Philosophy Review Session

Appiah – Racism
 inherent qualities that people have and that's the first premise that people have to accept to move
forward
 racism involves two propositions and a disposition
 to be a racist you have to believe racialism and it is the idea that there are heritable characteristics
possessed by our species that allows us to categorize people
 plus one of next 2 things
 Disposition: Intrinsic vs Extrinsic racism
 Extrinsic: is supported by propositions; colour of skin; I am better than them; being a bad driver
 Intrinsic: moral, because of this persons skin colour they are bad; trustworthiness
 Inethicatious – not producing desired effect

Goodman: Autographic/Allographic
Autographic: Can determine actual from a forgery; cannot be forged
Allographic: can be forged
 Can’t reduce music down to the score;
 In order for a piece of music to be a token, it has to be a near perfect reproduction of a score
 Came up in Morris article as well
 Why can music be forged? Importance of the score; if score was destroyed, someone could stll
play the song but you are still playing form the score even without a physical copy
 We associate a painting with a painter and music with the score

Universals/Particular; Plato’s Phaedo

Senses cannot be trusted because they are unclear and inaccurate
We can’t know absolute uprightness/equality
Knowledge/absolutes comes from prior experiences coming from the forms
 Uses example of equality
 Can never find two sticks that are exactly equal
 There must be something that is absolute equality but that doesn’t exist in the World
 We get the knowledge of absolute equality from the forms
 Review Plato’s story of birth; go back and glance over the Phaedo

Rosen; Argument about Numbers

1. There are numbers
2. Numbers are not physical objects
3. Therefore, physicalism is false
 Physicalism is the believe that every object is a physical object
 If what constitutes a physica thing is being able to give an ideal physics description
 A number cannot be described physically so physucalism would be false
 We have a belief in numbers; numbers are a kind of universal and we all believe in numbers
 Does the first part to prove numbers exist and goes on to say that if somethinDg that’s not
physical exists then physicalism is false
 Dennis brought in type/token distinction to help with numerals but it was to introduce it for
musical lecture
  What is Physicalism/Why does he give this argument/why do we come to the conclusion that we
do?/Why do numbers exist? Try to say 2-3 more sentences that you think you need
 If the question asks if you agree, list all of the reasons why you agree; raise a reasonable
objection and respond to that objection

Race
 People have a biological sex and assume gender from that and we give it a social meaning
 She makes a parallel between colour and race; people have a certain colour and we socialize
them in a certain way as race
 Haslinger
 Justice would ask us to get rid of race but not necessarily gender
 Gender is politically significant in our world and race is not; gender has practical significance
 We would still have gender, it just wouldn’t be hierarchal
 In a just world gender would be different but it would be there; race would not
 Can’t get rid of gender because women are the only ones who can have children; important
social characteristic in our society regardless
 Okin raised a similar argument; behind the veil of ignorance; goes behind rawls
 We can separate gender from ourselves
 If we cant separate gender from ourselves we end up in an unjust society
 If sex was contingent then gender would disappear behind the veil of ignorance
 If sex was not contingent, rawls system collapses because we can’t actually get behind the veil
of ignorance
 This argument by haslinger reminds us of something we saw earlier with Okin
 Argument from Root
 Tries to figure out if Race is a natural kind
 Race categories aren’t discovered; they are invented
 They are invented and real but they aren’t natural
 Real doesn’t necessarily mean legitimate
 Race is a social kind, not a natural kind
 You need something to explain races power because it isn’t a natural kind so why does it have so
much effect on people
 Race doesn’t refer to biological differences between people
 Natural kinds support generalizations from like science and human/social kinds support
normalization
 Social kinds are something that humans invent; they are importantly real
 Distinction between generalization type of thing we do in science; take your examples and come
to conculisions about them and normalization (sort of like stereotypes)
 Generalization is a conclusion that everyone could come to

Mill and Causation

 Philosophically speaking, the cause of an event is a set of conditions sufficient to bring it about
 If I drop my coffee cup, what are the set of conditions sufficient to bring it about; all of the
conditions; an impossibly long account of what caused it
 All of the conditions are not what we talk about; we single out a single condition and call it the
cause
 An event among a state of affairs: food poisoning is the cause of sickness (the event)
 Distinction between the metaphysical cause and the physical cause
 Philosophical cause and the cause we talk about in practice
  Event among a state of affairs, a background that goes without saying (a struck match; why it
lights on fire), it happened last
 Proof of Causation: Cook versus Lewis: don’t worry about it; it would only be helpful as
seasoning for a question

Epistemology

Descartes
 Foundationalism: the things that you say you know, you have to know all undoubted and those
things form the foundations of everything else that you believe
 First Meditation: I want to doubt everything that I believe so I can come to a firm foundation of
which I can base all my other knowledge
 If something has tricked me, even once, I am going to throw it out
 He’s trying to find something that is beyond doubt
 1. Starts with the sense; senses are not beyond doubt
 2. Well it seems like I can trust me sitting here with the coffee cup in my hand
 How do I not know that I am dreaming? I can’t know that I am not dreaming so I can’t trust that
I’m here holding the cup
 3. The last thing I can trust is the truth of mathematics… it seems that like if this is all a dream, a
square is still a square and 2+2 is still 4
 Maybe an evil demon is tricking me. I can’t trust anything
 4. However, I can trust that I am real. Maybe not physically but mentally
 The fact that he is thinking and questioning everything, there has to be something that is
thinking. Cogito ergo sum. I think therefore, I am
 This is the piece of knowledge that he builds everything else on
 Track the principles back: very worth looking at
 Purse’s critique of Descartes
 We can’t enter philosophy with complete doubt
 You’ve already been convinced that it is true so why would you go back and doubt it
 Purse objects radical doubt
 It doesn’t make sense; you can’t doubt this way

Prichard and Malcolm reading 42+43

 Prichard: Knowing is different from believing
 You can’t start from believing and get knowledge
 Prichard is saying that when you believe something you know it’s just belief
 Malcolm is saying that knowledge and belief is the same
 Prichard wants to say that we can know something is true inside of us and Malcolm is saying
that believing and knowing is independent, it is not internal and you have to have external
influence
 Malcolm (I passed the Gorge this morning so I know there is water in it)
Don’t have to know Gettier, Goldman or Leftcus

Austin (corresponds to Russell) correspondence theory of truth 47+48

 For something to be false, you find out something in the world that makes it false; it has nothing
to do with the fact that what you believe wasn’t a good belief
 Truth has an opposite, falsehood
 Truth and falsehoods are properties of beliefs and statements
  Point 3
 Although truth and falsehood are properties
 Austin’s criticism of this: Truth is a property of statement; correlation between a statement and
the thing
 Go back and look at Austin

Pierce and Janes

 Pragmatics definition
 Truth is something that we, its like a test tat we out things torugh and the property of truth
comes out throught he testing
 It’s important for something to be true; the world would have to be different in an important
way if it were true or false
 Worthwhile to go back and review
 Slides were good