Philosophy

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Essay Instructions
For this assignment, you are asked to write a formal ESSAY PAPER, on a selected topic of your choice (chosen from a range of designated topics already considered by you and your classmates for Discussion Forums that we have conducted in earlier weeks of this Course). Hence you will have the opportunity to augment or intensify your individual research on the selected issue, to elaborate or to embellish your points, and to demonstrate, in formal essay paper style, the reasoning and argumentation that led you to conclusions that you may have posted in one of our class’s prior Discussion Forums.

ESSAY OPTION 2A.
Write an essay addressing the problem of our Week Five Discussion, which concerned the way in which our ability to understand the world scientifically, on the one hand, relates to the ultimate nature of the object of scientific understanding, the knowable world of facts, on the other, as explained in the different views concerning this issue defended respectively, (1) by fifth-century BC philosopher Zeno of Elea, a disciple of Parmenides, whose earlier “problem of the one and the many” inspired not only Zeno but also the metaphysical distinction between the “intelligible” and the “sensible” worlds expounded by Socrates in the “Republic” of Plato, (2) by Aristotle, who in his works the “Physics” and the “Metaphysics” famously analyzed the famous paradoxes of Zeno—concerning the nature of physical motion and change—and attempted to resolve Zeno’s apparently absurd results, explaining them away as due to inevitable limitations of geometrical measurement, and to fallacious reasoning, and, in recent years, and (3) by Peter Lynds, who supports a conception of time introduced by 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant (according to whom it is only the conscious awareness of a scientific observer that entails the intuition of a present moment in time).
You should revisit our Week Five Discussion, and consider all the points made therein. Based on your re-examination of the reading assignments and the Internet links given in the body of the instructions for our Week Five Discussion—especially the fragments reproduced therein from Aristotle’s work, the “Physics” (together with Waterfield’s own commentary in our textbook on these fragments, on pages 69—72) AND your study of the 9-page paper by Peter Lynds that is available under the Course Documents tab entitled “Zeno’s Paradoxes—A Timely Solution,” DISCUSS THE FOLLOWING:
What do you regard as the essential differences—theoretical and/or practical differences—between EACH philosopher’s (Zeno’s, Aristotle’s, and Lynds’) view concerning the effectiveness of using geometrical measurements (both finite and infinitesimal measurements) of spatial and temporal distances, for purposes of attaining a scientific understanding of the knowable world of facts. Which view do you regard as LEAST problematical, or wrong?
In the course of your essay, you must explain and critique the different attitudes towards the possibility of spatiotemporal measurability, defended respectively, BY EACH OF (1) Zeno of Elea (a follower of Parmenides), (2) Aristotle (who concluded that Zeno’s conclusions regarding the nature of physical motion and change are attributable to inevitable limitations inherent in the instrumentality of geometrical measurement itself, and to the fallacious reasoning of the skeptical philosophers), AND (3), Peter Lynds, author of the article entitled “Zeno’s Paradoxes—A Timely Solution” (available under the Course Documents tab), who thinks not only that instantaneous magnitudes—the “seeming now”—cannot exist in physical reality, but that an object in relative motion is not susceptible of a supposed divisibility of its motions.

Week 5 Discussion
These instructions will set up our Week Five Discussion, which will concern the sufficiency of certain fundamental conceptions of the nature of scientific understanding, and its object, the knowable world of facts, defended respectively, (1) by the fifth-century BC philosophers Parmenides and Zeno of Elea (who influenced Socrates and Plato), (2) by Aristotle (384—322 BC), who in his works the Physics and the Metaphysics famously analyzed the famous paradoxes of Zeno—concerning the nature of physical motion and change—and attempted to resolve Zeno’s apparently absurd results, explaining them away as due to inevitable limitations of geometrical measurement, and to fallacious reasoning, and, in recent years, (3) by Peter Lynds, author of an article entitled “Time and Classical and Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminacy vs. Discontinuity,” published in 2003 in Vol. 16, no. 4, of “Foundations of Physics Letters,” an academic journal.
The arguments of Peter Lynds (read the 9-page paper by Peter Lynds that is available under the Course Documents tab entitled “Zeno’s Paradoxes–A Timely Solution) support a conception of time introduced by 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant (according to whom it is only the conscious awareness of a scientific observer that entails the intuition of a present moment in time). According to Lynds, the Kantian notion of time resolves Zeno’s famous paradoxes, firstly, by accepting Aristotle’s insight (that instants in time and instantaneous magnitudes—the “seeming now”—cannot exist in reality independently from an observer that can tell them apart), and secondly, by embracing recently established physical laws, for instance, that an object in relative motion cannot have an instantaneous or determined relative position (for otherwise it would not be in motion), and therefore, that such an object is not susceptible of a supposed divisibility of its motions (as if it could possess an instantaneous or determined relative position), although Zeno’s paradoxes falsely assume such divisibility.
For our Week Five Discussion, you will be asked to elucidate YOUR understanding of EACH philosopher’s (Zeno’s, Aristotle’s, and Lynds’) view concerning the effectiveness of using geometrical measurements (both finite and infinitesimal measurements) of spatial and temporal distances, for purposes of attaining a scientific understanding of the knowable world of facts. Which view do you regard as LEAST problematical, or wrong? You must explain and critique, in your posts, the different attitudes towards the possibility of spatiotemporal measurability, defended respectively, BY EACH OF (1) Zeno of Elea (a follower of Parmenides), (2) Aristotle (who concluded that Zeno’s conclusions regarding the nature of physical motion and change are attributable to inevitable limitations inherent in the instrumentality of geometrical measurement itself, and to the fallacious reasoning of the skeptical philosophers), AND (3), Peter Lynds, author of the article entitled “Zeno’s Paradoxes—A Timely Solution” (available under the Course Documents tab), who thinks not only that instantaneous magnitudes—the “seeming now”—cannot exist in physical reality, but that an object in relative motion is not susceptible of a supposed divisibility of its motions.
Parmenides (510—440 BC) is famous for discovering the metaphysical “problem of the one and the many,” which in turn inspired the metaphysical distinction between the “intelligible” and the “sensible” worlds expounded by Socrates (470—399 BC) in the “Republic” of Plato (428—347 BC). According to Plato, scientific knowledge is knowledge of “the intelligible world,” in which the object of opinion is according to the way “that it is, necessarily” whilst common opinion is rather knowledge of “the sensible world,” in which the object of opinion is according to the way “of appearance.”
The pre-assigned reading requirement for this fourth week of classes (indicated on the course syllabus’s “Schedule of Subject Matters and Corresponding Assignments”) is pages 49—86 of our textbook “The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and Sophists,” edited and translated, with commentary, by Robin Waterfield. Though the books of Parmenides and Zeno have not survived, we know about them through the accounts of the late Neo-Platonic philosopher Simplicius of Cilicia (490—560 AD) in his Commentary on Aristotle’s “Physics” (see, for example ‘F8’ in the textbook, pages 59—61, and ‘F1’ in the textbook, pages 77—79, and ‘F6’ in the textbook, pages 84—85).
Here following, however, translated by Waterfield, and from our textbook, are key fragments from the works of Aristotle himself, concerning the views of Parmenides and Melissus of Samos (a contemporary of Socrates), and also a reference to these philosophers by Plato (Waterfield’s ‘T6’).
T3 (dk 28a25; c t20) Some of them [earlier philosophers] did away with generation and destruction altogether, on the grounds that nothing that is generated or destroyed, but only seems to us to be generated or destroyed. This is the view of Melissus, Parmenides, and so on. Even if basically they argue well, we have to regard their arguments as not relevant to science as such, since the existence of things which are not liable to generation or to change in general is more properly a question dealt with by a different discipline, not natural science, but a prior form of study. However, because they assumed the existence of nothing other than what is accessible to the senses, and because they were the first to appreciate that there must be unchanging entities, if recognition and knowledge are to exist, they transferred arguments proper to the higher form of study from there on to sensible things. (Aristotle, On the Heavens 298b14–24 Allan) (trans. Waterfield, p. 61)
T5 (dk 28a24; c t26) Parmenides seems to speak with somewhat more insight [than Xenophanes and Melissus] in arguing that what-is-not is nothing––that there is nothing apart from what-is; he necessarily thinks, then, that being is single and that nothing else exists; I have gone into this in more detail in my Physics. But since he is forced to be guided by appearances, he assumes that the one exists from the viewpoint of reason, but that a plurality exists from the viewpoint of the senses, and therefore, in a volte-face, posits two causes and two first principles, hot and cold, by which he means, for example, fire and earth. Of these he ranks the hot with what-is and the other with what-is-not. (Aristotle, Metaphysics 986b27–987a2 Ross) (trans. Waterfield, p. 62)
T6 (dk 28b8; c t6) [Socrates speaking] But I was in danger of forgetting the other side to the controversy, Theodorus, the assertion that ‘Unique and unchanging is that for which, as a whole, there is the name “to be” ‘, and all the other propositions which people like Melissus and Parmenides maintain and which contradict the former theory [of perpetual flux and change]—that all is one, and that this oneness is fixed within itself, having no space in which to change or move. (Plato, Theaetetus 180d7–e4 Duke et al.) (trans. Waterfield, p. 62)
NOW, for purposes of our Week Five Discussion, study very closely the following fragment from Aristotle’s “Physics” (his work “On Nature”), concerning Zeno’s famous paradoxes. In this famous passage, Aristotle subjects his predecessor Zeno’s apparently absurd conclusions regarding the nature of physical motion and change to careful scrutiny. Aristotle concludes that Zeno’s results should be attributed to inevitable limitations inherent in the instrumentality of geometrical measurement itself, and to the fallacious reasoning of the skeptical philosophers. Aristotle’s discussion of these “paradoxes” in the passage from the “Physics” which follows, is the subject of the 9-page paper by Peter Lynds that is available under the Course Documents tab entitled “Zeno’s Paradoxes—A Timely Solution”). Read the paper by Peter Lynds of course, but you should not neglect to consult Waterfield’s own commentary in our textbook (on pages 69—72) concerning these fragments ‘T2’ and ‘T3’, reproduced here:
T2 (dk 29a25; krs 320; l 19) That is why Zeno’s argument makes a false assumption, that it is impossible to traverse what is infinite or make contact with infinitely many things one by one in a finite time. For there are two ways in which distance and time (and, in general, any continuum) are described as infinite: they can be infinitely divisible or infinite in extent. So although it is impossible to make contact in a finite time with things that are infinite in quantity, it is possible to do so with things that are infinitely divisible, since the time itself is also infinite in this way. And so the upshot is that it takes an infinite rather than a finite time to traverse an infinite distance, and it takes infinitely many rather than finitely many ‘nows’ to make contact with infinitely many things. (Aristotle, Physics 233a21–31 Ross) (trans. Waterfield, p. 75—76)
T3 (dk 29a25–8; krs 317, 318, 322, 323, 325; l 19, 26, 28, 29, 35) Zeno’s reasoning is invalid. He claims that if it is always true that a thing is at rest when it is opposite to something equal to itself, and if a moving object is always in the now, then a moving arrow is motionless. But this is false, because time is not composed of indivisible ‘nows’, and neither is any other magnitude.
Zeno came up with four arguments about motion, which have proved troublesome for people to solve. The first is the one about a moving object not moving because of its having to reach the half-way point before it reaches the end. We have discussed this argument earlier [T2].
The second is the so-called Achilles. This claims that the slowest runner will never be caught by the fastest runner, because the one behind has first to reach the point from which the one in front started, and so the slower one is bound always to be in front. This is in fact the same argument as the Dichotomy, with the difference that the magnitude remaining is not divided in half. Now, we have seen that the argument entails that the slower runner is not caught, but this depends on the same point as the Dichotomy; in both cases the conclusion that it is impossible to reach a limit is a result of dividing the magnitude in a certain way. (However, the present argument includes the extra feature that not even that which is, in the story, the fastest thing in the world can succeed in its pursuit of the slowest thing in the world.) The solution, then, must be the same in both cases. It is the claim that the one in front cannot be caught that is false. It is not caught as long as it is in front, but it still is caught if Zeno grants that a moving object can traverse a finite distance.
So much for two of his arguments. The third is the one I mentioned a short while ago, which claims that a moving arrow is still. Here the conclusion depends on assuming that time is composed of ‘nows’; if this assumption is not granted, the argument fails.
His fourth argument is the one about equal bodies in a stadium moving from opposite directions past one another; one set starts from the end of the stadium, another (moving at the same speed) from the middle. The result, according to Zeno, is that half a given time is equal to double that time. The mistake in his reasoning lies in supposing that it takes the same time for one moving body to move past a body in motion as it does for another to move past a body at rest, where both are the same size as each other and are moving at the same speed. This is false. For example, let AA … be the stationary bodies, all the same size as one another; let BB . . . be the bodies, equal in number and in size to AA …, which move from the middle of the stadium; and let CC . . . be the bodies, equal in number and in size to the others, which start from the end of the stadium and move at the same speed as BB . . . Now, it follows that the first B and the first C, as the two rows move past each other, will reach the end of each other’s rows at the same time. And from this it follows that although the first C has passed all the Bs, the first B has passed half the number of As; and so (he claims) the time taken by the first B is half the time taken by the first C, because in each case we have equal bodies passing equal bodies. And it also follows that the first B has passed all the Cs, because the first C and the first B will be at opposite ends of the As at the same time, since (according to Zeno) the first C spends the same amount of time alongside each B as it does alongside each A, because both the Cs and the Bs spend the same amount of time passing the As. Anyway, that is Zeno’s argument, but his conclusion depends on the fallacy I mentioned. (Aristotle, Physics 239b5–240a18 Ross) (trans. Waterfield, p. 76—77)
NOW HERE AGAIN IS OUR Week Five Discussion Forum ISSUE. (Please make your posts within ten days, that is, by Saturday night, February 28). First examine all of the above sources. Then BASED on your careful consideration of the reading assignments for this week—especially the fragments reproduced just above from Aristotle’s work, the “Physics” (together with Waterfield’s own commentary in our textbook on these fragments, on pages 69—72) AND your study of the 9-page paper by Peter Lynds that is available under the Course Documents tab entitled “Zeno’s Paradoxes–A Timely Solution,” DISCUSS THE FOLLOWING:
What do you regard as the essential differences—theoretical and/or practical differences—between EACH philosopher’s (Zeno’s, Aristotle’s, and Lynds’) view concerning the effectiveness of using geometrical measurements (both finite and infinitesimal measurements) of spatial and temporal distances, for purposes of attaining a scientific understanding of the knowable world of facts. Which view do you regard as LEAST problematical, or wrong? You must explain and critique, in your posts, the different attitudes towards the possibility of spatiotemporal measurability, defended respectively, BY EACH OF (1) Zeno of Elea (a follower of Parmenides), (2) Aristotle (who concluded that Zeno’s conclusions regarding the nature of physical motion and change are attributable to inevitable limitations inherent in the instrumentality of geometrical measurement itself, and to the fallacious reasoning of the skeptical philosophers), AND (3), Peter Lynds, author of the article entitled “Zeno’s Paradoxes—A Timely Solution” (available under the Course Documents tab), who thinks not only that instantaneous magnitudes—the “seeming now”—cannot exist in physical reality, but that an object in relative motion is not susceptible of a supposed divisibility of its motions.
Click the green header labeled “Week Five Discussion (Feb 17—23)” at the top of this assignment to enter this week’s Discussion Forum thread.

PHILOSOPHY
Homework: Look at the following websites and investigate some of the social justice issues you might want to explore for your research paper. Choose an issue that will help you acquire an understanding of the problems facing the Mideast, Asia and Africa nations and cultures. Your paper should include three sources from the internet and three sources from print media. Some sources may be (http://www.karamah.org; www.kiva.org ; http://www.womeninislam.org /about.html; http://violenceisnotourculture.org /; www.ecpat.net ; www.ednahospital.org ; www.womenforwomen.org ; www.womensrefugeecommission.org ; www.womensworldbanking.org .

Recommended also: read portions of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (New York: Alfred A. Knopp, 2010). Action on social justice issues generates understanding of the problems and, “once people see that there are solutions, they will be more willing to help in myriad other ways” (Kristof and WuDunn, p. 248). You can find portions of this book on the internet.

Your report, worth 10% of your final grade, is due on November 20, but may be turned in earlier. If the paper is late, the paper will lose 40 % of its grade for this assignment. Please turn in your paper on time, November 20. Please refer to our syllabus for specifics on this paper.

PHILOSOPHY
Homework: Look at the following websites and investigate some of the social justice issues you might want to explore for your research paper. Choose an issue that will help you acquire an understanding of the problems facing the Mideast, Asia and Africa nations and cultures. Your paper should include three sources from the internet and three sources from print media. Some sources may be (http://www.karamah.org; www.kiva.org ; http://www.womeninislam.org /about.html; http://violenceisnotourculture.org /; www.ecpat.net ; www.ednahospital.org ; www.womenforwomen.org ; www.womensrefugeecommission.org ; www.womensworldbanking.org .

Recommended also: read portions of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (New York: Alfred A. Knopp, 2010). Action on social justice issues generates understanding of the problems and, “once people see that there are solutions, they will be more willing to help in myriad other ways” (Kristof and WuDunn, p. 248). You can find portions of this book on the internet.

Your report, worth 10% of your final grade, is due on November 20, but may be turned in earlier. If the paper is late, the paper will lose 40 % of its grade for this assignment. Please turn in your paper on time, November 20. Please refer to our syllabus for specifics on this paper.