Reading Philosophy

After considering, and dismissing, various arguments against External Realism, John Searle asks if there is a positive case for it.

He also considers how religion might factor into these questions of metaphysics and comes to surprising and interesting conclusion.

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John Searle analysis a typical argument for skepticism of the external world. We also discuss naive realism and some aspects of empiricism.

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John Searle looks at four arguments against realism (the mind-independent existence of the external world), from perspectivism to underdetermination. He concludes that they are all weak or based on fallacies.

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John Searle sets out the default positions of reality and truth, namely external realism (there is a mind-independent world) and the correspondence theory of truth.

He muses about why so many influential philosophers have been drawn to challenge these basic assumptions. Maybe it's the will to power, or maybe it is to put the humanities on the same footing as the natural sciences.

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John Searle tells us how philosophy fits into his project to defend the Enlightenment Vision.

He sets out a number of Default Positions that, according to him, most humans intuitively hold, like the mind-independent existence of the external world. These are the positions typically attacked by famous philosophers.

Searle believes the Default Positions are correct, so he will try to defend them, with one exception: Dualism.

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Start of a new book: Mind, Language and Society by John Searle.

Searle sets out his project, to defend the Enlightenment Vision against various 20th century anti-realist challenges like Freudian psychology, quantum mechanics, Russell's Paradox, Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems and Kuhn's view of Science.

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Thomas Hobbes and Bernard Mandeville believe that we act morally mainly out of self-interest. The only reason I don't break the law is because I don't want to get punished.

Hume rejects this view in favour of an moral philosophy based on a mixture of natural and artificial virtues. He argues that humans are natural cooperators. But to be able to live peacefully together in larger societies we also need socially created virtues such as justice.

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David Hume takes on the moral debate of his day. He argues against moral rationalism that 'reason alone can never move us to action'. Instead, the passions are the source of our moral motivations.

Hume also rejects claims that the source of morality is god. Instead, he offers a naturalist account of the origin of morality grounded in our psychology.

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David Hume applies his skeptical method of definition to the ideas 'power' and 'necessary connection'. And he finds, again, that these ideas don't come from observation, but from the workings of our own mind.

He goes on to offer his own definition of causation, casting a long shadow over the modern debate.

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David Hume critiques the Aristotelian notion of causation. We cannot prove causal connections by a priori reasoning. So our causal thinking has to come from somewhere else, namely our nature given instincts.

This episode also looks at the difference between thought and belief, including Hume's idea that believing something is a kind of feeling.

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