Transcript Lecture Notes 1: Introduction

Philosophy 024: Big Ideas
Prof. Robert DiSalle ([email protected])
Talbot College 408, 519-661-2111 x85763
Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday 12-2 PM
Course Website: http://instruct.uwo.ca/philosophy/024/
Instructor’s Website: http://publish.uwo.ca/~rdisalle/
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,
Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without
knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man, for I will
demand of thee, and answer thou me.
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?
declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the
measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the
line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof
fastened? or who laid the cornerstone thereof…?
(Job 38:1-6)
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain
deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the
world, and not after Christ.
(2 Colossians 8)
For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will
bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of
this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this
world? For after that the wisdom of God the world by wisdom
knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching
to save them that believe. For…the Greeks wisdom; but we
preach Christ crucified, and…unto the Greeks foolishness.
1 Corinthians 19-23
There is no method of inquiry [other than dialectic] that
systematically attempts in every case to grasp the nature of
each thing as it is in itself. The other arts are nearly all
concerned with human opinions and desires, or with the
production of natural and artificial things….Geometry and
other such studies do in some measure apprehend reality;
but they cannot yield anything but a dreamlike vision of
the real so long as they leave the assumptions they employ
unquestioned and can give no account of them.
(Plato, Republic)
If your premiss is something you do not really know and
your conclusion and the intermediate steps are a tissue of
things you do not really know, your reasoning may be
consistent with itself, but how can it ever amount to
knowledge?
….So the method of dialectic is the only one which takes
this course, doing away with assumptions and travelling up
to the first principle of all, so as to make sure of
confirmation there. When the eye of the soul is sunk in a
veritable slough of barbarous ignorance, this method gently
draws it forth and guides it upwards…
(Plato, Republic)
The point of our present discussion is this, that all men
suppose what is called wisdom to deal with the first causes
and principles of things. This is why… the man of
experience is thought to be wiser than the possessors of
any perception whatever, the artist wiser than the men of
experience, and the theoretical kinds of knowledge to be
more of the nature of wisdom than the productive. Clearly
then wisdom is knowledge about certain causes and
principles.
(Aristotle, Metaphysics)
That [philosophy] is not a science of production is clear from
the history of the earliest philosophers. For it is owing to their
wonder that they began to philosophize; they wondered
originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by
little and stated difficulties about the greatest matters, e.g. about
the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and stars, and
about the genesis of the universe. And a man who is puzzled
and wonders thinks himself ignorant…therefore since they
philosophized in order to escape from ignorance, evidently they
were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any
utilitarian end. (Aristotle, Metaphysics)
We do not seek [philosophical knowledge] for the sake of any
other advantage; but as the man is free, we say, who exists for
himself and not for another, so we pursue this as the only free
science, for it alone exists for itself….Hence the possession of
it might be justly regarded as beyond human power; for in
many ways human nature is in bondage, so that according to
Simonides, “God alone can have this privilege,” and it is
unfitting that man should not be content to seek the knowledge
that is suited to him…But the divine power cannot be
jealous…nor should any science be thought more honorable
than one of this sort….All of the sciences, indeed, are more
necessary than this, but none is better. (Aristotle, Metaphysics)
….It soon becomes evident that thought will be satisfied
with nothing short of showing the necessity of its facts, of
demonstrating the existence of its objects, as well as their
natures and qualities. Our original acquaintance with them is
thus discovered to be inadequate. We can assume nothing,
and assert nothing dogmatically; nor can we accept the
assertions and assumptions of others. And yet we must make
a beginning; and a beginning, as primary and underived,
makes an assumption, or rather is an assumption. It seems as
if it were impossible to make a beginning at all.
This thinking study of things may serve, in a general
way, as a description of philosophy.
(Hegel, Logic)
The theory that is to be developed is based—like all
electrodynamics—on the kinematics of the rigid body, since
the assertions of any such theory have to do with the
relationships between rigid bodies (systems of coordinates),
clocks, and electromagnetic processes. Insufficient
consideration of this circumstance lies at the root of the
difficulties which the electrodynamics of moving bodies at
present encounters.
Einstein, “On the electrodynamics of moving bodies,” 1905.
It has often been said, and certainly not without justification, that
the man of science is a poor philosopher. Why, then, should it not be
the right thing for the physicist to let the philosopher do the
philosophizing? Such might indeed be the right thing at a time when
the physicist believes that he has at his disposal a rigid system of
fundamental concepts and fundamental laws which are so well
established that waves of doubt cannot reach them; but it cannot be
right at a time when the very foundations of physics itself have
become as problematic as they are now.
At a time like the present, when experience forces us to seek a
newer and more solid foundation, the physicist cannot simply
surrender to the philosopher the critical contemplation of the
theoretical foundations; for, he himself knows best, and feels
more surely, where the shoe pinches. In looking for a new
foundation, he must try to make clear in his own mind just how
far the concepts which he uses are justified, and are necessities.
Einstein, Physics and reality, 1936
A Few Big Ideas
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The Infinite
The Good and the True
Certainty and Skepticism
Theism and Atheism
The Scientific Method
Nature and Nurture
More Big Ones
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Money and Markets
Freedom and Individuality
Evolution and Progress
Being and Nothing
Time, Absolute and Relative
Cognition and Computation