Philosophy 1010 Class #4

1. Philosophy 1010 Class #4 Title: Introduction to Philosophy Instructor: Paul Dickey E-mail Address: pdickey2@mccneb.edu Hand in: 1. Revised First Essay 2. Brief Movie Scene Analysis from Chapter Two

2. For Next Week Reading Assignment for Next Week: Velasquez, Philosophy: A Text With Readings Chapter 2., pp 69-79. HEADS UP: It is very likely that there will be a pop quiz next week. Anything we have covered so far is fair game. • Homework Assignment: • Practice evaluating EVIDENCE in day-to-day arguments or judgments. Come to class prepared to discuss a particular example. (or, if you prefer, submit a 2 page written description of the incident.) • Write a two-page “play” as a Socratic Dialogue discussing one of the questions you proposed in your second writing assignment. Use two characters, you and Socrates. Illustrate the principles of the Socratic Method in your play.

3. Two Kinds of Good Arguments • 1) A good deductive argument is one in which if the premises are true, then the conclusion necessarily (I.e. has to be) true. • Such an argument is called “valid” and “proves” the conclusion. • For example – Julie lives in the United States because she lives in Nebraska. • All men are mortal. • Socrates is a man. • ____ • Socrates is mortal. • A sound argument is a valid, deductive argument in which the premises are in fact true.

4. Two kinds of good arguments • 2) A good inductive argument is one in which if the premises are true, then the conclusion is probably true, but not always. The truth of the premises do not guarantee the truth of the conclusion. • Such an argument is called “strong” and supports the conclusion. Inductive arguments are not “valid” or “invalid.” • For example: Craig lives in Nebraska and he loves football, so he is a Nebraska Cornhusker fan. • If I make this bet with you, would I win more money • than I lose?

5. How Do Premises Support Conclusions? • For a Deductive argument, premises prove a conclusion based on the logical form of the statement. • Consider the argument: • (P1) If it’s raining outside, the grass is wet. •         (P2) It’s raining outside. •             _________________________ •         (Conclusion) The grass is wet. • In this case, the premises support the conclusion fully simply by what the premises say. It would be a contradiction to suggest that the conclusion is false but the premises are true.

6. How Do Premises Support Conclusions? • For an Inductive argument, premises support (never prove) a conclusion based on how good the premises provide evidence for the conclusion. • Consider the argument: • (P1) If it’s raining outside, the grass near the house gets wet when the wind is not blowing strongly from the North (which doesn’t often occur). • (P2) It’s raining outside. • _________________________ • The grass near the house is wet. • Note: It would not be a contradiction to suggest that the conclusion is false but the premises are true.

7. How Do We Evaluate an Argument? Two ways (and only two ways) logically to evaluate a claim – 1) Do the premises support or prove the conclusion? 2) Are the premises true? -- It would be illogical for you to argue, for example, “I don’t want to believe that” or “You just can’t say that”, or “Where did you come up with that?” etc.

8. How Does Sometimes Our Thinking Crash? • 1. We are often influenced byrhetoric, language that is psychologically persuasive but does not have logical relevance. • 2. The view that “one opinion is as good as another,” or “whatever is true is only what you think is true” is subjectivism. Subjectivity precludes the possibility of logical standards providing rules of thinking and thus, rational discourse. • 3. Logical Fallacies are “screw-ups” in reasoning, which accept ambiguous, irrelevant, and/or illogical “fake” premises as “real” and incorrectly treat them as reasons to believe.

9. Logical Fallaciesare “Screw-ups” in Reasoning Logical Fallacies can be Formal or Informal. A formal fallacy is something like: All mothers are women. Janice is a woman. Thus, Janice is a mother. This is a formal fallacy because its logical form is invalid. An informal fallacy is something like: Janice believes in God. Janice is not smart because she is no good at algebra. Thus, God does not exist. That is, an informal fallacy are errors in logic usually because the “premises” of the argument either are ambiguous or irrelevant to the claim.

10. Informal Fallacies often occur when the purported premise is not evenrelevant. (These are known as “the fallacies of relevance”) They include: Appeal to Authority Ad Hominems Misplacing the Burden of Proof / Evidence Begging the Question Wishful Thinking

11. Appeal to Authority • A fallacy in which a speaker seeks to persuade not by giving evidence or proof but by appealing to the respect people have for a source. The source might be a person, an institution, a text, etc. . • Is this an example?

12. The Ad Hominem Fallacy • Maybe the most common of all logical mistakes. • The Ad Hominem Fallacy mistakes the qualities of the argument itself with the qualities of the person making the claim. Most Ad Hominem arguments are negative. • In an ad hominem, a person attacks the proponent of an argument rather than analyzing the argument itself.

13. Misplacing the Burden / Argument from Ignorance • The burden of proof in an argument rests on the person making the claim. It is her responsibility to give the premises and the reasons to believe her claim is true. • To try to shift the burden of proof onto the person who is listening to your argument and trying to make him show that you are wrong is called misplacing the burden of proof. • A particular example of this logical error is the appeal to ignorancewhich suggests that we should believe something because no one has proven or shown it to be wrong. • In an argument between a person who believes in God and an atheist, who has the burden of proof?

14. Begging the Question • Begging the question is assuming as true the claim that is at issue and is to be supported. • For example, God exists because the Bible says so and we should believe what the Bible says because it was written by God. • Another example: • An old gold miner’s joke: • One gold prospector asks the other: Why do you get two pieces of gold for every one I get. The second answers “Because I am the leader.” The first then replies but why are you the leader? The second responds: “Because I have twice the gold you do.” • What is the difference between begging the question and a valid, deductive argument?

15. Wishful Thinking • Our hopes, desires and personal needs can delude us and make us vulnerable to the fallacy of wishful thinking. • We should always be able to recognize when analyzing an argument what we want to believe and be sure that our desires are not overriding our critical thinking and making us come to conclusions simply because of what “we want to believe.” • We may want to believe, for example, that God exists so that we might feel more secure or happy. We must thus separate that wish from the reasons that can serve as premises for our claim that Goddoesexist.

16. Informal Fallacies also occur when it is not recognized that the purported premise is ambiguous. (These are known as “fallacies of ambiguity”) These include: Equivocation or semantic ambiguity” Amphiboly or “syntactic ambiguity” Composition/Division or “grouping ambiguity”

17. 1. Equivocation: words or phrases change meaning between premises and conclusion. (semantic confusion) All banks are beside rivers. Therefore, the financial institution where I deposit my money is beside a river. 2. Amphiboly : change of meaning due to grammar (syntactical confusion) One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas. Thus, elephants wear pajamas.

18. 3. Composition/Division: The confusion is in attributing the characteristics of part (or whole) to the whole (or part). All the books in this library are good. Thus, this is as a good library. (Composition) This is a good library. Thus, you can be sure that all the books in this library are good. (Division)

19. Now, what kind of a fallacy is this? The Naturalistic Fallacy • This fallacy occurs when someone attempts to derive a normative statement (what you “ought” to do) from a descriptive statement (what “is” the case).   • For example, a student argues that the instructor should excuse him from taking the mid-term exam because he was sick. • Another example would be argue that the U.S. military should remain in Iraq because they are already there. • Another example could be to argue that simply because God exists, you should act morally.

20. 4 Steps to Evaluating an Argument • Be sure you understand the argument. What is the claim? What are the premises for the claim? • Determine if the argument is deductive or inductive and apply the appropriate test for validity or strong support. • Identify and weed out any logical fallacies, rhetoric, subjectivity, or irrelevancies. Clarify any vagueness or ambiguity. • Examine the truth of the premises. If the argument is inductive, evaluate the evidence. Class Review of Logic Assignment

21. Class Discussion

22. Ten Minute Break!

23. Chapter 2 • On Human Nature: A Metaphysical Study • What is it to be Human?What is a Person? • What is a Self? What is a Soul? What is a • Person Worth?

24. In reviewing the different attempts to answer philosophical questions such as these, please note carefully: • 1) Likely each view can give us additional or new insight into the questions and potential answers to the questions and thus provides us a richer understanding of human nature, BUT • No answer will likely give us a complete and/or satisfactory answer that will supplant all the other views. • 3) In short, all views proposed to answer a philosophical question should be respected but examined aggressively. We should not rush either to reject them or to accept them.

25. The Traditional Western View • The Prevalent View Regarding the Nature of Man Makes Four Basic Claims: • That the self is conscious (has reason) and has a purpose • That the self is distinct from the body, but somehow is related. • That the self endures through time. • That the self has an independent existence from other selves

26. The Traditional Western View The Traditional Western View of Human Nature is the one most commonly held in our culture. Yet different philosophers throughout history have questioned and rejected every one of the four tenets with various arguments.

27. Chapter 2 • On Human Nature: • A Metaphysical Study • Video: • What is Human Nature?

28. Plato c. 427-347 B. C. Plato is history's first great philosopher because, among other reasons, he provided the first set of answers to some of the largest and most difficult questions: What is the structure of reality? What can be known for certain? What is moral virtue? What is the nature of the ideal state? No philosopher before Plato had ever attempted such a wide and deep exploration of philosophical problems.

29. The Traditional Rationalist View (Plato) • For Plato, humans have a nonphysical or material soul or self in agreeing with all these assumptions. • Plato contends that since reason often conflicts with our desires (or appetites) and that either of these can conflict with our aggression, each of these comprise one of the three main elements of our soul (self). • For Plato, man can choose what part of his self rules his actions. (Free Will?) Because reason alone can know how we ought to live, it should rule the appetite and our aggressions.

30. The Traditional Rationalist View (Aristotle) • Aristotle (384-322 BC) mostly agreed with Plato but went on to argue that reason can discover the truth about man in the natural world, and how we should act. • Thus, Aristotle is rejecting Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, suggesting that Plato’s world of shadows can be known through reason. • Ah, isn’t this the basic motivation for science? • For Aristotle, all living things and the natural world have purpose (telos). The purpose of man is to control desires and aggression through reason.

31. The Traditional Western Religious View (Judeo-Christian) • “The purpose of man is to love and serve God.” (St. Augustine – 354-430 AD) • Although influenced by Plato, this view asserts that humans are made in the image of God. Man has an immaterial and immortal soul and the ability to love and to know, in the very manner of God. • Augustine emphasized that humans have will and intellect, the ability to choose between good and evil. • “The purpose of man is to know God through reason.” (St. Thomas Aquinas - c. 1225 –1274)

32. The Traditional Western View The Traditional Western View of Human Nature is the one most commonly held in our culture. Yet different philosophers throughout history have questioned and rejected every one of the four tenets with various arguments.

33. The most radical view is perhaps the Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre -- 1905 – 1980. • “Existence precedes essence.” • Humans are radically free. Human nature itself is determined by a man’s choices. There is no fixed universal human nature (or soul) prior to the choices that an individual free man makes. • Existentialism challenges our basic values of western civilization that human nature in some way is “fixed.” God does not exist. • Human, All Too Human • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxbkPCLlXII

34. The Traditional Western View • The Prevalent View Regarding the Nature of Man Makes Four Basic Claims: • That the self is conscious (has reason) and has a purpose • That the self is distinct from the body, but somehow is related. • That the self endures through time. • That the self has an independent existence from other selves

35. Challenges to the Traditional Rationalist View • Feminism • The traditional view seems to be sexist in that it assumes that reason is male and emotions are female (e.g. Aristotle & Augustine) By calling for the subjugation of emotions to reason, does the traditional view take a gender bias? • Some feminist philosophers repudiate the traditional rationalist view and reject reason as the basis of human nature. Others agree that reason is primary and say the view only needs to be modified to remove gender bias and to acknowledge that reason is gender neutral.

36. Indeed, is the Rationalist View also Racist? • Aristotle claimed that since barbarians were less rational than Greeks, it was justifiable to rule and enslave them because they were less human. • Caveat Emptor: Such an assertion does not logically follow from Plato.

37. The Traditional Western Religious View • For Thomas Aquinas, however, one is not limited in their ability to love and serve God by differing levels of intelligence or knowledge. • In his view of Human Nature, note that Love and Service to God trumps Reason !!! • Question for the class: • Does this view contradict the previously asserted suggestion in the class that it is best to seek truth and wisdom? Or Socrates’ view that the unexamined life is not worth living? Would Aquinas agree with you?

38. Other Challenges to the Traditional Rationalist View • Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) claimed that man acts only to satisfy his desires. In particular, he possesses a basic, powerful desire for aggressiveness and sexual pleasure. Man views others as objects. • Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) claimed that the man’s primary desire was for power over others. • Moritz Schlick (1882-1936) believed that man is able to act only out of self-interest. Schlick recognized the appearance of unselfish behavior, but claimed even such behavior occurred only because of unrecognized self-interest.

39. Darwinism • Evolutionary theory claims that random variations and natural selection make species evolve. To many, this suggests that humans are not unique and that there perhaps isno special purpose to human life. • Charles Darwin – 1809–1882 • Darwin does not himself take a position on the question whether God exists.