PHIL 100 Notes

It is important to think before acting, even when action seems urgent.

When the occasional quick action is necessary, thinking still shows its purpose – have we thought about this sort of action before? Possible example: we watch movies about heroes so we feel like performing those heroic actions ourselves.

We must not act without thinking, nor let thinking too much prevent us from acting.

People of different nationalities, for example, often have a different view of so-called "facts", such as in which of the uncountably many ones they choose to recall and report and teh significance attributed to each.

Actions reveal the self.

CONCLUSION: People, as wholes, think. There is no "part" of them that thinks.

PREMISE: People hold jobs. Their thinking is influenced by those jobs. If thinking occurred in a separate part than working, this would not be so.

PREMISE: We refer to one as "a person worth knowing", for example. ???

PREMISE: (made through the rest of the chapter) a person's point-of-view is determined by the groups they associate with (country, church) and therefore is not some isolated, purified mechanism of the brain.

Thinking is the process of questioning and answering. Absolute or absolute lack of answers is impossible.

Many questions (once again, a question is one of the bases of thinking) conjure new questions as the answer to the first is investigated. It is a true art to determine which of these child question should be investigated and at which point the original question should take precedence.

People come from different viewpoints and are influenced by different groups. So what do they have in common? The ability to "argue"; the tendency to reject a contradiction. If we hold a contradiction in mind, it is only because we do not consciously realize it. /Objection: One can choose not to investigate a contradiction to the point where it would become impossible to believe./

To make a contradiction manifest, we must sometimes make clear a single, minor contradicting aspect of two beliefs, which leads to overall invalidation and disbelief of the larger beliefs as wholes.

Intelligence is defined as clarity of thought.

Syllogism: Two or more premises that entail a conclusion.

A truth for a class is true for its members.

When an answer suggests the same question it was proposed to resolve, that answer is most likely incorrect (eg, Aristotle suggested natural masters and natural slaves, but some slaves are natural masters, once again asking us how their use as a slave is justified).

THE BIG POINT: Answers sometimes require us to change our lives in a major way. We cannot assume that there is an answer which fits simultaneously with our morals, physical reality, and our present actions.

If intelligence is clear thinking, that thinking must not ignore inconvenient answers; that is not clear.

Challenge: Distinguishing a belief in ourself supported by evidence and one taken for granted. We also often believe something more strongly than the limited evidence in support of it warrants.

Obviously, a belief can be true but "unsound", i.e, not based in evidence.

We can only communicate and argue effective when points-of-view are remotely compatible.

CLAIM: Our occupation affects our thinking.

PREMISE: We think with our entire self.

PREMISE: What we do during our working day is a part of our self.

"Cherished beliefs" obviously pose a potential threat to clear thinking, but do not have to. A cherished belief is one which is pleasurable to us and of which a refutation would be distressing.

Two questions to ask about your own beliefs:

• How did I come to believe this?
• Without regard for the answer to the previous question, is this belief tenable?

CONCLUSION (without premises): Thinking clearly is worthwhile.

PREMISE (ok, maybe there is one): Stebbing would not have written this otherwise.

PREMISE (a better one): Unclear thinking entails (note the nested conclusions/premises!) unclear/muddied/bungled "doing", which can be shown by other means to be undesirable.

CONCLUSION: If two points-of-view differ too much, discussion between those holding these different points of view will be impossible.

PREMISE: None provided! Stebbing asks the reader to regurgitate a personal example.

Suppose you hold that thinking clearly is not worthwhile. Then your POV would be too different from Stebbing's to appreciate her text, and in turn you would not be reading it (or understanding it, at least). Thus, you must hold that thinkin clearly is worthwhile (maybe). But, if you did not hold that, then even this very argument would appear opaque.

DEFINITION: Holding a Prejudice: Believing something without any evidence when it is reasonable to seek supporting evidence.

BIG IDEA: Holding a prejudice precludes clear thinking.

A superstition fits Stebbing's definition of a prejudice, but many people interpret a prejudice as having to be a belief that benefits its believer – not universally true of superstitions.

A valid conclusion supported by valid arguments only exists when the person drawing the conclusion believes that it followed from the argument (i.e, not rationalization).

The way out of prejudice: Notice when you are becoming emotional and recognize you may not be thinking clearly.

When Stebbing speaks of "danger", she mainly means unclear thinking, and by extension unclear action.

CONCLUSION: It is detrimental to clear thinking to search for evidence that supporst a pre-existing belief.

PREMISE: The same conclusion, if true, ought to be reached by a neutral search for arguments.

PREMISE: Evidence against the pre-existing belief, and perhaps stronger than the evidence supporting it, will be suppressed. Thus (mini-conclusion), a partial view of the evidence is not good enough. If a partial view of the evidence is the only option, it is better a sample from all corners than a one-sided one.

BIG IDEA 2: We must justify or find evidence for a belief. Holding a belief without justification, even if it is true, is poor form.

We will treat all opinions we cannot free of doubt in the same manner; there is no difference between something that is certainly and possibly untrue.

Most of the things that we think are certainly true are things that we directly observe, but the experience of dreaming shows that even the things we sense are not necessarily correct.

CONCLUSION: We cannot believe our senses.

PREMISE: Our senses can already operate in two completely different modes, awake and asleep, and there exists no surefire method of determining which mode our senses are operating in at this instant.

CONCLUSION: Dreams must be derived from some sort of reality.

PREMISE: Artists cannot devise something "utterly" new – at the least, they must re-use color.

CONCLUSION: Physics and astronomy are not necessarily true, but "arithmetic [and] geometry" are.

PREMISE: (see twice above conclusion) the most fundamental elements of the observed universe must exist.

PREMISE: Arithmetic and geometry build upon only the most fundamental elements of our observed universe.

COUNTER-CLAIM: A God may have created us to be deceived such that, although our world may have fundamental truths in it, we are unable to observe them, or observe them incorrectly ("may I not … be deceived every time I add 2 and 3 or count the sides of a square … ?"). This means, perhaps, that even these fundamental fields are in doubt.

REBUTTAL TO COUNTER-CLAIM: God is said to be good, and would not want to deceive us. (no evidence provided, hence why Descartes later throws out this claim).

CONCLUSION: If there is no God, we are deceived even more than if there is one.

PREMISE: Ability to be deceived is an "imperfection" or "mistake"

PREMISE: Things created by nature or chance have a high degree of imperfection.

PERSONAL REBUTTAL: But we must also doubt that imperfections are more likely by chance than otherwise, or that chance itself even exists.

When one believes things might be true, or deserve some doubt, we are inclined to believe these things almost automatically. Thus, we must assume them to be completely false to convince ourselves not to unwillingly submit to these doubtful ideas.

We will assume god is completely evil and tries to deceive us at every step.

CONCLUSION: We can know at least one thing for certain.

PREMISE: We can either find something that is certain, or be certain that everything is uncertain.

ALTERNATIVE PREMISE: We are already certain that certain things (such as the reality of our senses) are uncertain.

CONCLUSION: I exist.

PREMISE: If a God is deceiving me, there exists a me for him to deceive.

PREMISE: If a God is not deceiving me, then my thoughts are true, and thus when I think I exist, I exist for there is an I to reference at all. Alternatively, as we are able to convince ourself of things (say, that the senses are false), there must be a self to convince.

We must be careful not to overstate our new knowlede, that I Exist, but incorrectly assuming what "I" refers to.

CONCLUSION: We cannot imagine what "I" am.

PREMISE: Our imaginations are based in the things we have sensed from the real world.

PREMISE: Nothing of the real world is true.

CONCLUSION: "I" can think; "I" am a thinking thing.

PREMISE: We made the thought, "I Exist"

Although our imaginings are based in that false "real" world, the very power of imagining is real and a part of ourselves.

PERSONAL REBUTTAL: Could imaginations not be supplied to us by the great deceiver?

Real things, which are part of the thinking we know we are capable of: doubting, desiring, imagining, sensing (although the contents of this sensing may be false, sensing itself is a sort of thought). In the words of Descartes' translater: "A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, and that also imagines and senses."

CONCLUSION: Our imaginations of a thing are not that thing.

PREMISE: We can only imaine specific examples and images.

PREMISE: The nature of a thing is governed by general rules, such as the rule that wax can take any form.

PREMISE: A rule cannot be understood from specific examples.

CONCLUSION: We understand what a thing is exclusively through thinking and the mind.

PREMISE: We do not understand a thing through its corporeal form.

PREMISE: We do not understand a thing through imaginings.

Descartes also notes that language itself can distract us from the nature of things – when it is said that "I see her", you really see the corporeal manifestation of her – yet the language implies the two are one and the same, something (if the assumption holds that the world is certainly false) we have proved not to be the case.

Descartes does not claim that our perception of the wax, or anything, that we form in our mind is correct – he is just stating its nature.

We have said we are "certain" of a number of things. We will show, later, that, once we "clearly and distinctly" perceive something (a term used to refer to our mental image of the wax in 2nd meditation), we are certain of it.

Perhaps the meditator will achieve this by provin that God exists, and is not a deceiver – then we can know that our clear and distinct perceptions are true, since there is no being that could tamper with them.

CONCLUSION: "Ideas" and "Wills" cannot be false. There is no notion of truthiness or falsiness for them.

PREMISE: If we have an idea, there is no argument to be had over whether the idea has been had. The content of an idea has no bearing on whether or not the idea has occurred to us.

CONCLUSION: "Judgements" do have elements of true and false.

PREMISE: We make judgements about the external world.

PREMISE: The judgements we make about the external world do not always manifest.

Judgements are what bridge our thoughts and the corporeal world.

Three types of ideas/judgements:

• Innate: Ones we've always had.
• Adventitious: Introduced by the world.
• Produced by me: That we developed through our lifetimes.

It's time to look at the ideas that we believe to be adventitious and determine whether, as judgements, they are true; do the ideas match up with reality?

CONCLUSION: The ideas we get about the nature around us are not necessarily true.

PREMISE (example): The sun appears small, but is likely large (note Descartes background in the sciences).

COUNTER-PREMISE: It seems obvious that the idea we get of a real world object, from its shape, its feel, its smell, its temperature, are representative of that object's true nature. Why would it be unrelated?

CONCLUSION: Our perceptions of nature may not come from the external world and its objects but rather a "faculty" of our own minds which we do not yet consciously acknowledge. The fact that we do not "will" these perceptions, as we do imaginations, is not proof that they are truly adventitious.

To summarize the above conclusion in parallel structure to the one before it: The ideas we get about the nature around us are not necessarily initiated by that nature.

PREMISE: We have identified several internal sources of ideas and thoughts, such as our will and our imagination.

PREMISE: When we dream, some ideas about things enter our brains without the will, yet we seem sure these are not based in reality. This is an unnammed and misuderstood faculty.

conclusion I did not understand: About objective reality latter end of 40

"Light of Nature": Some compelling force that instills in us a sense that something is true. Perhaps the source of clear and distinct perceptions? Descartes emphasizes that our senses of the world (eg, that the fireplace is hot) are not functions of the light of nature, they are simply beliefs suggested to us.

CONCLUSION: A cause must have at least as much reality as its effect.

PREMISE: Something cannot come from nothing.

PREMISE: Reality has nowhere to come from, if not the cause (ok, this is the same as the last premise).

CONCLUSION: Something more perfect cannot come from something less perfect.

PREMISE: Perfection and reality are fundamentally correlated.

PREMISE: Previous conclusion.

PREMISE by example: A stone can only come from the material of a stone.

PREMISE by example: Something can only be heated by something hot.

(my) COUNTER-EXAMPLE: Fiction writing

(in-class) Clear and Distinct Perception: Self-evident, almost the definition of certainty.

CONCLUSION: Clear and Distinct thoughts are true.

PREMISE: I am certain I think and exist.

PREMISE: I am certain of such because I clearly and distinctly perceive it.

PREMISE: If CDP were not necessarily true, I would not necessarily exist.

Modus Tollens: Deny the consequences of an argument to refute it (in this case, the consequence of CDP being false would be uncertainty in own existance).

CONCLUSION: God is good and would not deceive us.

PREMISE: Deception is malice.

PREMISE: Malice is an imperfection.

CONCLUSION: A "complete" and "independent" God Exists (yes, again)

PREMISE: I am "incomplete" and "dependent". I am also capable of doubt.

PREMISE: If something partial exists, something total must exist too.

CONCLUSION: God created me without an intentional ability to make mistakes.

PREMISE: God is not malicious and does not deceive.

PREMISE: Explicitly enabling one to make mistakes is a deception of sorts.

COUNTERPOINT: We are able to make mistakes.

CONCLUSION: Our ability to make mistakes is a lack of perfection, not an addition of some imperfection.

PREMISE: God is on one end of the spectrum, perfect and complete.

PREMISE: Nothingness is on the other end of the spectrum, completely imperfect and entirely incomplete.

PREMISE: We are in-between God and nothingness.

Thus, God did not intionally design us to make mistakes – he is the only being that cannot make mistakes.

Descartes is making a point about positive/negative here – negative attributes aren't real attributes, just a lack of their positive counterpart.

PERSONAL COUNTERPOINT: Why would God make anything imperfect at all?

How can the mind move the body without contacting it?

Similarly, how can

Two types of knowledge: "Relations of Ideas" and "Matters of Fact". ROIs we are certain of; they can be rationally/logically deduced, much like Descartes' conclusions. Matters of fact are typically observed and cannot be proven.

Hume's Fork: Relations of Ideas and Matter of Fact exist in their own little worlds, and nothing may pass between them.

CONCLUSION: Any matter of fact I can distinctly conceive of may be true, and certainly cannot be objectively proven to be false. i.e, two matters of fact may not "imply a contradiction"

PREMISE: Things we have seen in the past are not guaranteed to continue existing in the same fashion indefinitely.

CONCLUSION: No matter of fact can be disputed by a relation of ideas.

PREMISE: It is impossible to prove a matter of fact false.

ALTERNATE PREMISE: Simple, "it can never imply a contradiction". I take this to mean that, since an invented object is novel and original, there is nothing that it can conflict with.

ALTERNATE PREMISE (sorta personal): Relations only connect to the real world through definitions and approximations which can sorta change.

This field of questioning "matters of fact" is new, and therefore I expect to make mistakes. Please, excuse me.

CONCLUSION: When we think about matters of fact and try to prove them, we invariably rely on the laws of cause and effect.

EXAMPLE: If we see a watch on a desert island (effect), we can only assume that it came from a person who crashed on that island before us (cause).

EXAMPLE: If we hear voices in the dark (effect), there must be a person (cause) doing that speaking.

EXAMPLE: If we feel heat (effect), we infer the fire (cause) and, going one step further still, the light (effect). So, effect -> effect relations are possible.

If all our understandings of matters of fact rely on cause and effect relationships with other matters of fact, it is crucial that we know cause and effect is true.

CONCLUSION: Understanding of cause and effect relationships come from repeated observation of those cause and effect relationships playing out.

EXAMPLE: Adam would not have known that you could drown in water, never bein told it and never having heard it from anyone.

EXAMPLE: One could not predict the difference in tensile and shear strength of marble.

EXAMPLE: One could not predict that gunpowder would explode.

EXAMPLE: There are cause-effect relations in the world that we acknowledge but do not have any "reason" for – provided: Why do men enjoy eating bread and milk, but tigers do not?

COUNTER: It seems everything is the result of simple rules, and knowing those simple rules we could dedice more complex cause-effect relations without observing them. (Essentially, Hume is saying that we have shown some cause-effect relations are the result of experience only, but we have not yet shown that they all are).

REBUTTAL PREMISE: Effects and causes are discrete.

REBUTTAL PREMISE: Our first "arbitrary" guess at an effect must be random.

REBUTTAL PREMISE: Even if "suggested" a possible effect (the true one) for a cause, we can think up a million other effects that are just as plausible until observed not to occur. For example, why should a rock move down towards the earth, instead of up?

PERSONAL EXAMPLE: We see a red drink, and assume it will taste fruity. This could be and sometimes is completely wrong; we gained this knowledge from experience.

PERSONAL: One may think that they infer the cause/effect of a complex machine by analyzing its parts, but they still required experiential knowledge of the cause and effects of those individual parts. Then, they apply the laws of cause and effect of what, say, the motion imparted on one gear when an interlocking one is spun. Applied many times, the effect of action on the larger machine is clearly shown by many simple cause and effect rules summed together.

CONCLUSION: The work of philosophy is to discover the broadest and simplest causes, then define more complex causes and effects in terms of those simpler ones. A "theory of everything" can never be discovered.

PREMISE: Causes and effects can only be determined by experience or as a combination of simpler sorts of these relationships.

PREMISE: An infinite chain of relationships defined by simpler relationships is not possible.

Thus, at one point, all our matters of fact knowledge are based in the simplest observations from the real world.

Hume predicts that the base observations from which all other relationships are formed are:

• Elasticity
• Gravity
• Cohesion of Parts
• Communication of Motion by Impulse

So, the work of natural philosophers are to break down other phenomena (lightning?) into these ones.

CONCLUSION: While mathematics are still in the realm of "relations of ideas" and thus hard to argue with, "mixed mathematics" (i.e, applied mathematics) still rely upon basic observations and our general principles of cause/effect.

PREMISE: Applied math relies upon relations between physical values.

PREMISE: The way these physical measurements interact could not be determined without observation.

We asked how we reason about matters of fact, and the answer was cause and effect. We then asked where we get causes and effects from, and the answer was experience. Now we must ask: "What is the foundation of all conclusions from experience"? (i.e, how do we go from experience -> conclusion (about cause and effect, presumably))

BIG CONCLUSION: There is no understandable or logical process that connects experience and the direct conclusions of experience (say, that impact imparts momentum).

We ate a piece of bread once. Our experience, strictly speaking, tells us only that this one piece of bread was edible. Our mind does not understand the connection between the consistency, color, smell, etc of the bread and the fact that it's edible: there's nothing about "brown and slightly mushy" from which directly follows the conclusion that we will be nourished. Somehow, the specifics of our experience must be translated into a general rule. Why do we make the jump from one piece of bread to other pieces of bread when we have no understanding of why its immediately obvious properties lead to its causes (nutrition)?

Hume admits his own flaw in reasoning here: By simply being unable to show the connection or "medium" between experience and cause/effect, he does not prove that such a medium cannot exist. He expects that, in time, many others will attempt and fail to identify this medium, helping to prove his point.

"Demonstrative Reasoning": reasoning about relations of ideas.

"Moral Reasoning": reasoning about matters of fact

Hume reiterates that demonstrative reasoning cannot be used for matters of fact.

Similarity between objects is the basis for our genealizations of cause and effect.

"sensible qualities" and "secret powers": The terms Hume uses for the surface level qualities (color, smell, form, texture) and the underlying functions or unintuitive properties (life, nutritional value, computational ability) of an object, respectively. We observe the sensible qualities, the causes, and somehow know about the unintuitive secret powers.

CONCLUSION (the big one): The way we could possibly show that the past predicts the future would rely on that very assumption that the past predicts the future.

PREMISE: We cannot reason about the real world, our experiences, or, more relevantly, the way that the future proceeds the past, in terms of demonstrative reasoning, and thus the only possible avenue for describing why the future proceeds the past is through moral reasoning.

PREMISE: Moral reasoning relies upon the assumption that the future proceeds the past.

Obviously, if we can't use demonstrative reasoning to show that the future follows the past, and we can't use moral reasoning either, there is no way to show this relationship logically whatsoever! It's complete magic!

How do we know that history repeats itself? Because in the past, history has repeated itself! Why couldn't Hume have put it this way?

The circular argument is a generalization, or stepping up a level. We provide evidence for the very notion of experiential reasoning from experience, thus it cannot be rational.

Hume mentions, once again, that his lack of an explanation for the reasoning that sits in-between experience and cause/effect understanding is not quite a proof that it does not exist. But he provides one more argument: If a baby is able to form these cause/effect relationships so readily, it should not be hard for a learned philosopher to understand the mechanism behind those relationships. After all, philosophers are quick to accept the reasoning that goes into demonstrative reasoning, which is also present in babies, so why is it so tough for them to identify the source of moral reasoning? Most likely because it does not exist. A complex explanation of moral reasoning is just as much an admission it does not exist as no explanation at all.

"Uniformity of Nature": Hume's term for the idea that the future predictably follows the past.

The philosophy of skepticism: Nobody wants to do it, and people even despise it because, in Hume's opinion, they are ruled too strongly by bodily wont.

Although "skeptical philosophy" is highly abstract and may seem to make our everyday life worthless, don't worry that this abstract reasoning will ever prevail over our daily and bodily needs or the demands of everyday life.

CONCLUSION: The above paragraph.

PREMISE: The mind performs a leap between experience and a cause/effect relationship.

PREMISE: Cause/effect relationships and moral reasoning feel just as strong as demonstrative reasoning.

So, a non-rational part of the mind is just as strong as the rational part. We'll investiate into this non-rational reasoning a bit more here.

When people say "Custom" to refer to "the way things are done", they use it as a dirty word; it's implied that there's some underlying reason behind the custom. But Hume suggests that Custom is the end; it is the tendency to repeat what has been repeated and to believe that what has been repeated will repeat. Custom is the term for that mysterious and indecipherable mechanism that connects experience and cause/effect understandings.

Hume renews the "ad infinitum"/turtle argument, but to a different effect: All reasoning about matters of facts in the past or future are based in some matter of fact directly observed by the senses; otherwise, it is the result of an inference on other facts which can be traced down to a present observation.

Custom is a part of "human nature" or "natural instincts".

CONCLUSION: The difference between "belief" and "fiction" (i.e, something imagined) in our minds is not some idea, which indicates truthiness, and that is attached to all our "beliefs"

PREMISE: Our mind can arbitrarily manipulate and rearrange ideas.

PREMISE: We cannot arbitrarily choose to believe or disbelieve things.

Hume says, then, that truthiness is a "sentiment or feeling"

He also claims that this "sentiment or feeling" is "annexed", or connected, to truths, not fictions. Presumably, this is because, since this sentiment or feeling is a product of natural interaction and not the willing mind, it would not be possible for it to be attached to fictions because there is no external event that occurs every time we conceive a fiction and which could attach this sentiment. PERSONAL: Why couldn't there be a sentiment that is attached to all our thoughts, then dropped from them upon observation?

Mechanism of attachment: We see object, we involuntarily imagine/think of the object, and whenever we think of and see an object simultaneously the sentiment clings onto it.

The sentiment is termed, simply, belief.

Custom is not just our ability to understand repetition – it's our tendency to repeat thoughts, as well. For example, when we see something, a "customary conjunction" leads us to think our corresponding idea.

CONCLUSION: Observing a thing not only strengthens our thoughts in it, raising them to the level of belief most of the time, but also strengthens the vigor of thoughts of things connected to the observed object (either by "resemblance", "contiguity", or "causation")

PREMISE (causation): The conclusion holds true for cause/effect relationships (causation), for how else, upon observing a billiard ball about to strike, does the thought of its target moving come to us so strongly?

PREMISE: Resemblance and contiguity are closely related to causation for these purposes.

PREMISE (contiguity): I think more clearly of something when I am a few miles from it rather than on a different continent, even though there is no direct observation in either case.

PREMISE (resemblance): Catholic services show us things that resemble Jesus and other objects of our worship. They are effective only because we feel closer with these resemblances than by just thinking of God.

Not quite a proof :| most of Hume's proofs in this section are simply tips to the reader on how to introspect in a way that will make his conclusion obvious to any human.

CONCLUSION: Observing an object only strengthens an idea of a related object if we believe in that related object.

PREMISE: By introspection; a picture of a friend, for example, will not strengthen our idea of that friend if we do not believe that friend to be real. PERSONAL: But doesn't it? What if we see a picture of a character whom we know to be fictitious?

QUESTION: What is the third-to-last paragraph saying? "We may observe, that, in these phaenomena…"

Speech Acts: Doing things through speech. Yeah, we're just moving our vocal cords, but all the while we may be declaring war (or worse, divorce!)

Convention: We say what we mean: "Good-Bye!" or "Pass the Salt!"

Intention: We mean something other than what we say and assume that our audience will infer that meaning. Author's e.g: Say that a chocolate was very good to thank the person who gave you a box of them.

Attempted speech acts may deliver the wrong point or no point at all, whether they rely on convention (imagine a speaker of another language) or intention.

Some philosopher claimed that pornography silenced women, which led to a number of texts delving into how silencing works. A few types of silencing were developed.

• Different languages, or "mediums of exchange". Solution: Provide a shared medium, eg through a translater or a third language both parties know.
• Different dialects or jargon. Differing "hermeneutical resources", more formally. Eg, an inside joke, or Australian slang. Solution: Once again, translation, or perhaps
• Word understanding, but not phrase understanding. Eg, a dense text. Solution: Psych! There ain't an easy one. Often, this would be due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the prerequisite concepts or the writer's culture.
• When multiple interpretations are possible, picking the unintended one. According to our author, this is because of prejudice. That may, however, be due to a hermeneutical impass between the author and myself – maybe they mean to say that this category is only for prejudice-caused impasses and thus always involves prejudice by definition, while I took it to mean all alternate interpretations of a statement.

Social Contract: If everyone were rational and equal, what they would agree upon.

Original Position: The hypothetical state of the world where people choose the principles of society and the social contract. Everyone is free, rational, and equal.

Veil of Ignorance: The people in the original position choose without knowledge of group membership, class membership, etc. This is part of the definition of everyone being "equal". This sorta forces people to follow the golden rule.

Original Position: We are unaware of our social class, our race, etc; this is the "veil of ignorance".

Somehow, Rawls shows that, from the original position, people will naturally come to instill two-to-three principles into society:

• Difference Principle: Inequalities can only exist if they benefit everyone, even the worst off.
• Equal Opportunity Principle: Inequalities are only achieved through "equality of opportunity" (eg, election instead of inheritance). Somewhat meritocratic.
• Greatest Equal Liberty Principle: Maximum liberty except where it interferes with the liberty of others.

Rawls also ordered these rules:

1. Greatest Equal Liberty Principle
2. (2b) Equal Opportunity Principle
3. (2a) Difference Principle

He said that it does not matter how nice things are in the latter categories if their prerequisites are not filled, and that the people negotiating the social contract from the original position would never trade the upper principles for the lower ones.

Two models of human motivation:

• Egoist: Completely self-motivated.
• Dualist: Partially self-motivated, partially motivated by something higher. For Kant, that something higher was "pure reason".

Models of reason ("practical reason"):

• Rational Egoism: We are rational iff it benefits us.
• Dualist: We think about the needs, wants, etc of the universe. We think from the "point of view of the universe" and what would be rational for everyone and everything, all the time. Wolf classifies things like justice and duty as existing only in the eyes of the universe, under this dualist perspective. Roughly, these categories align with happiness and morality.

People seem to do things and rationalize for another reason to: To give some sort of meaning to their lives, or to make their lives worth living. Wolf plans to spend most of her essay describing what these reasons are and wouldn't want to spoil it, but she tells us right away that meaning /= happiness.

Goal: Explain meaning and why we should want it.

Maybe self-interest and morality, which we claim to already understand, will seem different after understanding meaning.

There are things we do that neither serve the greater good nor provide some obvious benefit to the self. Wolf attributes our motivation for these things to "reasons of love". Not just loving people: Hobbies can be boring and morally fruitless. Loving a person or pursuit justifies it and explains it.

Reasons of love gone wrong: Incorrect application of love (i.e, our actions don't benefit the loved object) or loving where love isn't deserved.

Wolf claims that when we act for reasons of love towards an object that deserves such love, we are acting in a "justified" and "important" way.

Definition of meaning? "Loving objects worthy of love and engaging with them in a positive way."

Another definition of meaning? "Meaning arises when subjective attractino meets objective attractiveness"

Wolf calls endlessly working on crossword puzzles meaningless…grr

It's not enough to "recognize" that something is valuable and to believe in it. If you say you're Christian when someone asks but you've never prayed, you aren't living a meaningful life.

The endoxic method: Instead of using known facts to support our conclusion, we use our conclusion to support a commonplace belief then take tha as evidence for our conclusion.

Endoxic method for Wolf's meaning: People say you should "do what you love" and get involved in something "larger" than oneself. These correspond, respectively, to the subjective and objective components of Wolf's meaning.

When we think our lives meaningless, we refer to a lack of subjective value. When we think another's life meaningful, we refer to its objective value.

PERSONAL: Subjective = egoist, Objective = moral. Wolf hasn't shown well that meaning is its own thing, yet, just the union of the other two.

PERSONAL: If meaning is not synonymous with self-interest, then why do we want to do it? Same thing goes for morality, too.

Everyone gets the same stuff. Eg, the start of Settlers of Catan.

Personal: What about people? You can't give everyone the same family. Or are we just saying, hypothetically, what if everyone could have the same family, same partners, same children?

People get stuff depending on what they need.

What people "deserve", based on their work – not innate needs.

Sure, some people get more for merit, but only if that benefits the people at the bottom.

Eye-for-an-eye

Utilitarian. Help criminals; "rehabilitate" them.

We don't do eye-for-an-eye because we want to see the criminal suffer, but rather because we want to stop it from happening again (i.e, it can still be utilitarian).

Try to fix things that went wrong during the crime.

What exists? What is there?

Is the world fully material? Eg, is the mind synonymous with the brain?

Are gender and race biological? Social?

Study of knowledge, very meta.

How do we know anything? What does it mean to know something?

What is right and wrong? Do means justify the ends, or must the means be based on a well agreed-upon, universalizable principle?

Justice, relationships.

How should burdens of society be distributed? What are ideal human relationships made of?