WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?

1. the study that is based on ideas about life, existence, meaning of life and more.

2. There are 3 big main strands

   • METAPHYSICS
     • The Basics
       • Branch of philosophy concerned with the ultimate nature of reality
       • Considers primary questions like
         • What is this?
         • That, is what exists?
         • what is it like?
       • Considered the first philosophy
     • Common metaphysical theories
       • Idealism
         • The world and everything in it only exists when somebody is observing it (when we stop looking at it, it’s gone!)
           • For instance, if we were to turn our backs on the apple on the table, it's gone.
         • Reality is grounded in the experience of a subject
         • Reality isn’t an objective, independently existing thing! It’s in our minds
           • To a idealist, a concept of a chair is important
             • You can destroy all the chairs in the world but they would still exist in the mind.
               • Does God exist?
                 • There is a lot of people who disagrees with the existence of God on the basis that you can’t just believe in a all powerful being that no one ever saw themselves or on the basis of science
                 • The article:How to Know Immaterial Things Exist
                   • He questioned why we were able to know things that science tells us, but we can’t really know about things that aren’t part of the physical world
                   • He argued that we should be able to have confident knowledge about facts of the immaterial world
                   • There are all kinds of things we know about that have little to do with the physical world but we are aware of them. Friendship. Love. Care. We can’t be sure whether if there is a being or not.
                 • My own opinion
             • The idea of a chair is the ultimate truth
       • Monism
         • Reality is ultimately one unified all-encompassing thing - our thoughts, emotions, etc. All come from one source = our physiology?
       • dualism
         • Reality consists ultimately of two fundamentally different kinds of things or properties (mind/matter or mental/physical)
         • Mind and Body = Separate
         • It was Rene Descartes idea!
     • Models of the mind
       • There are several philosophers, who had a different idea about the mind, how we perceive and our senses.
         • John Locke
           • believed that the mind started off as a blank slate and the mind gains experience through its senses
           • He believed that the way the thinking of the mind diminished by disease, injury or lack of stimulation. He called this the tabula rasa
           • Mind (thinking) is diminished by disease, injury or lack of stimulation
             • His diagnosis of Zasetsky
               • Zasetsky
                 • a man who had gotten shot in the head during a battle but miraculously lived
                 • However, he can’t retain his memory, struggled with speech and writing.
               • Locke believed that his ability to think has been heavily affected and so he can’t perceive or think.
               • He still remains a person because he can still think, reason, and care about his future (to a certain extent)
           • The environment affects perception
           • The mind learns through senses
         • Immanuel Kant
           • viewed the mind as part of a greater whole (ie the world.) He believed that our mind is affected by how the world is and that our experiences in the world shape our mind.
           • Our mind affects our perception of the world. It is just as real as everything else in our world
             • His diagnosis of Zasetsky
               • Since he sustained trauma to his mind, it resulted in distortions in the most basic shapes, familiar properties, shapes and relations of objects in the world
               • There is a lot of deep experiential structure and patterning in Zasetsky’ perception of the world
                 • That is because the human mind has part of the control of the world by giving it meaning and structure to the world.
           • Immanuel Kant views the mind as part of a greater whole (ie the world)
   • EPISTEMOLOGY
     • Episteme = “knowledge” Logos = “Rational study”
     • The study and theory of knowledge
     • This study Considers how...
       • We obtain knowledge
       • What we can know
       • How certain we can be in our knowledge
     • Objective
       • Rationalism
         • Descartes
           • And he only thing he could knew for certain…
             • “I think therefore I am”
               • His arguments
                 • Dream arguments
                   • You can't trust your senses
                     • His support to the argument
                       • This led him to conclude that he couldn't trust his perception whether if the fire exists or not
                       • Even though, there isn't an actual fire, his senses sensed the heat of the fire when he was not near it
                       • In one of his experiences, he had a dream where he sat by the fire and he could feel the warmth of the fire
                   • Your senses can be easily tricked
                   • If I’m touching this item, I can feel it but am I dream then?
                 • Evil demon
                   • Suggested that his body may be under the control of an all powerful being bent on deceiving him
                   • He didn't mean it literally but he said he didn't have a body at all instead a brain fed on information and illusions by the all powerful being
                   • We also can’t trust deductions we’ve made on the grounds of sense perception
                     • By this argument, he meant to explain that the senses can be deceived
                     • We can’t trust our senses to convey true information about the world around us
           • Descartes asked “what can I know for certain?”
             • Nothing, he trusted neither of his senses nor reason
         • What rationalists believe in
           • We enter the world with innate knowledge
             • An example
               • Rene Descartes belived that the mind is innate ideas about God
           • We draw on this knowledge to make sense of our experiences and to create further knowledge
           • Rationalists believe that we acquire additional or higher knowledge through reason
         • Plato
           • Justified true beilef
             • Justification
               • Evidence, or other support, for your belief
             • Belief
               • Proposited attitude of truth
               • To believe something if you think it’s true
               • Belief corresponds to reality so therefore, its true
                 • Example: this is a cat
                   • You do hold the belief that whatever you see is a cat
                     • This belief is justified because you have some sort of evidence to support it
                       • This statement therefore becomes true
             • True
               • The state of either true or false or undetermined
     • Subjective
       • Feminism
         • Mary Wollstonecraft formed her own girls’ school and argued that Kant’s Rousseau’s observation of women and opinion were not accurate
           • but were biased and outdated descriptions inherited through the ages
             • A lot of the thinking that men hold power over women started back then from the hunter/gatherer family. Men were seen stronger so their main jobs were to hunt and to protect the women and children because they’re weak
             • Women were seen better at home and taking care of children instead of working like the other men. Mary Wollstonecraft believed that thought was inherited through teachings to make women stay at home
         • She argued that girls playing dolls with frilly dresses and are delicate was not by nature but because they were nurtured that way
       • Empiricisim
         • John Locke
           • Rejected the idea of innate knowledge
           • Tabula Rasa (Blank slate)
             • John Locke believed that our minds were a blank pieces of paper at birth
             • Mind starts off as a blank slate
             • Mind (thinking) is diminished by disease, injury or lack of stimulation
             • Mind gains from experience (through the senses) which it builds upon
           • To figure out the difference of the senses reflect the world, he created a distinction betwen primary and secondary senses
             • Primary
               • These we would all agree on
               • Qualities physical objects themselves have
                 • shape, figure, motion, number, etc
                   • For example: an apple
                     • It's red
                     • It's round
             • secondry
               • Comes from the act of perception and may vary
                 • colour, temperature, smell, taste, sound
               • Dependent on the viewer
         • The view that knowledge is the product of sense perception, experience, and experimentation
         • George Berkeley
           • Moved by Locke’s Empiricism
           • Looked at primary and secondary qualities
             • You can’t detect primary colours without identifying the secondary qualities (an apple)
               • Therefore, primary qualities are subjective as well
                 • No such thing as matter, just perceptions! So… things exist because we perceive them…
                 • Does this mean that objects cease to exist when no one is there to perceive them? No! He believed things are being perceived constantly by God
               • For example: an apple
                 • You have to see the shape of the apple before seeing the colour
     • Immanuel Kant
       • Senses and reason both play a role in what we know
       • While we take in information, we coordinate these experiences with our knowledge that we already have
       • The mind has innate knowledge of certain concepts
         • Space
         • Time
         • Motion
     • Epistemology
       • Sided with neither rationalism, empiricism, idealism or materialism
       • Charles Peirce, John Dewey and William James
       • They concluded that we use knowledge and formulate our beliefs depending on what is useful to us
         • They believe that that we conduct our lives as though we have instrumental forms of knowledge.
           • Focused on how we should use knowledge in our personal and social experiences
   • Ethics
     • The basics
       • A system of moral principles
       • They affect how people make decisions and lead their lives.
       • Ethics is concerned with what is good for individuals and society and is also described as moral philosophy.
     • Subjective
       • Transcendental
         • “Being beyond comprehension”
         • Morality is passed to us from a Higher power
         • Virtue ethics
           • Emphasizes an individual’s character rather than following a set of rules.
           • What does it mean to be virtuous?
             • Having virtue just means doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, at the wrong amount, toward the right people.
             • There is no need to specific, if you are virtuous you know what is right, how to be virtuous and how to act.
             • Aristotle understood virtue as a set of robust characteristic that once developed will lead to predictably good behavior
               • Vices
                 • Aristotle believed that virtue was between two vices and that virtue is just the right amount
                   • The sweet spot between the extreme excess and extreme deficiency
                     • For example
                       • Courage is the midpoint between the vices of cowardice and recklessness
                         • A courageous person would assess the situation, know their own abilities and take the action that is right in the particular situation
                       • Cowardice is the deficiency of courage
                       • recklessness is the extreme excess
                   • The middle is called the golden mean
         • Transcendental is the branch of ethics that believes morality was passed onto us by a higher power (ie. spiritually or a God.)
         • Divine command theory
           • The belief that what is moral and immoral is commanded to us by the Divine
           • It is “revealed” to us from a divine being (perhaps through scripture, prophets, etc)
             • Environmental ethics
               • Judaism teaches that because animal are apart of God’s creations and should be treated with compassion
                 • By wronging animals, harming animals-you are doing wrong to God.
                   • A Rabi or a Jewish individual would say that it’s not acceptable to illegal dehorn a rhino for medical use because it scientifically has no use and it does not heal anyone.
                   • They believe that the rhino poachers are wronging God because they are harming animals for something that does not fulfill a essential human need.
                   • They recognize that its a unnecessary thing to do and is what harms animals.
               • Humans must avoid causing harm to any living creature because God created a covenant with the animals as well as he did with Abraham and his people
               • However, Judaism teaches that it is acceptable to kill and harm animals if there is only way to fulfill a essential human need.
           • This theory believes that it was “revealed” to us from a Divine being through scriptures, prophets and etc
       • “Something is RIGHT depending on the beliefs, customs, etc of a particular person”
       • Based on self
     • Objective
       • Consequential
         • is a school of thought that is concerned over what action is most conducive to the best outcome is the “moral” choice.
         • It judges whether or not something is right by what its consequences are.
         • Relativism
           • Egoistic Relativism
             • An egoistic relativist would believe that we don’t have to make this decision
             • As long as each of us is fully convinced, in his or her mind, that he or she is living a good life, then we have to avoid telling each other what to think or do
               • Environmental ethics
                 • believes that we don’t have to make the decision on whether rhino poaching is right or wrong. The opinion of others is separate from them and and so it does not affect them
                 • As long as they are convinced that everyone is living a good life then everyone has to avoid telling each other what to think or do
             • Her opinion is separate from me and is unrelated to me, it won’t affect me
           • Social relativism
             • A social relativist would believe that morality depends on what his or her social group believes to be right and wrong
               • Environmental ethics
                 • the morality of dehorning rhino is inhumane because of what their social groups believes to be right and wrong.
                 • This relativist could be living in a 1st world country where they are brought up with the values that we care for our animals more and have compassion for them
                 • They would feel that dehorning rhinos especially not for a essential human need is wrong because there isn’t a reason to hurt these rhinos and let them slowly die
                 • A person raised in a different group could also think it's efficent to sell the horns to provide for their family
             • This would make sense. We have many social groups in society with many differing views and opinions
           • Metaethical relativism
             • Looks at whether or not there are any firm and universal principled
         • Pragmatism
           • that right and wrong is determined by how useful or pragmatic a rule is. Whether that rule is practical and sensible.
             • Environmental ethics
               • In the past, there were few rhino dehorning because there were businesses who would pay for it to have it apart of their traditional medicine.
               • However as we became more experienced, we began to become more aware and compassionate over the pain of rhinos. Which is why in South Africa, they set out a law opposing rhino poaching in 1976.
               • They are aware of the usefulness of the rhinos in South Africa and how it helps the ecosystem as well as local communities and other animals who live in the same habitat as them.
               • it is not practical to poach rhinos because the rule/law that is set out to protect these rhinos are done so to also help us a lot as well
               • Rhino horns have no scientific use in medicine and does nothing. There are no uses for them at all
           • it believes “what works” is right
           • There really isn’t a permanent criteria for morality. They should be re evaluated and improved.
           • Our moral judgements will improve as we gain experience

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