Socrates' Children

by Govier, Trudy

• ISBN13: 9781551110936
• ISBN10: 1551110938
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-05-01
• Publisher: Broadview Pr

Summary

How do Humans Think? How should we think? Almost all of philosophy and a great deal else depends in large part on the answers that we provide to such questions. Yet they are almost impossible to deal with in isolation; notions about nature of thought are almost bound to connect with metaphysical notions about where ideas come from, with notions about appropriate arenas for certainty, doubt, and belief, and hence with moral and religious ideas.The Western tradition of thinking about thinking takes shape with Socrates; among the other important strands covered in this book are Descartes' recipe for discovering truth through systematic doubt, Hume's notion that all our ideas are copies of sense impressions, Wollstonecraft's introduction of the perspective of gender into such questions, and Wittgenstein's claim that much of the traditional terrain of Western philosophy should be thought of as the proper domain only of linguistic assertion, possessing no content beyond the words.With each philosopher and school of thought dealt with, Govier shows how ideas about thinking connect to the other elements of the particular philosophy, and brings to life the social and intellectual context that the ideas spring from. Socrates' Children is thus not only an investigation of notions of thinking and knowing in Western culture; it is a selective general history of much of Western philosophy, from a unique and fascinating perspective.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
1 Socrates, the Sting Ray of Athens	1	(20)
Thinking, Questioning, and Arguing	2	(3)
Discovering That We Do Not Know	5	(7)
The Quest for Definition	12	(4)
Observations: The Legacy of Socrates	16	(5)
2 Plato: The Shadows, the Cave, and the Dazzling Sun	21	(26)
Paradox and Recollection	23	(7)
The Divided Line	30	(3)
Dialectic	33	(1)
Dialectic and Thinking	34	(2)
The Sun and the Cave	36	(2)
Observations	38	(3)
Myth, Imagination, and Play	41	(6)
3 Aristotle: Finding the Golden Mean	47	(30)
Forms in the World	48	(4)
Aristotle and Plato	52	(3)
Practical Knowledge and Deliberation	55	(5)
Strategies for Thinking	60	(4)
Logic, Argument, and Dialectic	64	(1)
The Syllogism	64	(2)
The Principles of Non-Contradiction and the Excluded Middle	66	(4)
Demonstration and the Complete Science	70	(2)
Dialectic	72	(1)
Observations	73	(4)
4 Descartes: Are There Rotten Apples in that Basket?	77	(30)
The Method of Doubt	79	(5)
Cogito Ergo Sum: I think, therefore I am.	84	(4)
Proofs of God's Existence	88	(3)
The Problem of the Cartesian Circle	91	(2)
Thinking, Error, and Free Will	93	(3)
Mind and Matter	96	(5)
Observations: Cartesian Thought, Cartesian Problems	101	(6)
5 Hume: Custom, the Cement of the Universe	107	(28)
Hume the Empiricist	109	(5)
Hume's Perplexing Arguments	114	(1)
Induction	114	(2)
Causation	116	(1)
The External World	117	(2)
The Self	119	(3)
Hume on Scepticism, Belief, and the Will	122	(5)
Practical Implications	127	(5)
Observations: Hume's Problems	132	(3)
6 Wollstonecraft: The Oak that Braved the Storm	135	(24)
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman	141	(7)
Thought and Reason	148	(4)
Enlightenment and Romanticism; Reason and Emotion	152	(2)
Observations	154	(5)
7 Kant: The Starry Skies and the Moral Law	159	(30)
Rationalism, Empiricism, and Kant's Theory of Knowledge	161	(5)
Kant's Arguments	166	(1)
Two Distinctions	166	(2)
Are Synthetic A Priori Judgements Possible?	168	(2)
Space and Time	170	(2)
The Categories	172	(3)
Metaphysics	175	(7)
Kant on Thinking	182	(5)
Observations and Criticisms	187	(2)
8 Hegel: Negation and Progress	189	(26)
Absolute Idealism	190	(4)
Hegel on the History of Philosophy	194	(4)
The Hegelian Dialectic	198	(1)
What is Hegel's Dialectic	198	(3)
Dialectic in the History of Philosophy and Elsewhere	201	(1)
Some Qualifications	202	(1)
Examples of Dialectical Development in The Phenomenology of Spirit	203	(5)
Observations: Reflections on the Hegelian Dialectic	208	(4)
After Hegel	212	(3)
9 Beauvoir: More than Kings and Conquerors	215	(30)
Existentialism	217	(7)
Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir	224	(2)
Beauvoir's Existentialist Essays	226	(3)
The Second Sex	229	(10)
Thinking	239	(1)
Fiction and Philosophy	239	(1)
Observations: Applying Philosophy	240	(5)
10 Wittgenstein: Duck-rabbits and Talking Lions	245	(42)
The Early Philosophy of the Tractatus: Propositions and Pictures	247	(4)
Saying and Showing	251	(2)
The Mystical	253	(2)
Thinking, According to the Tractatus	255	(1)
The Vienna Circle and Logical Positivism	256	(2)
Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy	258	(3)
A Sceptical Problem and its Resolution	261	(3)
Private Language and the Egocentric Predicament	264	(3)
What is Thinking?	267	(5)
How Wittgenstein Makes Us Think	272	(6)
Wittgenstein on the Nature of Philosophy	278	(4)
Observations	282	(5)
11 Contemporary Voices	287	(26)
Artificial Intelligence	287	(5)
The Informal Logic-Critical Thinking Movement	292	(6)
Deconstruction	298	(5)
Feminist Epistemology	303	(8)
Concluding Comments	311	(2)
Notes	313	(26)
Index	339