Introduction Flashcards
Philosophy- Philo and Sophia: Love of wisdom.
Love of wisdom.
Metaphysics.- studies the nature of nature, world and reality.
Metaphysics
Epistemology- studies the nature and scope of knowledge. Knowing about knowing.
Epistemology
Aesthetics- study of beauty and art. But for philosophers, the pursuit of aesthetics involves considering what beauty is, and whether it even exists.
Aesthetics
Logic is about reasoning, giving strong arguments that don’t fall victim to fallacies, which are, as you’ll learn, the mortal enemies of philosophical precision.
Logic
Principle of Charity- always try to understand the strongest and most persuasive version of arguement
Principle of Charity
Plato believed that we all have what he called a tripartite soul
tripartite soul
Deductive argument- if all premises are true, then the conclusion must be true.
Deductive argument
Validity- an argument is valid if the truth of the premises guarantees (entails) the truth of the conclusion.
Validity
Deductive Soundness- free from formal flaws of defects. Validity + all true premises.
Deductive Soundness
Induction- using past experiences to make future prediction. Having an argument from the past as basis or something that you know. BLANK arguments don’t provide you with certainty. Instead, they work in terms of probabilities.
Induction
Abduction- Drawing a conclusion based on the explanation that best explains a state of events, rather than from evidence provided by the premises. Instead, it reasons by ruling out possible explanations until you’re left with the most plausible one, given the evidence.
Abduction
Interlocutors- people participating in the dialogue, debate or conversation.
Interlocutors
Counter argument- an argument made to oppose or refute the existing argument.
Counter argument
Socratic Method- learning through a dialectic exchange of ideas, rather than a passive transmission of information.
Socratic Method
Skeptic- a skeptic is someone who questions whether it’s possible to know anything with certainty.
Skeptic
Local Doubt- Those are doubts about a particular sense experience, or some other occurrence at a particular point in time.
Local Doubt
This type of doubt, the kind you can’t step out of, and thus can’t check, is called global doubt.
global doubt
RADICAL SKEPTICISM- In his book, Meditations on First Philosophy, he declared: Cogito ergo sum. “I think, therefore, I am.” It’s one of the most famous realizations in philosophy – I cannot doubt my own existence.
RADICAL SKEPTICISM
Empiricism is based on the principle that the most reliable source of knowledge isn’t our ideas, or our reasoning, but our senses.
Empiricism
Locke believed that we’re all born as a tabula rasa, or a blank slate. He argued that all knowledge is obtained through experience.
Locke
Primary qualities (Locke) are qualities that physical objects themselves have. They’re not in our minds, Locke argued – they’re actually in the stuff. These primary qualities include things like solidity – the density, weight, and mass of an object. And also extension the height, depth, and width that a certain thing has.
Primary qualities
Second qualities. They’re just in our minds. But they get there through the primary qualities. I’m talking about things like its color, taste, texture, smell, and sound.
Second qualities
George Berkeley used Locke’s qualities against him.
George Berkeley
Berkeley’s famous assertion – his version of cogito ergo sum – was
esse est percepi: “to be is to be perceived.”
Berkerley- In his opinion, there are no objects, only perceivers – and even then, the perceivers themselves don’t really have any physical form.
Berkerley
So in the end, Berkeley believed there was only one thing that kept us – and everything else – from disappearing into oblivion. God. Berkeley believed that God was the Ultimate Perceiver.
Ultimate Perceiver
An assertion is a linguistic act – either spoken or written – that has a truth value.
assertion
Truth Value- It’s just the state of being either true, or false, or indeterminate. All declarative sentences have truth values. Answered by true or false. “This is a cat.”
Truth Value
For example, I’m gonna assert that “This cat will pee on my desk before the end of the show.” That assertion has a truth value, but it’s indeterminate, because the show’s not over yet.
YEAH
Proposition- The content of your assertion is your proposition. It’s the underlying meaning of what you’re saying.
Proposition
If I say, like, “This is a cat,” but I actually believe it to be a rat and I’m trying to fool you, then philosophers would say that I have a propositional attitude of disbelief.
propositional attitude of disbelief
Belief is just when you take a propositional attitude of truth.
Belief
Knowledge - is a justified true belief.
Knowledge
Justification is simply evidence, or other support, for your belief.
Justification
Popper observed that Freud was able to make just about any data point work in service of his theory. Freud could explain a person’s intimacy issues both in terms of not being hugged enough as a child, or in terms of having been hugged too much.
Popper
This is the key point, for Popper – science disconfirms, while pseudoscience confirms.
science disconfirms, while pseudoscience confirms.
So, if you were to test for Santa’s reality, your method would require you to try to prove that he doesn’t exist, rather than proving that he does. So, you stay up all night, waiting to catch him delivering his presents. If it can’t be tested, then your theory doesn’t have much value.
YEAH
Pseudoscience- is a belief or process which masquerades as science in an attempt to claim a legitimacy which it would not otherwise be able to achieve on its own terms; it is often known as fringe- or alternative science. The most important of its defects is usually the lack of the carefully controlled and thoughtfully interpreted experiments which provide the foundation of the natural sciences and which contribute to their advancement.
Pseudoscience
