Introduction to Philosophy

Definition

• Philosophy entails reflecting on the reasons for and interrogating one's beliefs.

Various Disciplines

• Epistemology deals with knowledge and what we know.
• Metaphysics concerns time, God, space, reality, and existence.
• Ethics involves what is considered morally correct.
• Aesthetics pertains to beauty and art.
• Political science studies anarchy and the government.

Methods for Answering Questions

• Commitment to questioning involves skepticism.
• Logical reasoning includes taking a position, providing supportive reasoning, explaining, and analyzing, and reaching a conclusion that follows from the reason.
• Analysis involves conceptual understanding, breaking down concepts, and clarifying them.

Conceptual Analysis

• Concepts are not just singular words but means by which we order experience and make sense of the world.
• The same words can evoke different concepts, or synonymous words can refer to the same concept.
• It is important to consider if a concept has remained consistent throughout an argument, as equivocation can occur.
• Consider the relationships, compatibility, and incompatibility between concepts.

Types of Concepts: ARDL

• Antithetical concepts are contradictory.
• Reconcilable concepts work together.
• Logical implication occurs when one concept implies another.
• Different conceptual categories combine abstract and concrete realms in a sentence that creates no actual meaning.

Evaluative Analysis

• Evaluative analysis assesses the moral value or worth of a concept, targeting a deeper, belief-based level.
• Specific questions matter because of the importance of the notions we value or feel we should.
• Not all values or evaluative concepts are equal.
• Philosophy has a strong normative dimension, focusing not only on what "is" but how things "ought to be."
• Branches of philosophy analyze evaluative questions, which aligns with value theory.
• Conceptual and evaluative analyses can go together.

Positive Underlying Theories

• Always consider counter-examples, phenomena that your theory hasn't accounted for.
• Responses to counter-examples include:
  • "Ad hoc" explanations, which create exceptions to the theory.
  • "Unfalsifiable" statements, which are true by definition, but don't allow room for disproof.

Reflective Equilibrium

• Effort is made to find coherence between general principles and particular judgments in certain cases.
• Counter-examples occur when there are conflicts (e.g., sacrificing one person to save an entire city challenges the general principle of reducing harm).
• This method uses coherence to adjust principles and find a compromise.

Thought Experiments

• Thought experiments include trolley problems.
• E.g., a railway test where the decision must be made between sacrificing 4 people on one track or 1 person on another. Deciding which side the train will go on.
• Philosophy is anti-dogmatic.
• Dogma is a principle or set of principles laid by an authority as incontrovertibly true and not allowed to question said belief.

Free Will and Moral Responsibility

• Free will: The power to choose & have control when making decisions
• Assumption states that nothing determines any decision irrevocably until the very moment that it is take.
• There will always be alternative possibilities/options, so if a choice is exercised, it is done so freely.
• Moral responsibility makes way for choices that are morally correct or responsible. Consequences are involved with the result and are distinct for inanimate objects/animals, etc.

How Free Are We?

• Nature, genes, expression, nurture & their interplay combined result in the kind of individual one is, but interplay isn't necessarily something that is controlled.

Determinism

• Determinism states that the link between cause and effect is subject to natural laws.
• It is not necessarily fate (not 'meant to be' but rather pre-decided).
• Any existing state/event is the unavoidable effect of a preceding state/event, which is in turn the unavoidable of another preceding state/event, etc.
• This grants that entire lives are single trajectories (due to deterministic effects).
• If the theory is true, a choice is made because of a chain of preceding states/events, including desires, brain states, etc. that caused the decision.

Deterministic Interpretation

• States that a decision could not have been made any other way.
• Argues it is unsettling as it implies that individuals carry no moral responsibility since this theorizes that every choice is predetermined.
• States there are NO 'alternative possibilities'.
• There is a large amount of indeterminacy. It is not to be taken lightly that elements of unpredictabiity/randomness come in to play.

Dilemma

• States that IF determinism is true, then the choice should not be the responsiblity of the individual nor the resultant of chance.
• Interventionist Response states that while there is a deterministic world, there is ‘still a reel me’.
• This allows the belief that the real self is what is deciding and choosing things is NOT predetermined.

Compatibilism states

• States that freedom is not necessarily needed so long as the outcome is justified.
• The freedom needed to be morally responsible doesn't get threatened by determinism.
• As long as the actions align with the accident, inadvertence and duress of an individual.

Incompatibilism

• States that it is impossible to have freedom, determinism and responsibility at the same time.
• Determinism would deny any kind of freedom, whereas Incompatibilism and Libertarianism would say its needed.
• There is freedom involving the ability to have done otherwise.
• Free will skeptics question the need of being able to do otherwise.

Consequentialism

• It is a theory of normative ethics that states that the moral value of an action or decision should be judged based on its consequences.
• Asserts that consequences of an act is what ultimately matters when assessing its moral worth.
• Claims that the evaluation should focus on the overall good for society as a who rather than individual gains or losses.

Frankfort Compatibilism

• Another theory for freedom not defined by "the ability to have done otherwise”.
• It operates on the principle of not intervening with a subject in a state, even if one can, is what makes their choice their own.
• Can we rely on consequentialism to be able to reconcile moral responsibility with free will (robust compatibilist).
• If we have the ability to choose a course, but are compelled to perform an action, in the absence of a determining factor, it becomes an action we are responsible for.