Epistemology Moral Philosophy

Epistemology

Q1. What is a contingent truth?

Ans. A contingent truth can be referred as a true proposition that can be found to be false sometimes. A contingent falsehood is that false proposition which can be true sometimes. This contingent true or false is basically expressed by saying that the contingent proposal is that proposal which is truth in some scenarios and not true in some other situations. In simple words, a contingent truth is some kind of truth that is true but it could have also become false under some circumstances. It can be said that the contingency is that status where the proposition is neither false nor true in every possible valuation or it is neither necessarily true nor false.

Q2. Explain Locke’s primary/secondary quality distinction.

Ans. Qualities are that thing which can be defined by the powers that any object pursues to produce the ideas in human minds.

From John Locke’s side, the primary qualities are all those properties of any object that are not directly related with the definition to the perceivers with qualities such as shape, size, number, motion and solidarity. And on the other hand, the secondary qualities are like smell, temperature, taste and sound.

The distinction between the primary and secondary qualities as explained by Locke is that the primary qualities are those qualities that an object produces with those ideas in us that resemble those particular qualities. Different from that, the secondary qualities are those which produce the ideas among humans that do not particularly resemble those specific qualities.

The primary qualities are inseparable from the human body despite of whatever state the body is in. Apart from that the secondary qualities are nothing but just the power to produce the sensations in human body by the primary qualities.

Primary qualities are generally mind-independent inherent properties and the secondary qualities are mind-dependant relational properties.

Locke drew an example of the primary quality by showing that colour of porphyry vanishes with the light despite having no ‘real’ alteration and this suggests that the colour is an inherent quality. Whereas the secondary example is shown by an analogy of the qualities heat and pain to present that the se secondary qualities are mind-dependant and relational.

Q3. Outline direct realism and explain the issue of perceptual variation.

Ans. The concept of direct realism is that particular position where the immediate objects of the perceptions are truly mind-independent among the objects and their properties of inherency and relational. Different form the direct realism, the human perceptions are not mediated through the sense-data so it is not direct. The direct realism is explained as when the human body perceives anything from the external world that is called direct realism. Though during hallucinations, when a person is under any pill or drugs, then the human body perceives those things also which are not even present there.

The perpetual variation is that phenomenon where the qualities of any object are seemed to change depending upon the factors which are external to the objects such as the condition of perception for example the position of the perceiver. There are various kinds of issue is the logic of perpetual variations. The first logic of perpetual variation can be expressed by applying the phenomenon principle which says that “if it appears that there is an ‘x’ which has the sensible quality ‘f’ then there is an ‘x’ which does possess that quality ‘f’”, where

P1 says that the object that directly perceives appears to change like colour, shape, size etc.

P2 says that if the object directly perceives, appear to change then the object is directly perceivable and must change

P3 is an object that doesn’t change

C1 is therefore that object which directly perceives isn’t the physical object, and

C2 says that it follows that direct realism which is defined above is false.

Apart from this, Bertrand Russell’s argument of perceptual variation shows an example of various people having different perceptions in the same table shows that there exists a gap in between the reality (the independent physical object) and the appearance (what is perceived) so that the human body doesn’t perceive the physical object immediately but it must infer it’s reality and existence in the form of colour, shape, texture etc which are perpetually variable.

Q4. Outline innatism and explain how Plato’s ‘slave boy’ argument supports it.

Ans. According to Plato, the innatism is that position where the humans are born with pursuing some kinds of innate propositional or conceptual knowledge and understanding which is neither given to the humans nor justified by the empirical experiences faced. The innatism propositional knowledge is basically based on the concepts which have the innate propositional knowledge and entails having the innate concepts but doesn’t have any vice versa. The innatism is directly related with the rationalism concept where the position which humans have with some kinds of synthetic priori knowledge. However the synthetic priori knowledge need not to be innate or identified with the innate knowledge of the innatism.

However this innatism concept of Plato is supported by the ‘salve boy’ argument which is also argued by Plato himself. The ‘salve boy’ argument is originally developed to give a reply to the argument of Meno’s paradox. The ‘slave boy’ argument says that:

The slave boy who previously has not been taught the geometry knowledge but he is asked to calculate the double of the area of a 2x2 square. Here initially being unaware of the geometry, the slave boy starts to double the lengths of the lines of the square and draws a 4x4 square. After that the boy subsequently draws a 3x3 square before reaching to the aporetic stage. At this point of time, the by gave up and declared himself as looser. Then, Socrates guided him any making him understand by means of a simple step by step path to the correct answer. The answer was to use the diagonal lengths of the original square to have the base of the new square. The boy agreed to this way as prompted by Meno and Socrates and collected the right answer. This example revealed that as prompted, the slave boy got the relevant knowledge and hence the slave boy possessed the innate knowledge subconsciously or tacitly supporting the innatism concept of Plato.

Q5. Is there a convincing response to philosophical scepticism?

Ans. Yes there is a convincing response to the philosophical scepticism and yes there are both the convincing responses to the global scepticism and also to the particular examples of the scepticism concept of philosophy.

There is a difference between the philosophical scepticism and the normal incredulity. The normal incredulity is the local and specific reasons for doubting the specific claims. The philosophical scepticism is dependant the mods which might doubt the knowledge about any religion, ethics and many more things. Apart from this the global scepticism adds on by extending the doubts without any limit. The global scepticism can be referred as the narrow external world scepticism or as the broadly scepticism which traditionally invites the suspension of the knowledge claims which are regardless of the subject matters which includes the knowledge of a person’s various state of minds and along with that the priori claims.

The philosophical scepticism means the attitudes of the doubting knowledge which claims set forth in different areas. The philosophical scepticism claims that the usual methods of the justifications for claiming the beliefs of the amount to knowledge like the inductive or the perception reason which are contrary to what the normal understanding that is assumed is inadequate and insufficient.

There can be several types of philosophical scepticism examples like –

Having knowledge of the existence of the external worlds outside

Knowledge of the future

Knowledge of casual relations

Knowledge of any type of evil demon scenario

Knowledge of existence of God

Moral knowledge

Problems of the other minds

Knowledge of Self

The reasons behind the positive convincing response are:

The reason lies in the induction concept where there cannot be any kind of reasonable undermining of it since the problems and issues of the induction are not genuine problems and issues at all and so it can be mitigated.

Berkeley’s idealist response, who is an albeit anti-realist, revealed to have an adequately overcame the scepticism concept and it can infer that God is an epistemological and an ontological guarantor.

Adding to this, Locke have successfully argued to the convincing pint that the existence of the external worlds out there is true from the fact that the human experiences are involuntary in its nature and it can be verified also by using more than one sense of experience of both touching and eye sight.

Moorean responses towards the concept of scepticism are also successful with various kinds of interpretations of the Moore’s response to scepticism which are available.

Gilbert Ryle has also given responses towards both the global and the local Cartesian scepticism concepts.

Further Descartes has successfully overcame all of his three waves of doubt by applying all the intuitions and all the deductions to prove with the help of all the proofs of God’s existence with the capacity of a person’s mind to have that knowledge particularly the understanding and the knowledge of the external world but along with the understanding of a priori knowledge.

The Post-Kantian has also responded with the transcendental responses to the scepticism concept of positivity.

Reliabilist response to scepticism concept with the argument of Alvin Goldman’s that whilst the sceptic is right in order to point out that humans cannot provide the verification conditions for any knowledge, they can nevertheless give the truth conditions for the knowledge they pursue and this shows that the knowledge which is possible to have although it is difficult to know that what knowledge is possessed within humans.

Moral philosophy

Q6. What is preference utilitarianism?

Ans. The preference utilitarianism also known as the preferentialism is basically a form of the utilitarianism in the contemporary philosophy concept which is distinct from the original concept of the utilitarianism. preference utilitarianism are those actions which are called right if they maximises the satisfaction level of the preferences or desires or interests no matter what the references are for. Preference utilitarianism says that the morally good or right actions are those actions which when acts as consequences fulfils all the greatest amount of all the interests of the greatest amount of the humans of being morally relevant to the preferences.

Q7. Outline Aristotle’s function argument.

Ans. Aristotle has claimed that in order to discover the good human beings, one must first identify the functions of a human being. He further argued that the human beings functions are rational activities so the good performed by the humans are therefore rationally performed activities are good whose meaning is to be taken in accordance with the virtue. The function argument of Aristotle which is applied to the human beings argues that:

A human being can only be a good human being if she or he performs his/her activities or function well, so a good human being always lives a life which is fully functioned and guided by the good practical reasons.

The function of a human being or something else is its characteristics that are the form of the activities that sets it apart from other things.

In order to be a good human being, one has to fulfil all his/her functions that he/she will need in the form of certain qualities like one of the quality which is called a quality of excellence or virtue.

The function argument says that a good human being ought to live his/her life according to the virtues’ of excellences such as living excellently or virtuously.

Q8. Explain Bentham’s utilitarianism and explain how it faces problems with calculation.

Ans. Utilitarianism is the normative ethics in the form of a traditional stemming initiated from the late 18th and the late 19th century by the English philosophers and economists Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. According to Bentham’s utilitarianism, the actions or any type of actions will be considered right only if it tends to promote any kind of happiness or pleasure to the human beings and will be considered wrong if it tends to produce any kind of pain or unhappiness and not just by the performed of those actions but also for all the other people who are affected by the actions performed. Bentham’s utilitarianism is a quantitative utilitarian form as in this form the quantity of the happiness or pleasure matters the most.

The problems that are faced by the Bentham’s utilitarianism calculations are –

The practical problem of calculating the utility can be objected by the practically impossible ways to calculate the utility because even if the utility is specified as the presence or absence of the happiness or pain, the felicity calculus utility requires to be taken into account to the variables of – the intensity of the pain or happiness, the duration of the pain or the happiness, the certainty which occurs in the pain or the happiness and the propinquity of the pain or pleasure that how soon will it be going to occur.

The problem comes out with the fecundity and purity of the action since in case of the fecundity, the calculation is how it leads towards the same type of sensation and in case of the purity the calculation is that how little it leads to the site type of sensation.

The commensurability issue is faced since there is no single scale exists to use as a unit of measurement.

Utilitarianism is always aims to be impartial in its nature despite being a psychological fact of having unconscious biases.

Q9. Outline moral anti-realism and explain the issue that it cannot account for moral progress.

Ans. In the philosophical language of ethics, the meaning of moral anti-realism or in other words the moral irrealism is a type of meta-ethical doctrine where there are no objectives of the moral values or any normative facts. Usually the moral anti-realism can be further defined as opposite to the moral realism concept which basically holds the concept that there are objectives of the moral values in which any such type of moral claim cam be proved to be either true or false. In context of the meta-ethics, the anti-realism is a metaphysical position which is mind-independent in the moral properties of it for the facts that do not exists. The anti-realism concept can be related with –

The anti-realist non-cognitivist positions such as the emotivism concept of Ayer ad the prescriptivism concept of Hare.

The anti-realist cognitivist positions like the Mackie’s error theory concept

The positions which have been studied going beyond the specification such as the fictionalism concept of Joyce or the Gibbard’s norm-expressivism concept.

The issues and problems that the anti-realism concept cannot account for the moral progress are like –

The anti-realism concept does not account the issue that raise in correspondence with the theory of truth where the moral progress needs to be discovered more and more in terms of the mind-independent concept of moral facts and properties just like the way in which the scientific progress is understood with discovering more of the mind-independent natural facts.

The anti-realism concept relies on the coherentist theory of truth where the moral progress is in terms of more and more of the inclusive and the internally consistent set of all the moral claims and propositions where the Non-cognitivist anti-realism concept denies all those moral claims and propositions that are truth-evaluable in their nature and also will not become able to keep the consistency for example the Frege-Geach problem or issue.

Q10. How convincing is Kant’s view on telling lies?

Ans. The ethical theory of Kant refers towards that deontological ethical theory which is developed by a German philosopher Immanuel Kant on the basis of the notion that “it is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be considered good without limitation except a god will”.

The views of Kant on telling lies argues that –

there is an absolute or categorical or perfect duty not too lie, as an example if there comes a axe-murderer at your door and you are given never to lie and even if to save the lives of the innocents or protect them.

only the will which is good will be the good without any such qualifications or to have a good will which is the duty. In this case, one can take ought to tell the truth without any les from the sense of duty alone and not rather than for some any other reason.

the moral duties say that they are discoverable by all the reasons and so that only those who will possess an adequate rational capacity to have a duty that not to lie.

the views of Kant’s on the terms of lying is of the first formulation of all those Categorical Imperative that is the Formula of Universal Law which says that “ act only according to that maxim by which one can at the same time will that it should become a universal law or the universal law of nature”. Thus there always stays a perfect duty not to lie in any situation.

Kant’s view on telling lies is not convincing because:

The consequences of all the actions performed are determined by their moral status and the theory of lying as said by Kant is to open to some of the obvious counter of all the examples which are underlined such as the lie told to the murderer standing at the door (as mentioned above) or telling a simple white lie in order to make someone happy.

The argument of Kant is flawed because it has been seen that so far not all of the universalisable maxims are totally distinctly moral in its nature and not all the non-universalisable maxims are all of immoral. The principles of Kant are depending on which Kant has prohibited lying is so proved wrong.

Kant’s system has always been suffering from that of being competing or clashing duties just like the difference between not lying and save lives.

The concept of Kant has always ignored all the values of the certain motive of lying such as friendship, love or kindness or any other expression. All these motives are to be given more value than the motive of not lying just like if any person lies to the murderer at the door in out of loving expression to that person then the person lying is either protecting or giving any type of kindness too that murderer standing at the door whom the lying person is wanting to prevent from committing any crime like said in the example murder out of any kind of blind rage or any misinformation.

The concept presented by Kant fails to account because only the desires or emotions can motivate all the actions and not any other expression.

The views of Kant are generally meant to have the same duties of not to lie to all those people who have done or might do any wrong action so as to not do any morally wrong act to them which seems to be odd in context with the morality.

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