HCJ4 - Seminar 2

JS Mill

Mill describes his 'system of logic' as a textbook of the doctrine that derives all knowledge from experience. All number denote a physical phenomena e.g. 2 denotes all pairs and 4 denotes all fours. This gives 2 apples a physical difference between 3 apples. No one can deny that 2 is different to 3!

Another of Mill's principles was 'the sums of equals are equals' - this is an inductive truth (a generalisation based on individual experiences e.g. If a person has only ever seen black cars, then all cars are black. Assertions of this type are always hypothetical and tentative.)

Mill also looked onto ethics, his 'utalitarianism' combind Hedonism (the pursuit of one's own is the aim of all action). It was a mix of act-utalitarianism and rule utalitarianism. An example of both is stealing. If someone has to steal a loaf of bread to feed his/her family, rule utalitarians would say that it is unethical to steal in all scenarios. An act utalitarian could justify stealing the bread if the consequences of that specific act were good, despite it usually having bad consequences overall.


Pierce

In his articles for 'Popular Science Monthly' he wrote that an inquiry starts and ends in doubt - "it is certainly best for us that our beliefs should be such as may truly guide our actions so as to satisfy our desires". "The sole object of inquiry is the settlement of opinions". To settle our opinions, we must use 4 methods:

1: Tenacity. This is when we take a statement an repeat it over and over again, pushing away everything that might not confirm it. People also tend to read newspapers that confirm their political views e.g. Daily Telegraph read by Tory supporters and Dail Mirror read by Labour supporters. Problems may arise when your beliefs conflict with another tenacious believer's views.

2: Authority. This method can rectify some of the problems with tenacity. "Let an institution be created that shall...keep correct objects before...the people...to teach them to the young. Also to have power of prevention of other doctrines (contrary to the ones taught in the institution) being taught". One problem with this method is that it is accompanied by cruelty and and no institution can regulate every subject. It can regulate the teaching of subjects in the institution, but not the actual subject.

3: A priori meditation. This is respected among philosophers despite it not producing a fixed belief system. The pendulum has swung between idealism (the theory that the ultimate nature of reality is based on the mind. It also manifests itself as scepticism about the possibility of knowing anything outside of your own mind).

4: Science. It concerns the existence of a reality independent of our minds. "By taking advantage of the laws of perception, we ascertain by reasoning how things really are if he (any man) has sufficient experience...will be led to the one true conclusion". Pierce rejects Descartes' principle that true philsophy must begin from methodical scepticism. According to Pierce, Cartesian doubt was nothing more than s futile pretence and the endeavour to regain certainty by meditation is even more harmful.


Frege

In his work there is explicit discrimination between logic and psychology. Frege believed that epistemology had been given a fundamental role in philosophy that should be designed to logic.

He adopted Kant's distinction between a priori (deduction) and a posteriori (experience). It is possible to discover the context of a proposition before we hit on the proof of it. If we are to talk of knowledge there must be a justification as all knowledge is a belief that has been justified and is true. It is not possible to talk of a priori mistakes because no one can only know what is true.

Frege used a distinction between sense of an expression and the reference of an expression. The reference is the object to which the expression refers e.g. Venus is the reference of the expression 'morning star. The sense is what we get when we understand the word. The sense is common understanding.

In practice: The morning star is a body illuminated by the sun. The evening star is a body illuminated by the sun. Not everyone knows that the morning star and evening star are names for venus, so does that mean that one statement is true and one is false? The thought is not the reference, it is actually the sense. Bascially, the planet Venus is the referent, 'morning star' is sense and 'evening star' is sense. It could have other senses.

Later in his life, Frege became interested in 'colour'. These are the aspects of language that he hadn't covered in his method of logic.If everybody spoke in a way that Frege saw as 'logical' then our sentences would be tedious and have no emotional interest. Frege saw binary as the perfect language as there is 'no colour', just 1 or 0, yes or no, black or white.

Computers work on binary, so analytical logic is what we have to thank for computer code. Phrases like 'there was no one on the road' would confuse a computer. Similar to 0 = nothing, but nothing is something, so 0 = something?