HCJ - Lecture 1

Science is the search for the truth.
Human condition - we can not know the truth - Kant
The universe is ultimately unknowable. Kant, apart form believing that we cannot know the truth, also thought that you always have an honest opinion about something. This can relate to us as Journalists because our job is to have an opinion about almost everything.
Before Kant, it was believed that the earth was a mix of objects which can relate to the mirror theory of mind and reality. Even Plato believe the forms existed independently of human consciousness. The empiricists however such as Bacon and Newton thought that the cosmos is the sum total of many things. Some of these are large, some small/remote and difficult to see but they are 'there' as objects whether we can physically see them or not.

A Priori - is before experience. An example of this is if you were told about a triangle, you could work out that it had 3 sides, therefore enabling you to understand what it was before experience. These are based upon reason alone.
Posteriori - must be grounded upon experience and are constantly limited.

Kants view of this is that the cosmos is much like a computer game where the object and the landscape, space and time are created in consciousness and then fade away again. For those avid gamers, for the time you are playing the game you can see everything there and you are immersed in the world, however once you finish the game that world has faded away. This is an easier way of understanding Kant's idea of the cosmos. However, Kant was not a pure idealist, and did not believe that things are really there but in a noumenal form.
From Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, we inherit the idea that existence is not a predicate of any possible object, nothing actually 'causes' existence.

If no one is perceiving the object, does it exist? - Barclay

Electronics and the explosion of innovation in technology, from medicine to space travel are based on the firm idea that we know virtually nothing but that humanity has a capability to strive to know more. As a society we are constantly wanting to more of something and ultimately what we have just is not enough. This can also relate to Journalists and the way that they, in their personalities, strive to learn more and know more about a particular person or topic. As Journalists we go by the idea of 'playing dumb', that we 'know nothing'. We attribute statements to the source, and never say we know the truth.  This idea is similar to Nietzsche.

Logic - invented by Aristotle, bases upon the ideas of deduction and induction.
Deduction preserves truth and respects authority above all else. It moves from a general proposition to a particular one.
Induction is the opposite, it moves from a particular proposition to a general one.
Aristotle said 'all men are mortal' e.g. Socrates is a man therefore he is mortal. The idea of this is you start with a general point then you get the truth from it.

Newton to Einstein - The copernican revolution
- Does the earth orbit the sun?
- Where is up, where is down?
- Where is the centre of the universe?
If Newtons laws of motions describe motion from one point to another, can there be any motion if there are infinite distances?
In Newtons science, in some ways there are no limits, ultimately you can find out anything scientifically.
The steam age was when the Newtonian physics highly benefitted stream trains. However, Newtons ideas do not relate to electronic devices. For 200 years, Newtons laws were regarded as true.

We see the universe in 3D because we are 3D beings - Russell on Kant

Perception is ultimately subjective, e.g. what we call blue is different at different times of day or the lighting conditions of the room change.

Zeno's paradox - These are a set of philosophical problems which were said to be made by Zeno who was a greek philosopher. They supported Parmenides's doctrine that 'all is one'. Both philosophers believed that motion is nothing but an illusion. Based on Plato's Parmenides, Zeno took on this particular project of created the paradoxes because other philosophers had created ones against Parmenides.
- I understood this as a matrix type of thing where the characters can do stuff which is unexplainable.
- This was created 3,000 years ago.
- Zeno said that Achilles fires an arrow and the arrow goes through specific points. If the universe is large and you can divide spaces, then motion is impossible.
- Zeno believed that if motion exists then time cannot.

Verification principle
The truth of any proposition is the way in which you verify it. If a proposition cannot be verified, it is neither true nor false. E.g. 'It's raining'. If it can not be verified then it can not be proved to be true or not. Non verifiable principles have to be separated by verifiable principles.