Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes
Background
The history of modern philosophy can be schematized in terms of the intersection of two lines of thought, on the hand in the British empiricism tradition and on the other hand the continental and rationalist tradition. These two traditions representing the extensions of all the areas of inquiry of the inductive method of science and the deductive mathematical type of method. We will start in the British stream with Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes in 17th century England.
Francis Bacon
Overall Purpose & Method
It is particularly interesting if we are trying to trace the shift of world views from Medieval to modern times. In as much as Bacon, while every bit is genuinely Christian as the Medievals comes at the whole under taking in remarkably different way. There are echoes of reformed theological persuasion in Bacon’s thinking and overall purpose. He makes repeated reference to the cultural mandate in the opening chapters of Genesis, the mandate that’s given to Adams and Eve to replenish subdue, exercise and so forth, and he complains that the human race far from fulfilling these mandate is detracted from it, and it is our responsibility to recover that mandate.
He think of the task of philosophy and science in terms of creation, sin and redemption. Creation gives a mandate, sin distracted us from the mandate, redemption calls us back. The particular sin and redemption is tied to philosophy, he regards the scholastics as some of the main perpetrators of the crimes that distracting the human race from the cultural mandate, for the scholastic disputes help us not at all in reaching human life in transforming society through knowledge. What he wants is a new method that will help us get back to transform the nature and shape human society.
The Medievals conceived of philosophy as ancilla theologia, philosophy is the servant of theology. What Bacon does, is to see philosophy as servant of society, working for the good of the human condition. The ideal he has is the kind of Utopian ideal. It is the transformed society for which he sees everyone is working as the Kingdom Heaven and Kingdom of God.
It is evident that knowledge is power, but he also want that power controlled by appropriate ethic. The ethic has to come from true religion and right reason. It will not be a myth to distinguish three kinds of grades of ambition in mankind. The first is of those who desire to extend their own power in their native country, the second is of those who labor to extend the power of their country and its dominion among man, this certainly has more dignity though no less covetousness, but if a man was established and extend the power and dominion of human race itself over the universe, his ambition is more noble than the other two.
What sort of knowledge can give power over nature’s processes? A knowledge of nature’s processes. On the hand he has rejected any rejected any metaphysic of forms, if there are final causes, we have to leave that to theologians. He is turning to empirical science that aims to discover forms, but it is not the same as the metaphysical forms, it is just the uniform way the natural processes are perceived. The form has to do with processes are entirely due to the operations of physical forces in the material world. It is the empirical science of forms is what gives him concern to develop appropriate inductive logic rather than deductive.
In criticizing deductive reasoning, he has little appreciation what syllogism can establish, the problem is not the process of inference in syllogism, but finding premises, which is precisely what Aristotle emphasis. It’s the process of intuitive abstraction to get the premises is what Bacon do not like. Bacon want another kind of inductive method of empirical science dealing with forces in the material world. He doesn’t see the road to truth as the ladder to the contemplation of God as Medievals did.
There are few key themes of Bacon that we need to get hold of. One is his conception of induction, seeking to know the forms. The second is knowledge is power in relation to power over nature, creation etc, scientific knowledge has instrumental value only, rather than being part of the search for truth and contemplation of God. The third is this kind of scientific knowledge can be entirely objective, and it’s influence of Scottish realist tradition.
Idols
- Idols of Tribe The idols of the tribe have to do with the unconscious influence of the human mind, especially in regards to what we take as first principles that which are inadequately secured. There are some knowledge that is rooted in the uniformity of the human nature. These idols of the tribe rejects, there is no influenced first principles from what we know as human nature.
- Idols of Cave The idols of cave have to do with individual temperament, the personal atmosphere that you dreamed in your own cave, which influences the direction of your thinking. This is also the sort of things that William James and Frederich Nietzsche are going to say around 1900, James talks about the difference that it make philosophically whether you are tender minded or touch minded, because your psychological disposition affect the kinds of philosophy you like. The tender minded people tend to have a more optimistic view of nature, the tough minded person with a more deterministic pessimistic view. Or Nietzsche who talks about the way of will to power affect the philosophical views, so Nietzsche bring a racist psychology, a psychology of the people, will try to characterize the philosophical outlook in terms of the temperament of the people.
- Idols of the Market Place The idols of the Market Place is saying that the idiom of the language has a way of instilling philosophical beliefs that maybe totally erroneous. If a noun stands for a thing, an entity, a substance, then we are going to give substantive reality to everything that is denoted by a noun.
- Idols of the Theater That is where our games of make believe take on reality of life of their own, that’s where our imaginative thinking has taken to be real, the theater has to do with philosophy, science. He distinguishes three kinds of philosophy, the sophistical, the empirical and the superstitious. The example of sophistical philosophy is Aristotle. Empirical philosophy refers to the science of the day, where is too little care for observation. Superstitious philosophy is philosophy mixed with religion, there he have people like Pythagoras and Plato.
You can see how thorough his repudiation of the past. We mentioned the resurgence of skepticism in the renaissance. The rediscovery of Sextus Empiricus, the break down of medieval synthesis, the epistemological vacuum left from the protestant reformation. Here is Bacon reenacting skepticism with the past philosophy, wanting to make a fresh start. Just as reformers went back to scripture alone, Bacon wants to go back to the empirical facts alone.
But notice he doesn’t see any active relationship between philosophy and religion. There was a synthesis of the philosophical with the religious quest, of the philosophy with theology, not so Bacon. The only tangency of religion to science is why to do science, because it has many instrumental value, to restore part of human condition. It’s not the content of the science but the purpose of science that is related to religion. There is further incentive in Bacon to separate religion from science and religion from philosophy. Hence subjective science, presupposition science and the only connection of religion to science is the purpose.
Induction
What Bacon does here is to offer what he call certain tables, ways of tabulating your observations. He talks of table of presence, absence and degrees. They correlate with the table from John Stuart Mill. If you find fact C precedes Z something like that appears again and again, you begin to suspect by virtue of agreement that there is some causal relationship between C and X. On the contrary, from the difference you can suspect there is causal connection. If in increasing amount of C will increase amount of X, then there is causal connection according to degrees. It’s the beginning of modern empirical science.
Thomas Hobbes
Motives & Methodology
Thomas regarded Bacon’s inductive method as simplistic, essentially what Bacon is doing is defining certain regularities that we can make use of in applications of scientific knowledge, but that’s not providing overall theoretical understanding that can be a basis for a view of human person, human behavior and political order. He want to make the transition of empirical science to the development of ethic and political philosophy. He finds his clue in scientific method traced to Galileo, the method of reconstruction. What he calls for is empirical premises, then deductive influences to further conclusions. The overall scheme that results has the logical form of the deductive system that we found in mathematics or geometry. It is the deductive method of Descartes that impresses him, so he builds it into the re-constructive method. One further methodological assumption is an assumption of methodological naturalism, that everything can be explained in natural causal processes.
While he says it’s natural to believe in God because we have ask the cause of all causes, reason doesn’t say anything about the nature of God. He seems to indicate that he regards God as a material being, in which case Thomas Hobbes is a theistic materialist. Hobbes believes the causal inquiry leads to “semen religionis”, the seed of religion, in which religion flesh out the concept of God.
Epistemology
Sensation
Particular objects have particular qualities which causes changes in our sense organs, and the stimulus produces reflexive responses from heart in thought or action. Sensations or “Phantasms” are mental states with sense qualities, this involve both primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are what objects have, secondary qualities are the qualities that are dependent on five kinds of sense capacities, color, sound, texture, taste and smell. We have the objectivity of primary qualities and subjectivity of secondary qualities.
Imagination
Imagination is simply mental images, operating when we remember something or in sleep when we dream something.
Reason
At conscious level, reasoning is simply some idea followed by another idea. The mental conscious activity is caused by brain activity, the brain combines what ought to be combined and separate what ought to be separated. Reasoning is entirely a process determined by brain causes. We have no innate idea of consciousness because it is a byproduct of brain processes.
Language
Words are just particular signs that stands for particular groups of things. The universality of one name has been the cause of the thinking that things are themselves universal. But universal is just a particular name applied to whole group indiscriminately. So there is no such thing as abstract names, he is rejecting conceptualism, we don’t have abstract ideas. What we have is simply general ideas without referring to any real universal. He is explicitly nominalist.
Persons + Society
Consciousness
Whatever you say about the materialistic account of human nature, human beings are conscious. What is the cause of consciousness? Hobbes answers that conscious is simply a byproduct of epi-phenomenon, it is appearance produced by bodily existence. Consciousness is a byproduct of brain processes. What the conscious state produces are the desires and aversions. Brain is the seed of consciousness and Heart is the seed of emotions, it’s from these desires that we act. So human action is not governed by reason, it is governed by the emotions and desires.
Freedom & Determinism
That raises the question of freedom and determinism. He speaks of freedom in two senses, one when I am free from external constraint, free to do what I desire. Second sense of freedom is when you make a decision, in alternation of desires, choice is simply one desire outweigh the other. The sense of being free is simply a byproduct of your ambiguity of desires. But you are not free in the sense of having uncaused actions, there is inner determinism which is sometimes called soft determinism.
Psychological Egoist
On that basis he comes out as a psychological egoist. Psychological egoist is one who pursues self interest, and that’s empirical generalization. It is the desire for self preservation that drives us. What we desire we think it is good and what we dislike we think it is bad. We have a lot of different goods and bads, we have ethical relativism between us. But we are brought perpetually by the restless desire for the power we need to survive, so life becomes a power struggle, and scientific knowledge is power, if you understand causal processes then you can survive. He makes the distinction between natural state, the one of conflict, power struggle, and natural law, the dictates of the right reason, in other words, consequentialist thinking. Therefore, knowledge, the right reason about consequences of human action, is power.
Ethics + Political Theory
Then what are the natural laws, first, seek peace, second, keep covenant with others. What we need in a body politic is some covenant, that the right reason will keep. We vest the authority by covenant in an absolute ruler who have complete authority except if he tries to destroy us, but since the contract is for self preservation, absolute power goes to the ruler. Instead of divine right of kings, you have a social contract basis for political authority. It is the authoritative interpretation of the ruler that is going to settle religious disputes.