PhilosoPhy in A Week Mel Thompson The Teach Yourself series has been trusted around the world for over 60 years. This academic series of ‘In A Week’ books is designed to help people at all levels and around the world to discover the basics of key ideas in the fields of philosophy, religion and culture. Learn in a week, remember for a lifetime. Mel Thompson is a former teacher, lecturer and publisher, and today works as a freelance writer specializing in philosophy and ethics both for the general reader and the student. With Hodder & Stoughton he has published, among other titles, Understand Philosophy, Understand Ethics, Eastern Philosophy and Philosophy of Mind, all part of the highly regarded Teach Yourself series. PhilosoPhy Mel Thompson www.inaweek.co.uk in a week First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Hodder & Stoughton. An Hachette UK company. First published in US in 2011 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. This revised and expanded edition published 2013 Previously published as Philosophy Made Simple Copyright © Mel Thompson 2011, 2013 The right of Mel Thompson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Database right Hodder & Stoughton (makers) The Teach Yourself name is a registered trademark of Hachette UK. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographic rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Hodder & Stoughton, at the address below. You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: on file. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that any Website addresses referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher and the author have no responsibility for the Websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content will remain relevant, decent or appropriate. The publisher has made every effort to mark as such all words which it believes to be trademarks. The publisher should also like to make it clear that the presence of a word in the book, whether marked or unmarked, in no way affects its legal status as a trademark. Every reasonable effort has been made by the publisher to trace the copyright holders of material in this book. Any errors or omissions should be notified in writing to the publisher, who will endeavour to rectify the situation for any reprints and future editions. Artworks © Peter Lubach Typeset by Cenveo® Publisher Services. Printed in Great Britain by CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading. Hodder & Stoughton policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. Hodder & Stoughton Ltd 338 Euston Road London NW1 3BH www.hodder.co.uk Contents Introduction 2 Sunday 4 The theory of knowledge Monday 20 The philosophy of science Tuesday 36 Language and logic Wednesday 50 The philosophy of mind Thursday 68 The philosophy of religion Friday 84 Ethics Saturday 100 Political philosophy Afterword 116 Glossary 120 Answers 122 IntroduCtIon In order to enjoy philosophy, it is important to remember that it is both an activity and a body of knowledge. As an activity, it is a matter of asking questions, challenging assumptions, re-examining traditionally held views, unpacking the meaning of words, weighing up the value of evidence and examining the logic of arguments. It cultivates an enquiring and critical mind, even if it sometimes infuriates those who want an easy intellectual life. Philosophy is also a means of clarifying your own thinking. The clearer your thought, the better able you will be to express yourself, and the more accurate your way of examining arguments and making decisions. As a body of knowledge, it is the cumulative wisdom of great thinkers. It offers you a chance to explore fundamental questions and to see what thinkers in different periods of history have had to say about them. This in itself is valuable, because it frees you from being limited by the unquestioned assumptions of those around you. To think through issues from first principles is a natural result of having looked at the way in which philosophers have gone about their work. So this second aspect of philosophy reinforces the first. Philosophy is a tool with which to expose nonsense, and express ideas in a way that is as unambiguous as possible. For example, philosophy makes a distinction between ‘analytic’ and ‘synthetic’ statements. An analytic statement is known to be true once the definitions of its terms are understood. 2 + 2 = 4 is just such a statement. You don’t have to go out gathering sets of two items and counting them in order to verify it. You cannot return triumphant and proclaim that you have found a single case which disproves the rule – that you have two sets of two which actually add up to five! Proof, for analytic statements, does not require research or experimental testing. On the other hand, if I say that a certain person is at home, that cannot be true in the same way – it is a synthetic 2 statement, based on evidence. To find out whether or not it is true, you have to phone or visit. The statement can easily be proved wrong, and it certainly cannot be true for all time. But if someone says ‘God exists’, is that an analytic or a synthetic statement? Can you define ‘God’ in such a way that his existence is inevitable? If so, can any evidence be relevant for or against that claim? You might argue that: ●●God is everything that exists. ●●Everything that exists, exists. ●●Therefore God exists. This argument is sound, but it implies that ‘God’ and ‘everything that exists’ are interchangeable terms. This is pantheism (the idea that God and the world are identical) and it is quite logical, but is it what most people mean by the word ‘God’? And what are its implications for the way we see ‘everything that exists’? We observe that everything in the world is liable to change. There will come a time when nothing that exists now will remain. Does this mean that a pantheistic god is also constantly changing? Does it make sense for a word to stay the same, when the thing to which it refers changes? Is a school the same if its buildings are replaced, its staff move on to other posts, and its pupils leave year by year to be replaced by others? Am I the same, even though most of the cells in my body are changing, and my thoughts are constantly on the move? What is the ‘I’ that remains throughout my life? This illustrates another feature of philosophy, and a good reason to study it: you can start from any one question and find yourself drawn outwards to consider many others. Start with ‘the self’, and you find that matters of metaphysics or religion are drawn into your thinking. By using the skills of philosophy, you have the means of integrating your ideas, of relating them, and of testing them out within a wide range of issues. Mel Thompson 3 Y A D The theory of knowledge N U S 4 Y Theory of knowledge examines what we know A d and how we know it. It asks whether knowledge n u starts with the mind or with the experience of our s senses. Descartes famously claimed that the only thing we can know for certain is the fact of our own Y A thinking (‘I think, therefore I am’), whereas Hume d n argued that we should proportion our belief to our o m evidence, and Kant showed that our minds shape the way in which we experience the world. Y A Today we shall also look at the different views of d s Plato and Aristotle on whether general or ideal e u entities (e.g. justice, goodness) actually exist in t themselves, or whether they are only summaries Y of the qualities we see in individual things. A d s In the end we need to consider whether we e n should be sceptical about our knowledge, or d e W take a pragmatic view that we should assess our knowledge on the basis of what works. Y A d s r u H t Y A d rI F Y A d r u t 5 A s