Intro to Philosophy

1. Intro to Philosophy Branches of Study Definition of Philosophy Why Study Philosophy

2. TheHistoryof Western Philosophy … as soon as you start to comment on philosophy … … you have started to philosophize!

3. TheHistoryof Western Philosophy Much of the story of philosophy is in dialogue with Christian faith. Can you prove that God exists? Why is there evil in the world? Can miracleshappen? Is there life after death? Is experience useful evidence? What is good? Can we describe ultimate reality with ordinary words?

7. The question of miracle The existence of God Three important themes The question of life after death

8. What is Philosophy? • Philosophy has been called many things and it can have many meanings • Those single words or statements on the right side are only some of them • What words would you add? • Wisdom • Reality • Theories • Meaning of Life • Nature of being human • Life perspectives

9. Philosophy = the love of wisdom Samples of questions philosophers ask • What’s the meaning of life? • Why do innocent people suffer? • Does God exist? • Is everything a matter of opinion? • What is happiness? • What is knowledge? • How do you know what is real? • How do you verify knowledge or reality? • Explore how philosophers, scientists, and theologians attempt to answer these questions

10. Areas of Philosophy: • Metaphysics • Epistemology • Ethics (Axiology) • Social and political philosophy Note: more than 200 areas listed by Philosophical Documentation Center

11. Metaphysics: what is truly real? • Questions about reality that go beyond sense experience, beyond ordinary science: • Free will, mind-body relationship, supernatural existence, personal immortality, and the nature of being • Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms: What is there? & What is it like? • A person who studies metaphysics would be called either a metaphysicist[4] or a metaphysician.[5] The metaphysician attempts to clarify the fundamental notions by which people understand the world, including existence, the definition of object, property, space, time, causality, and possibility.

12. Metaphysics (cont.) Prior to the modern history of science, scientific questions were addressed as a part of metaphysics known as natural philosophy. The term science itself meant "knowledge" of, originating from epistemology. The scientific method, however, transformed natural philosophy into an empirical activity deriving from experiment unlike the rest of philosophy. By the end of the 18th century, it had begun to be called "science" to distinguish it from philosophy. Thus, metaphysics denoted philosophical enquiry of a non-empirical method into the nature of existence.

13. Epistemology concerns w/ knowledge & truth: • is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge • Epistemology questions involve standards of evidence, truth, belief, sources of knowledge, gradations of knowledge, memory, perception. • It addresses the questions: • What is knowledge? • How is knowledge acquired? • How do we know what we know?

14. Axiology • philosophical fields that depend crucially on notions of value—or the foundation for these fields, and thus similar to value theory and meta-ethics. • Axiology studies mainly two kinds of values: ethics and aesthetics. • Ethics investigates the concepts of "right" and "good" in individual and social conduct. • Aesthetics studies the concepts of "beauty" and "harmony." Is beauty a matter of taste or is it objective? • Encompasses the study of moral problems, practical reasoning, right and wrong, good and bad, virtues and vices, character, moral duty, and related issues involving the nature, origins, and the scope of moral values. • Specialization: medical ethics, environmental ethics, issues of ethnicity and gender…etc.

15. Foundationalism vs. constructivism Claim • Many rationalities that are local and based on inter-subjective agreement Argument • Rationality is conditioned by history and culture • Vast amounts of historical, cultural, anthropological, and linguistic evidence support the above claim. • Critique of Foundationalism • Can’t agree on what is foundational beliefs; hence they are not self-evident; amount to ethnocentric imperialism. claim • One rationality that is universal and objective Argument • Beliefs are rational if supported by good reasons • If an infinite regress of reasons is to be avoided, there must be a foundation of self-evident beliefs. • Such foundational beliefs are the laws of logic or evident to the senses Critique of constructivism Amounts to self-refuting relativism

16. More terms • Cognitive relativism: denial of universal truths • Ethical relativism: denial of universally valid moral principles • Ethnocentric imperialism: imposing our views on others by presenting them as if they are the only true views

17. Fallacies: bad argument that appears to be good Some common, informal fallacies • Hasty generalization: generalizing from unrepresentative or insufficient cases • “no one should drink alcohol in any amount because my friend drank alcohol, became alcoholic and died” • Begging the question: Assuming as true what needs to be proved. • “God exists because the Bible says so, and God wrote the Bible” • Black and White: assuming that alternatives are exhaustive when they are not. “Either we attack that country or appease it and history shows appeasement is futile. Therefore, let it be war” • Strawperson: distorting someone’s position and arguing against the distortion. Pro-choice = baby-killer

18. More common fallacies… Don’t commit them 5. False analogy: assuming similarities between two things hold when they do not or are relevant when they are not. “the state is like parents; therefore, he must respect and obey it” 6. Ad hominem: an attempt to discredit a position by discrediting the person holding it. 7. Appeal to authority: assuming a claim is true from the fact that some alleged authority supports it. Religionist appeal to the Bible, prophet, tradition, 8. Argument from ignorance: assuming that the absence of evidence for or against something makes it true. “There is life after death because no one has proven there is not.” Unfair shift of burden of proof, which does not work in our reality.

19. It is a Shameful Question by Will Durant p7 (Soccio) • “…Is all this philosophy useful…We do not ask of poetry….If poetry reveals to us the beauty our untaught eye have missed, and philosophy gives us the wisdom to understand and forgive” • “…For what if we should fatten our purses, or rise to height office, and yet all the whole remain ignorantly naïve, coarsely unfurnished in the mind, brutal in behavior, unstable in character, chaotic, in desire, and blindly miserable? • “We are so slovenly and self-contradictory in our thinking; it may be that we shall clarify ourselves, and pull ourselves together into consistency, and be ashamed to harbor contradictory desires or beliefs.

20. The Prejudices of Practical Men by Bertrand Russell • “Philosophy is to be studied to …enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation, but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.”

21. Philosophy and the Search for Truth • No question or point-of view is off-limits • The history of philosophy is a history of heresy (Walter Kaufman) • The best philosophers…radically questioned and revised their own thinking over the course of their lives, reacting to what they saw as more compelling evidence • There has always been a powerful philosophical tradition that challenges the status quo and confronts social institutions • Environment, animal rights, family structure, racism, and sexism • “I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace” Baruch Spinoza

22. Belief: subjective mental acceptance; need not be true unlike knowledge p13 (Soccio) • Conviction or trust that a claim is true; an individual’s subjective mental state; distinct from knowledge • Mere belief: A conviction that something is true for which the only evidence is the sincerity of the believer • The best way to distinguish reliable beliefs from problematic ones is to subject important ideas to careful scrutiny

23. Ignorance is not an option • Rejecting important philosophical arguments before we’ve really thought about them is foolish and arrogant…because we can’t really know what value there is in a position if we don’t give it a fair hearing…and because it implies that without any background knowledge we know more than philosophers, scientists, and theologians who’ve devoted years of study to these issues. • Willed Ignorance: closed-minded attitude of indifference to the possibility of error or enlightenment that holds on to beliefs regardless of the facts

24. The Search for Happiness • Ancient philosophers made no distinction between “being good” and “being happy”