Chapter 1
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 Philia

love
 Sophia

wisdom
 Philosophy
= love of wisdom
Philosophy is thinking
 Philosophers think about life’s most basic
questions:

What is the purpose of life?
Is there a God?
How do we know the difference between right and
wrong?
 Are our actions free or determined?



Doing philosophy is one of the most common
activities of life
 Philosophy is active, not passive


Fundamental issues

Reality


Personhood


How free are we?
Knowledge


What does it mean to be a person?
Free Will


What is the nature of reality?
What is involved in knowing something?
God, Life After Death, The Purpose of Life


Where did it all come from?
What is the purpose of life?
 Practical

Right and Wrong


issues
How do we separate right from wrong?
Community organization

What kind of government do you want?
 The

Philosophical Questions


subject matter of Philosophy
Involve conceptual issues
Philosophical “Answers”

Generally more than one plausible answer
 Analytical


Development better analytical abilities
Useful in a variety of professions
 Vision

Abilities
and insight
Socrates-“The unexamined life is not worth
living”
 Popular
Metaphysics
 Pure and applied Methaphysics
 Academic Metaphysics


Mysticism
Occultism









Telepathy
Clairvoyance
Precognition
Retrocognition
Mediumship
New Thought
Christian Science
Theosophy
Spiritualism
 Theoretical
and applied
 One describes the other applies the
description to practical problems
 Materialism
 Idealism
 Dualism
 Existentialism
 Pragmatism
 Post
Modernism
 Philosophical
questions are
primarily_____.
a)
b)
c)
d)
factual
empirical
conceptual
subjective
 Philosophical
a)
b)
c)
d)
questions _____.
have a single, correct, logical answer
are solved by using a scientific, empirical
methodology
are solved by appealing to philosophical
authorities
generally have more than one plausible
answer
 The
value of studying philosophy is that it
_____.
teaches you how to argue so well that you
can make a bad case look good
b) develops your analytical abilities and your
capacity for abstract thought
c) strengthens your emotions
d) makes you a more ethical person
a)
 The
Greek philosopher Socrates said,
_____.
a)
b)
c)
d)
“He who dies with the most toys wins”
“The examined life is not worth living”
“The unexamined life is not worth living”
“Philosophy makes the examined life
unnecessary”
 Philosophy
questions.


True
False
studies life’s most basic
 The
word philosophy derives from two
ancient Greek words: philia, which means
love, and_________, which means
wisdom.

sophia
A
major philosophical concept,
________________, deals with basic
human characteristics and similar traits in
other beings like chimpanzees and
dolphins.

personhood

Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly
and rationally.

Someone with critical thinking skills is able to do the
following :






understand the logical connections between ideas
identify, construct and evaluate arguments
detect inconsistencies and common mistakes in reasoning
solve problems systematically
identify the relevance and importance of ideas
reflect on the justification of one's own beliefs and
values
 …accumulating
information
 …having good memory
 …knowing a lot of facts
 Analytical
thinking uses necessary and
sufficient conditions to show something is an
example of that concept.

Necessary and sufficient conditions
The concept of a square
1. Four sides
a)
b)
c)
d)
The concept of a square
1. Four sides
2. Two pairs parallel
a)
b)
c)
d)
The concept of a square
1. Four sides
2. Two pairs parallel
a)
b)
c)
d)
The concept of a square
1. Four sides
2. Two pairs parallel
3. Sides equal
a)
b)
c)
d)
The concept of a square
1. Four sides
2. Two pairs parallel
3. Sides equal
a)
b)
c)
d)
The concept of a square
1. Four sides
2. Two pairs parallel
3. Sides equal
4. Four 90 degree angles
a)
b)
c)
d)
The concept of a square
1. Four sides
2. Two pairs parallel
3. Sides equal
4. Four 90 degree angles
a)
b)
c)
d)
Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind,
Two of us will help you, whichever you would find,
One among us seven will let you move ahead,
Another will transport the drinker back instead,
Two among our number hold only nettle wine,
Three of us are killers, waiting hidden in line.
Choose, unless you wish to stay here forevermore,
To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four:
First, however slyly the poison tries to hide
You will always find some on nettle wine's left side;
Second, different are those who stand at either end,
But if you would move onward, neither is your friend;
Third, as you see clearly, all are different size,
Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides;
Fourth, the second left and the second on the right
Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight.
 incorrect
reasoning in argumentation resulting
in a misconception.
A


term that has more than one meaning
Billy is a good tennis player.
Therefore, Billy is 'good', that is to say a 'morally'
good person.
 Trying
to prove too much from your evidence
(It argues from a special case to a general
rule)


Argument: Every person I've met speaks English,
so it must be true that all people speak English.
Problem: Those one has met are a subset of the
entire set.
 Arguing

against the person
"You can't believe Jack when he says the
proposed policy would help the economy. He
doesn't even have a job."
 Demonstrates
a conclusion by means of
premises that assume that conclusion


Argument: Billy always tells the truth, I know
this because he told me so.
Problem: Billy may be lying.
“After this, therefore because of this"
 Since that event followed this one, that event
must have been caused by this one

Argument: After Mike was vaccinated he developed
autism, therefore the vaccine caused his autism.
 Problem: This does not provide any evidence that the
vaccine was the cause. The characteristics of autism
may generally become noticeable at the age just
following the typical age children receive
vaccinations.


Drawing an unwarranted conclusion about the
cause of something


Argument: More cows die in India in the summer
months. More ice cream is consumed in summer
months. Therefore, the consumption of ice cream in
the summer months is killing Indian cows.
Problem: It is hotter in the summer, resulting in both
the death of cows and the consumption of ice
cream.Also called causation versus correlation.
 If
the antecedent is not true, then neither is
the consequent


Argument: If it is raining outside, it must be
cloudy. It is not raining outside. Therefore, it is
not cloudy.
Problem: There does not have to be rain in order
for there to be clouds.
 Relying


on the authority of its source
Argument: The president believes that war is
justifiable, therefore it must be justifiable.
Problem: The president can be wrong.
 Claiming
there are fewer options than is
actually the case


Argument: The country of the United States:
Love it or leave it.
Problem: Nobody is obligated to love the country
in order to be there. Nobody is obligated to leave
a country based on love for such country.
 It
manipulates people’s emotions to get them
to accept a claim as being true. Very
common in politics and marketing.


Argument: I know I didn’t do the assignment
and turn it in on time, but my grandmother is
visiting from out of the country, and I am her
only grandchild!
Problem: This claim appeals or preys upon the
emotions of the listener to obtain something
from him/her.

It manipulates people’s emotions to get them to accept
a claim as being true. Very common in politics and
marketing.


Argument: The new PowerMango computer gives you the
super wonderful and amazing power you need and want. If
you buy one, people will desire and envy your fantastic and
fabulous power. They will look up to you and wish they
were as just as fantastic like you. You will know the true
and unmatchable joy and glory of power. PowerMango!
Problem: This claim uses words such as wonderful, amazing,
power, envy, joy, glory (and more) in order to get someone’s
attention, but it doesn’t provide evidence of their claim.
 Accent
refers to the stress placed upon a
word in a sentence or a syllable in a word.
Depending on it the meaning can change.
Many times there is an ambiguous meaning.


Argument: Dan told me “I've never seen you
looking better!” so he really liked me.
Problem: Dan could have been sarcastic or could
have also mean that the other person has
improved his or her image regardless whether
Dan likes the other person or not.

Asserting that some event must inevitably follow
from another without any argument for the
inevitability of the event in question.
Argument: We have to stop the tuition increase! The
next thing you know, they'll be charging $40,000 a
semester!
 Problem: There is no evidence that the semester will
increase to $40,000 based on the fact that the tuition
will increase. Many more factors come to play (data,
patterns, current increase, etc).

A
fallacy based on the assumption that a
statement must be true if it cannot be
proved false.


Argument: There is intelligent life in outer space,
for no one has been able to prove that there
isn't.
Problem: Nobody knows all the confines of the
outer space to conclude that there is in fact no
life.

A straw man is a component of an argument and is
an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an
opponent's position.To "attack a straw man" is to create
the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting
it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition
(the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having
actually refuted the original position..

Argument:



Person A: Our society should spend more money helping the
poor.Person
B: Studies show that handouts don't work; they just create more
poverty and humiliate the recipients. That money could be better
spent.
Problem: Person A never said handing out money to the poor.
 Hard-determinists

Materialism
The idea that all things are physical
 Nothing immaterial exists
 All physical things are subject to natural laws like cause and
effect
 Astrology
 Our actions and fates are caused by celestial objects
 Sun, planets, and constellations

 Hard-determinists

Predestination


Our final destination—heaven or hell—is already logged
into the heavenly computer
Fatalism


Destiny will bring people together
Oedipus the King
 Hard-determinists
 Libertarians
 Soft-determinists
 Example
with the
card deck
 Example of door A
and door B.

Behaviorism




Focuses on human observable behavior and denies free
will
Behavior can be observable and predictable
Stimulus (cause) and response (effect)
Positive and negative reinforcements

Smiles or spits

Castle and Frazier


Drops matches to prove Frazier wrong
Result of positive reinforcement from other times
where he was praised when he proved colleagues
wrong
 Human


Freedom and the Weather
Weather forecasting imprecise due to lack of
information
Behavior prediction imprecise due to lack of
information
 Freud
as one of the most important figures in
the history of western thought
 Patients had problems with no medical cause
 Used free association to uncover feelings
causing their illness

The Conscious, the Preconscious, and the
Unconscious



Conscious
 What we are aware of from moment to moment
Preconscious
 A data bank where people store memories, thoughts, and
feelings that people can easily retrieve and make
conscious
Unconscious
 The part of our personality of which we are not aware,
but influences our thoughts and actions
 Biggest part of the personality
 Tip of the iceberg

Expressions of the Unconscious
 “Freudian slips”
 Dreams

The Unconscious and Determinism
 The power of advertising

The id
 The most deeply buried part of the unconscious
 Two basic drives; sex and aggression
 Irrational and unrealistic

The ego
 Something close to the self
 Controls the id

Horse and rider

The superego
 A part of the unconscious over and above the ego


Riding instructor
Inner criticism


Ego moves to reduce anxiety as a reflex action
All this goes on without our knowledge


Projection is where we attribute our feelings to
someone else
Reaction formation takes a disturbing impulse and
converts it into its opposite
 The
effect of early childhood experiences
have on adult personality
 Needs of childhood need to be met be before
moving into next stage of development
 Psychoanalysis
is a process where the patient
talks freely about thoughts and feelings
 Unconscious
forces can be re-channeled
in a better direction
 Neither
thinker puts much weight on
nations of blame or moral responsibility
 Understanding
a situation by breaking it into
smaller pieces, or tracing the implications of
a situation in a step-by-step causal way
 It includes organizing the parts of a problem
or situation in a systematic way; making
systematic comparisons of different features
or aspects; setting priorities on a rational
basis; identifying time sequences, causal
relationships, or If ►Then relationships.
 Follows
a scientific approach
Problem
Solution
Analysis
Hypothesis
Facts