Intro to Philosophy The Entire Set of Notes For The Class Objectivism 500 B C Athens led by Pericles defeat Persians Golden Age 500 About 400 B C 3 Factors Disintegrate Athens 1 Corruption of the Assembly Sopishts Rhetoric 2 Death of Pericles loss of honored ruler didn t help stop corruption 3 Peloponnesian War Athens v Sparta and other city states Socrates 470 399 B C Recruited into the army Known for his physical endurance Taught philosophy after the war on street corners Wisest Socrates puzzled 1 I think I know but do not Sophists 2 I know I don t know Socrates 3 Highest Level of Knowledge I know and know I know Dialectic Method Oracle of Delphi the Athenians go to her and ask who they should turn to Socrates is Socrates asks Judge What is justice and then challenges his response with another question his questioning was misunderstood and the Assembly was angered Example Charges Against Socrates 1 Corruption of the youth 2 Impiety to the Gods See The Apology Condemned to drink hemlock Has chance to escape but It is better to suffer in injustice than to commit one two wrongs don t make a right Plato s Metaphysical Theory of Forms Philosophers Good Truth Justice Beauty Humanity Sophists Animals Plants Inanimate Objects Greatest of all forms Not held in particular forms more lofty than humans Half physical Half Mental 100 particular pure and simple Truth Justice Beauty make the world a better place GOOD The form of the good is like the sun Ultimate illumination of the good shining down on Side Note Epistitonomy Truth Asthetics Beauty Ethics Justice Philosopher who opens self up to make self as complete and realized as possible Sophists in a sense are pursuing nothing Ex A plant burrowing under and hiding from the sun everything else Ignorance Naturalism Aristotle 384 322 B C Macedonia northern Greece His father was the main physician in King Philip s court So he received some of the top education and quickly outgrew teacher s knowledge and was sent Plato s academy Leaves the academy after Plato s passing and ends up tutoring Alexander The Great After that Aristotle opens the Lyceum in Athens and outshines Plato s academy Becomes known as the philosopher Leaves Athens in fear for his life and dies in Macedonia Aristotle s 4 Famous Causes Combined Form and Matter Rationalism and Empricist 1 Material Cause physical presence of matter ex lump of clay 2 Efficient Cause Mechanical push pull on matter ex Potter s hands 3 Formal Cause Physical Shape ex clay slowly becomes pot 4 Final Cause Alpha and Omega idea definition or concept ex original thought and final product Potentiality Inanimate Objects Plant Animal Humans Actuality Shape Shape and Growth Shape Growth Learn Shape Growth Learn Intellect Intellect ability to take particulars and abstract them into general concepts which can be communicated by reason and language Soul capacity to be alive The Human Soul Rational Perceptive Nutritive Metaphysics Social Relativism Hall and Ames Confucian and Buddhist Thought Confucianism Confucius 551 479 B C What am I Loyalty to authority Practical Behavior Taoism Emphasis on manners and social interactions Lao Tzu Born and Died during Zhou Dynasty Tao Te Ching Manual of Taoism Hermit live a life of contemplation Tao embracing of opposites source of all existence o Examples Powerful and Humble Seen and Unseen Man and Women Yin and Yang Finding the Tao ultimate balance Buddhism Siddhartha Guatama Buddha 563 483 B C Most of influence in India Seeker of knowledge pleasures and the lack of etc Four Noble Truths o Suffering o Redemption release o Embrace Suffering o Middle Way Indulgence and Asceticism Yin and Yang Symbol Both black and whites have a little bit of each other in them Individual Relativism Metaphysics Jean Paul Sartre 1905 1980 Studied Martin Heidegger Divided between o Theist Do not find god by way of revelation must be found by a leap of faith o Atheists without god more intellectual and morally responsible Existentialism Existence proceeds Essence Forms Particulars Existence come into being from the blueprints of its essence Two Realms Being The World I Free Will Choose Moment of Clarity I create myself pathway from authentic to authentic Example A platoon leader choosing a soldier to go on a mission that may ultimately end in his demise choosing who lives and who dies Responsible for Self I am responsible for everyone God s loss is tragic if there was a God there would be a plan and it would all be smooth Inauthentic Anguish Anxiety Loneliness sailing Epistemology Empiricism Approach to Epistemology G E Moore 1873 1958 Kant Scandal of Philosophy which is the problem of the external world The mind conforms to objects In order to see the real world the objects must conform to the mind Moore asks what is the external world 1 Does it mean external to my body 2 External to my mind 3 Things met with in space things external to all minds Moore s Argument This is a hand here is another hand Conclusion external objects exist Review An Argument Premises and conclusion must be different You must know the premises to be true Conclusion must follow the premises Critics of Moore 1 Moore misses the point 2 Moore is taunting the skeptic 3 Moore is arguing in a circle Here is a hand here is another External objects exist Defenders of Moore argument Critics say that Moore is presupposing that a hand is an external objects 1 Noting the impossibility the regress of justification Moore is quite justified in his 2 The Skeptical Scenario is plausible but not as plausible as Moore s claim Direct Realism idea that somehow the world comes to us just as is Representational Realism can t gloss over the problem of knowing the representation of the world Bertrand Russel 1812 1970 Appearance Sense Data v Reality Physical Matter The table looks different from different angles and directions So what is the real table behind all this matter the real table if there is one is not immediately known to us at all but must be an inference from what is immediately known The reality of the table in the sense that there is a table depends on a process of inference based on a knowable part of reality the part Russell calls sense data Sense data are not the same as our sensations Sense data are the things that are immediately known to us in sensation George Berkeley 1685 1753 If you are going to be an empiricist you must trust your senses Reality in the external world is nothing it does not exist This leaves us left with
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