Kant's Idealism

I/ The difference between Kant's and Hume's ideas in the necessary connection between cause and effect:


"Hume says that the necessary connection between cause and effect is the product of a habit of the mind. Kant claims to have removed Hume's doubts about causation, but for him too the necessary connection between cause and effect is only in our minds. Kant's position is therefore no real improvement over Hume's." This criticism is partly correct because both Kant and Hume say that the necessary connection between cause and effect is related to our minds, but is not totally correct because Kant's idea is a significant improvement over Hume's idea. First of all, Hume's causal knowledge of knowing future is related to matters of facts and to what he calls the psychology of belief, and this psychology of belief is a product of custom and habit, or the product or our minds that are formed based on our habits. Habits are experiences that we have, not concepts or a priori relation of ideas; however, when the mind forms a belief based on these habits, the mind uses a reasoning which is known as an inductive reasoning, and thus, the belief is a conception formed by experience. Hume says in his An Enquiry that:

I say then that belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain. This variety of terms, which may seem so unphilosophical, is intended only to express that act of the mind which renders realities, or what is taken for such, more present to us than fictions, causes them to weigh more in the thought, and gives them a superior influence on the passions and imagination. (509)

Thus, we see that according to Hume, belief is a conception; however, in my opinions, although belief is formed on experience, it is a constant conception which may be contrast with experience, and in that case, it is definitely a product of the mind. For example, I have an experience that riding a bicycle is a good exercise because it increases heart beats, develops muscles, and makes me become supple and strong, and this experience has formed such a belief that "riding bicycle is an excellent exercise." But in fact, do everyday in which I ride my bicycle, I always feel healthy and strong? No, if one day I have an accident on the road while riding the bicycle, or if one day, I practice it too much and get a hear attack? But saying so is not denying that my belief is true because the belief that riding the bicycle is an excellent exercise contains the whole conception about health, physiological and medical matters, etc. in that belief, not just the act of riding a bicycle. Thus, we now understand why belief is the product of a mind which is based on a physical habit because through the habit of riding a bicycle, we form a good conception about it.

But is it true that for Kant, the necessary connection between cause and effect is only in our mind as the above statement said? Yes, but Kant's theory about cause and effect is more complex than Hume's theory of belief. Recall that Hume defines that causal knowledge is not a relation of ideas but a statement of matters of fact. For example, what causes us to think that we will perform better on a test if we study? Why do we reason that way? Because to Hume, in the past, studying hard has improved our performances on tests; thus, when we reason that way, we are reasoning about the future based on the past. And a belief is a concept that is derived from this reasoning; that is why we believe that when we study hard, we do better on a test. Thus, Hume's causal knowledge about cause and effect is a posteriori judgement; however, Kant asserts something different than Hume's idea about a priori or a posteriori judgment; that is the concept of what Kant calls "synthetic judgment" that is different from Hume's analytic judgment. Hume's judgment is a priori relation of ideas that states that a proposition whose truth can be known by simply inspecting the ideas to see whether denying it involves a contradiction. For example, the definition "a triangle has three sides," or "two plus two is four" whose truths involve the contradictions of the definitions. The important point about those judgments is that they are analytic because the properties of a triangle are used to judge what a triangle is, and the property of three sides expresses nothing else in the predicate of that judgment about a triangle except what has been thought in the definition of that subject which is a triangle. Kant's judgment is a synthetic one which adds more features or more information than what is already contained or thought about the subject. For example, "a physician who is a medical doctor makes more money than a teacher" is a synthetic judgment because it shows that a medical doctor not only has a purpose of curing people but also has a purpose of getting rich. It is synthetic because not every doctor likes to get rich more than to help people, but there is a truth that many people want to become medical doctors to get rich. The concept of getting rich says something more than what is contained in the concept of being a doctor; it contains a synthetic concept. Understanding only the philantropic concept of a doctor is not sufficient to determine the truth of the above two synthetic-ideas judgment about a medical doctor. Thus to know the truth of the above proposition would amplify our knowledge of doctors beyond what we know about them. Another example about synthetic judgment is the following mathematical theorem that "the sum of the interior angles of a triangle is equal to the sum of two right angles." Thus, by knowing and analyzing the definition that a triangle has three sides will not help us understand the above additional property about a triangle; therefore the sum of the interior angles of a triangle is a synthetic judgment. Kant says in Prolegomena:

Now special and time are the intitution that pure mathematics lays at the foundation of all its cognition and judgments that arise as both apodeictic and necessary. For mathematics must first present all its concepts in intuition and pure mathematics must do the same in pure intuition; that is, it must construct them. If it proceed in any other way, it would be impossible to make any progress, for mathematics does not proceed analytically by dissection of concepts, but synthetically, and if pure intuition were lacking, there would be nothing in which the matter for synthetic a priori judgments could be given. (592)

What Kant means is that from intuition, we can build more theorems revolving a definition of a mathematical objects, and these theorems are synthetical propositions such as the theorem about the sum of the interior angles of a triangle. But that is to explain how mathematical synthetics is possible. For the question of how natural science is possible, Kant says, "if nature is supposed to signify the existence of things in themselves, we could never recognize it either a priori or a posteriori." And,

The cognition of what cannot be an object of experience would be hyperphysical and we are not concerned here with hyperphysical things, but rather with the cognition of nature whose actuality can be confirmed by experience, although it is possible a priori and precedes all experience. (598)

What he means is that we can only have a priori judgments for things that are not in themselves but are presentations such as objects of experience - objects that we can observe in scientific experiments or in natural life experience. Thus, to Kant, a judgment of experience can be a priori judgment while Hume's a belief which is a judgment of experience is a posteriori judgment. Kant says additionally:

But it has just been shown that the laws of nature can never be recognized a priori in objects insofar as they are considered not in reference to possible experience, and the sum of these is what we properly call nature. (598)

Furthermore, a priori judgment must be universally valid because object validity and necessarily universal validity are equivalent concepts, and this answers the next question that:

II/ Explain Kant's argument for the objective validity of the category of causation, which he sees as sucessfully responding to Hume's challenge. Is Kant's a priori necessity the same thing as Hume's psychological necessity? In other words, is this fictional criticism of Kant justified?

Kant says:

I think it will be understood that I do not mean here the rules of the observation of nature that is already given, for these already presuppose experience. I do not mean we can study the laws of nature (through experience) -- for in that case they would not be a priori laws and would not yield us a pure natural science -- but rather how a priori conditions of the possibility of experience are at the same time the sources from which all universal laws of nature must be derived. (598)

And,

All our judgments are initially mere judgments of perception; they are valid only for us (i.e., for our subject) and only later do we give them a new reference (to an object) and desire that they shall always be valid for us in the same way for everybody else; for if a judgment agrees among themselves, and thus the objective validity of the judgment of experience signifies nothing other than its necessary universality. (599)

Thus, to Kant some synthetic judgments are a priori judgments that express a necessary or universally valid truth (apodeictic), and he asserts that experience comes from knowledge or understanding but experience does not lead us to knowledge. Hence, we see that Kant's causal knowledge is different from Hume's causal knowledge because Hume's causal knowledge is the reasoning of matters of fact that are true or false a posteriori judgments. Here, I think I should give specific examples to explain more explicitly about causal knowledge and how it is considered as objective or subjective as well as why it is considered universally valid or not. In an experiment that ball A hits ball B, we see that ball B moves after being hit. To Hume, the fact that ball B moves can be explained also that it is previously hit by another ball, ball C; this means that when we see ball B moving it is not necessary that ball A hits it because it could be hit by any other balls. Another better example is that people say "I eat because I am hungry", but in fact when we see somebody eating something, it can be not true that he or she is hungry; he eats because he sees a new food that he wants to try, or he eats because he goes to a food party. It is not true that he must be hungry in order to go to a party. Thus, we can't always say that we eat because we are hungry. To Hume, the statement "he eats because he is hungry" is not valid in all cases; thus there is no necessary connection between eating and being hungry. To kant, that statement is universally valid in all cases because Kant thinks that when we hungry we must eat; thus to kant, it is universally valid if we consider it as a principle that can apply in common cases. In Hume's case, the statement is observed by an individual; thus, it is subjective, but in Kant's case the statement is a principle of a causal knowledge. To Kant, a causal relation is a necessary relation or a necessary connection because it is true that we eat because we are hungry; the most necessary cause of eating is hunger and they are the cause and the effect that are necessarily related. To Hume, he doesn't consider it be universally valid because he is considering in a posteriori experience where a specific effect has a specific cause; in other words, there is not always a necessary relation between an effect and a cause as the above example pointed out. Here is what a critic says about the difference between Hume and Kant:

For all we have in perception is the temporally and/or spatially associative concatenation of sensory images and the like. And, as Hume demonstrated, connection such as Kant takes to be essential ingredient in our ordinary conception of causation. But for Hume no further resources are available from which our concept of cause is an a priori concept, which, in virtue of its necessary application to all of our intuition, renders objective experience possible. ( Scott-Kakures, 269)

In Part two of the Trancendental Problem: How is natural science possible? Another idea is added by Kant that is called "subjective validity" or judgment of perception. According to Kant, judgments of experience possess what he calls "objective validity" while so-called judgments of perception possess only "subjective validity". Kant says,

Let's illustrate the matter: that the room is warm, sugar sweet, and wormwood bitter, are merely subjectively valid judgments. I do not at all expect that I or everyone else shall always find it as I do now do; each judgment merely expresses a relation of two sensations to the same subject, namely myself, and that only in my present state of perception; for that reason they are not valid of the object. I call them judgments of perception... For that reason I express all such judgments as subjective valid. For instance, when I say that the air is elastic, this judgment is initially only a judgment of perception, since I simply refer two of my sensations to one another. However, if I want to call it a judgment of experience, then I require that this connection stands under a condition that makes it universally valid. Thus, I desire that I and everybody else should always necessarily connect the same perceptions under the same circumstances. (599)

For Kant, to say that judgments of perception have only subjective validity is to say that any issue of the legitimacy or correctness of the judgment can in no way depend on how things are outside the subject's own subjective experience. However, subjective validity is sometimes necessary to an objective validity because judgments of perception and judgments of experience may be complementary to each other, or a judgment of perception may be used to combine with a judgment of experience since Kant says that " all our judgments are initially mere judgments of perception; they are valid only for us (i.e., for our subject) and only later do we give them a new reference (to an object) and desire that they shall always be valid for us in the same way for everybody else. (599)

The way Kant uses the term 'concepts of understanding' and the way Kant thinks that experience rests upon a priori concepts of understanding show that Kant doesn't want to rely only on perceptions as the only foundation for a judgment or a reasoning to be laid upon. Some of Kant's synthetic judgements don't rely on perception if they are a priori understanding of knowledge; other synthetic judgments rely on perception if they are a posteriori judgments while all Hume's judgments are not synthetic and cause and effect connection. That's why Kant says that a judgment of perception is what comes before a judgment of experience, and I think that the following statement is a very important one in Kan't Prolegomena:

All our judgments are initially mere judgments of perception; they are valid only for us (i.e., for our subject) and only later do we give them a new reference (to an object) and desire that they shall always be valid for us in the same way for everybody else; for if a judgment agrees with an object, all judgments concerning the same object must likewise agree among themselves, and thus the objective validity of judgment of experience signifies nothing other than its necessary universality. (599)

By the above statement, Kant means that if we want our judgment to be objectively valid, we must see that it is first valid by ourselves, and this means that a judgment cannot be accepted to be valid by others if I, the subject, who see an object cannot accept the validity of that object that I am perceiving. Moreover, my perceptions are subjectively valid only to myself because I am the only one who is having the perceptions. So, to make my perceptions become objectively valid I must make them become valid by others. Thus, we see that Kant's judgment of experience is not a posteriori judgment like Hume's judgment because even experience comes from perceptions, making it objectively valid is a process that turns experience into universal concepts and principles because it is no longer valid only to the person who perceives it but valid to all persons regardless whether they perceive it or not. And this is a big difference between Kant and Hume because Hume is an empiricist who would want to rely only on experiment or a posteriori judgment and reasoning from matters of fact to make judgments, especially judgments that are related to causal knowledge, and Hume thinks that all judgments concerning cause and effect are judgments of matters of fact while Kant thinks all judgments concerning causal knowledge are a priori judgments.

In addition, there are some important terms that Kant uses in his texts; they are 'subject', 'appearance', and 'transcendental idealism'. The terms 'transcendental idealism' itself is not a common term but an allusion of what Kant means beside the literal concepts that he establishes and tries to explicate especially using scientific areas such as mathematics and natural sciences. His main theory still focuses on what he calls the problem of metaphysics. Many times in the Prolegomena, Kant has asked repeatedly the questions: "How metaphysics is possible?" and "What kind of cognition which can alone be called metaphysical?" And this is the topic that I think is the most important one in Kant's works. After the Preface, and before the Main Transcendental Problem: Part One, Kant talks about the sources of metaphysics; he says,

First, as concerns the sources of metaphysical cognition, its very concept implies that they cannot be emperical. Its principle (including not only its fundamental propositions but also its basic concepts) must never be derived from experience. It must not be physical but metaphysical cognition, namely cognition lying beyond experience. It can therefore have for its basis neither outer experience, which is the basis of emperical psychology. It is therefore a priori cognition from pure understanding and pure reason. (584)

That is why we can see that even when dealing with mathematical problems, Kant still thinks about synthetic judgments in the propositions as ones that can insert additional subjective characteristics onto the subject of propositions, and this is related to what he calls "transcendental idealism'. By using these terms, Kant wants to concentrate on subjects and subjective perceptions, and this is a metaphysical idea. In "The Main Transcendental Problem: Part Three", Kant says, "the objective reality of these concepts and the truth and falsity of metaphysical assertions cannot be discovered or confirmed by any experience.' (612) Other important statements that Kant writes are:

Judgment may be twofold -- I may merely compare perceptions and connect them in a consciousness of my state; I may connect them in consciousness in general (599)

And,

The former judgment is merely a judgment of perceptions and is to this extent of subjective validity only: It is merely a connection of perceptions in my mental state without reference to the object. (600)

What Kant means by idealism in a strong transcendental meaning is that: Anything that pertains to the material world beyond mentality is wholly a product of the mind, and what Kant means by idealism in a weak transcendental meaning is that: There are certain aspects of the material world including material qualities that are imposed by the mind, and this theory asserts that there is a reality that exists independent of the mind which the mind somehow relates to it. However, all the characteristics that are used to impose on the material objects are created by the mind and hence they personify that independent reality only for the outer appearance but not for the objects themselves or the inner characteristics. If we take space and time as temporary conditions necessary for the connection of the natural objects then Kant is the philosopher who thinks that space and time are dependent upon the mind.

Thus, there are two main aspects of transcendental idealism; one talks about idealism as a theory that asserts that the physical world or the material objects are dependent upon the understanding activities of the mind in perceiving them that is also called experience. The other talks about how a person can be certain about the appearance of the external world, the object independent of the mind, if a person only understands or has consciousness directly of the objects in his mind. Kant calls the immediate perception of the object as 'appearance' or 'representation' and they exist only in the moments being perceived and the only natural characteristics of them are the ones that they are perceived to have. Kant also thinks that idealists consider that space and time are objects in their minds and the physical objects that are extended in space and time exist independently of our understanding of them.

Thus, the answer for the question that how an idealist can be certain that objects that are outside the mind can exist is that: the physical objects along with space and time which are their positions are their only 'outer appearance' and are considered as representations but not as objects that are in themselves. During the explanations in the two texts, Kant also alludes about the importance of the impact of a subject on the material objects that the subject is observing, and that subjective validity is a judgment so important that without it, universal validity is impossible because objective validity is equivalent to universal validity, and they are equivalent concepts. What he means is that we cannot make a judgment universally valid if it is not first subjectively valid.

References

Kant, Immanuel. "Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics that Will Be Able to Come Forward as a Science (1783)." Modern Philosophy - An Anthology of Primary Sources. Eds Roger Ariew and Eric Watkins. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company. 1998. 579-633.

Scott-Kakures, Dion et al. History of Philosophy. New York: Harper-Collins Publisher. 1993.

Consideration of People Potentials Never Comes After Consideration of Product and Process

The following debate is an argument related to Myth 4 of Chapter 1, Seven Myths of Mediocre Leadership, in Spitzer's book: The Spirit of Leadership. The seven myths are:

Myth 1: Resources are fixed.
Myth 2: The narrow view of maximizing shareholder wealth -- to maximize stockholder wealth in the short term -- is a reasonable one.
Myth 3: Three traditional financial statements -- income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement -- give a comprehensive report on organizational performance.
Myth 4: Consideration of people should come after consideration of product and process.
Myth 5: Leadership requires tough-mindedness -- matters of the heart make one "soft" and should be avoided.
Myth 6: Principle-based ethics will make us less competitive; the best we can do is look at harm and benefits.
Myth 7: Tangibles -- money, equipment, and inventory -- are more real than intangibles (ideas, ideals, trust, spirit, concern and vision)


Everyone knows how to use wheat flour to bake, but a croissant is tasted much better than a piece of bread, and so a breakfast with croissants also cost more than the one that involves only plain bread. Eventually, to sell croissants will bring more profits than to sell breads, and we also can't forget to be grateful to the person who invented it. That story is a good example to remind us that without the invention of a product, there would be no process of making it, and there would be no business to be established in order to sell the product. Thus, what comes first increating a business? The product. But who makes the product of course would even comes before the invention of the product. Moreover, for example, a pharmaceutical company whose focus is to manufacture medicine would definitely emphasize more on the development of new medicines rather than just selling the current products. How do they accomplish this goal without paying attention to the employment of a group of talented pharmacists or chemists to help them? So, to get to the main point is equivalent to saying that the consideration of people should be the main concern issued at least at the same time with, if not before, the concerns for designing a product and for constructing processes.

Before proceeding into further arguments for the above main theme, it is necessary to classify the manpower which means the consideration of people potentials into two primary categories that are used in the structure of a business. They are employees and customers. In addition, employees do not mean only employees but also corporation leaders, stakeholders and others who involve in making and selling the products, and customers are the ones who involve in the purchasing of the products. For this purpose, the first category which is employee will be mentioned first to help the analysis of why manpower should be considered the priority.

As I already stated in the above first paragraph by giving two examples to show why people are important for the foundation of a company, the next example will not focus on how to form a business, but on how to operate a business. Once, a group of people already decide what product that they want to engage their business in, and how to get that product, the next step for them is to worry about how to conduct and make the performance tasks of making the product the best ways they can to bring them profits. A good example for this strategy would be the case of a pharmaceutical manufacturer who wants to create more medicines that can cure new diseases to sell. In this case, the management team would concentrate on hiring talented pharmacists and chemists, and this is not an easy task because among a thousand people, the real talented can be counted on the finger tips. Not just people who invent the products that are important to increase profits, other regular employees who involve in the daily operation of producing, selling, accounting, etc. are also very important to the survival of a business. In the book First Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently, written by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, the two authors concentrate their main issues mostly on the manpower more than other matters such as product, process, money, equipment, etc. In this 7-chapters book, the five chapters are reserved for teaching how to obtain the best relationship between the managers and their employees as to how to select, to train and to treat employees as the most crucial matter for a business to succeed and develop. The following paragraphs extracted from this book presents their valuable ideas about employee power:


Companies and managers know they need help. What they are asking for is a simple and accurate measuring stick that can tell them how well one company or one manager is doing as compared with others, in terms of finding and keeping talented people. Without this measuring stick, many companies and many managers know they may find themselves high and dry... And now there is a powerful new faction on the scene, demanding this simple measuring stick: institutional investors. (Chapter 1, 22).

The institutional investors, instead, find out that traditionally, managers focused on hard results, like return of assets and economic value, and that most of them didn't concern themselves with "soft" issues like "culture": Why this new found interest? They have started to realize whether software designer or delivery truck drive, accountant or hotel housekeeper, the most valuable aspects of jobs are now "the most essentially human tasks: sensing, judging, creating, and building relationships"... Today more than ever before, if a company is bleeding people, it is bleeding value. Investors are frequently stunned by this discovery. (Buckingham, 23)


Thus, the focus is on the power of employees and how managers should manipulate this power. The following paragraph is an important conclusion of their perspectives:


As we described in chapter 1, many companies have realized that the strength of their culture is part of their competitive weaponry. If they can treat their people better than their competitors, the will be able to attract more talent, focus that talent, develop that talent, and ultimately dominate. In their view, culture - how managers treat their people - has become tremendously important. Too important, it appears, to be left to chance. (Buckingham, 118)


In the next category which is customers, we all know how important customers are to the survival of a business. Speaking about customers is also speaking about profits because more customers means the increment in profits, and thus customer is related to other tangible considerations such as maximizing shareholder wealth, financial statements, etc. which are the main subjects of Myths 2,3,5,6 and 7. Thus myth 4 is not only important for itself but also affects the meanings of other myths. If myth 4 is not practiced correctly, other myths will be useless in considering them as ways to improve the spirit of leadership. Back to the customer problem, product, of course is the object of customers because all they are interested in is to buy the products. However, what products are sold and how they are sold is a relation to the interaction between the sellers, the employees and customers. If employees are not trained well to be courteous, helpful and cheerful, the store or the company will loose customers. Recently, in my own experience, the market place, especially the stores are the most popular places for cashiers, salespersons, employees to mistreat customers. Once they are tired or have some personal problems, they pour their problems on customers by some very impolite and nasty actions. Of course, the ill-treats will cause customers to forsake and detest the places and not to come back for their future purchases. So, loosing customers can mean a reduction in profits and further disaster as bankuptcy. Therefore, consideration of how to attract more customers is one of the most important priority in the operation of a business. The following paragraphs that are extracted from Chaper 7 - Ignoring Custoerm - of the book, Why Companies Fail, written by Mark Ingebretsen will show us how a business evaluate its customers and put the importance of customer a second rank behind the first priority which is employee:


southwest Airlines is one company that is legendary for its innovative customer service. Not so well known is the fact that the company does not input its customers on top of the organization chart. Ironically, it caters to customers not via costly perks but through the lack of them. While other airlines were offering in-flight meals Southwest gave customers "a beverage and a bag of peanuts. The result? As fierce price competition forced other airlines to cut back on service, customers reacted harshly to the ever-diminishing value of their tickets. Southwest Airlines, meanwhile, was able to continue as before. It focused on two things that customers value most from an airline, other than safety: price and timeless. What Southwest added to this mix was notably courteous service, which in the end costs nothing but is often what customers remember most about a flight.


How the airline makes a specialty of customer service is somewhat ingenious: First, its employees are taught that "intangibles are more important than tangibles." For exmple, a simple friendly hello can mean more than a well-prepared meal. To operate under edict, the airline puts its employees ahead of customers, the very opposite of what most companies say in their mission statements. Presumably happy employees will be motivated employees. And on their own, they'll envision and innovate often cost-free ways to keep customers happy. (Ingebretsen, 125)



Furthermore, some fixed tangible assets that are on the financial balance sheet is of course as not important as other variable tangible assets, and most of these variable figures belong to revenues and expenses which show the operations that are related to employees and customers which are in the manpower category.

In summary, if the management of a business considers profits, production, and other tangible assets are more important than employee values, then what regularly happen in the daily operation of their business? Probably, frustration, complaints, and disciplined procedures such as verbal warning, written reprimands would be given out frequently to employees, and how people would think about those managers who always nag their employees and treat them worse than the value of an equipment or money? But those behaviors are not crucial if the actions of managers are to enforce or to maintain rules, and to control damages that fly beyond an accurate calculation in their financial statement. The real problem comes when these managers use some strict company's rules or policies in order to abuse their employees for some selfish personal purposes. Some managers hire new employees with just a purpose to use them as a start to advance their own potentials, or to show off their managment ablity by taking the disadvantages that new employees are not yet competent enough or expert enough at their new assignment and duty. In today's modern business, there are managers who are mistreating their employees and still be considered the best managers who know how to use manpower, and manage their financial situation effectively.

Usually, when some conditions are considered a myth, they are the conductions actions that are not correct. Thus, in our text book, when myth 4 says that "Consideration of people should come after consideration of product and process", it is not always true and needs to be re-evaluated. Explaining in myth 4, Spitzer writes "The people system cannot be shunted off as an afterthought to product and process." And "As leaders think about new product lines, they must also think about stakeholder satisfaction, about ways of promoting co-participation, of creating a fun atmosphere, of helping people to be openly communicative, of decreasing blame and game-playing. The same four steps for building the heart of a leader are designed to help build stakeholder satisfaction. When these steps are combined with opportunistic visioning and rational communication, growth and quality of both products and processes will follow." Thus, we see that myth 4 considers that the role of manpower is indeed more important than product and process. As I already pointed out in the above paragraph that not only myth 4 is important in training a good spirit of a leader, but also it is the one that has close relationships to other myths. Thus, failing to learn myth 4 will lead to failing in the practice of other myths.



Bibliography



Buckingham, Marcus and Curt Coffman. First Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1999.

Ingebretsen, Mark. Why Companies Fail: The Big 10 Reasons Business Crumble, And How to Keep Yours Strong and Solid. New York: Crown Business, 2003.

Spitzer, Robert J. The Spirit of Leadership - Optimizing Creativity and Change in Organizations. Utah: Executive Excellence Publishing, 2000.

Hume's Empiricism

A/ Why does Hume think that there is no evidence of real causal power or "necessary connection"?



The reason why Hume think that there is no evidence or necessary connection between two events comes from the idea that sensory experiences or matters of fact account for the cause and effects. Hume has an idea to classify the objects for human reason into two kinds: Relation of Ideas and Matters of Fact. The example of the first kind is the sciences of mathematics that use reasoning to support, but for the second kind, Hume says: "Matters of fact, which are the second objects of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner;" and "all reasonings concerning matter of fact seem to be founded on the relation of Cause and Effect." In addition, Hume writes: "the knowledge of this relation is not, in any instance, attained by reasoning a priori; but arises entirely from experience." (An Enquiry, Section IV, part I). What he means is that reason solely cannot guarantee what will happen in an event. For example, in the billiard game, if ball A hits a cluster of other balls, the tracks that other balls move will be different each time ball A hits them. There may be a repetition of some tracks but not all will happen in the same manner. Only by observation or using sensory experience, one can predict what will happen next or will happen in the future. Moreover, Hume emphasizes on the connection between the events, for example, ball A strikes ball B, and ball B moves. Now, can we say that ball B would not have moved if ball A had not struck it? The answer is no because may be another ball, for example, ball C, can hit ball B and causes ball B to move. So, it is not necessary that ball A must push ball B in order for ball B to move because it could be that another ball, or ball C, would push ball B. So, by only reasoning, we cannot determine the cause and effect relation. Rather, this relation is a result of our impression that is our own belief based on our experience that previously showed that relation.

Hume's idea is different from Descartes' idea that reasoning can guarantee for checking the truth. Descartes thinks that relations of ideas which form mathematical or scientific laws are the true method because there are proofs for the involment of logically plausible reasoning. But Hume thinks that only sensory experience or matters of fact can account for any cause-and-effect relation. He says: "Let an object be presented to a man of ever so strong natural reason and abilities; if that object be entirely new to him, he will not be able, by the most accurate examination of its sensible qualities, to discover any of its causes or effects. Adam though his rational faculties be supposed, at the very first, entirely perfect, could not have inferred from the fluidity and transparency of water that it would suffocate him, or from the light and warmth of fire that it would consume him. No object ever discovers, by the qualities which appear to the sense, either the causes which produced it, or the effects which will arise from it; nor can our reason, unassisted by experience, ever draw any inference concerning real existence and matter of fact." ( An Enquiry, Sction IV, paragraph 6, part 1). In some cases, according to Hume, we are reasoning about the future based on our observations about the past. To convince us that conclusions of causal reasoning are not relations of ideas, but are merely matters of fact, Hume asks that whether we can predict about the result of an event as the effect that is caused by another event by just reasoning? Probably, we will answer yes, but that is because we have seen things that happened that way before, and when presented with new objects or circumstances, we do not really know what to expect. For example, we can predict that any object will fall to the ground because we have seen those event happen all the times, but if we had never seen objects fall, we would not have been able to tell that they would fall if we dropped them. Hume writes:

"We are apt to imagine that we could discover these effects by the mere operation of our reason, without experience. We fancy, that were we brought on a sudden into this world, we could at first have inferred that one Billiard-ball would communicate motion to another upon impulse; and that we needed not to have waited for the event, in order to pronounce with certainty concerning it. Such is the influence of custom, that, where it is strongest, it not only covers our natural ignorant, but even conceals itself, and seems not to take place, merely because it is found in the highest degree." ( An Enquiry, Section IV, part 1, paragraph 8). Now, Hume develops a new concept; that is custom. It is by custom that we draw conclusions, but not by reasoning or idea that certain effect is to be followed by certain cause. Even if we can use reasoning and invention to predict the effect, but these reasoning and invention are not always trusted, not saying that they may be queer, or fictional, or unrealistic. By Hume's language, they may be arbitrary as he wrote: "Were any object presented to us, and were we required to pronounce concerning the effect, which will result from it, without consulting past observation; after what manner, I beseech you, must the mind proceed in this operation? It must invent or imagine some event, which it ascribes to the object as its effect; and it is plain that this invention must be entirely arbitrary. The mind can never possibly find the effect in the supposed cause by the most accurate scrutiny and examination. For the effect is totally different from the cause, and consequently can never be discovered in it. Motion in the second billiard-ball is a quite distinct event from motion in the first; nor is there anything in the one to suggest the smallest hint of the other. Stone or piece of metal raised into the air, and left without any support, immediately falls: but to consider the matter of priori, is there anything we discover in this situation which can beget the idea of a downward, rather than an upward, or any other motion, in the stone or metal?" ( An Enquiry, Section IV, part 1, paragraph 9). However, the strongest persuation saying that in the relation of Cause and Effect, there is no necessary connection or no evidence that can be evoked in the reasoning process. Finally, Hume concludes:

In a word, then, every effect is a distinct event from its cause. It could not, therefore, be discovered in the cause, and the first invention or conception of it, a priori, must be entirely arbitrary. And even after it is suggested, the conjunction of it with the cause must appear equally arbitrary; since there are always many other effects, which, to reason, must seem fully as consistent and natural. In vain, therefore should we pretend to determine any single event, or infer any cause and effect, without the assistance of observation and experience." (An Enquiry, section IV, paragraph 11, part I)

Another example that Hume gave was the case of eating bread by looking at the following sentences of a cause and effect:
Phrase A: The bread I eat nourished me yesterday
Phrase B: Today If I eat the bread, it will nourish me
But the problem is what happens if the bread I eat today is poisoned? If so, then the bread that I eat today won't nourish me but kill me instead. Thus, there obviously is no connection between the bread that I ate before and the bread that I am going to eat today. So, when reasoning, the matter becomes worse and more likely to fall into a false property. Hence, there is no real connection in reasoning between the cause and the effect.


B/ According to Hume, do we have any proof that "external object" resemble our impressions or ideas of them?

Hume says that we can have proof or ideas that resemble to external objects. He found three relations that characterize the behavior of ideas: resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect. In his first relation which he names resemblance, Hume says that our idea comes from the things or other ideas that resemble it. For example, the idea of the mermaid is a combination image of a female human and a fish. Without knowing what a fish looks like, no one can imagine to cling the fish tail to the body of a girl to form the image of a mermaid. Of course, with the idea of a mermaid, it shows us the obvious proofs that everyone living on this earth should know: the proof of a fish tail and the proof of a female figure. Besides, the connotation meaning of that mermaid idea is to imply people who have predominant appearance that exceeds the truth of its quality; so, by looking at some people whose appearance overstated their corresponding personality, a person can easily comes up with the idea of a mermaid. In addition to sight, sound is a strong impression that can cause our resemblance ideas; by listening to a sound, we can know the resources from which the sound is caused and how it can be created. For example, the sound of a wooden stick that beats on another wooden object is different from the sound of a wooden stick that beats on a tin can. Once we hear those sounds and see how they have been created, next time, if we hear them, we can imagine or have concepts of what form that same sounds. But without seeing the wooden stick and the tin can, we can hardly guest how that sound is created; by that, I mean the kind of objects that cause that sound. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section II, "Of the Origin of Idea", Hume classifies perceptions into two categories: ideas and impressions. Ideas are different from impressions in the meaning that they are less lively perceptions than those of impressions:

Here therefore we may divide all the perceptions of the mind into two classes or species, which are distinguished by their different degrees of force and vivacity. The less forcible and lively are commonly denominated Thoughts and Ideas.

For the definition of impression, Hume writes:

The other species want a name in our language, to rank them under a general term or appellation. Let us, therefore, use a little freedom, and call them Impression; employing that word in a sense somewhat different from the usual. By the term impression, then, I mean all our more lively perceptions, when we hear, or see, or feel, or hate, or desire, or will. (An Enquiry, section II, paragraph 3).

Furthermore, he explains that thoughts are powerful and can go beyond the universe and is unbounded. However, mostly they are perceptions that are copies of impressions or of more lively ones:

But though our thought seems to possess this unbounded liberty, we shall find, upon a nearer examination, that it is really confined within very narrow limits, and that all this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded to us by the senses and experience. (An Enquiry, section II, paragraph 5).

For abstract ideas, we can also find proofs for them. For example, the mathematical statement "a triangle is a closed shape that has three sides" can be checked to see if it is true by understanding what three sides mean, and by drawing a picture of the three lines that intersect one another to form the shape of a triangle. The knowledge of lines are of course come from our previous impression or learning that there are in fact straight lines in our world. Also, once we know the definition of a triangle, if someone says " a triangle does not have three sides," we would know immediately that that statement is not true due to our previous perception of a triangle. Since it is very hard or impossible to conjure a new idea without a previous specific impression involving things contained in that idea, there is always a proof that an external object will resemble to a certain specific idea or impression.

C/ According to Descartes, God has established certain laws of nature and God has "impressed in our souls notions of these laws that, after having reflected sufficiently, we cannot deny that they are strictyly adhered to in everything that exists or occurs in the world" (Discourse on Method, part 5, paragraph 1). Does Hume agree with Descartes that we can know that God has impressed notions of nature directly to ours soul?

No, Hume doesn't agree with Descartes that we can know that God has impressed notions of laws of nature directly to our souls for the following reasons:

First of all, Hume says that there is no necessary connection between cause and effect. If there is no connection between cause and effect then how can we know what really causes an effect although we can presume there is connection, and how can we know that God is the one who caused the laws of nature to be impressed in our souls? He can prove that there is no connection using external impression and internal recognition. For external impression, as I already explained in part (a) above that with external objects, we can always find proofs through our perceptions of them by senses or by contact experience. If we cannot find any existing proof for something through our perceptions of it, then we cannot say that that something exists; for example, like a mermaid if one to creates the mermaid, he or she has to know in advance that there is a tail of a fish which he or she always sees in real life and there is a beautiful girl image which he or she always sees in real life, and with those 2 real images, he or she then combines them to create the imaginary image of a mermaid, God's existence can be proved by a figure of something must have already existed like God, perfect and all-knowing, but Hume thinks that we can't find any proof of such a perfect and all-knowing, or omniscient person who did really exists; thus, for an external proof, we fail to prove that God is the resemblance of something existed. Hume writes:

In reality, there is no part of matter, that does ever, by its sensible qualities, discover any power or energy, or give us ground to imagine, that it could produce anything, or be followed by any other object which we could denominate it effect. Solidity, extension, motion; these qualities are all complete in themselves, and never point out any other event which may result from them. The scenes of the universe are continually shifting, and one object follows another in an interrupted succession; but the power of force, which actuates the whole machine, is entirely concealed from us, and never discovers itself in any of the sensible qualities of body. ( An Enquiry, section VII, part I, paragraph 8).

And: "It is impossible, therefore, that idea of power can be derived from the comtemplation of bodies, in single instances of their operation; because no bodies ever discover any power, which can be the original of this idea (An Enquiry, Section VII, part I, paragraph 8).

Since we can't find any idea of power or the necessary connection through the resemblance of external or real objects, how can we know that God is the power to cause the notions of laws in our souls or He is the one who caused the universe to operate?

Second, Hume does not think that by only reasoning, we can create new ideas about things around us since every of our new ideas can only be initiated by some previous impresions of real things that we could see, hear or feel. And if there may be a new idea created through reasoning, that idea may be very arbitrary including being queer, or strange or unrealistic, or too fictional to be true. Therefore, if we don't have any provable idea that God exists, can we think that He exists? Hume thinks that the idea of the existence of God is only an imaginable idea by reasoning but not by any impression or real sense that makes us know that He exists since no one has ever seen God before. Specifically speaking, we can use reasoning to say that since animals have related parts of the body, God may be the creator of these related parts. The related parts are obviously the impression of the real things in nature.

To prove that God has not impressed in our souls notions of the laws of nature or that God doesn't exist by our mind, Hume gives an example that if God causes us to know how things operate then why our mind can control some parts of the body but not other parts? If we know the principle - the laws of nature -that God has impressed in our soul upon which our mind can direct certain parts of the body, we should know that by that same principle, our mind can also use to direct other parts of the body which it actually cannot. For example, we can use our mind to move our legs or arms and hands but not our kidneys our our hearts. Once our hearts cease to beat, we die. Can we control our heart so that we can live again by using our mind? Of course not. Hume says that some philosophers cannot answer that question why the mind cannot control the body, and therefore, death comes when the heart stops beating, they claim that God exists and that He is the one who causes the heart to stop beating because human beings must die due to the sin that Eva made. But then, the idea of God cannot be proved by any external object or any real sense such as seeing, or hearing because no one has ever seen God or has ever heard him talk directly to them (only a few claims to see God - the Saints - but the majority of men don't). The idea of God is still considered as a suggestion or by a reasoning since we don't have something real that exists that is as perfect as God's characteristics, we cannot conclude that God is a resemblance of somthing like it.

Hume writes:

Is there any principle in all nature more mysterious than the union of soul with body; by which a supposed spiritual substance acquires such an influence over a material one, that the most refined thought is able to actuate the gross matter? Were we empowered, by a secret wish, to remove mountains, or control the planets in their orbit; this extensive authority would not be more extraordinary, nor more beyond our comprehension. But if we must know this power; we must know ist connextion with the effect; we must know the secret union of our soul and body, and the nature of both these substances; by which the one is able to operate, in so many instance, upon the other. (An Enquiry, Section VII, part I, paragraph 11).

Thus, we cannot know any power or any cause that can show us the cause of the operation of our soul and body, and of the universe. So, why do we think that there is a power such as God's power that can cause all of these relations? Hume writes:

But to hasten to a conclusion of this argument, which is already drawn out to too great a length: we have sought in vain for an idea of power or necessary connexion in all the sources from which we could suppose it to be derived. It appears that in single instances of the operation of bodies, we never can, by our utmost scrutiny, discover any thing but one event following another, without being able to comprehend any force or power by which the causes operates, or any connexion between it and it supposed effect... The authority of the will over its own faculties and ideas is not a whit more comprehensible: so that, upon the whole, there appears not, throughout all nature, any one instance of connextion which is conceived by us. (An Enquiry, Chapter VII, Part II, paragraph 1).

Definitely, not. Hence, God did not impress notions of laws of nature upon our souls because we can't find the necessary impressions fo all the relations between things (in our body, nor in the universe) by external objects, internal recognition nor by reasoning.

However, Hume says that we can say God exists by looking at the things He created around us. As I just said above that we can find related parts in all kinds of animal that have the same functions; for example the tiger's eyes related to the human's eyes; the monkey looks like human beings; thus, we can say that God did create other animals before He created human beings. The Designer theory is a theory that says that there must be a designer who designs all the related parts of animals. Hence, God is proved to exist not by an impression or by something that resembles to Him that did exist but by looking at the real things existing around us that we can say that God exists because he is the designer of those meaning things. Hume's theory of the Designer is an interesting theory about God as a designer.


Works Cited

Hume, David. "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding." Mondern Philosophy - An Anthology of Primary Sources. Eds. Roger Ariew and Eric Watkins. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company. 1998. 491-557.

Descartes' Argument for the Existence of Material Objects

A/ The argument for the existence of material objects:

The final conclusion that Descartes makes concerning the existence of material objects is that they exist and that they are the cause of Descartes' ideas of them. This conclusion is made finally in Meditation 6. In Meditations 2 and 5, Descartes also mentions about their existence as being a suspect of truth for his investigation, and in Meditation 2, material objects are corporeal things that he can observes using senses. Thus, when he speaks about corporeal things that he perceives by senses, we know that he is talking about material objects. In addition, not only material objects are objects that Descartes perceives through senses, in Meditation 5, Descartes mentions about another kind of material objects that associate with figures, numbers, size and shape and pertain to mathematics; in other words, objects that can cause idea of them, and they are what Descartes can conceive either by himself or by means of other ideas such as mathematics. In these Meditations, Descartes already recognizes or has a feeling that they really exist, but he needs to examine more so that they can be better known; in other words, he knows that they exist, but he must prove that his knowledge of them are clearly and distincly perceptions so that he can say about the certainty of their existence. Let us look back at some statements that he writes regarding the existence of those material objects in Meditation 2 and 5. For example, in Meditation 2, Descartes says that material objects have a distinct impression on him by starting to view and to examine his own body as a material object:

But as to the body, I was not in any doubt. On the contrary, I was under
the impression that I knew its nature distinctly. (31)

For corporeal things other than his own body, Descartes says, also are more distinctly known:

But int still seems (and I cannot resist believing) that corporeal things--
who images are formed by thought, and which the senses themselves
examine-- are much more distinctly known than this mysterious "I" which
does not fall within the imagination. (32)

Finally, Descartes give out another example that he made on the wax, a natural object that he can touch and conduct an experiment to study its existence. In his observation of the wax, he finds out about its true property, one that is unchanged and remains eternally while other properties change and disappear under our senses. After this experiment about the wax, Descartes thinks that if the corporeal objects exist, he knows more clearly about them by the intellect:

It is what my imagination shows it to be: namely, that this piece of wax
can change from a round to a square shape, or from the latter to a
triangular shape? Not at all; for I grasp that the wax is capable of
innumerable changes of this sort, even though I am incapable of running
through these innumerable changes by using my imagination. Therefore
this insight is not achieved by the faculty of imagination. (32)

Even though Descartes' knowledge about the wax is gained by his reasoning, he cannot deny that the wax and its material are not in a dream or in an imagination. Finally, in Meditation 6, Descartes proves that material objects exist and that they are the cause of his ideas of them:

1) There must be some cause for my ideas of sensory things:

And since the ideas perceived by sense were much more vivid and explicit
and even, in their own way, more distinct than any of those that I deliberately
and knowingly formed through meditation or that I found impressed on my
memory, it seemed impossible that they came from myself. Thus the remaining
alternative was that they came from other things. (50)

2) This cause is either in me or outside of me:

I cannot understand them clearly and distinctly without me, that is, without a
substance endowed with understanding in which they inhere, for they include
an act of understanding in their formal concept. Thus I perceive them to be
distinguished from me as modes from a thing. I also acknowledge that there
are certain other faculties, such as those of moving from place to another, of
taking on various shapes, and so on, that, like sensing of imagining; cannot be
understood apart from some substance in which they inhere, and hence without
which they cannot exist. But it is clear that these faculties, if in fact they exist,
must be in a corporeal or extended substance, not in a substance endowed
with understanding. (50-51)

3) This cause is not in me [because I am not aware of being this cause]:

But this faculty surely cannot be in me, since it clearly presupposes no act of
understanding, and these ideas are produced without my cooperation and
often even against my will. (51)

4) This cause must therefore be outside me:

Therefore, the only alternative is that it is in some substance different from
me, containing either formally or eminently all the reality that exists objectively
in the ideas produced by that faculty, as I have just noted above. (51)

5) This external cause must be either physical bodies or God:

Hence this substance is either a body, that is, a corporeal nature, which
contains formally or eminently all the reality that exists objectively in
the ideas, or else is God. (51)

6) This cause cannot be God (for then He would be deceiving me):

But since God is not a deceiver, it is patently obvious that he does not send
me these ideas either immediately by himself, or even through the meditation
of some creature that contains the objective reality of these ideas not formally
but only eminently. For since God has given me no faculty whatsoever for
making this determination, but instead has given me a great inclination to believe
that these ideas issue from corporeal things, I fail to see how God could be
understood not to be a deceiver, if these ideas were to issue from a source
other than corporeal things. (51)

7) Therefore, the cause of my ideas of physical must be actually existing physical bodies:

For since God has given me no faculty whatsoever for making this determination,
but instead he has given me a great inclination to believe that these ideas issue
from corporeal things, I fail to see how God could be understood not to be a
deceiver, if the ideas were to issue from a source other than corporeal things.
And consequently corporeal things exist. (51)

For the proof that God is not a deceiver, the following statement of Descartes in Meditation 3 will count:

The whole force of the argument rests on the fact that I recognize that it
would be impossible for me to exist, being such as nature as I am (namely,
having in me the idea of God), unless God did in fact exists. God, I say,
that same being the idea of whom is in me: a being having all those
perfections that I cannot comprehend, but can somehow touch with my
thought, and a being subject to no defects whatever. From these
considerations it is quite obvious that he cannot be a Deceiver, for it is
manifest by the light of nature that all fraud and deception depend on
some defect. (40)

B/ How the view that Descartes articulates in Meditation 6 provides a foundation for mechanistic science:

Recall that I did mention about Descartes' example of the wax and objects that are the subjects of mathematics in Meditation 2 and 5. The special idea about how to obtain the true property of the wax using reasoning and experiment but not using senses proves that Descartes is the founder of mechanistic science or science in general because mechanistic science is the study of the relationship among size, shape, extension and motions of physical or material objects, and because when he studies about the wax, he focuses on its size, shape and its extension which are the most important things that are changing and therefore reveal the true property of it, the extension and the changing of the size and the shape of the wax. All of these things, of course, are subjects that mechanistic science use as said by the above definition. In Meditation 6, Descartes also admits the important role of the quantities rather than the qualities of material objects which include size, shape, extension -- the essential properties that can assist the creation of concepts that are used by mathematics and mechanistic sciences, and by first sensing them he can have better ideas of them.

Moreover, I also recalled that the use of the senses antedated the use of reason.
And since I saw that the ideas that I myself fashioned were not as explicit as
those that I perceived through the faculty of sense, and were for the most part
composed of parts of the latter, I easily convinced myself that I had absolutely
no idea in the intellect that I did not have beforehand in the sense faculty. (49)

Although, senses and material objects are the essential things for the observation and study of science, senses appear less precise and untrusted:

Afterwards, however, many experiences gradually weakened any faith that
I had in the senses. Towers that had seemed round from afar occasionally
appeared square at close quarters. Very large statues mounted on their
pedestals did seem large to someone looking at them from the ground level
and in countless other such instances I determined that judgments in matters
of the external senses were in error. (50)

And Descartes thinks that reasoning makes him think differently than what he perceives through senses:

As to the arguments that used to convince me of the truth of sensible things,
I found no difficulty responding to them. For since I seemed to be driven
by nature toward many things about which reason tried to dissuade me, I
did not think that I was taught by nature deserved much credence. (50)

C/ Strength and weakness of Descartes' attempt to ground science in philosophy:

1/ Strength:

* His belief in the existence of the natural objects which are the main subjects for the study of any science because science is the study of natural things-- things that exist around us.

* His great idea in finding the true properties of material objects. For example, his experiment of the wax shows that unlike other people who don't have any doubt about the senses, Descartes use his observation that assists him checking his senses such as seeing, hearing, touching, smelling ect. in discovering that all of the properties such as shape, size, color and fragrance of the wax are not permanent properties of the wax and can be changed because they all disappear when the wax is melted. Thus, Descartes has built an important foundation of mechanistic science, that is using the doubted mind -- a mind in reasoning -- to discover true properties of material objects.

* His account of using senses as the first action that scientists must use in order to study material objects is a good foundation for science because some scientists even don't use senses at all and use only imagination in establishing scientific concepts.

2/ Weakness:

* Even though Descartes uses senses as the first condition in studying material objects, he later denies senses as an important role in scientific study because he thinks that reasoning is more important. For example, he says that the extension property of the wax cannot be found without 'the doubting mind' that re-checks all the phenomena given by senses:

Not at all; for I grasp that the wax is capable of innumerable changes of this sort,
even though I am incapable of running through these innumerable changes by
using my imagination. Therefore this insight is not achieved by the faculty of
imagination. What is it to be extended? Is this thing's extension also unknown?
for it becomes greater in wax that is beginning to melt, greater in boiling wax,
and greater still as the heat is increased. And I would not judge correctly what
the wax is if I did not believe that it takes on even greater variety of dimensions
than I could ever grasp with imagination. It remains then for me to concede that
I do not grasp what this wax is throught imagination; rather, I perceive it through
the mind alone. (33)

* For the example of the wax, it is obviously that Descartes did not use his mind alone, since he couldn't obtain the extention of the wax without first doing an experiment on it. Thus, Descartes' accomplisment is not by reasoning alone but by a combination of senses and reasoning; however, his "first doubting mind" is what he acclaimed as his reasoning achievement in his succesful experiment of material objects.

* In deed, although in science and especially in mathematics, many mathematicians and physicists did come up with theories that are the results of their "first doubting mind" that something needs to be re-examined in the process, and many theories are just the result of reasons or by a priori. Morevoer, many others compiled and created scientific conceptions through observations and using senses such as Newton's theory of gravity because it is obviously that Newton couldn't come up his theory of the earth's gravity without "first seeing a falling apple or falling objects to the ground". Thus, Descartes heavy account on only reasoning is not a good ground for science.

References

Descartes, Rene. "Meditations on First Philosophy". Modern Philosophy - An Anthology of Primary Sources. Eds. Roger Ariew and Eric Watkins. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998. 22-62.

The Drama of Socrates' Trial

1/ Does Socrates claim to know the answers to the questions that he asked the Athenians who were unable to answer?



Socrates knew the answers to the questions that he asked the Athenians during his trial. For instance, the first accusation the Meletus charged against him was that he was a wise man and a student of all things in the sky and below the earth, and that he used it to disgrace the gods, and even taught those things to others for money. When Socrated defended himself against this charge, he asked Meletus and other Athenians to give proofs for this accusation, but they couldn't do it. To prove that he did not charge fees for his students, Socrates gave a list of the men whom he had taught such as Gorgias of Leontini, Prodicus of Ceos, Hippias of Elis, and Evenus. He said that those men, instead, had taken his knowlege to teach others and made people pay money to them. (Apology 19e-20a,b,c)

To prove that he was not the one who studied things beyond the common and therefore were wise, Socrates argued that he had been telling all the wise men whom he met that he was not wise. First of all, Socrates said that the kind of wisdom that was blamed on him was human wisdom and not the other kind of wisdom and that other wise men were wiser than him because they possessed a wisdom that was higher than human wisdom. The first witness that he called upon was the God of Delphi. Socrates then told the story of his friend, Chaerephon, who went to Delphi to ask who was wiser than Socrates, and the Pythian replied that no one was wiser than Socrates, but the reason why the oracle said that was because Socrates had declared before the oracle that he had not been wise at all, and that for him, wisdom was worthless ( Apology, 23a,b). Therefore, the gods knew that Socrates possessed a good personality, modesty, and that Socrates was also wise because he knew there still were more things to learn and his knowledge was not advantageous at all.

To prove that he did not disgrace the gods, Socrates told the stories of his own venture to find men who were wise or not wise in order to know whether what the gods said was true or not, and the result was that no wise men whom he had contacted with were truly wise. Socrates said that for every man he met and talked with, he found out that they were not wise, and when he let them know that they were not wise, they became dislike him. Therefore, instead of becoming famous and popular, Socrates became unpopular and had many enemies. Socrates reasoned that since those wise public men claimed that they knew thing of which they did not really know while Socrates knew what he did not know; that was why Socrates knew they were just foolish and boastful people who loved to adorn and overpraise themselves. The fact that Socrates acknowledged that he himself knew what he did not know showed that he knew something that other wise men did not know, i.e., they thought they knew something when they did not know it. That means that they didn't have any precise knowledge of what they had known or had not known. Socrates also didn't forget to state specifically who were among those wise people; he said they were poets, craftmen, and politicians. For that reason, Socrates claimed that he had helped in proving that what the gods said was correct that no men was wise, and that human wisdom was worth little or nothing. Socrates also proved that because of this service to the gods, he lived in poverty.

2/ Does Socrates prove that he is not guilty of one or both of the official charges against him?

Socrates did prove that he was not guilty of both of the charges against him, but not by the exact truth of the matters but by his cunning reasonsing and intelligent analysis. What I mean is that it was just because of the oracle about his wisdom that made him go around and talk to wise men to try to find out if the oracle was true, and because of this mission, he had to use reasoning and intelligent analysis to analyze about what other wise men knew and whether they were wise. For the first charge, I already explained in the above paragraphs; according to what Socrates said and according to his rationalization, I think he had skiffully proved that he had been partly slandered on the first charge. For the second charge which was his guilty of corrupting the young and for not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, Socrates proved the following:

When Socrates called Meletus to tell the jurors, who were the men of Athens, to acknowledge that he was the one who corrupted them, they were silent and didn't know what to say ( Apology, 24a,b,c). Socrates then argued that if he wanted to corrupt his associates, he also ran the risk of being harmed by them because Socrates thought that the people who were bad would do something bad to others. Therefore, how could he be willing to do such an evil action deliberately, for if he had done that, he would not have done that purposefully but unwillingly. Socrates even took this opportunity to reverse the charge back to Meletus that Meletus was guilty of ignorance and slander, and that Meletus had never been at all concerned with those matters befor accusing Socrates.

For the charge that he did not believe in the gods, Socrates explained the following: He never wrote books with theories against the gods, and one of the wise men did that was Anaxagoras. Socrates then said that Meletus claimed that he believed in spiritual things and taught about them, whether new or old. But Socrates reasoned that if he believed in spiritual things, he must inevitably believed in spirits. So if he believed in spirits, he must also believed in gods because gods were spirits.

3/ Socrates seems to have shown that a significant and influential portion of the Athenian citizen population did not know what they said they knew. Explain what political problems this would cause in Athens, and why it would cause these problems. What was Socrates' "service to the god," and how does Socrates think his "service to the god" will help Athens address these problems?

As I explained in part (1) and (2) above, Socrates twice condemned that Meletus did not know what he should have known before accusing Socrates. First, he claimed that Meletus did not make any investigation before accuising him, that Meletus listened to other people such as Anytus and Lycon, and acted on behalf of the craftmen, the politicians, and the poets. Second, Meletus had given no thought to the subjects about which he broght Socrates to trial. Finally, Socrates attacked the whole justice system for its prejudice manner by the fact that he would run on the risk on the side of law and justice rather than join them when they engaged in an unjust course (32a,b,c). Socrates said that he was a righteous man whom the god ordered to do what he had been doing, teaching the spiritual things to the public; therefore, by prosecuting a good man like him, the justice system would do more harm to themselves and to the public than to him.

For the Athenian citizen population, Socrates said that the same result applied to them if they did not know what they thought they knew. For example, Socrates said people who were to fear death were the same with the people who thought that they knew things when they actually did not know. Because Socrates said that "no one knew whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they know that it is the greatest of evils" (29b). Also he thought that to fear death was to disobey the gods because the gods punished men who committed sin with death. For other matters, since Socrates knew that the gods disliked the people who were arrogant and thought that they themselves were wiser than the gods, if this population, which he mentioned specifically as poets, craftmen, politicians continued acting and teaching their wisdom, they would be impious and disobeyed to the gods. However, the most important disastrous sequence of this ignorance of them was the fact that they did not care for others but only care for themselves. Socrates claimed that those wise men used their knowledge and wisdom to benefit themselves, and not to benefit the public or the gods, and he gave a specefic example that they used their knowledge to earn money.

For question: What was Socrates' service to god? I think, first of all, Socrates said that he served the gods by proving what the god Pythian said was true that no one was wiser than him - this I already listed as an answer in part (1) above. Next, Socrates claimed that by teaching the spiritual things, he proved that he believed in spirits, and therefore believed in the gods. Third, Socrates said that by acting as a good man, without taking into account the risk of death and by only caring whether what he did was right or wrong, he lived the life of a philosopher which the god ordered him to live, and so he obeyed god's command. Therefore, by these services to the god, he taught the public the spiritual things that god wanted him to do, and by doing this, he benefited the public as well as the gods. But the main advantage of his teaching was to improve the public to become better citizens. Thus, by letting the public as well as the justice system knew what they didn't know before, Socrates helped them see their deficiencies that they never thought of until they met and talked with him. Of course, by this condemning and this contemptuous manner Socrates had for the government, he would cause a chaos and untrustworthiness between the public and the government; that was why finally, Socrates' verdict was decided by them as a death sentence. In conclusion, Socrates claimed that what he taught the people he met, including the system justice who brought him to trial so that they would open their eyes and would learn more about what they didn't know - to act right and justly to serve the public and the gods better - because Socrates thought that he was a good man, was superior to a majority of people, was god's gift and that god had ordered him to do what he had been doing.

Refernces

Plato. Five Dialogues - Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo. 2nd ed. Trans. Grube, G.M.A. Eds. Cooper, John M. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002.

The Roles of Opposites in Anaximander's and Anaximenes' Works

In Anaximander's work, there are four fundamental opposed elements: fire, water, earth and air, and there is alos an original substance, the Apeiron, of which all things are composed, and from which those four elements are formed. The most important property of these opposites is the definite property. Since the opposites are definite, Anaximander argues that the Apeiron must be indefinite and neutral; that means it cannot be hot nor cold, not wet nor dry since if it had been definite and had had one of the property that the opposites had, it would have destroyed the opposites the by swamping them with its larger quantity. The Apeiron is considered further by Anaximander to possess supernatural characteristics such as eternal, ageless, unlimited and movable. From this extraordinary substance, as seprating-off process was initiated by its mass, and the things that generate hot and colse arose.

These opposite elements are responsible for controlling the atmosphere and other living conditions of the earth. For example, fire helps the habitats to have heat to cook; water is to drink, etc. Besides, they help control the weather such as spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Of course, these opposites can be sensed and found everywhere in the environment around us, and in addtion to their natural characteristics, they can be found in man-made events; for example, a match can initiate a fire, an air-conditioner can give us cold air, etc. For Anaximander, although the two pairs of fundamental elements are opposite to each other, they help maintain the same separating-off process that generated them. For example, from the Apeiron, which is originally a combination of flame and dark mist, things such as the sun, moon, stars and the earth are formed, and then afterward, natural evolutions such as thunder and lightning will result from wind being enclosed in cloud, etc.

However, these pairs of opposite elements when acting against each other , they then "pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice" (McKirahan, 5.19, 43). Thus, things that come into being in turn are destroyed, and things that are perished in turn come back into being again. This justice idea that Anaximander conceives is his most peculiar idea compared to the ontological idea of the four opposite elements because it seems to me that this justice idea has a relation with the supernatural Apeiron although they are different things since the Apeiron accounts for what happens to the universe at the beginning of it whereas justice in the maintaining process accounts for the continuing living process of the universe. It seems to me that the Apeiron not only is the cause of the birth to the four opposite elements but also is the mysterious being that helps maintain the evolutions of the natural phenomena of the universe. And the reason why I think so is because the eternal and ageless characteristics of the Apeiron for if the continuing process of the universe is an eternal process except for the mortality of human beings, only the eternal Apeiron can remain forever to control the continual conflicts of the four opposites.

Anaximander's theory of opposite elements has a difficulty to explain for their continuation because they seem to be so opposite that it is hard for them to reconcile themselves without the assistance of the fifth element which seems to be the Apeiron in a material sense since the Apeiron is considered also by Anaximander as an infinite and unlimited substance but not a spiritual substance or a devine being such as God in Christian theology, and since they must pay penalty and retribution for their injustice, things that are terminated by them become being born, and things that are living become extinguished. In addition, Anaximander did not explain very well the process of exchanging from hot to cold or from cold to hot with four elements that seem to be obviously opposite in their characteristics, or why spring and autumn are in between the two extreme seasons of winter and summer. He only says that the injustice that one does to the other would be paid back by a justice that comes in between, but he doesn't say how the elements would change the four seasons. In contrary to Anaximander, Anaximenes' theory of air and the changing process of the element air that causes other elements to form fire, water, earth don't acknowledge the opposite characteristics of these elements, but rather they do not oppose to one another. Anaximenes thinks that they are simply different states of the single elements stuff that is air. Thus, we now explore the differences in Anaximenes' theory compared to the Apeiron and the four elements from Anaximander's theory.

Anaximenes denies the Apeiron that Anaximander conjured because he thought that the Apeiron was unobservable and couldn't be used to explain well the changing process of the seasons of from air to fire, water and earth. So, opposite to the eternal, ageless, neutral Apeiron, Anaximenes deems that air is the main substance from which other substances such as fire, water and earth come from. He "appears to have thought that we ought not postulate the existence of anything that is not required to explain the world and its phenomena, especially when the postulate is unobservable." (Hurley, 3). For Anaximenes, air is the substance "out of which come to be things that are coming to be, things that have come to be, and things that will be," and "For when it becomes condensed and finer, it appears different. For when it is dissolved into what is finer, it comes to be fire, and on the other hand, air comes to be winds when it becomes condensed. Cloud results from air through felting, and water when this happens to greater degree. When condensed still more it becomes earth and when it reaches the absolutely densest stage it becomes stones. (McKirahan, 6.2, 48). Thus, we see that air transforms itself into four different elements, and so these elements cannot be different in characteristics or cannot be absolutely opposite since they all come from one substance, air.

The greatest advantage of air as can be understood from Anaximenes' statement is that it well explains the process of mutual transactions that change from something that hot as fire to something that cool and hard like stones. Besides, the seasons such as autumn and spring will be easier to explain using the changing air theory. For example, before the hot air in summer meets the cold air in winter, there is a change in the weather that is autumn in which there is a lot or rains falling down because the hot air vapors and becomes water when meets the cold air higher above in the atmosphere. Another advantage is that there is no abstract term such as "justice" involved in the changing process of these material substances as it is supposed in Anaximander's theory that doesn't seem to reconcile rationally all the changes in the four opposite elements.

Another difference in Anaximenes' theory is that air that forms other four substances seem to posess another characteristic, the quantitative characteristic since the rarity and density are quantitative notions. That means that more or less of the air stuff can form other substances such as fire, water and earth. In Anaximenes' theory, only quality characteristics such as hot, cold, damp, wet or dry are mentioned but not the quantities of air such as found in rarity and density. So, see that Anaximenes' air and other elements are related to one another in term of their quantities as things that can be measured.

Now, we know that for Anaximander, the Apeiron, which is the fifth element is the original source of all other four elements while for Anaximenes, air is the original or the basic element that other three elements come from. Besides, the quantity of the air plays an important role in changing it to other elements. Another different aspect between Anaximander's theory and Anaximenes' theory is that Anaximenes' theory is closer to a scientific experiment than Anaximander's theory in dealing with the natural, material world since Anaximenes takes the observable breath as air to be the fundamental and original substance in both natural phenomena and human phenomena because human beings and animals breath air in order to live: "The meaning would then be 'as our soul holds the body together and so controls it, so the originative substance (which is basically the same stuff as soul) holds the world together and so controls it.' (iii) 'The soul, which is breath, holds together and controls the world must also be breath or air, because the world is like a large-scale man or animal." (Kirk, 160). Thus, it seems that Anaximenes comes up with the idea that air is the basic substance from observing the breath coming out of our mouths.

In addition to the perceptible characteristic of air that is different from the unobservable characteristic of the Apeiron, "Anaximenes determined that air is a god and that it comes to be and is without measure, infinite and always in motion." (McKirahan, 6.5, 52), and in this point of view, theory of air become similar or compatible with Anaximander's Apeiron because both air and the Apeiron are infinite, always in motion, eternal and have devine characteristics.

6.6 Just as our soul, being air, holds us together and controls us,
so do breath and air surround the whole kosmos. (McKirahan)

If we compare the above statement of Anaximenes with Anaximander's 5.19, we see that it describes the maintaining process of the universe better and more concretely than the 'justice' concept of Anaximander because air not only controls earthly phenomena but also controls human lives, and air is also conceived by Anaximenes as the human soul, a concept that is neglected in Anaximander's theory; thus, Anaximenes' air is blended in everything and present in every living things.

Despite the fact that like Anaximander's theory of the Apeiron, Anaximenes' air is also supernatural, has spiritual meaning of a soul, his most important view point in the rationally changing process among the four opposite elements is a better view point than Anaximander's opposite view point; especially, the changing process is more observable, more plausible, and can be demonstrated by a simple experiment such as the breathing experiment.

It shows how Anaximenes related two pairs of opposites that appear to be unrelated because when breath is rare, it is warm; then it is densed, it is cold... In this way, Anaximenes advances our understanding of the world by reducing the range of independent phenomena through increasing the number of intelligibly connected features. The world becomes more intelligible as the range of related phenomena is increased ( McKirahan, 50)

The last thing I should mention as a big difference from Anaximander's theory and Anaximenes' theory is the layout of the picture of the whole universe. For Anaximander, the earth has a flat cylinder-shaped form with the sun, the moon and the stars surrounding it, and all of these heavenly bodies are surrounded by the Apeiron whereas for Anaximenes, the earth is standing on a column of air, and the other planets such as the sun, the moon and the stars are in different locations compared to Anaximander's locations.

Futhermore, the development of Anaximenes' theory may have thought to be the view that was obtained first from human observations then was extended to a more universal observation that can be applied to the universe as a whole; thus, it contains the explicit use of the microcosm-macrocosm analogy. It offers us a scientific method or an experimental method in creating an ontological theory regarding material laws and events.

References

Hurley et al. eds. History of Philosophy. New York: Harper Collins Publisher,
1993.

Mckirhan, Richard. Philosophy before Socrates. Indianapolis: Hacket publishing Co., 1994.

Kirk, Raven and Schofield. The Prescoratic Philosophers. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1971.