6 Flashcards
Philosophy
love of wisdom; investigation of nature of knowledge,
Ancient Greek Philosophers:
1st scientists and pillars
• Science
originated from philosophy
- Seeks objective truth through empiricism
Science and Technology have limitations:
- Can only predict or state possibilities
- Cannot study theological issues
Plato
(428-348 BCE)
• Theory of Forms
• Idealism and Essentialism
• Akademeia
o world’s first university founded in 387 BCE
located in northwestern Athens
Aristotle
(385-323 BCE)
• deductive reasoning during Renaissance
• study of zoology
Rene Descartes
(1596-1650)
• Father of Modern Philosophy
• major figure in 17th Century - Continental Rationalism (Cartesianism)
• major break with Aristotelianism and Scholasticism
• power doubt to discover truth
David Hume
(1711-1776)
• 3 main figureheads of British Empiricism
• Bundle theory
• Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the
passions
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
• Deontological Moral Theory: rightness or wrongnes, not depend on consequences but on duty
• Reconciled rationalism and empiricism
• Categorical Imperative: supreme principle of morality
SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT OF THE HELLENISTIC AGE
(320- 30 BCE)
• Emerged after death of Alexander the Great
Cynicism
• live in virtue
• Reject conventional needs (ex. power, sex, & wealth) with nature
• Deny norms and follow natural inclinations
Cynics
o watchdog of humanity
o Evangelize, hound people such as greed
3 Main Figures of Cynicism
ADC
1. Antisthenes
o Founder of cynicism
o Preached life of poverty, his teachings also covered language, dialogue, literature, and pure Ethics
2. Diogenes of Sinope
o cynicism to logical extremes
o biting satire
o Archetypal Cynic philosopher
** o self-sufficiency (autarkeia),
austerity (askēsis),
shamelessness (anaideia)**
3. Crates of Thebes
o Gave away large fortune
o Teacher of Zeno of Citium
Epicureanism
• Epicurus
• sensations we experience are true
• Maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain
• Hedonism (pleasure and pain are important)
• Happiness/greatest good is to seek pleasures, freedom from fear (ataraxia), bodily pain (aponia)
Stoicism
• Zeno of Citium
• Perfect Rationality: achieve moral goodness
• Virtue: highest good on Perfect Rationality
• Resign ourselves to Fate
• development of self-control
• Apatheia (equanimity): not disturbed by passions, pain, or emotions
Ibn Sina or Avicenna
(980-1037)
• philosopher in Islamic tradition
• influential philosopher of pre-modern era
• religious exigencies of Muslim culture
Francis Bacon
(1561-1626)
• importance of inductive reasoning combined with deductive reasoning
Bertrand Russell
(1872-1970)
• exponent of Logicism (mathematics into logic)
How Science is Done
1. Deductive Reasoning / Deduction
- by Aristotle
- obtaining specific statement
- Starts with theory
- Confirms hypothesis
- quantitative research
- If the premise is true, the conclusion must be true
Theory → Predictions → Experiment
2. Inductive Reasoning / Induction
- by Francis Bacon
- generating a generalized statement
- Starts with data
- Infers conclusion from data
- qualitative research
- If the premise is true, the conclusion is probably true
Observation → Generalizations → Paradigm
3. Abductive Reasoning
FIELDS OF MODERN SCIENCE
- Natural Sciences
• Investigates natural phenomena
• explain how things happen
• Work is based empirical data - Physical Sciences: inorganic world
4 Broad Areas of Physical Sciences CAPE
1. Astronomy
2. Physics
3. Chemistry
4. Earth Sciences
- Biological Sciences: organic world
- Social Sciences
• give insights on human behavior and societies
• Psychology: mind and behavior
• Sociology: human societies, interactions
• Anthropology: what makes us human
• Archaeology: ancient and recentbhuman
• Economics: production, distribution, and consumption
• History: chronological record of events
- Formal Sciences
• set of rules beforehand (priori statements)
• Theorems (Ex. Math, Logic, & Statistics
VALIDITY OF SCIENTIFIC REASONING
Verifiability Principle (Verificationism)
Vienna Circle (1907) and Berlin Circle (1920)
• If a principle cannot be supported by empirical evidence: meaningless
• discourages budding theories Falsifiability Principle (Falsificationism)
• Proposed by Karl Popper
• Scientific theories can be **tested and falsified by experimentation, ** but never logically verified
• As long as experiment is not false, it is accepted as prevailing explanation
Eudaimonia
• good-spirited, human flourishing, prosperity
• Central to Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics:
- highest human good
- relation to virtues (aretē) and friendship (philia)
-
- **Virtue: between vices (extremes of action and character)
1. Intelligence and Scientific Knowledge
2. Practical Wisdom: deliberate well about what is good
3. Temperance: restraint to pleasurable activities
4. Generosity and Friendship
5. Courage: foolhardiness and cowardice
6. Contemplation: reflection on eternal truth; highest realization of happiness
o Philosophical Thinking: most fulfilling activity
2 Kinds of Virtues
-
Intellectual Virtues: virtues of thought; arises from teaching
(ex. episteme/scientific knowledge & phronesis/practical wisdom) -
Moral Virtues: virtues of character; arises from practice or habit
(ex. andreia/bravery & sôphrosune/temperance)
self-actualization
- highest personal nee/ desire for fulfillment
(Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs)
2 Conditions to be Happy
- virtuous
- external goods
o pleasure that we do bad things, account of the pain we abstain
- If you are virtuous, virtue is pleasant, and vice is painful.
- If you are not virtuous, then virtue is painful, and vice is pleasant.
Technology
• Application of scientific knowledge
• Greek word techne (manufacturing and arts)
• Techne: part of poiesis (bringing forth) – concealment into reveal
• Poiesis is related to aletheia (truth)
• Neither a machine nor a process of production
• reveals the truth
Martin Heidegger
- revealing of modern
- bringing-forth but rather challenging-forth
Gestell (enframing):
removes essence of poiesis,
o practice meditative thinking rather than calculative thinking in his 1995 memorial address:
1. Calculative Thinking: numbers and categories
2. Meditative Thinking: elucidates, allowing nature to reveal itself to us
Technology is
amoral (does not tell us what is morally right or wrong)
• Martin Heidegger: phenomenology and existentialism and ontology (philosophical study of being);
wrote The Questions Concerning Technology
1. Technology is not instrument. It is a way of revealing the truth
2. Technology is not controlled by humans. It is technology that controls human activities.
3. Technology is dangerous in a sense that it frames our thinking about the world.
• S&T have its
limitations. looks for objective truths.
From Empiricism (experience-based thinking) to Logicism:
[1] Ibn Sina ornAvicenna (980-1037)
[2] Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
[3] Russel Bertrand (1872-1970)
