Spring 2011 Philosophy of Human Nature Lecture Notes

Back to Human Nature

January 11, 2011 (1)

1. Three Web Sites!
2. Course Goals
3. Roll Call
4. Schedule, Grading Schemes, Wiki, Study Questions
5. Philosophy

What is Philosophy?

Philosophy is a discipline of inquiry directed toward a wide range of basic questions about the nature of the universe and our experience in it. It involves a turn toward "basic questions". It also involves meta-level cognition.

Philosophy uses general tools of reasoning and knowledge to answer basic questions and to develop theories about the nature of reality, both as a whole and in parts.

Philosophy is an activity that involves the use of thought, experience, and judgement to order one's life and thinking about the universe.

Philosophical Methods

Go to Philosophical Methods

Go to General Overview of Critical Thinking Concepts

What is Real? (1st Exercise)

In small groups, generate a list of criteria or a definition for calling something "real". Then try to figure out if you can find reasons for preferring one set of criteria or definition over another.

January 11, 2011 (2)

Continuation of "What is Real?"

Try to keep track of methods used, report on distinctions made, questions which arose, cases considered, principles which were proposed to fit cases, etc.

Review of Socrates' life and methods

Socrates as an image of the philosopher. Review of Enclycolpedia Channel, and MM McCabe

Elenchus -- Maieutics -- Aletheia

Socratic Method -- value of discovery of ignorance, value of the examined life / life spent examining.

Structure of Philosophy

Fields of Philosophy and major questions

Logos, Mythos, and Theos

How is philosophy related to and different from science, theology, and literature?

Course matters

How timeline assignment works.

Questions on grading schemes

January 18, 2011 (3)

Logos, Mythos, and Theos

locating philosophy in relation to Mythos and Theos

Logos (Human culture associated with discovery of truths about a wide range of objects)

Associated with Philosophy, Interpretation, and Science

Requires belief in the truth of conclusions.

Aspires toward rational knowledge.

Theos (Human culture associated with our relationship to totality and to the divine)

Associated with Religion.

Commitment to truth of beliefs, but no longer typically asserted as directly comparable to forms of rational knowledge such as science.

Includes both individual and communal experience which produce insight and knowledge about important matters in life.

Mythos (Human culture associated with myth and story in drama, books, and other media.)

Typically associated with fiction, but includes dominant myths of the culture.

Does not require belief in the reality of objects in the story.

Claim to truth derived from indirect reference.

It is important to acknowledge that these three areas of culture interpenetrate each other extensively. There are stories and philosophies at work in religions. Philosophy attempts to purge itself of narrative, but some say that is never successful. And story telling almost always seems to imply a view of life and a hence a range of philosophies.

Additional details/questions from R1: distinction between philosophy and science, branches of philosophy.

Plato, Euthyphro

• Summary of the dialogue.
• How does Socrates come across in this dialogue?
• Euthytphro 10

Group Exercise on Objectivity

In your small groups, consider the nature of objectivity from Euthyphro 10. Begin my making a list of things that are what they are because we say so (subjective), as opposed to things that are what they are independently of what we think about them (objective). At first, generate your list without raising any questions about the items. Then, after you have 15-20 items, go back and look at the list. What principle distinguishes the subjective from the objective items? Is the distinction clear in all cases. Try to say what is difficult about the mixed cases. Use your analysis to start coming up with a view about the nature of objectivity and subjectivity.

Philosophical Methods

We'll briefly highlight the philosophical methods we saw in the 1st group exercise on the "real" (lists, definition, using a principle to distinguish cases), and connect it with the methods we used in the exercise above.

Also, I will work in some review of argument theory since the next, and main, philosophical methods we will on are reconstruction or rationales and critical response to points of view.

We'll start with these concepts:

• claim
• rationale
• argument
• explanation

January 20, 2011 (4)

Review of Apology

• main story, accusations, defense.
• What is the image of Socrates in this dialogue? The image of philosophy.

Group Discussion

Today's group exercise doesn't involve doing philosophy, so maybe we'll just have the discussion as one big group. I'd like you to use the image of Socrates in the Apology to think about the nature of philosophy.

• Is Socrates a blasphemer by virtue of his activity?
• Is Socrates a hero for you in Plato's depiction, a really eccentric crank who finally had to be put down, or something in between?
• Does Philosophy have to be radical?

Introduction to Platonic Metaphysics

Plato's answer to the question, "What is Real?"

The real is what persists through all changes and manifestations.

Key Elements of Plato's Worldview

1. Essential Definitions

Through the project of giving essential definitions (relentlessly asking, "What makes all instances of X (horses) "X" (capable of having the word "horse" predicated of it), Plato is led to focus on form as persistent reality.

2. Mathematics and the structure of reality. Independently of the search for essential definitions, one might reason that abstract relationships underlie reality. (Show parabola video, or first 1:38 of it. [1])

Plato holds that mathematics is a tool for seeing the deep structure of reality.

3. Hierarchy of reality in the process of enlightenment.

Following to some degree from the first two commitments, Plato recognizes that things "participate" in reality to different degrees. This applies to both reality and to the forms of intellect we bring to it. The two main images of the "hierarchy of reality" in Plato's thought are in the Allegory of the Cave and the Divided Line.

Allegory of the Cave -- The Allegory of the Cave gives us an image of the implications of Plato's metaphysics for his view of human existence. We'll read the Allegory (Republic 514) and discuss it briefly in class. [2]

Divided Line

Philosophical Methods

Review of Philosophical Methods

Don't forget Crtical Thinking review articles on main page. General Overview of Critical Thinking Concepts

Critical Response in light of Socrates' fate.

January 25, 2011 (5)

We have more Platonic metaphysics to talk about, but today's class is pretty busy getting started with Epistemology and Plato's Symposium.

Epistemology

Epistemology is the study of the grounds and nature of human knowledge.

Types of Knowledge

Propositional:

Know-how:

Knowledge by acquaintance:

Defining Knowledge as "true, justified belief"

Consider all three factors.

Cases of having a good justification, but not truth.

Cases of having truth, but the wrong justification.

Gettier Cases [3]

Small Group Exercise

The goal of this philosophy work is to get yourselves to be very specific about the reasons why you might claim that some of your beliefs are "knowledge". Note that this is a belief about your beliefs.

1. (5 min) Start by looking at the following list of knowledge claims from Rauhut and, for each, discuss the kind of knowledge involved (develop a vocabulary for classifying, but also consider vocabulary from your reading (propositional, know how, and acquaintance), the degree or type of certainty involved, and whether you could be proved wrong. Group similar knowledge claims.

1. I know that I have two hands.
2. I know that my parents will never get divorced.
3. I know that other people experience the smell of coffee just as I do.
4. I know that Joe Montana is a better quarterback than John EJway.
5. I know that water is H,0.
6. I know that all people are created equal.
7. I know that dinosaurs have existed on Earth in the past.
8. I know that there are nine planets in our solar system.
9. I know that Michael Jackson was an emotionally troubled man.

2. (7 min) Pick one or two of these claims or any that might have come up in your discussion and divide the group so that some members are sceptics and others defend the status of the claims as knowledge. What strategies do the sceptics wind up using? What lines of argument are open to the defenders of knowledge?

January 27, 2011 (6)

Skepticism, Empiricism, and Rationalism

global vs. local skepticism

global scepticism as self-refuting if claimed as a truth

Descartes, Meditation 1

Descartes' Approach in Meditation 1

"But I have sometimes found that these senses played me false, and it is prudent never to trust entirely those who have once deceived us. ...

But surely he's not wrong about the fact that he's sitting there . . .

"But in thinking about it carefully, I recall having often been deceived in sleep by similar illusions, and, reflecting on this circumstance more closely, I see so clearly that there are no conclusive signs by means of which one can distinguish clearly between being awake and being asleep, that I am quite astonished by it; and my astonishment is such that it is almost capable of persuading me that I am asleep now. "

composite things can be deceiving (note argument about painters, imagination), so "This is why perhaps that, from this, we shall not be wrong in concluding that physics, astronomy, medicine, and all the other sciences which depend on the consideration of composite things, are most doubtfuJ and uncertain, but that arithmetic, geometry and the other sciences of this nature, which deal only with very simple and general things, without bothering about their existence or non-existence, contain something certain and indubitable. ... I. For whether I am awake or sleeping, two and three added together always make five..."

It is possible that an all powerful God deceives me about even mathematics.

Descartes, Meditation 2

Archimedian Point: Cogito. I cannot be deceived into thinking that I am, so my knowledge that I am is certain.

What else can I know with certainty aside from the Cogito? That I doubt, perceive, affirm, deny, will, imagine, feel.

Wax Example: establishing that knowledge of objects is "clear and distinct"

Group Exercise on the Possibility of Being Radically Wrong about our Knowledge of the World

Continue the discussion of the possibility of being radically deceived about your experience in light of Descartes' first two Meditations. Identifying each others' views and help members of your group to develop several discrete arguments on the question (please record these in notes). Then transition the discussion to "sources of certainty." Consider not only different ways (from simple to profound) that you could be wrong about the world, but also the different degrees of certainty you have about aspects of your world (from least certain to most certain). Where does the cogito fall?

Beginning the Symposium (1)

Greek homosexuality - Livius Article.

Setting: Drinking Party, Speeches on Love

Phaedrus: Love is a great God. There is One Love. Love motivates the lovers to virtue. No lover wants to look bad in front of their beloved. "In truth, the gods honor virtue most highly when it belongs to Love." 180B

Pausinius: There are two loves: Urania - Heavenly Aphrodite and Pandemos - Common Aphrodite. Love itself is neither good nor bad. Defends Greek practice. Love's character depends on the behavior it gives rise to. Potin of customs about love is separate the "wheat from the chaff," heavenly from common.

Erixymachus: Love is a broader phenomenon and force. Medicine "the science of of the effects of love on the body" Music - science of the effects of love on harmony and rhythm. But not all love is good. Love also at work in destruction.

Aristophanes: