What Is Philosophy?

1. What Is Philosophy?

2. There are certain central notions that are the focus of philosophy: • Truth, justice, beauty, the mind, space, time, experience, justification, knowledge, thought, goodness, God, existence, causation •  A big part of philosophy is devoted to coming up with theoriesof those notions (e.g., a theory of knowledge). • We make lists of ideas or hypotheses regarding those notions, and then we reflect on the lists in trying to compose and evaluate the theories.

3. In constructing such theories, philosophers discover certain problems orparadoxes: collections of individually plausible yet jointly inconsistent ideas about the notion in question. Because each claim is highly plausible, we want to say that they’re all true, but because they seem to conflict with one another, we want to say that they aren’t all true.

4. Any adequate theory must solve the associated problems. And any adequate solution to a problem must do either of two things: • Identify the claims that aren’t true, explain why they aren’t true, articulate the truths we confuse them with (if there are any), and explain how it is that we made those mistakes. • Alternatively, it must explain how contrary to what anyone thought the claims are all true and do not conflict with one another; in that case the solution must greatly clarify the claims so we can see that they don’t really conflict.

5. How Can We Solve Philosophical Problems? Sometimes a new branch of science is developed which solves the philosophical problem. In that case, the notion involved ceases to be a philosophical one. E.g., astronomy. But most often, scientific theories and data don’t seem able to make much progress on these paradoxes.

6. Since science can’t fully solve the remaining problems, philosophers marshal exceedingly careful pieces of reasoning, called arguments, in order to make progress on those problems. The arguments are intended to solve the paradoxes and evaluate the theories. We use the lists of ideas mentioned earlier in constructing the arguments. That argumentative philosophical method is successful in several ways, e.g., by mastering those arguments we learn a lot about the central philosophical notions.

7. Remember what Philosophy is: • PAINTS: problems, arguments, ideas, notions, theories, solutions • That characterizes just a big portion academic philosophy, the enterprise devoted to deep theoretical understanding of fundamental notions, the central part of the enterprise practiced and put into motion by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

8. Therefore, regarding academic philosophy: • Philosophical problems typically aren’t pseudo-problems. • There is genuine philosophical progress (new sciences; insight into central notions). • Philosophy is connected to science to a limited extent. • Philosophy isn’t ‘My philosophy of X is…’ • Philosophy isn’t ‘The oneness of the universe is…’. • Philosophy isn’t the quest for spiritual transformation. • Philosophy isn’t the history of philosophers. • Philosophy isn’t psychology. • Philosophy isn’t people’s religious views. • Philosophy isn’t ethics. • Philosophy isn’t politics.

9. A Philosophical Example PAINTS: problems, arguments, ideas, notions, theories, solutions The notion knowledge. We want to come up with a theory of knowledge. So we start to list ideas or hypotheses about knowledge:

10. Some Ideas about knowledge: • If you that P is true, then P is true. • If you know that P is true, then you believe that P is true. • If you know that P is true, then you have some evidence, broadly construed, for P. • Just because P is true and someone believes it doesn’t mean that she knows P is true. • And then we eventually discover a philosophical paradox. In two steps: • Step One, a story: the fir tree story.

11. Here’s why you don’t know it’s a fir tree: • Your evidence is compatible with the tree being a spruce or even a hemlock for that matter; you can’t rule out it being one of these other trees. In order for you to know that P (that it’s a fir), you have to be able to rule out the alternative incompatible possibilities Q and R (that it’s a spruce or a hemlock). So we have the following idea about knowledge: • If there are conflicting hypotheses P and Q, and you’re aware of them and their conflict, then in order to know P, one has to have evidence that rules out Q. • E.g., P is ‘The tree’s a fir’ and Q is ‘The tree’s a spruce’ (or ‘The tree’s a hemlock’).

12. Step Two, a skeptical scenario: how do you rule out the possibility that our sensory experiences never depict the world as it really is?

13. Now we list some reasonable ideas or hypotheses about knowledge: • If there are conflicting hypotheses P and Q, and you’re aware of them and their conflict, then in order to know P, one has to have evidence that rules out Q. • I know that I have hands. • I’m aware of the conflicting “massive mistake” and “hands” hypotheses. • I don’t have evidence that rules out the massive-mistake hypothesis. • The philosophical argument that reveals the problem: • Let P = I have hands, and let Q = I am massively mistaken. Then 1-3 entails that I do have evidence that rules out the massive-mistake hypothesis, thereby contradicting 4. Thus, each of 1-4 is individually plausible yet they are jointly inconsistent!

14. So, what’s the solution to this problem/paradox? Remember what that means: the solutionmust do either of two things: • (a) Identify the claims that aren’t true, explain why they aren’t true, articulate the truths we confuse them with (if there are any), and explain how it is that we made those mistakes. • (b) Alternatively, it must explain how contrary to what anyone thought the claims are all true and do not conflict with one another; in that case the solution must greatly clarify the claims so we can see that they don’t conflict.

15. Knowledge, Belief, Truth

16. A belief is an opinion about things, a view of how things are. Here are some qualities we like our beliefs to have: Truth: it accurately reflects the way things really are Justified: there’s something backing it up sufficiently Knowing: we don’t merely believe something but know it Coherent: they fit together into a whole without contradiction Productive: they lead to new ideas, inventions, discoveries, and other useful things Philosophers are mainly concerned with the first three. Epistemologists are mainly concerned with justification and knowledge.

17. What does it mean to believe something is true, e.g., to believe that God exists or that bees make honey? It means that you accept those ideas (on some level), that you would bet on them as being very likely true, that you have enough evidence so that additional evidence is unnecessary as far as you are concerned, that you have made up your mind and consider the case closed. Hard cases: racist and other explicitly disavowed “beliefs”

18. Self-Test: give an example of the following:A false belief…

19. Self-Test: give an example of the following:A true belief…

20. Self-Test: give an example of the following:A justified belief…

21. Self-Test: give an example of the following:An unjustified belief…

22. Self-Test: give an example of the following:A belief that amounts to knowledge…

23. Self-Test: give an example of the following:A justified belief that is false…

24. Self-Test: give an example of the following:A belief that doesn’t amount to knowledge…

25. Self-Test: give an example of the following:A justified belief that doesn’t amount to knowledge…

26. Self-Test: give an example of the following:A true belief that isn’t justified…

27. Self-Test: give an example of the following:A true belief that doesn’t amount to knowledge…

28. Some Results So Far: • Some beliefs are true, others are false. • Thus, Belief  Truth • A person can believe X without having justification for that belief. • Thus, Belief  Justified Belief. • A person can have a justified belief that isn’t true, or a true belief that isn’t justified. • Thus, TrueBelief  Justified Belief. • A person can believe X without knowing X. • Thus, Belief  Knowledge • A person can have a true belief that doesn’t amount to knowledge • Thus, True Belief  Knowledge. • A person can have a justified belief that doesn’t amount to knowledge. • Thus, Justified Belief  Knowledge.

29. Therefore, we should keep these five key concepts distinct: • Belief • Truth • Justified Belief • True Belief • Knowledge • These are five separate things; don’t confuse them!

30. Beliefs False Beliefs True Beliefs Justified Beliefs Question: Where does Knowledge belong in this picture?

31. Self-Test: give an example of the following:Someone who knows some fact but doesn’t believe that it’s true…

32. Beliefs Lesson: K Knowledge must be found in the Belief circle, since you can’t know some fact unless you believe it’s true.

33. Self-Test: give an example of the following:A false belief that amounts to knowledge…

34. Beliefs Lesson: False Beliefs True Beliefs K Knowledge must be found in the TB half, as you can’t know something that’s false.

35. Self-Test: give an example of the following:Someone who knows some fact but has no evidence or justification for it…

36. Lesson: Beliefs False Beliefs True Beliefs Justified True Belief Justified False Belief K Knowledge must be found in the JTB area. Question: is K = JTB? Or is K  JTB?

37. A proposition is a true claim or a false claim. Knowing a proposition or piece of information: knowing that water is H2O knowing that Obama is the US President knowing that the USA is bombing Pakistan Propositional knowledgeis knowledge of facts; it is the knowledge of the way our universe really is.

38. JTB Analysis of Propositional Knowledge: • Someone knows P just in case • She believes P • P is true, and • She bases her belief on strong overallevidence or reason for P; her belief in P is overalljustifiedorwarranted • Main problems studied in epistemology lie in the last bullet point: • How good do your reasons/evidence have to be to make your belief count as knowledge? • What kinds of evidence are there? • What’s the relation between evidence/reason and justification (e.g., does justification always require evidence/reason)? • What is this “basing” relation?

39. Beliefs False Beliefs True Beliefs JFB JTB = K JTB Theory says: Knowledge area = JTB area

40. Comment on the Belief Condition: • Beliefs are typically not all-or-nothing; some are held with more confidence than others. In order of increasing conviction: • I have a vague suspicion that she’s pregnant, but for the life of me I can’t recall why I think this. • I’m inclined to believe that she’s pregnant; I think I remember hearing it from someone but I can’t remember whom. • She’s pregnant; I overheard someone say so at work. • She’s pregnant all right; her brother told me yesterday. • She’s pregnant all right; I was with her at the hospital when the tests came back positive.

41. Self-Test: • Which of the following do you believe? • God exists. • Obama is the current US President. • 0 + 0 + 0 = 0. • Some people once believed that the Earth is flat. • The Earth is flat. • Lady Gaga is not a keyboard. • On July 12, 4967 either humans will exist or they won’t.

42. Comments on the Truth Condition: The TRUTH or the ULTIMATE TRUTH (with capitals) is whatever it is that will “set you free”, that will enlighten you, that will give you spiritual consciousness, make you one with God, etc. The truth (without capitals): whatever it is that separates the true statements (e.g., “Jupiter is bigger than Mars”) from the false statements (e.g., “Hillary Clinton is a baseball player”). This notion of truth is the thing that separates what is true about the universe from what is false about the universe.

43. Throughout history the most endorsed theory regarding truth has been the Correspondence Theory of Truth: A statement is true just in case there are things in the universe that make it true. The statement corresponds to the things that make it true. The thing(s) that makes the statement true is called its truthmaker. Example: the statement “Her shirt is white” is true because there’s something in the world—the spread of white color on the shirt—that exists and makes the statement true. The statement “Her shirt is red” is false because there isn’t anything in the world that makes it true.

44. Most people think that whether there is something in the world that makes a given statement true is an objectivematter: it’s something that holds no matter whether or not we are aware of it or whether or not we like it. Whether there is something in the universe that makes ‘Earth is between Mars and Venus’ true has nothing to do with our beliefs, thoughts, or prejudices regarding the planets or the words ‘Earth’, ‘is’, ‘between’, ‘Mars’, ‘and’ or ‘Venus’. In fact, it has nothing to do with humans at all; it’s perfectly objective.

45. But the objectivity is complicated. Clearly, whether ‘Tom is famous’ is true does depend on how we view matters: it depends on how we view Tom. But arguably it does not dependon how we view his fame. Whether the statement is true is still perfectly objective. A similar point holds for ‘Tom is tall’ and ‘Tom is strong’ and ‘Tom is a nice guy’. Less obviously: whether ‘It was wrong of Tom to steal the candy’ is true might have a lot to do with how we view matters. It’s tricky to spell out the objectivity of truth so that it doesn’t contravene these more subjective matters.

46. We want to fill in the blank: S knows P = ____________________________ Most everyone agrees on part of what goes in the blank: S knows P = S justifiably believes/accepts P, P is true, … What else goes in there? JTB Theory said ‘Nothing else’, but is that right? Edmund Gettier in 1963 philosophy article: nope.

47. A Gettier Case: Fred sends the kids upstairs to wash their hands before dinner. Fred sits down to dinner with the family and hears some water running. Fred comes to believe that the water is running in the upstairs bathroom. Fred’s belief is true and justified. But, the water Fred heard was coming from the kitchen sink. Fred never heard the bathroom water. Thus, Fred’s belief “The water is running in the upstairs bathroom” is true and justified, but it isn’t knowledge. It isn’t knowledge because it’s just lucky that it came out true.

48. Beliefs False Beliefs True Beliefs JTB JFB K Gettier says: Knowledge is only a subset of JTB, since some JTBs don’t amount to K.

49. Kinds of Knowledge Knowing how (having an ability) Knowing a thing (being familiar with a thing) Knowing a truth or fact (propositional knowledge) Knowing when Knowing where Knowing why Knowing who Knowing what

50. Knowing how: to ride a bike to do long division to make money to raise children Someone knows how to X just in case she has the ability to X or is competent in doing X. Hard cases: temporary/permanent paralysis, football coach