Philo-Pointers PDF

Pointers to Review (Philosophy) Existentialism - It is the importance of free individual choice regardless of the power of the people to influence and coerce our desires, beliefs, and decisions. For example, there is a problem that you need to make a decision, but you should face what would be its...

Pointers to Review (Philosophy) Existentialism - It is the importance of free individual choice regardless of the power of the people to influence and coerce our desires, beliefs, and decisions. For example, there is a problem that you need to make a decision, but you should face what would be its early consequences. Another example is when a person makes a decision about his/her life, follows through, or does not follow through on that decision and begins to create his/her essence. It is said in existentialism that existence comes first, and essence comes second. -The Encounter with Nothingness - According to the existentialists, for individuals alienated from God, from nature, from other people, and even from themselves, what is left at last but Nothingness? Simply put, this is how existentialists see humanity: on the brink of a catastrophic precipice, below which yawns the absolute void, black Nothingness, asking ourselves, “does existence ultimately have any purpose?” -“Fear and Trembling“ and Anxiety - The optimism of the 18th and 19th centuries gives way, after the First World War, to the Great Depression, World War II, and the Holocaust, to a feeling of pessimism, fear, and anxiety. Another kind of anxiety that individuals faced in the 20th century when the philosophy of existentialism developed was “the anguish of Abraham,” the necessity which is laid upon people to make “moral” choices on their sense of responsibility. Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 535 - c. 475 BC) - Known as "The Obscure" or "The Weeping Philosopher" because of his allegedly paradoxical philosophies - Lauded by his viewpoint that change is a fundamental essence in the Universe; believed in an ongoing process of perpetual change, a constant interplay of opposites - Proposed that the whole Universe was made of fire Cosmology seeks to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order. Aesthetics, or esthetics, is the branch of philosophy which deals with the notion of beauty and the philosophy of art. It deals with the nature of beauty, art, taste, and the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensory-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste. Ontology is the investigation into what types of things there are in the world and what relations these things bear to one another. It deals with questions concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences. Political philosophy, or Politics, is the branch of philosophy which studies the concepts of liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why (or even if) they are needed, what makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it should take and why, what the law is, and what duties citizens owe to a legitimate government if any, and when it may be legitimately overthrown, if ever. In Philosophy of Mind, dualism is the position that mind and body are in some definite way separate from each other. That mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical. However, Dualism was most precisely formulated by René Descartes in the 17th century. Descartes was the first to develop the mind-body problem in the form in which it exists today, and the first to identify the mind with consciousness and self-awareness, and to distinguish this from the brain, which was the physical set of intelligence. He realized that he could doubt whether he had a body (it could be that he was dreaming of it or that it was an illusion created by an evil demon), but he could not doubt whether he had a mind, which suggested to him that the mind and body must be different things. Parmenides of Elea (Late 6th century - mid 5th century BC) - Taught Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos - Considered as the founder of the school of either Metaphysics or Ontology - Argued that motion is an illusion - Influenced Western Philosophy like Pythagoras did - His poem, On Nature, was the last surviving evidence of his existence and it, too, survived through fragments of the whole poem - Used a complicated form of reasoning to deny the concept of change and argued that everything that exists is permanent, indestructible, and unchanging Monism is the metaphysical and theological view that all is one, that there are no fundamental divisions, and that a unified set of laws underlie all of nature. The universe, at the deepest level of analysis, is then one thing or composed of one fundamental kind of stuff.  (Sauluhin ) Bonus: Item #4, #21, #25 (Hindi na masi-zero :D)