Great Philosophers Midterm PDF

PHI1104 GREAT PHILOSOPHERS MIDTERM I. THE BASICS THE PHILOSOPHICAL METHOD - Is a systemic use of critical thinking to find answers to questions about reality, morality, and knowledge. It is the birthright of every person - Fundamental beliefs make up your “philosophy of life”, and the...

PHI1104 GREAT PHILOSOPHERS MIDTERM I. THE BASICS THE PHILOSOPHICAL METHOD - Is a systemic use of critical thinking to find answers to questions about reality, morality, and knowledge. It is the birthright of every person - Fundamental beliefs make up your “philosophy of life”, and they must logically support other beliefs “THE UNEXAMINED LIFE IS NOT WORTH LIVING” - Philosophy means liberation from the dimensions of routine, soaring above the well-known, seeing it new perspectives, rousing wonder, and the wish to fly - We must achieve the “good of the soul, prioritising search/wisdom over wealth, power, etc - The socratic method is a question answer process which would get you closer to the truth LOGIC - An argument is a conversation - If you cannot find shared premises then you can’t find an argument/discussion - Moving from a premise to a claim is called an inference - In an explanation, the thing being explained is assumed to be true (eg: the sky is blue) - This is different from an argument, where the truth is questions - Descriptive versus Normative claims - Usually in an argument, there are implicit premises that may be stated situationally DEDUCTIVE ARGUMENT - Can be valid or invalid, a valid argument has a good structure and an invalid one has a poor structure, the premises can not be proven - (also called sound and unsound) - A deductive argument means that if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. - An argument can be valid but unsound, premises can be untrue, there can be implications in premise that need to be proven/considered/valid - Invalid arguments can have true premises but don’t prove the conclusion INDUCTIVE ARGUMENTS - Never give certainty, only more or less probable. Referred to as stronger or weaker - Inductive arguments are based on probability.. If the reasoning is good enough, the conclusion is likely to be true. If the evidence behind the reasoning is eak, the conclusion is not likely to be true - Inductive reasoning can go on and on and we still wouldn’t know if the conclusion was true - We don’t know everything, we build more and more reasons to increase probability/likelihood, not certainty - Science is vindictive, not guaranteed, mostly everything is unguaranteed INFERENCE TO THE BEST CONCLUSION - Given the premises we have, the best explanation is… - An example of this is evolution MORE ABOUT ARGUMENTS - An argument can have a claim where each premise supports the conclusion (a+b+c= conclusion) - It can also have two claims that must work/stay together in order to to support a conclusion [(1+2)=conclusion] - Premises can also lead to a conclusion (build up) FALLACIES - Confirmation Bias: naturally gravitating towards premises that support claims we already believe in , you want to find the evidence that makes what you already believe true. - Appeal to person: disagree on something because of the characteristics of a person - Strawman: distortion - Equillocation: assigning two different meaning to the same word - Slippery Slope: refusing to take an action due to hypothetical outcomes - Composition: what is true of the parts must be of the whole. Division: what is true of the whole must be true of the parts II.THE PRE-SOCRATICS AND SOPHISTS: How Far Can You Go with Just Reasoning? THALES - He was the first philosopher, 625-447 BCE, at this time philosophy = science, there is no distinction - “Natural explanations of natural phenomena”, reasoning is greater than myths - “EVERYTHING MUST HAVE some underlying substance”, he realised this before anyone else!!! - Decided that it was WATER: water is the source of all that exists and what everything is made of ANAXIMANDER - Thales’ successor, had the same idea that there must be some underlying thing - Said it is not water but something IMPERCEIVABLE and NONEXPERIMENTAL - There is one substance which does not change, we cannot experience it, but it is the building block of our changing world - It can't be air, water, fire, etc because those things are opposed to each other - No stronger force has “won out” between them - It must be something neutral! - If there were no opposites, how could anything appear? - Everything comes from “apeiron” a formless, imperishable substance - Earth is flat in the middle, it has no reason to move since it is in the centre of the universe - First idea of evolution: human babies are too vulnerable, there must have been a time where we were like animals HERACLITUS - The logos are the principle of the world order - Everything flows like a river and is constantly changing “you cant enter the same river twice” - Everything's “in flux”, something in the logos allows a unification despite the change - Logos = a harmony of opposites, one thing cannot exist without the opposite = BALANCE - Cosmos are eternal but have always existed - He wanted to seek out the laws and rules, the logos is the syste of the universe - Things are constantly changing because change is fundamental - “Nothing ever is everything is becoming” - There is no eternal and unchangeable as others are looking for PYTHAGORUS - “Music of the spheres”, heavenly bodies harmonising in space - “Most important thinker of all time” says Bertrand Russel - Pythagorus and his followers believed in the immortal soul and reincarnation, combined ratio and myth - The universe has a mathematical structure (first person to systemize maths!!!) - Everything had mystical significance - Pyhagorus divided people into three sections of worth - 3.People who buy and sell 2.people who strive for glory 1.people who contemplate and objectively analyse; “they are better than everyone because they have escaped the wheel of lies” - “It is not the substance, it's the form of the world that will allow us to understand it”, and the form is numbers - We do not see the numbers, we intellectually apply the structure of numbers to the world (according to Russel this was the origin of rationalism) PARMENIDES - First “rationalist” - Our senses deceive us, says the opposite of heraclitus (who claims that everything is changing), that change is an illusion “something cant come from nothing” - Change is not real - Motion is impossible since there is no empty space Xenos’ Paradox of Motion ** DEMOCRITUS - Come up with an alternative that did justice to the senses - Ancient atomism: atoms moving rapidly in an infinite void - The world is broken up by the void so there’s room for movement - Nature makes the world happen, no need to invoke deities or other agents to explain PROTAGORAS AND THE SOPHISTS - “Man is the measure of all things” - Sophists taught a range of subjects, shift in philosophy to expand further than metaphysics - More naturalistic, relying less on Gods  - morality and law are human inventions - The sophists say that you should live your life by conforming, and you will get into less trouble - Being practical and avoid making claims but learn to prove others wrong (sceptical pragmatism) - Plato says the sophists are too slippery, they don’t seek knowledge for the sake of it, but just for achievement - They live by “believe what is useful or pretend to do so, live by the truth of society” - The sophists are relativists: their truth is dependent on personal/cultural/other beliefs TYPES OF RELATIVISM - Cultural Relativism: values come from our culture, they are learnt, each society will have different values - Individual Situation Relativism: cultural relativism but adjusted the situation people find themselves in, family values, etc - Subjective Relativism: we make up our own values ISSUES - relativism restricts your worldview, something always has to rely on something else - A big issue with subjective relativism is that actions will have no purpose, because there is no real reason to do anything, so they will do NOTHING; - IS something moral just because you believe in it? - OR your actions would be different everyday because there is no reason for consistency - No good because there is no reason to be good - An issue with cultural relativists is you cannot be tolerant, you would have to accept every culture’s belief because there is no moral code - Cultural relativism implies that some actions can go uncriticized since they belong to a culture - Relativism would make two opposing beliefs true at the same time, which is not possible III.PLATO 3.1: THE REPUBLIC INTRO/BOOK 1 - Is it worthwhile to be a good person? - Thrasymacus says “justice is the advantage of the stronger over the weaker” - Socrates disagrees, ruling is an art, and you do better at the art if you achieve the aim of it (eg the goal of medicine isn't money its healing) - Any group of people united for a common purpose is not going to achieve that if each individual is thinking of their own good - BUT: the stronger can still do a bad job, is it still justice if the weaker are unhappy? - Socrates response: if they are acting in their own interest, they can get it wrong, which would be unjust - If you do not know truth what “the interest “ is, then you will always be wrong = unjust  - Socratic method aka abducto al absurdism - In the Republic there is kind of an underlying point that Plato is trying to make, that most people are emotional beings and value persuasion over logic - “People don’t want to go to war, but it's easy to get them to if they think they are in danger” (Goebbles) BOOK 1 AND 2: MORE ON JUSTICE - The way to resolve conflict is to prevent it therefore we need to reconstruct the state!!!! With what principle?!!! BEING JUST!!!!!! - Socrates’ stand: being just pays off, being just = a better life - Thrysamacus disagrees, saying it is easier and you can live better by being corrupt and getting away with it (he says that people don't care about justice they just care about what justice looks like) - Seeming just vs. being just - Socrates uses this as a teaching moment (obviously!) and brings up instrumental vs. intrinsic goods - Instrumental goods produce other things, they are no good by themselves, it's all about what you want from them. Money is an instrumental good - Intrinsic goods are good in themselves, justice is intrinsically good - Socrates says that most people, although they don’t know it, only want instrumental goods because they give them intrinsic goods. Money gives us things we can feel “happy” with, power gives us satisfaction, etc - Thrasymuc bounces back, arguing that appearing just is what does good for you - *the rest of the group is not satisfied with socrates’ answer and Glaucon takes over the argument, trying to restate Thrsyamucas’ points in a way that would make more sense - Glaucon introduces the classic parable of the invisible ring story!!! If you are invisible, you can be evil. Therefore, people are only good because of the consequences. - If we know we wouldn’t get caught, couldn't we do anything (this is an example of psychological egoism) - Glaucon goes onto say that justice is a social construct and that if the invisible ring theory was true, everyone be unjust and would nto feel guilty about it: “men condemn injustice because they do not have the power to commit it, just is a compromise made by the weak to protect themselves” - Socrates says that Glaucon has just made justice instrumental, and argues that if you feel like there are things that you would not do without laws, then his argument is invalid - Morality is non-conventional, human beings would still feel guilt even if there was no structure preventing us from doing things - Defining justice is getting complicated, Socrates decides to take a different approach by asking “what does a perfect/just state look like?” He says that maybe if we can figure this out,, we can extract the REASONS for why it's ideal and from that get a definition of justice in the individual!!!... and that leads us to basically the rest of The Republic BOOKS 3, 4 AND 5 THE JUST STATE - The relationship between justice in the state and justice in the individual… - What Is a Just state? What does it do and why? - While trying to figure out what a just state is Socrates realises two things: (1) that people are dependent on each other and (2) aptitude, different people are good at different things… - Just State according to Scorates/Plato: everyone does what they are naturally suited to do - This is efficient and productive, don’t try to work outside of your specialty - People are divided into three classes; bronze, silver, and Gold aka The Producers, Auxiliaries, and the Guardians - The Producers are manual workers who produce the goods and services of society - The Auxiliaries are soldiers who protect the society (military, law enforcement, etc) - The Guardians are the rulers, 3.2 EUTHYPHRO DIVINE COMMAND THEORY - Starts by Euthyphro saying “we now what is good because God tells us”, “piety is doing what God wants” - BUT what God/religion is true? (we still have this problem today!) - Socrates replies in dialogue.. So what is goodness? Is it beloved by gods because it is good or is it good because it is beloved by Gods - Euthyphro stands by the belief that loving creates holiness, nothing is good until a Good loves it - Socrates: “the leading does not create the led”, something has to exist before it can have a leader - Can goodness be independent from God?, if yes then we don’t need God, we can find goodness on its own (but religion can help act as a guide/enforcer to that already existing good, two ways this can go) - Ultimate argument: if God creates goodness, then God can do anything, and you would be happy to live up to it. If god says kill everyone you would accept it as good - IF your immediate thought is that “God would neve do that”, then you have admitted that whatever “good” is, is separate from God! - MORALITY does not have to be consistent - Therefore, Euthyphro is wrong, the Good is not created by God - Virtue can be accessed through knowledge 3.3 THEORY OF REALITY: RATIONALISM - Plato is the biggest rationalist in philosophy, he has written the “footnotes of western philosophy” - Starting claim: knowledge is not found in most people and is what the majority think. This opinion killed Socrates. This opinion prevents change  - Plato is determined to change it. He decides that knowledge is not what the majority thinks. Virtue = knowledge KNOWLEDGE - Knowledge requires…(1)you believe the claim (2)the claim is true (3)you must know why the claim is true (the most important) - True knowledge can never be change, sense experience changes and deceives us, so our senses can not be true - Therefore, truth must lie in our rationality THE FORMS - Forms are the only truth - Our knowledge is based on the forms of things, not the sensory of them - Example: maths is true even if you cannot see it with your senses - Definitions and forms (kinda similar) Chosky language theory… - Forms are REAl, not just ideas - Before we can apply anything it must be TRUE first and exist on its own as a truth, then our senses apply it to the real world - Our sense version of a thing isn’t form, it’s true form so perfect and changing and we cannot see it - We come “preloaded”, we recognize truths as we learn them - Therefore knowledge is recollection/rediscovery