History of Western Philosophy in Five Minutes

History of Western Philosophy in Five Minutes Video

Philosophy 1010 Class #1 - 6/10/2010 Title: Introduction to Philosophy Instructor: Paul Dickey E-mail Address: pdickey2@mccneb.edu Website: http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/NCW/dickey.htm Prefix/Section: Phil 1010 – SA Begins/Ends: 6/10/2010 – 8/12/2010 Meeting Day/Time: TH 5:30 – 9:55 PM

http://www.coursesmart.com/9780495103097 Reading Assignment for 6/17/2009: Velasquez, Philosophy: A Text With Readings (11e) Chapter 1 Text: Website: http://college.cengage.com/site_engine/#053874197X/philo:shell

Introductions • Syllabus • Assessment Quiz • Break • Discussion / Videos • Writing Assignment

Philosophy Begins with Wonder! Wonder is an emotion comparable to surprise and awe that people feel when perceiving something rare or unexpected. It is specifically linked to curiosity and is the emotion leading to philosophy and science. Video

What is a Philosophical Question?

What is true love? – Is beauty a matter of fact or a matter of taste? – Is there a God? – What do I want to do with my life? – What is the purpose of art? – Is there a difference between health and beauty? – Do I want to be beautiful? – Is everything I think I know true? -- Is lying always wrong? -- Does every question have an answer? – Do I have to accept reality or can I determine my own reality? -- Why can’t people just get along together? – Who should take care of the environment? -- What would happen if there were no government? – Why do bad things happen to people? -- What is the meaning of my life? – Will getting married make me more or less free? Is love more important than freedom? …. What is true love? …..

Why are these questions philosophical questions? What the characteristics of these questions so that we say they are philosophical? Is there a difference between philosophical questions and scientific questions? Is there a difference between philosophical questions and speculation?

Questions, So Many Questions … What Kind of Questions are These Anyway? • May be deeply personal • Answers cannot be “proven” but some opinions make more sense than others and generally arguments can be given for our views (thus, they are not entirely subjective) • Necessary to ask for our world to “make sense” • Often confuse us • We have to answer for ourselves. • We cannot expect everyone to agree with us and they may also have good arguments for their views • Throughout our life we may have to reconsider our answers

Some Shots at Defining Philosophy . . . • Do these definitions give YOU a satisfactory understanding of what the lady on the beach is doing? • Philosophy is an activity people undertake when they seek to understand fundamental truths about themselves, the world in which they live, and their relationships to the world and to each other. …www.fsu.edu (Florida State University) • Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence. … In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the forest possible.…Ayn Rand, Philosophy, Who Needs It (p. 2)

What is Philosophy? • Well, maybe…. • Philosophy is the “audacity of hope” for obtaining knowledge and wisdom about the world and about ourselves. – Yes, we can! (Thanks, Barack.) • Philosophy is the application of critical reasoning to our wonder about the world and ourselves. • Philosophy is the willingness to ask questions about what we have assumed we already know. • Philosophy is each individual person’s opportunity and responsibility to live their own life, to be who they are, to become autonomous.

What is Philosophy? • “We can help one another to find out the meaning of life. But in the last analysis , the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for ‘finding himself.’ Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can only discover from within.” ….Thomas Merton • “The unexamined life is not worth living.” • “The only thing I know is that I know nothing.” • ….Socrates

Is Philosophy Important to Living a Good Life? Some claims for Studying Philosophy – Do you agree? Why or why not? • Philosophy enlarges our understanding of the world and expands freedom of thought. Philosophy can release us from the "prejudices derived from common sense", from the "habitual belief of an age or nation", and from convictions that have grown up "without the cooperation or consent of (our) deliberate reason". (Russell) • Philosophy may help develop the capacity to look at the world from the perspective of other individuals and cultures. It develops tolerance and critical sense. • By discussing political and social issues, philosophy raises public awareness and helps in forming engaged and responsible citizens.

Is Philosophy Unavoidable? Philosophy is not a bauble of the intellect, but a power from which no man can abstain. Anyone can say that he dispenses with a view of reality, knowledge, the good, but no one can implement this credo. The reason is that man, by his nature as a conceptual being, cannot function at all without some form of philosophy to serve as his guide. …Leonard Peikoff

The Father of Western Philosophy? • Socrates, 460-399 B. C. • Socrates was both a real philosopher and the major character in Plato’s (his student’s) dialogues. Thus, it is not clear to what degree Socrates was a precursor to Plato’s ideas or was a mouthpiece for Plato to put forward his own views. • There were many Greek thinkers (actually known as “The Pre-Socratics”) prior to Socrates who developed profound insights into the nature of the universe and man’s place in it. • Most importantly though, Socrates' deserves credit for inventing rigorous, ethical investigation. His conversations with his fellow Athenians, as recorded by Plato, are the first records we have of an individual, by his own careful reasoning, trying to discover the guiding principles of moral choices.

What is the Socratic method? • “Teaching by Asking Instead of by Telling” • More than anyone prior to him however, Socrates built a reputation on questioning conventional beliefs, thus embodying the nature of philosophy itself. • Socrates engaged himself in questioning students in an unending search for truth. He sought to get to the foundations of his students' and colleagues' views by asking continual questions until a contradiction was exposed, thus proving the fallacy of the initial assumption. • This became known as the Socratic Method, and may be Socrates' most enduring contribution to philosophy. Video

Plato’s Dialogues & the Socratic Method • Plato’s dialogues demonstrate the Socratic Method. • In The Euthyphro, Plato shows Socrates questioning traditional religious beliefs and the nature of religious duty. He asks: what makes a thing holy? Is an act holy because it is loved by the godsor do the gods love what is holy because it is holy? If the first, are the gods capricious and random and be able to select anything to be holy? If the latter, then we have not answer the original question at all. • In Plato’s The Republic, Socrates questions Thrasymachus who states that justice is whatever is to the advantage of the strong, that “might makes right.” Socrates asks what if the powerful pass laws that in error do not benefit themselves. Would not justice then be following laws that do not benefit the strong?

Plato’s Dialogues & the Socratic Search for How to Live • Plato’s dialogues demonstrate Socrates’ pursuit of how one should live. • In The Apology, Socrates claims that the wisest man is he who knows he does not know. The unexamined life is not worth living. It is better to obey God than man. His pursuit of philosophy is following the instruction of God. • In Crito, Socrates is awaiting execution in his prison. Crito arrives and tries to persuade Socrates to escape. In order he says to act on reason alone, he asks Crito what is right and wrong. Socrates argues we must obey the laws of the society in which we live. Video

Plato 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.

Plato & The Allegory of the Cave • Plato was a student of Socrates. To better understand what philosophy is, he describes the nature of philosophy in the Allegory of the Cave. • Plato compares the state of man’s ignorance to living at the bottom of an underground cave chained so that such men cannot move. All they see are shadows created by a fire behind them. • Through this symbolism, he then describes the act of philosophy which he likens to the prisoners being freed from their chains. • Plato is suggesting to us that this process is the “ascent of the mind into the domain of true knowledge.” Plato suggests that the aim of philosophy is freedom from unwarranted belief.

The Allegory of the Cave Video

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What Are the Major Fields of Philosophy? • 1. Metaphysics is “the study of reality or existence.” • Does God Exist? • Does man have a soul? If so, is it immortal? • Are humans free to choose for themselves, or are all human acts determined?

In general, there are two kinds of metaphysical questions: • - What is all of reality? • - What are important parts of reality? • On the first, a Christian and an atheist might differ like this: • Christian: All of reality is divided into two parts: a higher part, the realm of God, that is eternal, perfect and non-material and a lower part, the human realm, that exists in time, is imperfect and material. • Atheist: All of reality is matter, that which the sciences can measure and describe. • On the second: • Christian: God, Heaven, Hell, the physical universe, the human body and soul are important parts of reality. • Atheist: The physical universe is the only reality and has only two parts, the living and the non-living.

Monism Monism is the view that all of reality is one kind of thing. If, for example, you believe that all of reality is matter, or that God is the only reality, then you are a monist. The first philosophers (Pre-Socratics) like Thales (c. 600 BCE) Pythagoras (c. 550 BCE) and Heraclitus (c. 500 BCE), were monists. Thales' belief that "All is Water" is considered the first philosophical statement because it explains reality, "All", in non-religious terms. Every previous description of all of existence relied upon stories rooted in religious traditions. Typically, most monists are materialists. In other words, they believe that the single unifying feature of reality is matter. Holding this view, materialistic monists argue that there is no God, Heaven, Hell, soul, or any other "spiritual" part of reality.

Dualism Dualism is the view that all of reality is divided into two kinds of things. Thus, if you believe that all of reality is divided between the realm of God and the physical universe, or that there is a "higher world" and a "lower world", or that reality is composed of spirit and matter, you are a dualist. In general, most Christians are dualists. They hold that reality is divided into two parts. Our souls are eternal and non-material; our bodies, like the physical universe, are temporal and material. Plato's view of reality is often termed dualistic, that is, he saw reality "dual", divided into two parts. The higher part of reality consisted of perfect and eternal truths which he called Forms. Plato held that all physical things are imperfect copies of Forms. Thus, all physical triangles are imperfect copies of the Form of Triangle.

What Are the Major Fields of Philosophy? • WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! • (or rather, in contrast to other areas of study such as biology where biology studies a particular domain, Philosophy does not necessarily have agreed upon assumptions that it can rely on to define any domain of study. Thus, metaphysics is more accurately “a collection of questions that seem to group together about what is real and what reality is like.” • NOTE: Biology is the study of life or living matter in all its forms and phenomena. To do biology, scientists thus must work with an agreed upon view of what is life.

What Are the Major Fields of Philosophy? • 2. Epistemology is “the study of knowledge.” • (or rather….) • What is the structure, reliability and kinds of knowledge we have? • What is the meaning of truth? • Is scientific knowledge different than other forms of knowledge? • Is the nature of knowledge different based on gender?

In general, philosophers have explained knowledge in three ways. • Empiricists argue that all knowledge begins with the senses. • Rationalists argue that is possible for the mind, independently of the senses, to gain knowledge. • Skeptics explain knowledge by saying that little if anything is known for certain.

If you believe that everything you know can be traced back to information that you saw, heard, touched, smelled or tasted, then you are an empiricist. If you believe that you have knowledge of God, heaven, hell, spiritual aspects of reality, or anything else that didn't come to you through your senses, then you are a rationalist. Some rationalists like Plato (427-348 BCE) hold that we are born with knowledge; other rationalists like St. Augustine (354-430) believe that God, during our lives, makes it possible for our minds to know truths that could not be gained through our senses. If you don't know for certain that the material world exists, or that the principles of science qualify as genuine knowledge or that God exists (or doesn't exist) then, on each of those issues, you are a skeptic.

What Are the Major Fields of Philosophy? 3. Ethics is “the study of values and morality and how they relate to conduct.” (or rather….) What is the nature of man’s obligation to other men? How should we live to be good? What responsibilities do governments have to their citizens? Is man essentially selfish? Or can he be motivated by principles beyond his own self-interest?

Ethics comes from the Greek word ethos for character. Ethics is the study of the nature of morality and immorality, of how humans should, and should not, act. A central ethical question is, what is the source of moral values? Here are three of several possible answers: • 1. Moral values come from God. If you hold this position, then odds are that you believe that genuine moral values are unchanging and universal. What is right, has always been right; what is wrong, has always been wrong. God's laws apply to everyone, in all cultures. This position would make you a moral absolutist.

Moral values come from societies. If you hold this view, then you probably believe that moral values can legitimately vary from culture to culture. Each society can have its own standards of ethical behavior. What is right for the Chinese, may be wrong for Brazilians, and vice versa. This position would make you a moral relativist. • Moral values are determined by the utility or usefulness of an action to promote everyone’s best interest. If you hold this view, then you are a utilitarian. Utilitarianism was supported by, among others, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873).

A Second Opinion… • What is Philosophy? • Graham Priest, • Professor of Philosophy • University of Queensland Video

Writing Assignment Worth 5 points in Participation Category. Pose a philosophical question that is important to you and attempt to answer it in 250 words or less. Please do not use any sources. Just use your own reflection.

History of Western Philosophy in Five Minutes