2020-PHIL 101-lecture notes 1 PDF

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Chapter 1 Notes What is Philosophy? ● Ethics: what people have in mind usually when they talk about their “philosophy” ● Metaphysics: the part of philosophy that attempts to describe what there is, in general terms ● Problems we’ll consider: ○ Whether God exists ○ Knowledge vs belief ■ What is knowledge? ■ Do human beings ever know anything? ● Philosophical skepticism: we never have knowledge; we don’t even know those things that we take to be most obvious ■ Topics from the philosophy of mind ● mind/ body problem: mind vs brain ○ Dualism: the mind and brain are different things ● Concerns of human freedom ○ Genes vs environment ○ Do we perform actions freely- is freedom an illusion ○ Whether we can be free agents if our personalities are the results of factors outside our control ● Ethics ○ Whether there really are such things as ethical facts- or just an elaborate illusion ○ Subjective realm: clashes of opinion occur here; one human mind disagreeing with another ○ Objective realm: facts that exist independently of anybody’s thinking about them ○ → In science there are both subjective opinions and objective facts ○ Question about ethics: whether both these realism exist in ethics ■ Are there ethical facts ○ Ethical subjectivism: a philosophical thesis that there are no ethical facts, only ethical opinions ○ If there are ethical facts, what are they? ■ Utilitarianism: the action you should perform in a given situation is the one that will produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of individuals

● Three theories about what philosophy is: ○ Fundamental Questions of Justification: questions about common sense ■ Fundamental assumptions we make about ourselves and the world we inhabit and tries to determine whether those assumptions are rationally defensible ○ Characteristic of many philosophical questions: they are very general ■ Asking why you should believe that there is anything at all outside your mind ■ Solipsism: the idea that your mind is the only thing that exists ○ Philosophy is the enterprise of clarifying concepts: ■ What is knowledge? What is freedom? ○ → one difference between these questions concerns ways in which reason and observation help answer them. ■ We do not rely on observations ● The Nature of Philosophy has Changed Historically ○ The subject has been around since the ancient Greeks ■ Some problems are the same and some have been determined by science ● Philosophical Method ○ Mystical guru model of philosophy: what people think philosophy is; not accurate ○ Axioms: given theories with very little explanation ○ Arguments rather than proofs: with the goal to try to reach answers to important philosophical questions by reasoning from assumptions ■ Establish something less obvious and more complex ● Summary: ○ Philosophy does address the most fundamental beliefs we have about ourselves and the world we inhabit ■ Some assumptions are so natural and obvious that it is hard to see that we are making assumptions at all ○ Philosophy is the effect to help us identify these assumptions and evaluate them Lecture Notes Introduction to Some Philosophical Ideas ● What Philosophy is Not: ○ “Having a philosophy”: set of beliefs that are hard to prove are true ● Plato & Aristotle: ○ Plato and Aristotle thought that philosophy begins in wonder ○ Want to understand the nature of everything ● Another View of Philosophy:

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○ “The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it” Common sense: ○ Common sense may tell us that we have free will, that there is a difference between right and wrong, and that we have knowledge of the world we inhabit ○ Philosophy seeks to discover whether these familiar ideas have any rational justification or are just prejudices ○ Distinguish between “common sense knowledge” and “common sense belief” ○ Commons sense tells us that the sun revolves around the earth ○ Copernicus reflected on how motion is perspectival ○ Reality vs appearance Sober on Philosophy: ○ “Philosophy examines the fundamental assumptions we make about ourselves and the world we inhabit and tries to determine whether those assumptions are rationally defensible ○ A (self-conscious) analytical clarification of fundamental concepts taken for granted by other branches of inquiry and by common sense ○ Emphasis on argument Conceptual Engineering: ○ Studies the structure of thought ○ Clarifies concepts ○ Example: what do things falling under a concept have in common and how do they differ from the things to which the concept does not apply? ○ Can involve observations but usually involves reasoning Wilfred Sellars ○ The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest sense of the term Examples: ○ Mathematical question: what number is x in the equation? ■ Philosophical question: what is a number? ○ Physics question: what law describes how planets revolve around the sun? ■ Philosophical question: what is a law of nature? ○ Legal law: you have to be 18 to vote ■ Philosophical question: is the law just? Ultimate Questions ○ The most fundamental and general (most basic and comprehensive) questions concerning what is and what ought to be Areas of philosophy: ○ Metaphysics: the study of what there is (the fundamental nature of reality) ■ What is the world made of?

■ What kinds of things are there? ■ What is real? What is merely apparent? ■ What am I? ○ Epistemology: theory of knowledge ■ What is knowledge? How do I know? ■ Can I know anything at all? If so, where do I get it? ■ Can I know anything independently of experience, though philosophical reflection alone? ○ Ethics, Logic, Political philosophy, Aesthetics, Ancient philosophy (Plato, Aristotle), Early- modern philosophy (Descartes, Hume, Kant), Existentialism (Nietzsche, Heidegger) ● Belief and Knowledge: ○ What is the difference, if any, between belief and knowledge? ○ What makes knowledge different from true belief?

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○ Opinions ○ Opinion: a preference for or judgement of something that cannot be verified outside of the fact that I believe them ○ Opinions can be wrong! ○ Two Questions: ■ Is this an opinion? ■ If yes, how informed is it and why do I hold it? Arguments: ○ Geometry proofs are arguments ○ Start with assumptions (premises) ○ Each line in the proof followed from the previous lines, an axiom, an already proved theorem ○ The last line is the theorem you wanted to prove (conclusion) ○ Philosophy is committed to sound logical reasoning ○ Evidence and observation can play a role in a philosophical argument Critical Reflection: ○ Philosophy is a critical approach to all subjects ○ Nothing is immune from critical evaluation Common Complaint ○ Criticism: philosophy is not practical ○ Neither is music, art, history, literature ○ Pleasure has mental health benefits (feel better listening to music, reading a book)

○ Pure scientists and pure mathematicians usually want to understand things for their own sake (beginning of the universe, set theory) ● Changes in Philosophy ○ Many areas that were part of philosophy have formed their own discipline ○ Ie: physics, psychology ○ From ancient Greeks on, philosophy included natural philosophy which studied the natural world ● The Value of Philosophy ○ Pragmatic: philosophy teaches you to think and write logically and clearly ○ Salary for philosophy majors ○ Philosophy aims to discover fundamental truths ● Doing philosophy: ○ See the consequences of our views and sometimes their inconsistencies ○ See the justification (or lack of justification) for our most fundamental beliefs ○ Gives us the intellectual strength to defend our (possibly new) beliefs ○ Important because we act on our beliefs...