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Summary study book What is truth? of Chunglin Kwa - ISBN: 9789024427031, Edition: 1, Year of publication: - (Elaborate PSS Notes)
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, 2
1. Plato, Aristotle
Chunglin Kwa brief content of the lecture in syllabus:
The deductive style of science in the classical Greek context.
Our idea of what truth in science is, derives in important respects from Plato and Aristotle.
Yet, the ancients developed an ideal of scientific knowledge that is no longer shared by most
working scientists. The first lecture seeks to restore the original intellectual context of the
deductive ideal of Plato and Aristotle. First principles, the basis of certainty and truth. The
idea of proof in logic (Aristotle) and geometry (Euclid). Plato’s and Aristotle’s
presuppositions on the nature of the universe and the soul.
What is truth according to Plato and Aristotle?
1. Truth is proven knowledge, thus certain knowledge (“Quod erat demonstradum)
2. Truth is a correct representation, a correct picture of the world, but it is not certain
(hypothetical-analogical style)
3. Truth is whatever works (experimental style)
What is the difference in how the truth can be acquired to the two?
- Plato: recollection
- Aristotle: Nous (soul, comprehension, intuition)
Plato’s texts:
Anyone experienced in geometry who sees diagrams like a triange would be sure that they
are beautifully constructed, but would think it is absurd to find in them the truth concerning
any type of ratio.
Explanation:
- Why is Plato modest at the start of the dialogue? In discussions of many matters we
should be content if we provide answers that are second to none in probability
- We must first make a distinction: What is that which is real and had no becoming, and
what is that which is always becoming and never real? What is real is something that is
apprehensible by thought with a rational account. Not real is something which is the
object of belief together with unreasoning sensation
- Reality exists on two levels. The everyday world of the senses which is constantly
changing (transient) and the underlying set of concepts (ideas, rules, laws) that are
eternal
- Everything that exists and becomes must have a cause. If it is without a cause, it is
impossible for it to exist and become
- All objects in the sensible world, including celestial bodies are made of the totality of
the four elements. Therefore they are singular, complete, consisting of all totalities,
unageing and untroubled by disease
Geometers make use of the visible figures and argue about them, but by doing so they do not
think about the figures themselves, but instead they think of what they represent. Thus
, 3
the absolute square and the absolute diameter. The absolute is the object of their
argument, not the diameter that they draw.
- Allegory of the cave: Knowledge gained by the senses (human perception) is no more
than opinion and in order to have real knowledge, we must gain it through
philosophical reasoning. Prisoners live their entire lives in a cave only to be able to see
shadows. To them, these shadows are reality. When someone guesses the next shadow
to appear, they look at him as someone that has mastered nature. However when
someone climbs over the wall and discovers that the world comes from light, he
realizes that senses can be deceiving. Dark cave: contemporary world of ignorance,
chained people: ignorant people in this ignorant world. Raised wall: limitation of our
thinking, shadow: the illusionary world of sensory perception. Philosopher is the brave
prisoner that climbs out of the cave to discover the real world, then climbs back to tell
the other prisoners about the real world.
- Truth/knowledge is already present in us as we have seen the forms in between lives
(reincarnation) learning is thus remembering
, 4
2. Al Ghazali (anti Aristotle), Maimonides (Aristotle) & Duns Scotus
Voluntarists
Chunglin Kwa brief content of the lecture in syllabus:
The deductive style in the post-classical period
The 1277 ban of the teaching of Aristotle at the Sorbonne. Why did eminent physicist Pierre
Duhem call this ban the single most important event in the history of science? The new
concept of law of nature replaced the Greek notion of necessity.
A note on the relationship between philosophy and theology:
It may be regarded as a matter of convention that the tradition inherited from the Greeks has
come to be known as “philosophy” whereas the Judeo-Islamo-Christian tradition became
known as “theology”. Plato and Aristotle also assumed the existence of God (arguably a
different God than the God of Abraham and Moses), and their arguments hinge in part on
Why did bishop Tempier of Paris prohibit the texts of Aristotle?
- Aristotle claims that the world is eternal and that God cannot have created other
worlds The world is eternal (Against God’s biblical story of Adam and Eve, and the
world)
- Everything that exists, exists necessarily (thus other worlds cannot exist, because if
they could, they would. If Gould would want to create another world, he could)
This replaces necessity by law, which makes it contingent
What is the difference between arithmetic and algebra vs. geometry?
Geometry proceeds by proof, arithmetic is just counting, algebra is the Arab utilitarian
tradition of arithmetic, later the tool to describe nature. (description, not explanation)
How should we understand nature? Explaining the unknown by the known man is the
small god. Man can explain technics because he made technics
Aristotle: the scientific method
- Not about what, but about why
- It should be based on proof
- Not about the particular ‘particularia’, but about the universal ‘universalia’
Syllogism:
- The tool to describe necessity
- If q and r, then p
- A syllogism only works if the assumptions (q and r) are true
- Scientific knowledge must be built up of demonstrations
- Demonstration is also a syllogism, whose premises can be traced back to true,
necessary, universal principles
First principles:
- Can be general
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