Introduction to Philosophy

Goal of Philosophy

• Philosophy aims to tackle "big questions" that other disciplines do not address.
• These questions include ethics (how we should act), metaphysics (what exists), epistemology (how we know), and logic (how we should reason).
• Knowledge is awareness or possession of information, facts, ideas, truths, or principles.
• Wisdom is the accumulated knowledge of life or an area of activity gained through experience.
• Philosophy acts as a catch-all for academic subjects outside traditional science and humanities.
• Many academic disciplines feature a corresponding philosophy, such as the philosophy of science or history.

Definition of Philosophy

• The word "philosophy" comes from the Greek words "Philo" (to love) and "Sophia" (wisdom), meaning "love of wisdom."
• Pythagoras invented the word philosophy and considered philosophers lovers of wisdom.
• The classical definition of philosophy describes it as the science using natural reason to study first causes or highest principles of all things.
• Philosophy is considered a science because its investigation is systematic.
• Philosophy investigates subjects using natural light of reason, not laboratory instruments or supernatural revelation (theology).
• Philosophy examines all things, unlike other sciences that focus on specific objects of investigation.
• Contemporary philosophy is the critical and rational inquiry into basic principles.
• It is a branch of knowledge devoted to systematically examining concepts like truth, existence, reality, causality, and freedom.

Classification of Philosophy

Branches of Philosophy (Theoretical)

• Metaphysics investigates ultimate reality.
• Ontology studies existence.
• Cosmology studies the universe as a rational system.
• Psychology studies the human mind, mental states, and behavior.
• Epistemology studies the origins, validity, and limits of knowledge.
• Theodicy studies the nature, being, goodness, and justice of God.

Branches of Philosophy (Practical)

• Semantics studies meaning in language.
• Ethics studies moral standards and their effects on conduct.
• Aesthetics studies beauty and the values of art.
• Axiology studies the origin, nature, types, and criteria of values and value judgment.
• Logic is the systematic study of the relationship of ideas, things, or events.

Four Thinking Periods in Philosophy

Ancient-Classical Period Themes

• The period roughly spanned from the 6th BCE to 4 ACE.
• Key themes were change and permanence.
• Thinkers aimed to settle the universe's origin, moving away from myths towards rational explanations.
• Philosophers observed an interplay between change and permanence in the world.
• Due to the focus on nature and the cosmos, this period is described as cosmo-centric.

Socrates

• Socrates is known for his "Socratic method" of inquiry.
• He questioned everyday views and popular Athenian beliefs.
• Some ideas included the immortality of the soul and the need to care for the soul through philosophy.
• Virtue enables one to attain happiness.
• Philosophy plays a very important role in people's lives.
• Self-knowledge can help people open their eyes to their true nature.
• One should contemplate, turn inward, and analyze the values that guide their life.
• The state of one's soul determines the quality of their life.
• Existence consists of the visible (changes) and the invisible (remains constant).
• The soul should rule the body.
• The goal of life should be to be happy through being virtuous.
• For the virtuous, death is trivial because they prioritize their soul and self-knowledge.

Plato

• Plato's philosophical method involved "collection & division."
• Philosophers would collect common ideas and divide them into specific kinds.
• He is known for his theory of forms, asserting that ultimate reality exists beyond the physical world.
• Plato greatly influenced of the Western concept of "self."
• The soul is the most divine aspect of the human being.
• The three parts of the soul are appetitive (sensual), rational (reasoning), and spirited (feeling).
• The Allegory of the Cave proposes the world of senses is filled with change.
• Plato proposed people should look into the world of ideas to find permanence.

Medieval Period

• Medieval philosophy spanned from 400 ACE to 1500 ACE.
• This period was divided into the time of St. Augustine and that of Thomas Aquinas.
• Medieval philosophy is generally labeled as Theocentric, connecting human nature to the reality of God.
• Medieval thought explored faith and reason.
• Faith and reason were radically separated in early medieval thought.
• The domain of faith is substantially different from the workings of reason.

St. Augustine

• Augustine was influenced by Plato's ideas.
• He asserted that Plato's Forms existed as concepts within the soul from a Christian worldview.
• Augustine believed the soul contained the truth and was capable of scientific thinking.
• Augustine defined the self as an inner, immaterial "I" with self-knowledge and self-awareness.
• According to Augustine the human being was both soul and body.
• The body possesses senses through which the soul experiences the world.
• One can sense material things through senses, but the immaterial God is clear only if tuned into his/her immaterial self/soul.
• The aspects of the self included the capacity to be aware of itself, to recognize itself as holistic, and know its unity.
• The human being tends to divine, heavenly matters to ascend and comprehend truths.
• A person who focuses on the physical world is no different from animals.
• A person is similar to God regarding to the mind, and by neglecting its use he/she loses the possibility of reaching lasting happiness.

St. Thomas Aquinas

• Aquinas presented a unique position in the later medieval period.
• Aquinas’s work was expressed in his five cosmological arguments for God's existence in Summa Theologiae.
• The five arguments are:
  • Argument from Motion
  • Causation of Existence
  • Contingent and Necessary Objects
  • The Argument from Degrees and Perfection
  • The Argument from Intelligent Design

First Way - Argument from Motion

• Studying Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas observed objects in motion are put in motion by other objects or forces.
• The argument:
  • Nothing can move itself.
  • Each object in motion requires a mover.
  • Movement cannot continue infinitely.
  • Therefore, the first mover is the Unmoved Mover – God.
• Aquinas starts from an a posteriori position.
• He states that the natural condition for things is to be at rest.
• Motion is unnatural, requiring an external, supernatural power.

Second Way - Causation of Existence

• Aquinas concluded that common sense suggests no object creates itself.
• He argued that there must be an uncaused cause (God) who began the chain of existence.
• The argument:
  • Things exist that are caused by other things.
  • Nothing can be its own cause of itself.
  • There cannot be an infinite string of causes.
  • Therefore, there must be a first uncaused cause called God.

Third Way - Contingent and Necessary Objects

• This argument identifies contingent beings (objects that cannot exist without a necessary being causing its existence) and necessary beings.
• The existence of contingent beings necessitates a being to exist for all contingent beings.
• The argument:
  • Contingent beings are caused.
  • Not every being can be contingent.
  • There must exist a being that is non-contingent to cause contingent beings.
  • This necessary being is God.

Fourth Way - The Argument from Degrees and Perfection

• This argument stemmed out of a unique take the qualities of things.
• Aquinas concluded there must be a perfect standard by which such qualities are measured.
• For any quality, there must be a perfect standard by which qualities are measured.
• The perfection qualities are ultimately contained in God.

Fifth Way - The Argument from Intelligent Design

• We can observe an inherent system in the world which governs all things.
• St. Thomas suggested that there must be a divine architect who planned the universe.
• God is the overall architect of the universe, which depicts the bond between faith and reason.
• Understanding God begins with how humans experience and comprehend the world through human reason.
• All physical laws and the order of nature and life were designed by God.

Modernity

• This period is described as anthropocentric.
• Unlike the medieval focus on God, modernity elevated man to the main concern.
• The concept of faith took a side step for reflections and investigations on human potential.
• The uniqueness of the philosophical time frame rested on the relationship between reason and senses.
• Two camps have been formed because of reason and senses.

1st Camp: Rationalization

• Reason must be cultivated because it aims at the principles behind things, events and issues.
• The role of reason is magnified, to decipher the causes behind every phenomenon encountered in this world.
• Consequently, the senses should not be trusted.
• A discussion that makes uses of information derived from the senses will only end up in contradictions.

René Descartes (1596-1650)

• Descartes, a mathematician and philosopher, is believed to be the most important figure in the intellectual revolution to understand how the traditional systems based on Aristotle were overthrown.
• Descartes had an all-embracing conception of philosophy that encompassed mathematics, physics, psychology and ethics along with metaphysics.
• His metaphysical doubt was that any demon cannot deceive him from the fact of knowing he exists ("I am, I exist"). Descartes' cogito argument was that as long as "I am thinking, therefore I exist."
• He asserted that anything perceived by the senses could not be used as proof as human senses are easily fooled.
• There's a thinking entity that is the act of doubting. One knows his self through thought.
• He claims the self is:
  • Constant.
  • Not prone to change or affected by time.

  • The immaterial soul remains the same .
    

• He asserted that this thinking entity could exist without the body because it is an immaterial substance. But this immaterial substance (self) posseses a body and is intimately bound/ joined to it.

2nd Camp: Empiricism

• This rejects the role of the reason and prefers using the senses in knowledge productiom.
• The empiricist camp believes that any knowledge without the senses is impossible.
• Empiricism claims that the information provided by senses should be underestimated.
• The capacity of senses should be harnessed and delevlped so we can better know the world.

David Hume (1711-76)

• Hume was a skeptic in the early modern period.
• Hume suggests that "impressions" are more forceful or vivacious than ideas, but some ideas do take on enough force and vivacity to be called impressions and make indistinguishable from impressions.
• Impressions are clearly distinguished by always that idea are causally dependent on impressions.
• Hume strived to create a total naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Against philosophical rationalists, Hume held that passion rather than reason governs human behavior.
• Hume argued against the existence of an innate ideas, which solely grounded from experience.

Conceptual Points

• Feelings &Reason: The key thing that what we need to get right in life is feeling rather than rationality and Whatever that what we aim for Reason is the slave of passion.
• Religion: Hume believes, It’s not rational to believe in God. He thinks there were no compelling reasons for the existing of God.
• Common Sense: Hume is skeptic about some common sense.

Ethics Morality is not having moral ideas. its having trained in the early years , the art of decency through emotions.

• Bundle theory describe “self” or a person as a bundle or a collection of different perceptions that are moving in a very fast a successive manner.
• Hume’s theory denies the Cartisian Material soul and his exeperiences.
• He concludes that the "self" is merely made up of successive impressions.
• Hume divided the mind's perceptions for degree.
• Perceptions are most strong that enter sesnes. . Ideas are more forcible for express dat that were percieved.
• He argues that if you can directly know, then what you know are mere objects of what your senses are experiencing.
• For Hume, the "self" was nothing but a series of incoherent impressions received by the senses Hume's self is watching one's life for observer.

John Locke

• Locke believed that the "self" is identified with this conscious and includes memories of experience.
• His theory of personal identity allows Locke to justify accountabilty.
• Since the person is the self in the passing of time, she can be accountable for past behaviors and however, She can remember for it.

Immanuel Kant

Views "self" is transcendental.

• The self is the body.
• Despite being transcendental, the body and its attributes is what gives root to the self.

Two kinds of consciousness of self (rationality):

• Conscience of one self and one's psychological states in inner world.
• Conscience of one self and one's status which is what connects to the external world
• Defended that bodies are outside objects ; souls are inside object.
• Two components of the self:
  • Inner self : Rational intellect and psychological state.
• Other selves: Sense and physical world.

• Kant the (self) organizes 3 ways : • Raw input. • Recognizing concerts •Reproduction in the imagination.

Post-Modernity

• Post-modernity means 'after modernity' and after philosophy.
• The post-modern milieu does not have a singular center point of focus.

Convince that a mind cannot achieve that the specific locations/contexts can contribute in the table of discussion/

Sigmund Freud

• His most important contribution specially in psychoanalysis where those who that feel have.

• The vast majority of European philosophers before Freud .

• Said that humans are having self/soul/was an entity.

• The notion is that it Is undated and unaffected.

• Freudian is not really expectance single entity on what put towards that self.

• His work in psychoanalysis was groundbreaking to answer something people what could before .

• In structure division Freud distinguish - 3 levels • Conscious : Awareness of percent and past . • Pre- Conscience or related. • Unconscious : that is retained and not available to all.

• Central to Freud’s psychanalticanly theory •A repose Tory,traumatic reposed memories, . •The source anxiety -provoking drivers that is socially or ethically.

Psychoanalytic Theory:

• To explain the model ID: operates on pleasure principal . If very well impulse Confluencees :operated according t o the reality a ego
• Super ego it incorporates values and morale

The superego consist of 2systems. Consciences deal .

• **

Ego defense mechanisms:

| Projection | It’s when you put feelings toward soemthing with out knowing, | She feels attraction for him but does not know him to her. | | Repression | It a person can not think straight from thoughts. | There an accident she does remeber | | Sublimation |Rechannel some socially acceptability into a construction activities | a mother turns herself and became president | | Supp ression |Its when unpleasant feelings from ones. | I dont want to think about it now | | Undoing | Cancel one intolerable
| Joe is nervous job and b yells flowerwife |

Psychosexual Development

• Oral (0-18months)

• It has to do with the enjoyment of speaking Beahviors: dependency, eating, crying, biting Develops body image, aggressive drives -Too much or little satisfaction can cause oral Oral receive: smoke,drink .over eat. Oral aggressive, having and bad words. Or aggressive Anal (18-3 old) : It have all to the enjoy of ones parts as what. Behaviors: control of holding on or letting go power, punishment’ concern with cleanliness or being dirty anal retentive is obsession with power anal expulsive: is whe the what more or organize. Phallic 3-6 Pleasure Has to do with some sexuality’ Behaviors to the enjoyment Develops fear of punishment.

• Gilbert Ryle where the was the book . Where that states that metal was spertable of p. the distinction mind and matter A "category mistake"

Ryle's points against Descartes' theory are:

-- The relation between mind and body are not isolated processes .

• That M. are not acts are distinct actions from each .
• -According Ryle, It's a"dogmatic,

Paul church land — materialist view or the belief matters

• The church land view the In material. Idea

That idea mind or soul is not in consonance With the.

Maurice m