of
images appear quite different from the point of view of the subject
reflecting on them. But in both cases, objects seem to be present to
the subject, in one case, as objects of perception, and in the other
case, as objects of reflection. </font></font>
</p>
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" name="HistPhiloOP" align="bottom" width="400" height="250" border="0"></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
only plausible way to construct an epistemological argument is to
assume that the appearances of these objects in consciousness involve
an intuition of objects that exist independently of the subject, for
there is nothing else to reflect on, except the feelings or emotions
associated with desires (that is, the goal selection system). </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
images of perception naturally appear to be objects in space, because
the local image represents the objects as having locations in space
relative to one’s body. Though the telesensory images are certain
groups of neurons firing in 2-D arrays that are located in certain
regions of the thalamus and neocortex, they seem to be located in
space, because as we have seen, they are combined with other
telesensory and somatosensory images as part of a <i>local image</i>,
and with spatial imagination, the subject is able to think about the
effects of motion relative to them by calling up sequences of images
in imagination. The sensory images of objects are seen, therefore,
against the background of what is possible by motion, and since that
is how the subject understands the structure of space, the objects
appear to be located in space. And it is a qualitatively rich
appearance, because in conscious subjects, what is happening
throughout the brain is registered in the structures of the photons
being generated by it. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Naïve
(or direct) realism about perception, as this way of interpreting
perceptual images is called, is the natural attitude, because there
is ordinarily no reason to recognize the difference between
perceptual representations in the brain and the objects in space they
represent outside the brain. The overt behavior of one’s body
actually changes the perceptual images in just the ways one expects.
Thus, it is natural to think of perception as an immediate intuition
of objects in space, including one’s own body, as if the objects
themselves were immediately present to the subject.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Objects
of reflection, such as the <i>object images </i>representing objects
of various kinds that evolve as the meanings of some general terms,
also have an appearance, albeit one that is less vivid, detailed, and
persistent, because they are images in rational imagination. They
might also ordinarily be taken as objects present to mind by way of
intuition, but they do not act like objects in space. They may be
imagined as located in space relative to objects that are perceived,
but unlike the latter, what changes them is not the overt behavior of
one’s body, but the covert behavior by which one calls up images
from memory. Imagined object are easier to handle. Not only are they
not constrained like objects in space, but neither do they appear to
be in time. Though <i>object images </i>involve sequences of images
in imagination, such sequences are simply the meanings of the general
terms. The meaning of “cube” or “tree,” for example, may
include a sequence of images representing the effects of rotating it
or moving around to see it from the other side, but that is
understood to be just a way of thinking about the nature of the cube
or the nature of the tree. The object itself is unchanging and, thus,
not in time. The natural attitude is, therefore, to assume that the
objects of reflection are in the mind, that is, merely subjective. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">However,
since objects of reflection are appearances quite on a par with
objects of perception, it is <i>possible </i>to think of both as
intuitions of objects that somehow exist independently of the
subject. Thus, just as the tree that is perceived is seen a located
outside the subject in space, so the image of reflection that is the
meaning of “tree” can be seen as located outside the body in some
other way. The connection between these independently existing
objects affords an explanation of the objects of perception, for it
is possible that the objects of reflection are also somehow what
causes the objects of perception to have the natures they seem to
have. That is what Plato did by positing the existence of Forms in
the realm of Being beyond the visible objects in the realm of
Becoming.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><img 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" name="HistPhilAncient" align="bottom" width="400" height="250" border="0"></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">This
theory about the nature of reason overcomes, therefore, the dichotomy
between the objects of naturalistic and reflective understanding. It
uses it as an explanation of what exists in the world. But that was
not, of course, the only cause of Plato’s metaphysics. Plato was
looking for a metaphysics that would also explain the nature of
goodness, that is, a way of overcoming the dichotomy between the true
and the good and the dichotomy between the good of satisfying animal
desire and a higher good (self interest and spiritual interest).</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
dichotomies that philosophy must overcome include not only the
difference between the science of nature and the science of subjects,
but also the difference between the true and the good. In addition to
cognizing the true, reason has the power to guide behavior, and thus,
it also seeks to know what is good. Practical arguments became the
focus of attention after the Persian wars, when Athens was the
dominant city-state and the exchange of arguments was supported by
the hiring of teachers, called sophists, to train the sons of the
wealthy to be leaders in the promising, new age of independence. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
sophists were itinerants, traveling from one city state to another,
gathering knowledge as well as teaching, and this cosmopolitan
experience led them to conclude that the standards of justice and
other virtues are conventional, that is, true merely because they are
believed to be true in a society. In this context, Socrates was on
the side of traditional religion, holding that the good is objective,
or something about the world that could be known like natural
science. But instead of the dogmatism of traditional religion,
Socrates insisted that knowledge of the good must be a kind of
knowledge that makes the knower virtuous, so that a rational being
does the good because it is good and he understands why it is good.
That is the meaning of the Socratic principle, that knowledge is
virtue. There must be an understanding of the nature of goodness that
is so deep that it explains to rational beings why they ought to
pursue it. The Socratic principle posed very sharply the problem that
philosophy must solve in explaining the relationship of the good and
the true. For how can any mere fact about the world show that
something is good in a way that gives rational beings a sufficient
motive to do it?</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Socrates
was implicitly asking for a philosophical argument, because he wanted
to know what makes all good thing good, which would explain why
ordinary arguments about what is good are valid (when they are). And
it was his attempt to answer Socrates’ challenge that led Plato to
discover the epistemological approach to explaining all the arguments
of rational culture. Recognizing that it is possible to think of
certain objects of reflection as objects existing independently of
the subject in much the same way as objects of perception, as
explained above, Plato argued that what makes visible things good is
that they are participating or imitating Forms in the realm of Being.
This meant that he had to hold that the Forms in the realm of Being
are themselves good, and so he argued that all the other Forms follow
from the Form of the Good. This was not very satisfying explanation
of the nature of goodness, but the transcendence of the realm of
Being, or its existence outside space and time, made it possible to
think that Being could somehow be the source of goodness. Thus, his
metaphysics of Being and Becoming could be used to justify arguments
about what is good in a fundamentally different way from ordinary
arguments of rational culture, and it was the same way in which he
could justify arguments about what is true in the natural world. In
both cases, it had to do with visible objects imitating the Forms.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">That
Plato’s goal was to construct a new kind of argument that would
explain the validity of the arguments of rational culture is also
evident in his use of this metaphysics to overcome the third
dichotomy, between individual and spiritual interest. He argued in
<i>The Republic</i> that the state is the individual “writ large.”
He showed that the soul of the individual rational subject has three
parts: reason, appetites, and a “spirited element” which enabled
reason to take control of the body away from the appetites (or what
we have found to be the desire to submit to reason). He showed that
the functions of these three elements also had to be served in the
state by three classes of citizens: rulers, ordinary producers, and
an army/police force to enforce the rule of the leaders. He suggested
that both are good for the same reason, because of the harmony among
the three parts required by their Forms. In both cases, it meant that
reason, with the aid of an animal-like power (the spirited element),
would prevail over mere animal desire. Thus, Plato defended a view
which subordinates the individual to the good of the spiritual animal
as a whole in a way that seems almost totalitarian from the
contemporary perspective. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
subsequent developments of epistemological philosophy during the
ancient and medieval period are a story about attempts to solve
problems it caused and how its marriage with Christianity eventually
made philosophy the foundation of subsequent Western culture. Only
the highlights need be mentioned here, for our goal is merely to
sketch the career of epistemological philosophy in order to show how
its various forms are variations on the same theme. </font></font></font>
</p>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">As
even Plato recognized, the gulf between Being and Becoming is a major
problem with his metaphysics. How is it possible for such opposite
kinds of entities as unchanging objects of rational intuition and
changing objects of perception to be related as parts of the same
world? Plato found himself holding (even in the <i>Timaeus</i>, where
Becoming is explained as being constituted by the “receptacle,”
or space, and “moving images” of the Forms) that they are
different substances, and in order to defend his epistemological
argument for the independent existence of the Forms, it was necessary
to explain how these two substances are related to one another. It
was Aristotle who attempted to solve that problem. </font></font></font>
</p>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Aristotle
accepted Plato’s epistemological approach to philosophy and posited
objects of rational intuition as fundamentally different from the
objects of perception. However, he insisted that they were not
different substances, but merely irreducibly different aspects of the
same substances: essential forms and matter. This afforded Aristotle
a more convincing explanation of the natural world, because he could
insist that just as the material aspect of particular substances
makes them able to act on one another and, thereby, account for
efficient causes, so the formal aspect of particular substances makes
them subject to final causation, that is, the tendency of essential
forms that are merely potential to become actual, and thereby account
for functional explanations. This teleological view of nature enabled
Aristotle to account for the regular changes observed in biological
organisms, and he extended the same kind of explanation to physics
and astronomy. </font></font>
</p>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Teleology
gave Aristotle a theory about how the good is related to the true
that resembled Plato’s, because he could hold that what is good for
any substance is the full actualization of its essential form. The
difference is that, having denied the existence of a realm of Being,
Aristotle could not hold that the essential forms are explained by
the nature of goodness (The Good Itself, as Plato called it). He had
to argue that the good is different for different substances (and,
thus, that the only reason it is good is that its essential form
happens to exist in the world). Aristotle attempted to explain the
relationship between individual interest and spiritual interest by
holding that rational animals are essentially social (though he did
not explain how substances with one essential form could jointly
constitute a higher level organism with its own essential form
without giving up their essential form as individuals). </font></font>
</p>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
difference between essential forms and matter confronted Aristotle,
however, with the same kind of problem that faced Plato, for as he
recognized, there had to be an explanation of the relationship
between them. This led Aristotle to argue in the <i>Metaphysics</i>
that individual substances are basically essential forms and that the
material cause is merely their particular existence, or as it came to
be called, a mere “principle of individuation.” (In terms of the
nature of substance as explained here, Aristotle tried to avoid
holding that form and matter are basically different substances by
reducing the difference between form and matter to the difference
between the essential and the existential aspect of each particular
substance.) </font></font>
</p>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Though
Aristotle tried to naturalize Plato’s metaphysics by denying the
existence of a separate realm of Being, Plato and Aristotle were both
realists about forms. Both believed that, in addition to perceptible
objects, there are intelligible objects. But since what they were
talking about were actually images in the faculty of perception and
(certain) images in the faculty of rational imagination, which have a
phenomenal appearance to the subject, it is not surprising that there
is no adequate explanation of the relationship between them when they
are taken to be objects existing independently of the subject,
regardless whether it is conceived as a relationship between visible
objects and Forms or between matter and essential forms. The
inability of realists about forms to formulate a metaphysics that
could explain adequately how they are parts of the same world as
material objects in space led to doubts about their existence, and
thus, realism gave rise to anti-realism. Anti-realism was acted out
mainly during the Roman era. </font></font></font>
</p>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Philosophy
continued to be discussed by educated people in the Roman empire, but
the two most popular philosophical systems abandoned realism about
forms in favor of materialism. The Epicureans believed in atoms and
the void, and the Stoics believed that the world is constituted by
two kinds of matter, ultimately, active matter and passive matter.
(Active matter replaced essential forms as the cause of the order
found in nature, for it was supposed to give passive matter into all
the proper structures and behavior.) </font></font>
</p>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Neither was
much concerned about overcoming the dichotomy between naturalistic
and reflective understanding, for both simply took it for granted
that rational subjects are part of nature. But they called themselves
philosophers, because they were interested in overcoming the
dichotomy between the true and the good. They prized Greek philosophy
as the model for the higher form of reasoning that would give them
wisdom, though the kind of wisdom they sought was practical.
Epicureans followed Democritus in defending hedonism, the view that
pleasure is the one and only ultimate good and pain the only ultimate
evil. They used the determinism of atomism to argue that rational
beings cannot help but pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Stoics held
that the good life is to suppress all desire for anything different
from what happens. The believed that everything happens for the best,
because active matter pushed passive matter around in a way that
makes the world as a whole a perfect being. </font></font>
</p>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Even as an
attempt to overcome the dichotomy between the true and the good,
however, Epicureanism and Stoicism were less philosophical arguments
than the attempt to have an alternative to traditional religions in
thinking about how to live. Neither even attempted to explain how the
true makes the good good except to insist that the highest wisdom of
philosophy is to make peace with natural necessity. Epicureans never
tried to explain why there ought to be rational beings in the world
who must pursue pleasure, and the Stoics never explained what it is
that makes the world shaped by active matter perfect. </font></font>
</p>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>Medieval
epistemological philosophy. </i>Toward the end of the Roman era,
there was a revival of interest in Greek philosophy as a way of
overcoming the dichotomy between naturalistic and reflective
understanding. (Plotinus formulated a variation on Plato’s
metaphysics that tried to overcome the dualism of Being and Becoming
by taking the ultimate source of everything to be the One and
explaining the rest of the world as levels of emanations from it.)
But Plato’s dualism is what sealed the marriage of Greek philosophy
with Christianity, giving Western civilization a uniquely
philosophical religion. Later, with the inclusion of Aristotelian
philosophy, its rationalism was complete, and the effect on
subsequent civilization was profound. </font></font></font>
</p>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
Judeo-Christian belief in a God who created the natural world
combined easily with Plato’s metaphysical dualism of Being and
Becoming. Being could be reinterpreted as a supreme rational being,
that is, a person. (Plotinus had already portrayed the Forms as
aspects of a self-thinking being in the first emanation from the
One.) Since God created the natural world, it was possible to take
God to be the objective source of goodness that Socrates and Plato
were seeking. Thus, Plato’s way of overcoming the dichotomy between
reason and nature was resurrected. </font></font>
</p>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">But
Augustine was the matchmaker, and his belief that it was simply the
will of God that made the good good undercut the rationalistic intent
of Socrates and Plato by implying that it is arbitrary. However, with
the rediscovery of Aristotle in the Middle Ages, that defect was
corrected by Aquinas. He argued that what God knows, rather than his
will, explains why the good is good. That is, God’s
self-understanding includes an explanation of the nature of goodness
that reveals why the good ought to exist. And since that knowledge of
the nature of goodness is what guided God to create a world like
ours, His will was free. God turns out to have the wisdom that
Socrates was seeking.</font></font></p>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
upshot is that the belief in wisdom as a higher form of argument that
can give us a seamless and complete understanding of the true, the
good, and the beautiful became, though its adoption by Christianity,
a basic principle in the evolution of the arguments about social
roles that generated the institutions of Western civilization as the
Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance and the modern era began. The
belief that social roles had to be justified by basic principles
about the nature of morality and justice that could be known by
reason, and the belief that each rational subject has a free will
which makes him ultimately responsible for his behavior (and the
eternal fate of their souls) led to institutions that recognized the
autonomy of individuals and the sanctity of contracts. That gave the
edge to institutions of private property and market exchange that
would make it possible for capitalism to evolve, helping to pave the
way for ontological philosophy. </font></font></font>
</p>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">M<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="TtsOtkCRS10_11" align="right" hspace="5" width="250" height="24" border="0">odern
epistemological philosophy.</font> In the modern era, epistemological
philosophy took a fundamentally different form, though its theories
of reason were based on the same two elements: perceptual and
rational intuition. The difference was caused by modern science,
another offspring of ancient and medieval epistemological philosophy
which forced the recognition that the ancient atomists had been right
to reject naïve realism about perception.</font></font></font></p>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">By
the renaissance, mathematical arguments had evolved far enough for it
to be recognized that there are quantitatively precise regularities
about what happens in the physical world and that they can be
represented mathematically. Ever since Plato (or even Pythagoras),
mathematical knowledge had been the model for the deeper kind of
knowledge about the world that epistemological philosophy was
supposed to make possible, and mathematical knowledge evolved as
philosophers become mathematicians exchanged mathematical arguments. </font></font></font>
</p>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">On
the other hand, the belief that the natural world had been created by
God, a rational being, made it plausible to assume that nature had
been designed using mathematical concepts. Mathematics was the
“language of nature,” as Galileo put it, and thus, it was
plausible to assume that the use of mathematics in physics would
enable rational subjects to see into the mind of God. </font></font></font>
</p>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
first advances in physics were all discoveries of quantitative laws
of nature, including Kepler’s laws, Galileo’s laws, and before
long, Newton’s laws. Even Copernicus had defended his revolutionary
view of the universe as a mere mathematical possibility. Mathematics
provided the tool that eventually pried open the lid that had long
kept reason from understanding micro level processes, leading
eventually to chemistry, biology and neurophysiology. Since it was a
gift of the previous era of philosophical culture, it is ironic that
its first main effect was to replace naïve (or direct) realism about
perception with critical (or representative) realism.</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
belief that the physical world is made up of substances whose ways of
moving and interacting can be described by quantitatively precise
laws of nature was recognized as materialism, but it was a form of
materialism that had to deny that matter has any of the qualitative
properties it seems to have. Those qualitative properties had to be
explained as effects on the subject that are caused by the objects
through chains of causation that could be explained by laws of
nature, which is basically the conclusion to which ancient atomists,
like Democritus, had been driven as the conclusion of Pre-Socratic
philosophy two thousand years earlier, and for much the same reason.
(The belief that shape and size were the only essential properties of
atoms was also a quantitative view of matter.) Modern scientists
understood that perception of objects in space, for example, by
vision, had to be caused in some way by something that travels from
the object across space over time to the subject. And since anatomy
had made it clear by then that the brain was responsible for
receiving sensory input and guiding behavior, there was, within the
body, a second leg of the chain of causes and effects that were
responsible for how it appears to the subject (implying thereby that
the body also lacked the qualitative properties that seemed to be
located in it, such as the feel of hot and cold). </font></font></font>
</p>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">This
view had a profound significance for anyone who would attempt to take
the epistemological approach to showing how the validity of all the
arguments of rational culture can be shown by a theory about the
nature of reason that was based on reflective understanding. Ever
since Plato, epistemological philosophy had been founded on <i>naïve
realism</i>, the assumption that the perceptual appearance of the
world is an intuition of objects that exist independently of the
subject (or else are properties of the same kind as those that exist
independently, as Aristotle held). But in the modern period, it was
recognized that the appearances of object in perception have a
basically different nature from what actually exists independently of
the subject. It is called “<i>critical realism</i>,” because it
reject the naïve view, or “representative realism,” in contrast
to the :direct realism” of ancient and medieval philosophy. Since
the perceptual appearances must someone be part of the subject, the
subject himself must be a basically different kind of entity from the
objects in space. It was called the “mind,” and the appearances
of objects in perception were called “ideas of perception.”</font></font></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><img 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" name="HistPhiloMod" align="bottom" width="400" height="250" border="0"></font></p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Since the
implications of this line of reasoning are not well recognized, it is
worth emphasizing something about them that confirms our explanation
of how the brain works. It is not only the qualitative properties of
the objects of perception that are in the mind, but also the
appearance that they have locations in space. That is, ideas of
perception include the perception of space itself, not just objects
in it. Consider, for example, the distance between your face and what
you are reading right now. That is a part of space that seems to be
as immediately present as the material object on which these marks
are inscribed. That is, of course, what we would expect, since the
qualitative properties, or sensory qualia, are parts of the
telesensory images that are combined along with input about the
condition of the body in constructing a <i>local image </i>to
represent the local scene. The perception of the distance between
your face and the material object embodying the written words is part
of the understanding one has of space because of how one can imagine
it changing as a result of certain ways of behaving, such as moving
your head, turning the object around or moving your body around in
the local scene, which is itself seen as just part of an entire world
of objects in space. The upshot of this is that what is contained “in
mind” is not just sensory qualia, but also a phenomenal space in
which all those qualia are located. What one naively takes to be the
whole natural word, in other words, is contained in the mind, and
what exists independently of it has an entirely different nature,
even if it is also assumed to be made up of objects in space. The
physical world is made up of material objects in real space. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
modern philosopher who took up the tradition of philosophy and
applied it in the modern era was Descartes, and the form of his
epistemological argument can also be derived from this ontological
explanation of the nature of reason and consciousness. With only
perception and rational intuition to use, Descartes used the latter
to argue for the existence of the objects represented by the former. </font></font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Descartes
recognized that the ideas of perception are located in the mind,
distinct from objects existing independently as an external world.
(That was the point of his doubts about perception based on its
similarity to dreaming and the possibility of the ideas being
supplied by an evil demon.) For him, therefore, the way to explain
the validity of the first level arguments about the natural world by
which science was discovering the laws of nature was to show that a
world of the kind discovered by empirical science actually exists.
That is how he would overcome the dichotomy between naturalistic and
reflective understanding. But since his higher level of forensic
organization was based on reflective understanding, the only other
resources that Descartes could use as a deeper “cause” were other
objects of reflection. The ideas of memory and imagination were of
little use, since they obviously came from ideas of perception. But
there were other ideas, which he called “clear and distinct ideas,”
which are certain principles that derive from the structure of the
faculty of rational imagination. They differed from perceptual ideas
in the same way that Plato’s Forms differed from visible objects,
and the prime examples of such ideas were, once again, those of
mathematics. But since Descartes was a critical realist, he
recognized that clear and distinct ideas are as much part of the mind
and the ideas of perception. Plato’s rational intuition of
independently existing Forms had become a rational intuition of
necessary truths. Thus, in order for this theory of reason to provide
a deeper cause explaining the validity of the first level arguments
of natural science, he had to argue that clear and distinct ideas
could prove that a world of extension exists outside the mind. </font></font>
</p>
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">His famous
argument started with the Cogito, “I think, therefore I am,” his
first clear and distinct idea, and proceeded to use other clear and
distinct ideas to argue for the existence of a God. God’s
perfection precluded His deceiving the finite rational beings He had
created, and thus, Descartes concluded that there is a world existing
external to mind with the essential nature that rational beings can
grasp clearly and distinctly through geometrical reasoning. Thus his
theory about the nature of reason explained the validity of the
arguments of both reflective and naturalistic understanding, and the
proof of the existence of God allowed him to adopt a traditional
theological explanation of the nature of goodness. </font></font>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Descartes’
new way of doing epistemological philosophy was a form of realism,
because it took the ideas that are immediately present to mind as its
foundation and it tried to prove the existence and nature of a world
beyond them. But Descartes’ argument for the existence of the
external world was not convincing in the end, and no one has been
able to formulate an argument that does what he wanted. Nevertheless,
Descartes set the agenda for all of modern philosophy. It would be a
battle between realists and anti-realists about the external world.
The main obstacle to a proof of the existence of an external world
was the fundamentally different natures of mind and body. As
Descartes pointed out, body is extended and divisible, whereas mind
has a unity that does not admit of such division. That was his
argument for holding that God had created them as different
substances. </font></font></font>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The unity
of mind, as we have recognized, is how all the sensory qualia that
seem to be located in different places all have an appearance at once
to the same subject to which other ideas are also appearing.
Consciousness does have a unity that truly does not admit of division
like a material object in space. </font></font>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">It may be
worth noticing, by the way, that ontological philosophy provides the
kind of argument for the existence of the external world that
Descartes was seeking. He wanted a clear and distinct idea that would
prove the existence and nature of the world external to mind from the
point of view of the rational subject, and that is what is provided
by this explanation of the wholeness of the world. On the assumption
that nothing exists but space and matter (of kinds that explain the
truth of the basic laws of physics), not only does it derive
reproductive global regularities that explain the essential nature of
rational subjects and their place in the world, but it also explains
the nature of their consciousness as the intrinsic natures of bits of
matter continually given off by active brains. Together, as we have
seen, they explains the clear and distinct ideas that Descartes takes
to be indubitable. But this explanation is itself a clear and
distinct idea in Descartes’ sense. It is distinct in Descartes’
sense (that is, separate from and independent of any idea that is not
before the mind), because it is an idea of the whole world, which is
everything that exists. And it is clear in Descartes’ sense (that
is, with nothing obscure or vague about any of the parts of the idea
that is before the mind), because it is an explanation of the entire
world and everything in it by the basic substances that constitute
its existence. If the rational subject would just look in the right
direction, therefore, he would have a clear and distinct idea that
entails not only his own existence as a conscious mind, but also the
existence and nature of a world that exists independently of mind. </font></font>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Mind-body
dualism was nevertheless an intractable problem in modern philosophy,
because it is a form of epistemological philosophy which attempts to
explain the validity of ordinary, first level arguments by a theory
about the nature of reason that is based on what can be known about
reason by reflective understanding. Reflective understanding makes
reason seem to be a form of intuition, because all the ideas in the
mind seem to be objects of intuition and clear and distinct ideas are
just a special kind. But if the subject knows that he has ideas (and,
thus, that he exists) because of how they appear, or he knows that
clear and distinct ideas are true because of how they appears, the
reasons that determine his beliefs can hardly be efficient causes
like those that determine what happens in the natural world. Mind
must be a fundamentally different kind of substance from body. </font></font>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
subsequent history of modern philosophy can be predicted, for it is
the attempt to vindicate Descartes’ new way of doing
epistemological philosophy by overcoming the problems he encountered
— or else arguing that it cannot be done, that is, defending
anti-realism. In either case, it has to provide some explanation of
the validity, if any, of the arguments of rational level cutlure, not
only in the science of subjects, but also in the science of nature.
At first, it seemed that there must be a way of defending realism
about the external world, since mathematics provides an understanding
of its essential nature. But the difference in nature between body
and mind was even deeper than the difference between Becoming and
Being, the two substances of Plato’s metaphysics. Modern
philosophers recognized that both realms to which Plato was referring
are in the mind (as the ideas of perception and the clear and
distinct ideas of rational intuition), and thus, what they meant by
the external world was something whose existence Plato did not even
recognize. </font></font></font>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Continental
rationalists like Spinoza and Leibniz hoped to defend realism about
the external world by explaining the relationship between mind and
body in a different way from Descartes. Spinoza thought mind and body
were two different essential natures (“attributes”) of a single
substance that constitutes the existence of the entire world, and
Leibniz thought that mind and body were both kinds of minds
(“monads”) whose relationships, like the monads making up the
rest of the world, were a pre-established harmony that God had built
into the world from the beginning. But instead of showing how reason
could know the existence of an external world, the implausibility of
their metaphysical systems brought the whole approach of rationalism
into disrepute.</font></font></p>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">British
empiricists, like Locke, Berkeley and Hume, rejected the attempt to
use reason to prove the existence of the external world. But they did
not give up the Cartesian project. Locke attempted, instead, to
explain the validity of the first level arguments of natural science
by showing how they are based on ideas of perception alone. But this
merely confirmed that the existence of the external world cannot be
known in that way, and Berkeley embraced anti-realism about it. Hume
agreed, though he focused his anti-realism on causation, showing that
perception provides no reason for believing efficient-cause
explanations except the regular conjunction of events of those kinds.
Though scientists could not share the philosopher’s skepticism
about the natural world, they had to agree with empiricists in
rejecting rationalist metaphysics, and empiricist skepticism about
causation put a real limit on the ambitions of natural science,
encouraging natural science to think of its goal as merely
discovering the basic laws of nature. </font></font>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Kant sought
to overcome the obstacle that mind-body dualism posed for
epistemological philosophy by insisting that the first level
arguments of natural science are really about the phenomenal world,
that is, the world constituted in part by the mind, not about what
exists independently of it. Though Kant did not deny that something
does exist independently of mind, he did deny that such “things in
themselves” are in space or time. Space and time were mere forms of
intuition in the mind. This transformed Cartesian mind-body dualism,
because it was no longer possible even to conceive the nature of what
exists besides mind. But it did not eliminate metaphysical dualism,
because Kant was still a realist about things in themselves outside
the mind. And the acknowledgment of a reality that reason could not
grasp meant that epistemological philosophy had to admit explicitly
that its way of explaining the validity of all the first level
arguments of rational culture did not explain the wholeness of the
world, but only the wholeness of reason itself. This discovery was
more than some defenders of traditional philosophy could accept.</font></font></p>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Hegel
sought to overcome the obstacle of recognizing the existence of
something whose nature reason cannot grasp by constructing from the
elements of Kant’s theory of mind a dialectical theory of reason.
Instead of helping to constitute a merely phenomenal natural world,
as Kant held, Hegel argued that reason constituted the actual natural
world and everything about it. By taking individual rational subjects
to be merely moments in its dialectic, Hegel could insist that he had
shown how reason is able to know the existence and nature of a world
existing independently of each particular mind, thereby defending
realism, in a sense, and giving a philosophical explanation of why
the first level arguments of rational culture (mere “understanding,”
in Hegel’s view) are valid. But such absolute idealism merely
exposes the real nature of epistemological philosophy as the attempt
to discover the deeper cause of the world that is known to rational
culture in the nature of reason, rather than in the nature of the
world that exists independently of rational beings. </font></font>
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">As
far as goodness is concerned, the medieval theological explanation
was taken more or less for granted during the modern era — until
Hume tried to explain what is good in terms of natural desires and
Hegel tried to explain the nature of goodness by the perfection of
the outcome of his dialectic.</font></font></font></p>
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