Epistemology

A priori
These are beliefs such as Descartes ‘clear and distinct ideas’ that can be recognised prior to independently of experience.
Mathematical or geometrical truths can be known a priori – a triangle has three sides regardless of whether I can see it or not 2+3 will (arguably) always =5. The same could apply to colours (eg).
Many a priori beliefs are analytic – true by definition. Propositions such as ‘all bachelors are unmarried’ can be known without there being any bachelors in the world. However, it can be argued that these propositions tell us nothing about the world.

A posteriori
These are truths known through experience – Empirical knowledge. I can only know through experience, for example, that ‘apples are tasty’.
Natural science is very important to Empirical knowledge. Many a posteriori claims depend on knowledge of ‘laws of nature’. However, unlike a priori statements, a posteriori knowledge tells us things about the world. These arguments are synthetic as they involve the synthesis of concepts.

Philosophical scepticism

There are three features that distinguish philosophical scepticism from ordinary scepticism. Firstly, Philosophical scepticism goes further and doubts different things, for example, you could doubt whether a train will arrive on time, a philosopher may doubt the very existence of the train and the nature of time. In this way it is often hyperbolic.
Secondly, a philosopher may well doubt something that they truly believe, because they cannot be certain of it (eg).
Thirdly, philosophical scepticism tests our knowledge claims (eg).
The 5 main claims that stem from philosophical skepticism: 2 ways to defeat the skeptic: 1) Descartes global skepticism 2) transcendental arguments (6 egs) Global skepticism: 4 problems with global skepticism:
Infinite regress
For a belief to work it must be supported by good reason and the reason will be something else believe. The second belief must also be supported by some further reason. This leads to an ‘infinite regress of justification’.
In order to attempt to stop this infinite regress we can turn to Foudationalism and Coherentism (brief description).

Foundationalism

Coherentism

Through this idea that our body of knowledge could be structured like a building on secure foundations breaks down. The argument is that knowledge, justification and certainty admit of degrees, they are not something one either has or has not.

According to the Coherentist, the process of justification can have no ultimate ground and so the proper response to the infinite regress of justification argument is not to search for special incorrigible beliefs, but to allow that the process of justification can indeed go on indefinitely. A belief will be justified by another belief, which in turn may be justified by another. The process goes on and on, and no set of beliefs is the sole justification for the rest.

A belief is well justified not just because it doesn’t contradict any other beliefs that one holds, but also because it is supported or explained by them.

The greater the evidential support given to a belief – the more intimately enmeshed it is with my other beliefs within the system – the better justified it is.

Coherentism lead to the formation of a web of interlocking beliefs. As we acquire new beliefs the rest of the web has to be adjusted accordingly.

ADVANTAGES of Coherentism
Could give us a more pragmatic and workable theory of knowledge. The Cartesian approach to epistemology has left us with truths if reason which are insufficient to give us any knowledge of the world.Theories can be adjusted according to coherentism, not simply discarded. OBJECTIONS to Coherentism
Some would maintain that some ideas are indeed incorrigible, and that they cannot, therefore, be revised in the light of new evidence. Descartes argued that mathematics and the cogito were such beliefs. An Empiricist foundationalist might insist that knowledge of ones own sense data is so basic that it can be known immediately, irrespective of what other beliefs one holds.The Plurality Objection: There is nothing in the coherentist’s account of justification to suggest that there cant be two or more equally justified sets of beliefs. So longs as two sets of beliefs are equally coherent there appears to be no way of choosing between them.
This means that, whilst my beliefs could be justified in coherentist terms, they could not actually represent the world.Reply: Surely there is some connection to between the sensation we experience and empirical knowledge, otherwise there seems to be no constraint on what beliefs we have about the world. The coherentist answer is that it is the beliefs we acquire about what we perceive can enter into justifying relations with other beliefs.

RELIABLISM:

This is the view of justification that claims that a belief is justified if it is produced by a reliable method rather than by being based on good reason. A reliable method is one which is most likely to produce a true belief.

It can be argued that justification for certain ‘facts’ of general knowledge can be obtained by the testimony of reliable authorities on the specific topics. By being told by a reliable source one can then claim justification for a belief.
* There are plenty examples of knowledge claims for which we have very little clue about how to justify.
* Many beliefs about the world around s are produced by sensory inputs. This is normally a reliable method for the production of such beliefs, and so such beliefs are normally regarded as well justified.
* Not understanding the underlying mechanisms of perception does not seem to disqualify it as a method of producing knowledge.
* In cases such as when a farmer knows when the right time is to sow his seeds, he does seem to have knowledge however, cannot offer any justification.
* According to Reliabilism, what makes such beliefs justified is the mechanism which produced the beliefs, as it is a reliable one. The methods are ones which tend to produce true beliefs.
* Therefore, what justifies a belief is not that it fits with or is supported by other beliefs which one explicitly has, but rather that it is acquired by a reliable method.
* Even if the justification is external to the mind, the belief is yet none the less justified. A sea captain who uses a compass to navigate may have nor real understanding of how a compass works, but none the less is the method a reliable one. The captain may even believe that the compass is controlled by navigating spirits, and this belief would not alter the reliability of the method.
* This suggests that knowledge does not consist in someone having any explicit understanding of the justification for their belief – all that matters is that they have reached the belief in an appropriate way.
* The sea captain has acquired a belief in the correct route by a reliable method although he cannot provide any justification as to why it is a justified one.

Knowledge and Perception

REALISM and ANTI-REALISM

This hopes to address the question of how much if what we are perceiving is really out there. If someone is a realist about something, then they believe it exists independently of our minds. If someone is an anti-realist about something, they think it is mind-dependent.

- Numbers, e.g. the number 7: Plato famously thought that numbers existed independently of humans, not in the world that we see and touch, but in a world we can only perceive with our minds; a world of ideas or ‘forms’. Pythagoras thought that to understand the world truly one must first look for the mathematical structures that lie behind appearances. He also revealed how music and harmony have a mathematical basis.
- Your reflection in the mirror: is your reflection behind the mirror, in your mind, or nowhere?
- Colours, e.g. red: ‘Red’ can be said to be the way humans see a particular wavelength of light when it hits their retinas. Others see it as the name for the particular wavelength itself. It could also be the name for a physical object’s propensity to bounce back visible light at a particular frequency. So red could be in the head, in the air or on the tomato.
- Morality: Are good and evil objectively real? Those who think that morality exists independently of human minds, perhaps as a creation of God or as an objective moral law, are realists. Those who think that morality is in some sense a product of human minds are anti-realists.
- Beauty: Some people believe that the concept of beauty is so universal that there must be an external standard of beauty to which these things refer. Other people think that beauty is subjective and is thus solely in the eye of the beholder.
- Electrons: Some people believe that electrons and other such entities that cannot be directly observed are just a useful story we invent to make sense of experimental data. Other people believe that such objects do exist and exist as we conceive them.
- Scientific laws, e.g. e=mc²: These laws are undoubtedly formulated in the minds of humans, but they also have to be successful in explaining and predicting aspects of the world. Some anti-realists believe that the laws do not correspond to anything and cannot really be said to be true or false. They are therefore, merely instrumental in helping humans control and manipulate the world. A realist might believe that scientific laws, as they slowly evolve, edge closer to the truth – to matching the laws of the universe.
- Matter: Some argue that the only things we are ever aware of are ideas or sensations in our minds and that matter is just a convenient way of talking about these sensations. Most people believe that there is a material universe that we perceive all around us.

NAÏVE or direct REALISM

This could otherwise be described as the position of common sense.
- Claims the world is pretty much as it appears to our senses.
- All objects are composed of matter , they occupy space and have properties such as size shape, texture, smell, taste and colour. These properties are perceived directly by the senses. Objects continue to observe the laws of physics and retain their properties whether or not anyone is there to perceive them
- If a tree falls in a forest it makes a sound whether or not there is anyone there to hear it.

CRITICISM 1)
Objects are not exactly as we perceive them to be. When looking at something from a distance is appears to get smaller, although it is technically the same size. A naïve realist would have to construct a very sophisticated argument to explain how objects actually shrink as they move away.

CRITICISM 2)
Berkeley explains in one of his three dialogues between Hylas and Philonus how clouds appear several different colours dependant on how far away you are from them. Since the clouds may appear red from a distance and any number of colours from different perspectives, according to Berkeley I makes no sense to suppose that they have any real colour. Colour is an appearance to us, not something objectively real.
Berkeley also uses the examples of heat and cold – luke-warm water feels hot to a cold hand and cold to a hot hand. They are not, therefore, real properties of objects but effects such objects but effects such objects have on observers like us.

CRITICISM 3)
Justification for the object appears circular. The naïve realists claim that we perceive the world as it really is, presupposes that we know what things are really like.
- A naïve realist could argue that we know what we are perceiving is really there by appealing to the testimony of others. However the sceptic can just as easily argue that if the human perceptual system distorts reality then it will distort it in the same way for all humans.

CRITICISM 4)
Using the testimony of others does not really help as we know that some people perceive the world differently, for example because of colour-blindness. Also, we perceive the world differently at different times. What we are tired or drunk things appear distorted, onto top of this we are occasionally subject to illusions and hallucinations. The naïve realist cannot seem to distinguish perceiving something which is there, and perceiving something which in reality is not there.

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES

Primary qualities
Real, physical qualities of the object.Secondary qualities The ‘powers’ of the object that produce experiences in humans and animals.Other Associate properties, often a social concept, but in part result of the primary or secondary qualities.Position of object Number
Shape
Size
MotionColour Temperature
Smell
Sound
TasteBeauty Value
Addictive
Importance
Disposable Physical objects act and interact with each other purely on the basis of their primary qualities.

Other than Berkeley’s contribution, there are several other considerations that have led philosophers to draw the primary secondary quality distinction:
1. All primary qualities are measurable mathematically and geometrically. In meditation 6 Descartes decides that only those qualities that are represented geometrically are real and this leads him to exclude weight and hardness which have no shape, position or size. Locke draws the conclusion differently, including these two in the list of primary qualities.
2. natural sciences may lead us to suppose that the world cannot be precisely as it appears to be; physics tells us that light is a form of electro-magnetic radiation and that what we perceive as different colours are in reality simply light waves of different lengths. `light in itself, in other words is not coloured. In reality it possesses only the primary qualities of having a certain magnitude or wavelength, of travelling at a particular speed, and so on.
3. Some philosophers have argued that certain properties are essential to objects while others are not. They argue that the essential ones must be primary while the inessential ones must be secondary. It is possible to think of an object without any secondary qualities. Many things fall into this category – gases, bacteria and perhaps ghosts. However, when we attempt to think of the object without any secondary qualities, our imagination fails us.

REPRESENTATIVE REALISM

Representative realism distinguishes our sensations, or sense data from the thing perceived. The physical object causes a sensation in us which is a representation of the real thing. So we now have two worlds: the world as it is in itself, and a picture of the world as it appears to our minds. But how accurate is our representation or the world? According to representative realism some aspects of our sensations are accurate while others are not. So our representation of the so called primary qualities of size, shape, position and motion represent accurately what is out there. Physical objects really have these properties. But our experience of colour, sound, smell, taste and so on, do not. These properties do not exist in the objects themselves in the same way that primary qualities do. Rather such sensations are imperfect representations produced in us by the secondary qualities of objects. So our different experiences of smells represent different shapes of molecules, for example.

Secondary qualities map onto real differences in the objects, but at a scale too small for us to detect.

CRITICISM 1)
How are we to tell when our senses are not ‘deceiving’ us?
Critics of representative realism would claim that we never perceive primary qualities directly, only secondary qualities. Everything we perceive must come from our five senses, so we must infer the existence of an independent object with primary qualities purely from our awareness of secondary qualities. How can we be sure that our senses are accurate in their representation? Without independent access, we cannot place our sensations and the physical objects side by side in order to make a comparison.

CRITICISM 2)
Veil of perception.

IDEALISM

Idealism is an ontology (a theory of being) as well as a theory of perception.

The 3 major ontology’s:

Materialism: Everything in the world is made of matter, interacting with other bits of matter.
Dualism: Claims that everything can be reduced to two classes: matter and – which occupies physical space and spirit or mind. This view can be traced back before recorded history, but it was Descartes in the modern era who gave it its most forceful philosophical expression.
Idealism: the view that what is real depends upon the mind, that the matter world does not exist outside the mind. According to Idealist Berkeley, All that exists are minds and their ideas, sensations and thoughts. We know we have a mind, we know we perceive various colours and shapes, and so on. But to suppose that there is a material world that causes these sensations is a leap of faith that we do not need to make. To be an idealist is to take an anti-realist stance regarding matter.

BERKELEY

Berkeley termed sense data (and the other contents of the mind) IDEAS and claimed that physical objects don’t exist independently of the mind, but in reality are collections of such ideas.

He held the same empirical belief as Locke that all the contents of the mind must come from experience. So, for example, a blind person cannot have the concept of red, since they have not had any experience of red.

Matter also poses problems. According to the representative realist, matter is something we cannot experience since it lies beyond the veil of perception. It is the cause of our experience, but not something we can actually perceive directly. But Berkeley argues that if we accept that we cannot experience matter then it follows from the Empiricist principle that we cannot have a concept of it. The concept ‘material object’ is empty of content, for there is no possible experience, no possible sensation, from which we could acquire it. He claimed that the Representative Realists talk about ‘matter’ was literally meaningless and that the idea of an unperceivable thing was a contradiction in terms. Berkeley concluded that an objects being consists solely in its being perceived; coining the term ‘esse est percipi’ – to be is to be perceived.

IDEALISM does not seem to able to explain the difference perceptual error and veridical (truthful or accurate) perception. If everything we perceive is a kind of dream, as the idealist seems to be saying then there would appear to be no difference between seeing something as it really is, and being mistaken; or between hallucinating and actually seeing something. However, the perceptual error is also a problem for the representative realist – we cannot distinguish these things by appeal to the way the world really is in itself, since we have no access to such a world. This means that the distinction has to be made from within ones experience.

CRITICISM 1)
While the idealist seems to have explained the difference between illusions and veridical experiences, they still face a difficulty: what happens to the object when no one is perceiving them?
For example – you light a fire and it roars alight and you leave the room and so it ceases to be, then you return and it is blazing again.
Idealism seems to imply there are ‘gaps’ in the fires existence when it is not perceived. Physical things have no hidden sides, no interiors, no secret aspects. They disappear and reappear without explanation, and there are no unobserved processes going on in the interim.

CRITICISM 2)
Idealism appears not to be able to give any explanation of why there is such regularity and predictability in our experience, nor, where our ideas come from.

- Berkeley’s defence
Berkeley suggests there is an all-powerful god who is a permanent perceiver of all possible ideas. By perceiving everything when no humans or animals are perceiving them, Berkeley’s God ensures that physical objects retain the kind of continuous existence that realists and common sense would claim for them. This also explains both the origin and the regularity of our sense data.

CRITICISM of Berkeley
God helps Berkeley out of his difficulties, but we have no independent reason to suppose either that there is a God or, if there is, that he acts as Berkeley imagines.

PHENOMENALISM

Phenomenalism is a nineteenth- and twentieth – century attempt at updating Berkeley’s insights. Phenomenalists attempt to improve on idealism by offering a more plausible explanation of both the occurrences of sense data, and their regularity. According to this view, objects are collections not just of actual sense data, or phenomena, but also of possible ones.

Its claim is that physical objects exist unperceived so long as they retain the potential to be perceived. As J. S. Mill put it: ‘matter […] may be defined, a Permanent Possibility of Sensation’. The seeds of this idea are already there in Berkeley when he suggests that we can say that physical objects exist so long as it is possible to see them, even though they may not actually be perceived. Where the idealist says that to be is to be perceived, the phenomenalist says that to be is to be perceivable.

One variation on Phenomenalism that gained particular favour is linguistic Phenomenalism. This is a theory about what we really mean when we talk about physical objects. The linguistic phenomenalist claims that all talk of independently existing objects can be translated into talk about sense data without any loss of meaning. Such a claim is backed up by considering how we learn a language.

Talk about physical objects is just shorthand for talk about sense data. So the word ‘apple’ does not really refer to some independent material object, it really means something like ‘round, red and green, hard, sweet, slightly sharp, crunchy, etc.. collection of potential sense data’.

All objects are just collections of sense data. They have no independent existence.
If the translation of talk about physical objects into talk about sense data is to work, there must be no loss of meaning between the original and the translation. Just as a translation of a French expression into English should not retain any French words, so there must be no physical object expression left over in the translation from physical object language into ‘phenomenal’ or ‘sense data language’.

For example: the physical object expression: the melon rolls across the wooden table and knocks over a glass.
Becomes: A round yellow patch rotates ad moves left across the brown expanse reaching a transparent, hard container-shaped collection of sense data which turns suddenly downwards.

Note that all phenomenalists are not saying that we should all start talking in phenomenalese. Obviously this would be impractical since it would take too long and communication would break down.

Rather they are arguing that it is possible to remove all talk of physical objects form our speech with no loss of meaning. It may be long winded and unwieldy, btu ultimately it means exactly the same. If this is right, it shows that belief in the existence of independent physical objects is redundant.

The linguistic phenomenalist can also deal with the problem faced by idealism of explaining what we mean when we talk about objects that are not currently being perceived.

For example there is an unobserved tree falling in the forest really means something like: if you approached the large green and brown expanse and walked into it for a while, then a small brown and green patch would shift in relation to the other brown and green patches and a roaring noise and shaking would also be experienced.

Instead of explaining perception by reference to the independent existence of material objects as the realists do, we should appeal to continuing possibilities of experience; possibilities which will be triggered by the occurrence of suitable conditions.

My not seeing the tree, although it continues to exist hidden in the forest, by claiming that this simply means that if suitable conditions were to obtain then I would see the tree, but presently these conditions so not obtain.
‘if…then’ statements of this sort are called hypothetical since they make claims about states of affairs which are not actual, but which would be if certain conditions were satisfied.

Hypothetical statements are going to be central to any complete phenomenal translation since we can never perceive every possible aspect of an object at any time

One benefit of Phenomenalism is that its anti-realist position makes it resistant to skeptical attack since it closes the gap between our experience and the world. Or the realist there is always the lurking skeptical question ‘How can I be sure that there really is a table in this room’.

Phenomenalism can dismiss such worries. In saying ‘there is a table in the room’ the phenomenalist simply means: ‘if I were to look in the room then I would have table-like experiences’ an this is true whether dreaming or not.

CRITICISM of Phenomenalism

Despite its advantages, we may still harbor the same worries over this form of anti-realism as we did over idealism. Simply to say that an object is a ‘permanent possibility of sensation’ is not much of an explanation either of the occurrences of perceptual experience or of its regularity.
Another way of posing this worry is to ask what makes the phenomenalists’ hypothetical statements true. Where the realist can readily answer this by appealing to a continuous material object, the phenomenalist appears able only to throw up her hands.
-The standard phenomenalist reply is to appeal to regularities in past experience. If every time in the past that you have gone for a walk into the forest you have had the same pattern of tree like experiences, then this justifies you in making the general hypothetical claim that if you were to go once more to the forest you would once again have the same tree like experiences. A statement of regularity, in other words, is good evidence for the truth of a hypothetical.
-Such a response may still strike us as an inadequate account of the actual nature of our perceptual experience. The reason why the tree reappears every time I go on the same walk in the forest cannot be that it has appeared in the past under similar circumstances.

Past regularities, do not constitute an object’s existence unperceived. Instead, says the realist, the independent existence of the object explains regularities.
For the realist, the phenomenalist just gets things the wrong way around.
Why should matter retain the properties it does so as to be ready on occasion to provide us with predictable sense data?
The only possible justification for supposing that matter will retain its properties unperceived is because of past regularities, and so the realist is in the same boat as the phenomenalist when it comes to explaining why experience is as it is.

- Another line of criticism of Phenomenalism concerns the impossibility of translating all talk about objects into talk about sense data.
- E.g. There is a machine gun beneath the window in the room next door. Would translate to: if you left this room, turned right and walked down the corridor and into the next room then you would have window like experiences and then if you approach the window like experiences and looked down, then you would have machine gun experiences.
- Clearly the translation is not complete, and all such talk must be further reduced to talk about sense data. The hypothetical statement must be expanded to include descriptions of ‘walking down corridor like experiences’ and ‘room like experiences’
- The difficulty is that each hypothetical statement that we use is talking about what an observer would perceive under certain conditions. But these conditions have to be characterized in terms of physical objects and spatial relations.
- So any phenomenal translation will be not only infinitely complex and long but also impossible, even in principle, to complete since it must reintroduce physical object language at each turn. This seems to show that our language is dependent on the assumption of an independently existing world and cannot be translated into statements about actual and potential sense data.

MEDITATION ONE 

• Descartes employs the method of doubt and aims to eliminate error from his system of beliefs to establish certain and enduring knowledge.
• To do this he must destroy all his previous opinions by rejecting any that have the slightest grounds for doubt.
• He does not go through each belief individually as this would take too long, but destroys the ‘principles’ of his basic beliefs so that the rest will collapse of their own accord.
• Whatever beliefs survive must be indubitable, creating the foundations upon which to build human knowledge anew, free from error.
I have doubt that doubting everything is an efficient way to uncover ‘truths’. I do not believe that it is possible to live a life of scepticism, if Descartes does all he says and refutes all that cannot be proven with certainty, he has no starting point and therefore will find it hard to get anywhere, he states ‘I must avoid believing things that are not entirely certain and indubitable’

Words? – and cartesianism
Assessing our beliefs one by one could never be completed anyway

Descartes doubts the senses – because his senses have deceived him, he cannot entirely trust them. He completely undermines empiricism and the view that knowledge comes from sense experience. This is the first of his three main sceptical arguments in this meditation. He considers how he can possibly know that he is not dreaming, he argues that when he is dreaming he often is in a similar situation to that he describes himself to be in – sitting besides the fire in his dressing gown. He suggests that perhaps his senses deceive him – they are therefore not a reliable source of evidence. Perhaps his senses do not ‘deceive’ him – rather he misinterprets them due to an altered state of consciousness. It seems that it is not human senses that are to be mistrusted, but initiative.

Others views on this (from text book)

However, the subject of dreams must be taken from real life, this would imply the existence of, for example, matter, space and time. Surely the truths of maths and geometry remain constant whether asleep or awake, hence must exist. He argues that Physics, Astronomy and medicine can be doubted, as their theories are reliant upon other theories – which could lead to an infinite regress. He claims that ‘two and three added together always make five and a square never has more than four sides’. The definition of a square is ‘a geometrical object with four right angles and four equal sides’. If a shape had more than four sides it would not be a square, there is no question of this – man made up the definition and gave the concept of a square its bounds. The proposition that two and three makes five is also dependant on the meaning of the numbers – also, not everything is certain in arithmetic’s, which (like physics, astronomy, medicine etc.) relies upon everything ‘fitting’ and ‘working’ together, for example zero is a very troublesome number; some mathematicians claim that they can even prove 2=0.
- Descartes recalls that he had previously believed in the existence of an omnipotent being – God, who would be capable of deceiving him about anything. If such a being does exist, he would be able to deceive Descartes about the existence of the world and his judgements on maths and geometry. Descartes prior perception of God was that off an omni benevolent force, deception would be inconsistent with his goodness. Descartes suggests that this deceiver is instead likened to an ‘evil demon’. If Descartes can defeat this doubt in the existence of everything then he will have discovered indubitable knowledge.
Descartes readily accepts that there is a kind of god – whether good or bad, upon absolutely no evidence. He should not feel the need to ‘suppose’ that there is an evil demon deceiving him. Surely he is overlooking his original claims to ‘apply (himself) seriously and freely to the destruction of all (his) former opinions’ and all the ‘insecure principles’ that he can doubt. This is some evidence to support my theory that Descartes method of Scepticism depends upon theory – in this case it is that we are all being deceived by an ‘evil demon’. This indicates that he cannot keep his habitual opinions entirely from his mind.
Critics complain that the evil demon hypothesis is empty as if the demon is so cunning that its trickery is undetectable then all vain attempts to find ‘truths’ must grind to a halt.

MEDITATION TWO
- Descartes pushes his doubts further by suggesting that if the world may not exist, it is possible that he does not exist either.
However, purely because he can doubt his existence he must exist in some form ‘cogito ergo sum’. Thus, whenever he conceives the proposition ‘I think, therefore I am’ at that moment it is certain to be true.
The following criticisms have surfaced:
- ‘cogito ergo sum’ is a deceptively simple claim. ‘cogito’ could be an inference – the move that we make when reasoning from premise onto conclusion. However the conclusion is not fully supported by the premise because it concludes more than can legitimately be inferred by the information given. As suggestion of a more complete version of this argument is ‘I am thinking. To think I must exist. Therefore I exist’.
- By use of ‘I’ in ‘I think’ Descartes suggests the existence of himself at the outset. George Lichtenberg argued that to say ‘cogito’ is too much – ‘’It thinks’, we really ought to say, just as we say ‘it thunders’.’
- Is this argument simply informing us about the meaning of terms and the relationship between them and nothing about what does or does not exist. They tell us about our concepts and not about reality. However, the cogito is not really a truth about concepts, but a truth about the person conceiving the concepts.
- Possibility that it is a transcendental argument –it transcends human experience of phenomena but is within a realm of knowledge. Kant argued that certain things must be true in order for doubt to exist, the preconditions of doubt. Just as one cannot doubt that one doubts, one cannot doubt that one is thinking. It is the very act of thinking which makes it true.
- However, the evil demon may have created Descartes a second ago with a full set of false memories and so Descartes cannot rely on his memory over even the shortest period of time.
- Descartes could be seen to claim that he is aware of the self, which is the subject of all his experiences. Wittgenstein argues that there is no such thing as the subject of experiences. ‘The subject does not belong to the world, rather is a limit of the world. Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found?’
- Hume famously argues that he has no consciousness of himself – ‘when I enter most intimately into what I call myself I always stumble on some particular perception or other, heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure, I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the but the perception’.
- Similarly, Bertrand Russell argues ‘When I look at my table and see a certain brown colour, what is quite certain at once is not ‘I am seeing a brown colour, what is quite certain at once is not ‘I am seeing a brown colour’; but rather –a brown colour is being seen’.
- Some express concern that Descartes could become trapped by Solipsism – the belief that only ‘me and the contents of my mind’ exist.
The issue becomes discovering exactly what he is, and he considers the possible ‘modes’ of existence in relation to his consciousness. Descartes argues that he has an intellect that enables him to reason. He also has a will that allows him to make choices and decide what to think and believe. On top of this, he states that he has an imagination that has the ability to picture physical things. Finally he establishes that he must have sensations – the awareness of experiences through his sense organs.
- Descartes begins to focus on the way material things appear to his mind. He uses his perception of a piece of wax as an example. He observes that the wax has various characteristics, a series of perceptible qualities such as colour, smell, size and shape. However, when the wax changes state, for example under heat, these qualities seem to change – it becomes a different colour, acquires a different smell, expands… None of the original qualities by which he perceived the wax are present, yet it is the same piece of wax. Therefore, he reasons, that the senses cannot be what perceives the wax.
Descartes dismisses the possibility that his imagination perceives the wax, on the grounds that his idea of the wax includes the understanding that the changes it could undergo are infinite, and he is he is unable to imagine all the possible states of the wax.
This leaves only the possibility of his intellect as what perceives the wax. Descartes claims that his intellect recognises the essence of the wax by ‘intuition’ or a purely mental inspection. The mind judges it to be in essence something extended in space.
He draws an analogy of his perception of the wax with his perception of people in the street wearing hats and coats. As he cannot see the people, he argues that he cannot know that they are not just automatic machines – his mind makes a judgement that they are not. In the same way, his senses only perceive the outer appearance of the wax, while the mind judges that the essence of the wax exists beneath.
Descartes concludes stating that he now knows himself better – while he can doubt the existence of the wax, his own existence is certain as he must exist to have a perception of the wax.
- Critics point out that Descartes should not have ignored the properties of wax that it is ‘extended, flexible and malleable’ when he considers its characteristics.
…finish notes on wax

MEDITATION 3
All ideas have a cause. The cause must either be inside me, or something else. Infinity and perfection are not inside me, so the idea of an infinite and perfect god must have come from outside me, so god must exist.
- Descartes ponders what it was about the cogito that allowed him to know it with absolute certainty.
- Light of reason.
- The Trademark Argument:
1. I know that ideas exist in my mind, but I don’t know whether what they represent really exists outside of my mind.
2. I am lead to think that my idea’s of material things represent real physical things, and this judgement is made by a ‘blind and rash impulse; not by the light of reason’.
3. So can I prove that there is anything outside of my mind?
4. Yes. My ideas have degrees of ‘objective reality’, that is to say, what they represent can be thought of as being more or less ‘perfect’. For example, my idea of a mode is less perfect than my idea of a substance, which in turn is less perfect than my idea of a substance, which in turn is less perfect than my idea of God.
5. ‘(T)here must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in its effect.’ In other words, any effect cannot be greater than what caused it: it cannot be more ‘perfect’ or contain more ‘reality’ than its effect – Descartes ‘causal principle’.
6. It follows that since our ideas come from somewhere and so must be caused by something, their causes must contain at least as much reality or perfection as the ideas themselves.
7. So if I cannot be the cause of one of my ideas, then I shall know that there must be something other than me in the world.
8. Now I could well be the cause of my idea of physical substances (e.g. a goat, a rock or a tree) since I am myself a substance (i.e. a thinking substance). I may not be aware that I am the origin of such ideas, but then it is quite possible that perceptions come from some unknown part of me. So I cannot prove that physical things really exist outside my mind.
9. But what of God? My idea of God is that of an ‘infinite substance’ with ‘great attributes’. Since I am only a finite substance(which I must be because I make mistakes), I am not sufficiently perfect to create this idea myself. So I cannot be the cause of my idea of God.
10. Since the cause of my idea of God must be at least as perfect as the idea, the only thing that can be the cause of God is God himself. And so it follows that God exists.
Criticisms
We have an idea that there could be such a thing as infinity and perfection from our own experiences, and we can attribute this to god, although it may be arguable what the words indicate. Some people might argue that a rose is perfect and Descartes argues that the wax is infinite – these are simply words implying greatness beyond imagination. Seeing as we are so shaky in our multiple conceptions of god, it seems man does not fully understand the characteristics he ascribes. Just as man (collectively) has a very shaky and inconsistent idea of god, his use of this words – which themselves suggest something beyond the confines of mans imagination, is similarly uncertain.
Finish notes…
MEDITATION 4
God is no demon; so long as he proceeds with great care in his investigations he should avoid making any more mistakes. As god would not deceive him, Descartes concludes that the reason he has gone wrong in the past has been because he has allowed himself to rush to conclusions based on insufficient evidence.

MEDITATION 5
Descartes resolves to find out whether any certain judgements can be made regarding material objects; to do this he begins by analysing his ideas of material objects.
He suggests that extension in three dimensions, motion, duration, number etc. Can be clearly and distinctly understood and seem to be innate, arguing that even if such qualities do not exist outside of his thought they have ‘true and immutable nature’ which is unchangeable and eternal.
These geometric properties cannot derive from sensation, they are therefore knowable a priori, and as they are clear and distinct, must be true; they are ‘something and not a mere nothing’. He does not however claim, at this stage, the existence of matter.
The Ontological Argument
This is Descartes second argument (Trademark Argument) for the existence of God. He aims to derive the existence of God from… just as he feels he is able to do with geometrical shapes.
However, it is part if the essence of a triangle that it must have three sides, but this doesn’t tell him anything about whether a triangle actually exists anywhere outside of my mind.
Premise 1. I have an idea of God, that is to say, an idea of a perfect being. Premise 2. A perfect being must have all perfections. Premise 3. Existence is a perfection Conclusion God exists
Gaunilo objects, arguing we could prove the exeistence of a perfect anything, using this form of reasoning – He give’s the example of a perfect island:
Premise 1. I have an idea of a perfect island Premise 2. A perfect island must have all perfections Premise 3. Existence is a perfection Conclusion The perfect island exists
The argument seems very subjective, as it is dependent on having a clear idea of god. It is plausible to argue that the idea of god is vague and without a ‘true and immutable nature’ however, if Descartes experiences otherwise, it is difficult to object.
-However, if not everyone feels that they have a clear idea of god how could Descartes doubt it if it is so clear? I see nothing to persuade me that he does have a clear idea of god.
-Is god a priori – he was told about god, by some other authority.
Kant argues that it is wrong to think of existence as a property or predicate of an individual. By treating existence this way, Descartes is able to argue that existence must be one of the properties or perfections a perfect being would have to have.
Existence cannot be a property that some tings don’t have, because if they don’t exist then they don’t have any properties at all. If existence cannot be a property that things can lack, then it cannot be a property that they have either.
Caterus argues that even if we grant that ‘God exists’ is analytic (true by definition) all that follows is that the concept of existence is contained within the concept of God. It is one thoing to talk about the definition of terms such as ‘God’ and another to talk about what exists in the world, but we cant legitimately move in an argument about one to the other.
The idea that is more ‘perfect’ to exist, has also been disputed – it certainly does not seem to be knowable clearly and distinctly.
Descartes does not consider that idea that there may be other potential gods outside of the one he previously chose to believe in. He assumes that the only god possible is the one he already has an idea of – so he never really lets go of this.

The Cartesian Circle
The existence of a non-deceiving creator can only be established with certainty of we can trust our clear and distinct perception of the Trademark/ontological argument in the first place. So, I need to trust my clear and distinct ideas in order to prove the existence of God; but I also need the existence of God to trust such ideas. If Descartes has committed a fallacy here, his whole enterprise must collapse and he will never be able to escape the solipsistic confines of the cogito.
- Descartes argues back to this that there are some propositions of which he can have self-evident knowledge while he is attending them and which do not need the divine guarantee.
Descartes establishes that the sense experience is caused by a world of physical objects impacting on the sense organs of his body. He goes on to discuss the nature of material reality.
He argue that imagination is inessential; if he did not have an imagination he would still be able to think and to reason and still be aware of his own existence as a conscious thing. Descartes concludes from this that the imagination must depend on some other object other than the self. He argues that perhaps his mind is able to contemplate a body to which it is joined – perhaps this is how physical objects are imagined.
Thus the imagination would consist in the mind turning towards the body and apprehending resemblances of things perceived by the senses; while the intellect would simply consist of the mind turning towards itself. While the imagination deals with images of material things, the intellect is purely intellectual, dealing with a priori truths which require no empirical output.
NB// but we a require memory to think about things – this is not stored in the ‘intellect’ this has much more to do with imagination.
WHERE do our sensations come from?
Sensations come from outside of me
Qualities such as colours and smells, rather than geometrical properties, appear to originate in sensation. He describes two features of sensation which suggests that they do not emanate from his essential nature as a thinking thing:
1. They are not subject to his will – he is unable to control their appearance.
2. Sensations are (in a sense) extended. They appear to represent things that have size and shape, but his mind is unextended. The mind is non-spatial and whatever is non-spatial cannot create something, which is spatial. So, sensations must come from outside of him.
CRITICISM: The claim that dreams are not subject to will
- Berkeley suggests that God could be the origin of our sensation. However, Descartes rejects this idea on the grounds that it would be a grave deception on God’s part to make us think that there is a material world when there isn’t.

MEDITATION 6
The relation of mind and body

MIND:
Unextended – the essence of mind is pure conciousness of thought. The intellect which performs the cogito.

THEMES

YOUTH and AGE
CHP III
Messalonghi
Don Juan XI
Fare Thee Well!

Idealized youth
Youth used to denote past ‘alas they had been friends in youth’.
Innocence and ignorance…

Byron’s own youth
DJ – I wish they know the life of a young noble… they are young, but know not youth!’
…
Excuses
Blaming parents – ‘untaught in youth, my heart to tame’ (CHP III).
Blames his problems on not having had a good upbringing – puts the responsibility of his actions onto someone else.

Manipulative (to strike a chord emotionally)
One of his ways to manipulate (Anabella) is through describing how she is neglecting her child.

GREATNESS
CHP III
Don Juan (?)

The fate of the Byronic hero – some A05 of his own life – linking It to Napoleon and then of course transgression

Define the ‘Byronic hero’
- An idealized but flawed character
- Epitomised by characteristics such as conflicting emotion, being an outcast, demonstrating a struggle with sexual identity, and a distaste for social institutions.
- Often a suffering of unrequited love.
One critic – ‘Mans greatest tragedy is that he can conceive of a perfection that he cannot attain’. Byron uses the literary artifice of Childe Harold to get around this.

NATURE
CHP III
She walks in beauty

She walks in beauty – nature enhances the woman – she is seen as an aspect of nature, an image…
Good example of transience. Compare to the storms of CHP – she walks in beauty has an almost photographic quality capturing the moment when this girl is part of a scene of nature – the soft light makes her beautiful… (from this Byron idealizes her character ‘thoughts serenely sweet express how pure, how dear their dwelling place’.

Nature a powerful force – in CHP we see an ambivilence/ uncertainty towards nature – prematurely jaded view (which vacillates).

A05 – Byron vs. The Romantics, their differing views
Wordsworthian moments (stanzas __ - __ CHP) attempt to become one with nature

Earth has absolute power over man – earth’s clay vs. human clay in CHP III

Personification of nature – makes it seem more of a threat

Napoleon – nature is unpredictable/ unreliable

Storms etc used as a parallel for life’s emotional ups and downs and events such as wars (esp. in relation to Napoleon) – transience of life... (can be related to Byrons ‘stormy relationships)
-Pathetic fallacy

THE INDIVIDUAL
CHP III

Byron’s literary artifices/ guises? – Beppo/ Don Juan/ Childe Harold
These characters seem to mirror Byron’s mood and situation.
Used to distance himself for the sake of being objective and/or preserving his reputation.

MAN
To Inez

RELATIONSHIPS
The love poems – fare thee well/
JCH
Newfoundland Dog

Fare thee – effects of society on relationships

FRIENDSHIP
JCH
Newfoundland dog

SOCIETY/ THE WORLD
Outcast poem – like exiled childe harolde/ don juan

Fare thee well –
His Cristobel excerpt ‘alas they were friends in youth’… (‘rent asunder’ by society). He suggests that society gossip caused the rift in his and Lady Anabella’s relationship.

On being an outcast…

Audience of the world
Doom/ disappointment in the world
Political view – the world is enslaved
Impermanence of world – transience

ESCAPISM – linked to ‘the world’ etc
Byrons foreign adventure can be seen as a way of attempting to escape the realities of Britain – his ‘world’ and even his own personality.
Byrons own travels – (A05)

He travels
- He travels in his writing also – this suggests an eternal hope that he will find what he seeks and escape what haunts him.
- When he goes to Italy he lightens up – his adopts Ottava Rima form in Beppo and DJ – more humorous and casual than earlier CHP written in Spenserian ___ (Spenser – in the tradition of British poets) – less pretentious.
- We also see an example of this in JCH in his reminiscing of their misbehaviours abroad and cryptic allusions to homosexuality ‘the old Horatian way’ – describing a homosexual friend as a ‘man of method’ and aligning him with Jesus ‘wash his reverend feet’. Through use of archaism and references to the Greeks and Romans he seem to express a longing to seek the more liberal society’s of earlier times – perhaps his travels to Italy are a manifestation of this.
- Byron seems to want to find hope – Childe Harold can be seen as the prototype of Modern Man – wandering

He digresses
His digression (moving of topic onto vaguely relation points and then onto himself – like Mr Keyte) could also be seen as a form of Escapism – particularly noticeable in CHP III.

BUT… ‘What exile from himself can flee?’
However, he admits ‘what exile from himself can flee?’ in To Inez – he abhor his own character at his inability to find joy in even this woman, because of what her refers to as his ‘demon’ - ‘Thought’; this is ‘the blight of life’ according to Byron.

Byron seems to want to find hope. Childe Harold can be seen as the prototype of modern man wandering through the world trying to find meaning (or as a great outsider?). – post revolution ‘tis to create’.

WRITING
JCH
Don Juan – self-awareness of role of poet ‘heroic syllables’…
CHP
Mention also his love poems – his reasons for writing

Practicality
Writing is highly appropriate to his world – to his society and the educated, literary circle he had familiarised himself with at Harrow and Cambridge.
It was a respectable occupation for a nobleman. He made the money he needed, without seeming like he was in pursuit of it. He also rose to fame and was probably attracted to the fame it drew.
Byron claimed not to write because he loved it – but because it prevented him from going ‘mad’.

Purpose
Seems Byron has an agenda in several of his love poems or the envoi ‘Fare Thee Well!’.
He wants his readership to know his pains, and he wants his subject to realize their offence.
Fare Thee Well – uses literary devices, such as
Reference or allusion to other writers to make a point – Don Juan – ‘you are the ‘best of cut-throats’ do not start, the phrase is Shakespeare’s and not misapplied’

PLACE/ LEVELS
Childe Harold
Sonnet on Chillon
Beppo

MADNESS/ SELF-DESTRUCTION
On being a Byronic hero – fighting for Greece, ascending to greatness
Disased by his personality – describes the character of great men as a ‘contagion’ an ‘infection’ describes the pangs of conscience and moral __ as the cost of being a revered by man.
On being an outcast – looking up towards
Self-destruction – images of the sword rusting ingloriously and the bird beating its breast against its cage (CHP III)
Exile - CHP
Imprisonment - Chillon
(don juan – somewhere where?)

INPRISONMENT
Sonnet on Chillon
CHP III (Byron’s mind-body crisis) – ‘clay-cold bonds’

DEATH
CHP

Mind body distinction in relation to death
Use of death romantically
And ‘I scarce can die’ death of the soul…
Blake’s ‘mind forged manacles’ vs. Byron’s ‘clay cold bonds’

LOVE
She Walks in Beauty
So we’ll go no more a Roving

PARTING
His envoi’s – Fare Thee Well… JCH

LOSS
In terms of love/ death…
Identity…

PHILOSOPHY
Don Juan

TRANSCIENCE
CHP – transience in nature (at the same time its constancy)
Transience of man, of greatness in particular

DON JUAN points:
Digression –
Byron moves from attacking Wellington (recent history) (stanzas 1 to 10) and greatness in general.
Stanzas 11 – 21 – philosophy and death
Self – awareness of the poet in the poem… (writing theme)
Theme of the world

Ottava Rima – form is chatty, causal. He was in Italy when he wrote Don Jaun.

GREEK

Christian - rejects natural space to convey the supernatural – glittering gold background
Constantine reappropriates the art of the time – his face replaces the trad face of christ

Mausoleum of Constanza – 4th c. build as a mausoleum for constantines daughter.
Mosaics on the ceiling – Christian iconography.

Greek temples
The most characteristic of Greek buildings was the temple. It was originally used as shelter to protect deities, not as shelter to house a congregation.
- Only the priest(ess) allowed to enter the temple.
- At the beginning temples were very simple in form, consisting of the naos, and the pronaos – porch.
- As the Greeks disliked the asymmetry of the front and back of the temple looking different – they added the Epinaos.
- Early temples were constructed out of wood and mud brick mix on stone foundations. Gradually use of local stones, mostly limestone and marble (plentiful) became the preferred material as it was long lasting.
- The Greeks tried to make all four sides look equally impressive by surrounding the temple with a colonnade or peristyle.
- The Greek temples were always part of a sanctuary. The entrance would usually determine the angle from which the temple would first be seen. This angle was usually at a corner of the temple, so that the viewer would see the 3-d volume of the whole temple, rather than the flat façade.
- Greek temples were constructed on a simple post and lintel system. Vertical posts and columns or walls, supported horizontal lintels or ceilings.
- In later stone temples wall blocks were laid in rows dry without brick or mortar. Sometimes the course limestone was coated with plaster, to give the appearance of a smooth surface.
- Marble blocks were finally smoothed and so carefully finished that the joints between blocks were hardly noticeable.
- Columns were erected with wooden pins used to centre one drum upon another. The shaft of the columns was covered with a layer of plaster.
- In the final stages the columns were fluted, vertical channels were carved into the shaft, supporting a horizontal entablature, composed of three parts: an architrave – a series of rectangular blocks placed above the columns, a frieze, and the top component the cornice. Both columns and entablatures were designed so that they belonged to either the Doric or Ionic order.

Greek Orders – with examples
DORIC order:
- Strong solid and simple.
- Columns were sturdy - height of 4 to 6 times their lower diameters, resting directly in the stylobate.
- Above the shaft is the capitol. Composed of the echinus (cushion like swelling) and the abacus (an undecorated square).
- Above capitols is the architrave. Plain and undivided. Above it the frieze – composed of alternating trygliphs and metopes:
- Trygliphs resemble beam-ends. The metopes were rectangles, which could be plain, painted, or sculpted in relief. One trygliphs above each column and one between each pair. So that the measured rhythm of the columns was exactly doubled that the rhythm of the frieze above.

Parthenon
- Largest Doric temple on the Greek mainland.
- The Parthenon, on the acropolis, in the time of Pericles marks the climax of the Doric style. It was dedicated to Athene Parthenos.
- The temple is made of Pentelic marble, except for the foundation, which is made of local limestone.
- It was built over .an earlier temple and some of the unfinished drums of this earlier building maybe seen built in the fortification wall on the north side of the acropolis.
- According to the building inscription work on the Parthenon was begun in c.446 BC. And finished in 438. Except for the sculpture, which took another six years to complete.
- The temple is peripteral octastyle in plan. The 17 columns on the flans and stands on a crepidoma of three steps. These steps were too steep to ascend with comfort. Therefore intermediate steps were provided at the centre of the east and west ends.
- In addition to the naos and the two porches there was a back chamber, which was entered from the epinaos and was perhaps used as a treasury. The naos had Doric colonnaded on three sides, forming an ambulatory. The columns were in two tiers separated by an architrave and gave support to the roof timbers.
- Near the west end stood the famous statue of Athene Parthenos. One of the most marvelled works of Pheidias, representing Athena fully armed with spear, helmet and shield and supporting a winged victory naos was of her right hand this was a gold and ivory statue about 42’ high incl. the peristyle.
- The gold plates, which for the drapery, armour and accessories over the wizened core were detachable so that they could be removed in case of danger. The face, hands and feet were made of ivory and the eyes of precious stones. The ceiling of the naos was of wood decoratively painted and ornamented with coffers.
- To the west of the naos, was the Parthenon (from which the temple took its name, this was entered from the epinaos from a large door way corresponding to the eastern one. And its roof was supported by four ionic columns.
- As the chamber was shallow and high a double tier of Doric columns would have appeared exceptionally clumsy, while a single range would have encumbered the floor space unduly so ionic columns were used instead and both orders are founding the one building – a practice increasingly prevalent from this time onwards.
- The joints of the marble roof-slabs: above the cornice were masked by carved antefixae, which formed an ornamental cresting along the sides of the building.
- The peristyle ceiling was enriched with coffers and marble beams.
- The eastern pediment represented the birth of Anthena and that of the west, the contest of Athena and Poseidon for the sil of Attica.
- The use of sculptured friezes, both inside and outside the temple, is another evidence of ionic influence.
- The Panathenaic frieze was carved along the top of the naos wall just below the peristyle ceiling and was taken across the east and west ends above the 6 columns of the pronaos and epinaos. It was 1 metre high, in very low relief of about 11/2 ‘’, and the sculpture is treated in such a way as to be seen effectively by the light reflected up from the white marble pavement below, the shadow being thrown upward.
- The frieze represents the Panathenaic procession, which went every fourth year to the Acropolis to present the ‘peplos’ to the goddess Athena, and it portrays the preparation of Athenian knights, and the great procession of cavalry, chariots

IONIC order:
- more delicate and ornate. Column shafts were slender, ranging in height from 8 to 10 times their lower diameters.
- The column shafts rested on elaborate bases consisting of at least 2 convex and one concave parts.
- The ionic capitols are also composed of an abacus and an echinus, this tapers out into 2 volutes.
- It has an ‘egg and dart’ decoration.
- The abacus is dark and slimmer. It is slightly curved and angled. The architrave is divided into 3 horizontal bands, perhaps reflecting the 3 steps in which the columns used to stand – the crepidoma.
- The frieze is left undivided, but could be left plain or decorated with relief carvings. The ionic cornice is richer than the Doric and could carry several bands of pattern., cut and relief. Often the plain frieze was surmounted with a row of dentils.

- The ionic style may have been invented c.550 BC in two, now destroyed, buildings, which were the first Greek temples on large scale, at Samos and Pehsus, in Asia minor, little else is known about the early Greek temples in Ionia.
- The best examples of the use of the ionic order are the Erechtheun and the exquisite little temple of Athena Nike, both on the Acropolis hill.
- The Temple of Athena Nike. This small marble temple was built by Callicrates in c. 427 BC. It measures 18’ by 27’ over the stylobate.
- It has a portico back and front. Is dedicated to wingless victory. Stands picturesquely on the Southwestern spur of the Acropolis.
- The temple was surrounded on three sides by a marble balustrade. Enriched with very fine sculpture. The columns stand on a crepidoma of 3 steps and are unusually short in proportion (less than 8 diameters)
- The architrave has fascia bands and the entablature bore beautiful relief sculpture.

- Each order had its own special character – Doric often considered a masculine order – strong and heavy. And the ionic the feminine as it is more graceful and delicate, Usually one order was used in a temple. It was ionic or Doric. AT the end of the fifth c. BC the Corinthian capitol was invented, introducing a third order the Corinthian order and decoration.

CORINTHIAN order
- Quite similar to the Ionic order. The main difference being in the columns. The capitol consists of a double row of Acanthus leaves. Which create a bell shape form – upturned and at the top corners they have a volute, which appear to support the carved abacus.
- The shaft of the column is at least 10 times its lower diameter in height. The base is very similar to the ionic base the entablature is similar to the ionic one. The Corinthian column because very popular in the late Hellenistic period – and especially in the Roman period.

- The Corinthian order made its first appearance in Greek architecture in 5BC, as a decorative variant of the ionic.
- The difference being almost completely in the column capital. Its popularity increased greatly in the Hellenistic period, though it was the Romans who brought it to full maturity in the last 1BC.
- The temple of Zeus Olympius, Athens, 174BC – 132AD. This temple stands on the site of an earlier Doric temple.
- It demonstrates the growing fondness for the Corinthian order in the Hellenistic period.
- It may be the earliest Corinthian temple on a grand scale.
- However, it was only finally completed in 132AD. It was dipteral octastyle, measured 145’ by 326’. The 15 columns remaining of the 104 columns bare witness to its pristine grandeur. The columns have a proportion of 1 to 9. There were originally 2 rows of 20 columns along the sides of the temple. A triple row along the front and rear.
- Orthodox in arrangement (naos, epinaos, pronaos, peristyle).
- Grand in dimensions (c.90’ by 204’ over the stylobate)
- Mad of coarse limestone, faced with marble stucco.
- Sculpture and pediments, metopes and roof tiles are all made from Parian marble.
- This temple, dedicate to the father of Gods, Zeus, at the sacred Pan-Hellenic centre of Olympia was embellished to the point of completeness with the cannon of the Doric style. By sculpture which achieved a serenity and composure of supreme monumental quality.
- The splendid architectural effect was heightened by picking out the mouldings a ornaments in blue, red and gold. While the nmaasin surfaces were left white. The acroteria was made of bronze.
- At around 448bc the temple received the colossal gold and ivory statue, 40’ high above its base, made by Pheidias, the famous sculptor who at that time was also working on the colossal statue of Athena fir the Parthenon in Athens.
- Inside the naos were superimposed colonnades.
- Fragments of marble tiles, with holes cut into them, through which light was admitted to the roof space, were found on the sight.
- During the 5th c. ad, building was wrecked by an earthquake but the vast platform surrounded by overturned columns and pieces of entablature demonstrates even in total ruin the essential monumentality of the achievement.

Pediments:

- The temples were usually dedicated to one god or goddess. All temples were usually covered by a pitched roof.
- THE triangle of the roof was called a pediment. You wouldonly fiun decoration of the pediment on the metopes of the Doric and the frienze of the ionic. The angles of the pediment were decorated with acroteria to soften the line.
Temple of Artemis:
- An early pediment would be the west pediment of the temple of Artemis on the island of Corfu, c.500BC (beginning of the archaic period) at the highest centre of the triangle, there is a huge gorgon in this case, Medusa. Her purpose is to ward of evil spirits from the temple. She was decapitated by Perseus and at the moment of her death she gave birth to two children from her neck.
- One is called Pegasus the . In winged horse, and the other is the man Chryseor, she is in an active pose, she appears to be running away from Perseus.
- Her two children are standing either side of her. She is flagged on either side by crouching panthers. The protect the temple and are also there to create symmetry
- In the corners are tiny pictures re-enacting the fall of Troy Pryam is seated on the left, about to be killed by a Greek who is attacking him.
- Behind him is a dead Troy. Behind them is the story of the battle between the Gods and the giants.
- Zeus wielding a thunderbolt. The giant kneeling. The other giant is lying dead in the corner mirroring the other side of the pediment.
- Excellent composition, from the point of the narrative, 3 stories are being told.
- However, it is also quite confusing, as it is difficult to focus on one story.

3 statues of the archaic period:

During the Archaic period, 600 – 480 BC the Greeks were developing techniques and ideas, inspired by their contacts with Egypt and the near East.
The kouros from Sunium (600BC) is an early example of Archaic Greek sculpture. Unlike later examples the figure is not fluid it is static and does not express movement. This is seen in the sturdy ankles and the arms – where the hands are attached to the sides. This was also due to the fact that sculpting techniques were not advanced and the sculptor would have been concerned that parts of the statue might break off. The use of marble does, however, have advantages over bronze, in that it creates a tangible effect of skin. The sculptor appears to rely on the stone also to give a sense of stability – the figure maintains the heaviness and weightiness of the stone.
Stylization was very important in this period, this kouros is more geometrical than a human being – symmetry can be seen very clearly through the ribs and the pelvis and the emphasized knee-caps, and the eyes and eyebrows. Stylization is visible in the ears which are represented through volutes similar to those used in architecture – architecture and sculpture were very close in their aims and ideals. Both sought symmetry and geometric perfection – construction feature out of geometric forms such as triangles and cylinders.
A slightly later example is the Kouros of Anavysos which has a much more human figure: it is 6ft 4.5 inches (almost human size) in comparison to the Kouros From Sunium, which is 10ft – more God like proportions. Naturalism is also achieved by modifying the proportions of the figure and giving a more rounded treatment to lines that had simply scratched onto the surface before. The hair looks stiff and helmet like – it clashes with the natural swelling forms of the body. The body has a tactile quality, it is virile, athletic and youthful. The figure seems to have progressed from earlier work in that it has been freed from the stone – the arms are not clamped to its sides. There is greater definition in its ankles. A slight ‘archaic smile’ bring the face to life although it is rigid and not very realistic. NB// THE GAZE, POSITION OF HEAD, WAIST NARROW, SHOULDERS BROADER (GEOMETRIC) COMPARED WITH KRITIOS.
The Kritios Boy was made in 480BC at the end of the Archaic and the beginning of the Classical Period. The Kritios Boy shows very clear progression towards Naturism. Where as the earlier Kouroi had a problem with stiff and unnatural poses with weight placed equally on both feet, the Kritios Boy seems almost to come to life. This is because of the new contraposto pose the sculptor has achieved. ‘Contraposto’ stands for counter-poise and suggests asymmetry. This asymmetry carries on into the position of the head which is tilted naturalistically to the left side. The expression is also much more natural than the earlier ‘archaic smile’. The Kritios Boy gazes casually into the middle-distance. It is likely that the Kritios boy was originally made in bronze as an asymmetrical pose would have been very different in marble, as one would have needed different drawings on all four sides of the original marble block to work from. Bronze casting is an additive process and allows for more complicated poses where the limbs were extended slightly.
FLESH – MORE LIFELIKE
- TORSO & MUSCLES…
+ eg. of female.

Archaic women
- typically wear loose garments with lots of folds.
Berlin Kore with pomegranate (570BC):
- Stood over a tomb.
- Was originally painted.
- Wears a long garment with vertical groves, like a column, and a shawl over it.
- Left hand placed in chest – traditional gesture.
- Large, bulging eyes, archaic smile.
- Elaborate hair style.
- Wears two bracelets and platform sandals – adds weight to the bottom.
- Weight is distributed onto two legs – cylindrical, rectangular lump.
Peplos Kore, 580 BC
- She wears a peplos (simple woollen garments made from a single piece of cloth – girdled at the waist and folded over on the chest).
- The statue looks quite stony.
- Breasts stand out roundly.
- Slender and graceful.
- Left arm would have been extended, holding out some fruit.
- Archaic smile and animated eyes.
La Delicata, 520 BC, 1m, marble
- Climax of Archaic style
- Much of original colour is preserved.
- Would have held an offering in her outstretched arm – now missing. Left arm would have held a gathering of garment – this show off the different handling of the weights/ textures/ patterns of materials.
- Three ringlets on each side of her face. Smaller eyes, softer archaic smile.
- Curve of form visible under material.

Hellenistic sculpture

More intimate, atmospheric and expressive than classical. Baroque – complicated and dramatic.
No longer a distinction between ordinary people and idealized deities. ‘No longer a single ideal of god-like perfection.
Realism emerges – figures more human.
HERMES WITH YOUNG DIONISUS 330BC
- By Praxiteles, carved from Parian marble, 7’ 11’’ tall
- Hermes relaxes against a tree trunk (used to support the heavy figure).
- Would probably have held a bunch of grapes out to tease the child Dionysus wine god).
- The anatomy is more detailed and elaborate here than in earlier Greek sculpture.
- The planes of flesh are slightly joined so that the transitions are difficult to perceive. This gives the flesh a sensuous quality; we can almost sense the skin breathing.
- The curls of the hair are suggested rather than given a hard outline and look more humanly.
- Praxiteles was the first artist to fully exploit the crystalline quality of marble, which gives the appearance of translucence.
- TO achieve to full effect he softened all the edges, the eyelids and edges of the lips are slightly blurred and soft shadows are cast over the body as light is reflected from within the crystalline structure of the marble.
- Hermes body is also elongated – there is rhythm in the curve and counter curve of his stance and outstretched arm. The contraposto stance is exaggerated.
- He wears a dreamy smile.

NIKE OF SAMOTHRACE 200BC
- Example of Hellenistic Baroque style.
- Goddess is in the act of alighting on the prow if a ship, her drapery streaming in the wind as the ship rushes through the waves, great wings beating to steady herself.
- Equal tension in both legs, the feet are planted firmly on the ground. The figure is standing on a tall pedestal, which represents (in marble) the prow of a ship.
- The right arm was raised, waving a victory’s triumphal sash, and the head was turned to the left. The sea winds whip the drapery into masses producing a rich variation of light and shade.
- There is a coplex relationship between the mass and weight of the body and the space around it. This is exaggerated by the figures stance. Although her feet have touched the ground her body seems to be still moving, almost quivering. The forms of the body are emphasized through the material

LAOKOON AND HIS SONS
- Most famous work of the Hellenistic tradition.
- Laokoon was a Trojan piest, who tried to warn the Trojans not to bring the fateful Trojan horse into their city. However, before he could convince them, ttwo large serpents sent by the Gods who were hostile towards the Trojans rose from the sea and strangled Laokoon and his sons. While they were sacrificing at the alter.
- The moment of maximal violence has been bhosen to sum up the story. As Laokoon falls back in the alter one of the snakes curls around his elder sono to bite him on the hip.
- The other serpant enmeshes the legs of all three figures and seems to have squeezed the life out of the younger son (to the left).
- As laokoon struggles to get free, he lets out a cry of pain. His contorted face and massive wreath of hair expresses a mixture of conflitvting emotions – fear, courage, agony and desperation.

THE SEATED BOXER

- social realism.
- Old man who has survived a competitive and brutal sport.
- it is a frank picture, unidealized: nose is broken cheeks and forehead scarred, teeth are broken and he has swollen cauliflower ears, which seem to be bleeding.
- Elicits sympathy.

Roman architecture

Discuss Roman structures and innovations:

Vaults
- The Romans had a taste for the massive and the durable. The materials in which they built were stone, coloured marbles, bricks (baked and unbaked) – the baked bricks were cut into triangles, for wall facings and rectangles for arches and mass concrete with the added advantage of pozzolana cement. One of the best and strongest cements in the world.
- The basis of Roman architecture was the arch, they built arches of stone, brick and concrete – in the case of concrete in addition to the temporary timber centring, the reverse mould of the arch itself, had to be made also in timber called shuttering. Into this shuttering the concrete could be poured, and the shuttering and centring was removed once the concrete had set. The first and greatest advantage of an atuated over a trabeated style is much greater floor areas can be left free from supporting columns and walls.
- A series of arches built side be side over the space below will form a roof, and this roof will be a tunnel form or a vault, then if one builds a circular space and then a number of arches over it, going in all directions and al meeting in the centre, one has built a dome. The only draw back is that an arch or vault or dome must have it soutwards thrust composed by some counter force such as another arch where there is a series of arches as in an arcade, or my some solid mass such as a very think wall or buttress.
- The CROSS VAULT concentrated all the weight and thrust of the vault at the four points where the lines of intersection reach the top of the walls or columns. The cross vault made it possible in theory to abolish the wall altogether, except for large masses of masonry or buttresses at the four corners of the vault.
- The cross vault enabled clerestory windows to be inserted high up beneath the arches of the vaults.
- Several bays, each vaulted and each opening out into the next bay can be placed by side to form a vaulted hall.
- It is this system that was the basis of both planning and construction in the great halls of the thermae and in the basilicas.
- The one limitation which Roman architects imposed was the shape or form of the arch – only semi circular arches were used and the bays were therefore square.

The introduction of CONCRETE along with the use of the ARCH allowed the Romans to build vaults of a magnitude never equalled until the introduction of steel for buildings in the 19c. It was this capacity to span over enormous spaces that the character of Roman architecture largely depended. Concrete vaults had an advantage over stone, in that they could be accommodated to complicated plan forms without involving difficult and laborious stone cutting. The vaults were supported in a temporary wooden framework until the concrete had set.

The three types of vault used in Roman buildings were
1) the semi-circular barrel or tunnel vault
2) the cross vault formed by an intersection of two barrel vaults of equal span.
3) Hemispherical domes or cupolas used over circular structures.

Bridges

Aquaducts

Triumphal arches

Relief sculpture

3 Roman Civic buildings:

The thermae of Caracalla
- Accommodation for 1,600 bathers
- Thermae stood on a platform 20’ high, measuring over 1/5 of a mile each way; underneath were the vaulted store chambers, corridors, furnaces and hot air ducts for heating the buildings.
- A colonnade on the entrance side screened two stories, forming shops on the ground level and baths in the platform level. The main entrance is led to a park like enclosure laid out for wrestling and games around, which were grouped halls for dramatic presentations and lectures.
- There were only four doorways on the NE side as it was exposed to cold winds, the large columned openings were a feature to the SW side.
- The great central hall around which the subsidiary halls were grouped was roofed with an immense semicircular intersecting vault of concrete, divided into three compartments.
- The vault was held up by 8 massive piers of masonry, fronted with granite columns. This great hall was lighted by clear-story windows.
- The caldarium had a dome, similar to that of the pantheon. The frigidarium was probably open to the sky.
- In the interior pavements were formed of bright-coloured mosaics in geometrical patterns or with figure of athletes. The lower part of the concrete walls was sheathed with many coloured marbles and the upper parts were painted and modelled stucco.
- The great vaults were also richly decorated with coffering, modelled or painted stucco, or coloured glass mosaic.
- The exterior of these great thermae appear to have been treated very plainly in stucco.

The coliseum
- 80 external arcaded openings on each storey.
- Floor of the arena is an oval, surouded by a wall 15’ high. Behind the wasll was the podium, with the Imperial throne and seats for special guests. Behind the podium rose the auditorium seats for some 50,000 spectators.
- The auditorium was divided into 4 main divisions: the two lower tiers seated those of equestrian rank and Roman citizens, above which was the third teir intended for lower classes and women.
- Around the edge of the arena are 32 cells where the animals were kept. By a complex system of ropes and cages, the animals could be released almost simultaneously into the arena. A huge canvas awning protected the spectators from the sun.
- In the construction of the Coliseum: LAVA was used for solid foundations, TUFA – a soft volcanic rock which hardens with exporure to air and BRICK for the surrounding walls and PUMICE STONE used for the vaults, to reduce their weight. TRAVERTINE blocks (light coloured local limestone), set without mortar and held together by metal clamps were used for the façade, while marble was employed for the columns seats and ornaments.
- Special architectural features:
1) PIERS (a mass of masonry) – from which an arch springs in an arcade of bridge, which support the three tiers or arcades.
2) Decorative use of the CLASSICAL ORDERS of architecture, superimposed onto the façade. The Doric order is on the ground level, the ionic on the next level and the Corinthian on top.
3) CONCRETE – employed not only in the corridors of cells of the chamber, but also in the many vaults which formed the foundations of each of the four tiers of seats, rowed on above an other in a great eclipse, to the crowning colonnade.

Greek architecture had been simple in appearance and self-evident in design, Roman architecture on the other hand became complex in appearance and hidden in design, for not only were columns placed in front of piers, but there were columns placed above columns, entablatures above entablatures and arches above arches.

The basilica of Constantine
- Begun by Maxentius and completed by Constantine, was one of the finest of Roman Basilicas.
- Rectangular building ending in two apses on its long sides.
- It did not have the usual flat roof – but a vaulted roof, the weight of which was carried by huge concrete piers, besides which the columns were little more than decorative attachment.
- The vaulting of the three surrounding arches bear witness to the immensity of the Roman innovations based on concrete.
- The divisions between the nave and two aisles consisted of only four huge piers. Immediately in front of the piers, stood Corinthian columns of 47’ high, made of creamy red-veined marble.
- A semicircular apse at one side contained an enormous stature of the Emperor Constantine.
- Outside the vaults were covered in tiles of gilded bronze. Inside the brick walls and massive concrete vaults were once elaborately decorated with coloured marbles, painted plaster and mosaics.

Religious – pantheon, maison carre

Roman sculpture

Imperial – Augustus of Prima Porta…
Ordinary men and women
Verism
Format of portrait

Roman wall painting
Style 1, 2, 3, 4…

- A painted room in a large country house know as the Villa of the Mysteries, just outside Pompeii, is altogether exceptional.
- There has been much discussion about its authorship, and also whether it was copied from an earlier prototype.
- Although the composition is so carefully adapted to the size and shape of the room that it might seen to have been determined by it., individual figures are in poses that occur in Hellenistic sculpture.
- One wall of the room is given up to immortals with Ariadne reclining in the lap of Dionysus, symbol of the eternal bliss of the initiate who espoused the God.
- There is nothing orgiastic about this painting, none of the delirious intoxicated frenzy of the devotees of Dionysus as depicted on Greek vases. Both mortals and immortals look distinctly cool and collected – apart from one apparently terrorized figure, though even she maintains her statuesque deportment.
- They are represented a little less than life-size; standing on a simulated stage or platform which runs round the room so that they seem to move in a shallow extension of the real space, giving the impression almost of a tableau vivant.
- The figures look across the real space of the room, with some rather complicated and sophisticated results, as when the flagellator raises her whip to strike the woman kneeling on the adjoining wall.
- If the ritual scene in the Villa of the Mysteries is a unique survivor, the illusionism of the architectural framework in which it is set is characteristic of painting in Italy of this period. Ambitious – spatial and not flat – decorative schemes appeared early in the first century BC, visually enlarging the space of rooms with columns, entablatures and other architectural elements.
- Later a further step was taken by visually opening the wall, sometimes completely, sometimes with make-believe windows, to disclose vistas of colonnades stretching into the far distance.
- In the first century AD recession was indicated by a perspective system apparently devised for theatrical scenery, probably in the Hellenistic East, though it may have had Italian origins as well, with orthogonal or lines of perspective projection slanting towards a central axis.
- One room in the house of evidently prosperous merchants combines all four illusionistic systems or styles – a dado of simulated panels of rare marbles; pictures hung on or set in the wall and surrounded by frames which seem to project forwards; windows opening on to views of airy structures; and, above, statues placed on top of the wall, beyond which fanciful buildings may be glimpsed in space.
- Sometimes the “pictures” were of fruit, dead fish and game and glass vessels half full of water (the earliest know still lifes), themselves exercises in eye-deceiving illusionism or trompe l’oeil, creating a complex and sophisticated play with levels of reality – illusionistic paintings of trompe l’oil pictures set in walls which were given the appearance of having relief decorations and also openings on to the world beyond.
- Mythological scenes such as those in the House of the Vettii may however had for those who commissioned them greater significance than meets the eye.
- The Roman house was a shrine and place of sacrifice as well as a human habitation.
- Its’ main living rooms were under the protection of different deities, who might be represented on the walls: Bacchus in the Triclinium, Venus in the cubiculum. Paintings might also indicate cultural and social status: Greek subject-matter for educated upper-class taste, decorative profusion and opulence for the newly rich – an appearance of wealth, sometimes a doubly deceptive one.
- The eight scenes from the odyssey – their artist created evocative atmospheric effects of cool Mediterranean water and warm still air with the headlands of a bay shimmering in a slight haze.
- Distance is suggested and the forms of boats and rocks only vaguely defined, but the painting opens the wall surface on to the crystalline dream-world of poetry.