History of Western Philosophy week 9

James Addison was an essayist, who wrote for the spectator magazine. This is far different from the spectator magazine today and Addison wrote about fashion, travel and life in general in the era. He was one of the first real journalists, what he wrote was a mixture of fact and fiction about special events at the time. He would attend functions and just observe the people there, describing them in his very objective style, which gave no emotional depth to those described. Addison wrote in the Restoration, the period of British history just after the English civil war and, along with Locke and Steele, became the iconic writers of the period.

                The restoration is marked by toleration, compromise and politeness. This was shown by Addison with his description of the laboured methods of greeting and so forth. Addison also created Sir Andrew Freedport, who was the embodiment of people at the time, and a tool with which he could poke fun at society which he did in his usual dry, witty tone. He described people as only being motivated by pleasure and pain. The greatest value or aim in Addison’s world is pleasure, in every aspect of life. This was most likely a deliberate response to move away from the chaos and terror of the civil war.

                The economy of Europe that fuelled the gentlemanly exterior was funded by much darker means. The conquest of the Americas provided gold and slavery, as well as far increased trade. This market was originally dominated by the Spanish, which meant that the Spanish monarchic, catholic state went from strength to strength. Conversely, Holland becomes a protestant, free thinking republic and therefore a safe haven for intellectuals, where anything could be published. By 1680 70% of all books in the world were being published in Holland. Due to technological advances which made them an impressive military power, Holland waged war on Spain, all the time allied with England. English privateers, who were basically pirates, refused to sail under the Union Jack and therefore chose to fly the skull and crossed bones.  With their far more advanced ships, Holland and Britain brought down the Spanish empire and gained control over the Atlantic, which of course meant that far more trade would come and along with it ridiculous wealth. This newfound wealth actually formed the base from which the industrial revolution in England would spring.

                Adam smith asked himself why one country is wealthier than another. Previously religion had provided the answer for this, people believing that one country was more in Gods favour than another and would therefore prosper. Smith tried to liberate people from this supernatural reasoning and said that it was due to the level of economic freedom that a country has. He said that wherever you find a state controlled system, as Spain was at the time, the people will end up ruined. This is because the state will control every feature of production and demand a cut, leaving the people with nothing. Wherever you find a system with less state involvement, where people are free to be entrepreneurs then they will end up being wealthier.  He brought about the idea of “The hidden hand of the market” where people stick to what they’re good at and trade off with people who are good at other things to end up with the best result possible.

                David Hume believes that the mind synthesises ideas from various other senses and predetermined sensations, which is called synthetic reasoning. Humans have a pre-disposition to synthesise; your mind is a machine that synthesises complex abstract ideas from simple sense sensations. Causation is the problem with reasoning. The mind tricks you into believing that one event leads to another. Place a cannon ball on a cushion, when you remove the cannon ball there will be an imprint on the cushion. Hume argues that these are completely unrelated. Similarly, when pool balls are struck, the fact that when the white ball hits a red ball the red ball moves, doesn’t mean that it moves because of the white ball. You have not seen the cause of the movement; you’ve only seen the constant conjunctions. He believed that there was no guarantee that if you did it again, the same result would be achieved, just because the sun rose this morning doesn’t mean that it’ll rise tomorrow. This is well described in a quote “You cannot derive an ought from an is”, meaning that because something has happened before, there is no reasoning that it’ll happen again. The reasoning that because something has happened, it should happen again is called inductive reasoning and all science is based upon it. Based upon an inductive reasoning by seeing what happens and translating what will happen into other circumstances. Assuming that the world will still be there, even when you cannot see it is inductive reasoning with a degree of probability. With this vein of thought, nothing can be known for certain, many things however are known through inductive reasoning, with a backing of statistical probability.