Transcript An introduction to philosophy

An introduction to philosophy
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What is philosophy?
• Love of wisdom (Greek)
• The critical investigation of essential principles
through the use of logical argument rather
than experiment
• You don’t necessarily need any knowledge
• You can do it in an armchair
• As it involves thinking,
• A lecture is a terrible way of teaching it!
Major branches
• Metaphysics: what exists?
 This includes Ontology – the study of being
• Epistemology: what do we know? How do we
know?
• Ethics: what is right? (Lecture 13)
• Aesthetics: what is beautiful? What is art?
(Lecture 21)
• Logic: the study of argument (mathematics?)
• Political philosophy
Philosophy of …
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Language
Law
History
Science
Mind
Religion
Philosophy was practised …
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Pretty much everywhere!
Clear philosophical traditions present in:
India
The Islamic world
Normally we make a distinction between
philosophy and religious thought
(should we?)
For non-religious philosophy:
Ancient China
Ancient Greece
The Ancient Greek World
http://plato-dialogues.org
The first philosopher
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Thales 624-546 BCE
Lived in Ionia - modern day Turkey
His most famous idea
Everything is water
Why is this an important idea?
An attempt to explain the world with no
reference to religion
• Also the beginning of science
The Pre-Socratics
• Philosophers in the early
Greek world (including
the South of Italy)
• Pre-Socratic = They lived
before Socrates!
• Up to the middle of the
5th century BCE
• Provided a series of
explanations of the world
• Do many things exist?
• Is everything really just
one substance or
principle?
• What is this unchanging
thing?
• Is change real or an
illusion?
• Combined philosophy
with what we would think
of as science and
elements of religion
Two Pre-Socratic philosophers
Heraclitus
Parmenides
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• c. 535 – c. 475 B.C.
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• Change is central
principle of the world: •
• All things change and •
nothing remains still
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• No man steps into the
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same river twice
• For it is not the same •
river and he is not the •
same man
• The world is an ever- •
living fire
Early 5th century BCE
Lived in South Italy
His philosophy:
Reality is one
“Being is uncreated and
imperishable, whole,
unique, unwavering and
complete.”
All things must be eternal
Change is impossible
Our senses, which
register change …
…mislead us
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Zeno’s paradoxes
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Zeno of Elea
Elea is in South Italy
490-430 BCE
Follower of Parmenides
Movement is an illusion
A race between Achilles and a
tortoise
Who wins?
Achilles is faster
But the tortoise has a head start
When Achilles reaches where the
tortoise started
The tortoise has moved on
And so on
• “the quickest runner can never
overtake the slowest, since the
pursuer must first reach the point
whence the pursued started, so
that the slower must always hold
a lead.”
• It is logically impossible for
Achilles to win the race
• Implying motion is an illusion
bp.blogspot.com
www.animalrightshistory.
Two more Pre-Socratics
Empedocles
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490-430 BCE
Sicilian
Four “roots” (=elements)
Air, earth, fire and water
Two “powers” of change:
Love and strife
Love brings the elements
together
• Strife pulls them apart
• Also a believer in reincarnation
Democritus
• 460-370 BCE
• Lived in Greece
• Reality is made up of a
series of indivisible and tiny
building blocks
• = Atoms
Socrates
• 469 – 399 BCE
• Athenian philosopher
• (also stonecutter and
soldier)
• A different approach and
concerns from the others
• Spent his time
questioning the Athenians
• He was found guilty of
corrupting the youth of
Athens and of not
believing in the gods of
the state
• He was sentenced to
death
• He could easily have
escaped – he chose to
drink cyanide
Images: http://www.gotterdammerung.org; www.bc.edu/bc_org
• The Oracle:
• “No human is wiser
than Socrates”
• Socrates “I know one
thing: that I know
nothing”
• He asked other
Athenians who seemed
to know more
• He concluded that selfaware ignorance …
• is wiser than thinking
that you know anything
• You make people wiser
by showing them that
they are wrong
• The Socratic method
The Socratic method
• = Elenchus
• The student makes an
assertion/definition
• “courage means …”
• “virtue consists of …”
• The teacher asks questions to
encourage the student to draw
conclusions from the original
assertion
• Which the student does not
agree with
• The student realises that he
does not actually agree with
his own assertion
• Reformulates and starts again
• In the end the student ends up
in a state of puzzlement
• “aporia”
• = “productive discomfort”
• This is wiser than the original
state
• The student has learnt how
little he knows
• “The unexamined life is not
worth living”
The Socratic method
• Useful for philosophy
• Used in US law schools
• Does not need
powerpoint slides!
• In a way this lecture is not
really teaching philosophy
• More than most
academic subjects
• Philosophy is a thought
process rather than a
type of knowledge
• However, knowledge of
facts
• Especially of the ideas
that have been put
forward by past
philosophers
• Is always useful
How do we know what Socrates
thought?
• He didn’t write anything
• We know about him from
his contemporaries
• Especially Plato
• 428-348 BCE
• Plato’s philosophy is mainly
written as dialogues
• Socrates is the main
character of many
• His viewpoint is presumably
Plato’s
• The early dialogues
probably do reflect
Socrates’ own views
• However, we can’t assume:
• That Plato’s “Socrates”
expresses Socrates’ views
• That “Socrates” necessarily
expresses Plato’s views
Plato’s dialogues
• About 35
• Are among the most
readable of philosophical
works
• Can be seen as dramatic
and literary as well as
philosophical
• They lend themselves to
literary analysis
• Adjective: Platonic
Plato’s philosophy
• Influential in ancient times and
in modern Europe
• (In the Middle Ages, Aristotle
was much more important)
• “The safest general
characterisation of the
European philosophical
tradition is that it consists of a
series of footnotes to Plato."
(Alfred North Whitehead,
Process and Reality, 1929)
Example of the Socratic method: the
Laches
(Discussion from the second half)
• What is bravery?
• Answer 1 (Laches): To be brave is
to stand and fight the enemy
• What about people who run and
fight?
• Can’t you be brave in politics?
• Answer 2 (Laches): bravery is
endurance of the soul
• What about people who endure
foolishly?
• Answer 3 (Laches): well, it’s only
wise endurance
• What about people who fight
when circumstances are against
them? Aren’t they braver?
• Answer 3 (Nicias): Bravery is a
special kind of knowledge
• Knowledge of the grounds of
hope and fear
• But in order to know this you
need to know all evil and good,
past and future
• So this is a definition of virtue,
not of courage
• Definition of courage?
• We don’t have one
Plato’s Republic
• Not an example of the
Socratic method
• Begins with an attempt to
define justice
• Describes an ideal
community
• All things are held in
common
• Three classes: rulers,
soldiers, producers
• The family is destroyed
• Children are educated
together
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Who should rule?
Philosophers!
“Philosopher-kings”
Why?
Only philosophers know
what is truly good
• The analogy of the cave is
intended to show us why
The allegory of the cave
• Book VII of the Republic
• Most people see the world
like …
• Prisoners tied up in a cave
who see
• Shadows thrown on the wall
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• Objects carried in front of a
fire behind them
• They have not seen the real
world
• They believe the shadows
are the real world
http://withfriendship.com
• The philosopher is like
someone who has been
freed
• And comes back to tell the
others that their “reality” is
not true
The allegory of the cave
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The world that we think of as “real”
Is not the real world
The real world is something unchanging
Change is therefore unreal
Plato is agreeing with Parmenides
How do we have access to the real?
Philosophy – which therefore can be seen as
approaching mysticism
• What is the nature of reality? Metaphysics
• How do we know the nature of reality? Epistemology
The theory of the forms
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Phaedo 109-111
Two equal sticks
No two sticks are ever equal – we haven’t experienced equality
So how do we know how to recognise equality?
Once we lived in a state of purity with the real things
The Forms
The Form of Equality
The Form of Beauty
The Form of Whiteness
So we can recognise them now
Material objects participate in the forms
We recognise good things because they share in the form of
goodness
The Meno
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A slave boy is shown to possess geometric knowledge
How is this possible?
We existed in a previous existence
The soul exists before the body
The body prevents the soul from seeing properly
Detaching the soul from the body is the aim of
philosophy
• Those who apply themselves to philosophy in the
proper way are doing no more nor less than to prepare
themselves for the moment of dying and the state of
death Phaedo in The Trial and Execution of Socrates
Platonism
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Adjective Platonist
These beliefs set out as a system
Reality is not how we perceive it
True reality exists in the perfect realm of the Forms
Only the soul, detached from the body, can see
Mystical elements added by Plotinus
Neoplatonism
Influential on Eastern Orthodox Christianity
The ascetic tradition
And on Jewish mysticism
And on Islamic philosophy
And on Western literary traditions
For example …
William Wordsworth, Intimations of
Immortality (1804) lines 59-69
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness
And not in utter nakedness
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy …
Things to notice about the cave …
• Plato is still interested in the same questions
as the Pre-Socratic philosophers
• Philosophy here can be interpreted to be
quasi-religious in its meaning
• Plato uses ideas from one area of philosophy
to illuminate another
Is Plato a Platonist?
• = Does he set out the basics for a metaphysical,
mystical system?
• (This is the way that I am interpreting it)
• Or is it merely an attempt to answer questions in
metaphysics and epistemology?
• Many philosophers would suggest the second
• E.g. Peter Stanford: History of Philosophy without
any Gaps
(http://www.historyofphilosophy.net/plato-caveallegory-republic)
Questions to ask about the Cave
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We are given these ideas in dialogue
How do we know what Plato really thought?
Is this what Socrates really taught? (Probably not)
Is “Socrates” necessarily Plato’s mouthpiece?
Do these passages use the Socratic method?
How valid is it to join all these ideas together into a
system?
• Note the context of the cave – are we happy that these
ideas are used in a political context?
• The cave is an analogy – that is, not an argument but
an illustration of a point. How valid is this?
Questions about the theory of forms
• Do we need the idea of “a perfect form of equality” to
explain how we understand what equality is?
• What are these forms? How many of them are there?
• How do material objects participate in the forms?
• How can there be a form of whiteness without
something that is white?
 Or a form of equality without things that are equal?
• Is the form of the good good itself?
 If so, don’t we need another form to explain it?
• What proof is there that we are in a situation like the
cave?
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How do we know that our reality is
real?
• If we suppose that the information given by
our senses is (largely) a lie …
• How can we check it?
• All the information about the world we have
comes through our senses
http://cdn.mhpbooks.com
Descartes
• 1596-1650
• “I will suppose... that some
evil demon of the utmost
power and cunning has
employed all his energies to
deceive me."
• The Evil Demon
• He provides all the
information to our senses
• Including the illusion that
there are other minds
• How do we know that this is
not the case?
• We don’t!
• Descartes argues that the only
thing we can be sure of is our
own existence:
• Cogito ergo sum
• “I think therefore I am”
• But it is possible to believe
nothing exists except your own
mind
• =Radical solipsism
• The position is irrefutable
• And indefensible!
A modern version of the evil demon
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NB Not solipsist
Other minds exist
The Matrix (1999)
The real world is a
simulation run by
computer
• We exist, but are in
pods
• How do we know that
the Matrix is not true?
• We don’t
http://www.cyberpunkreview
The Matrix also offers a choice …
• http://www.youtube.co
m/watch?v=zE7PKRjrid4
• (Red pill)
• The truth
• The difficult path
• (Blue pill)
• The comfortable path
• The continuation of the
lie
• Socrates:
• “the unexamined life is
not worth living”
• Some surveys indicate
• That many would prefer
the blue pill
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http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.155233-Poll-The-RedPill-or-the-Blue-Pill?page=2
The difference here between
Descartes and Plato
• Both use the idea that reality is not what we
experience
• Plato is (perhaps?) arguing for scepticism about reality:
• = Reality is different from the way we experience it
• Descartes’ evil demon idea is not sceptical in the same
way
• He does not put forward the idea seriously; it is a
thought experiment
• It is encouraging philosophical scepticism about reality:
• There are some things that we cannot know for certain
• What is the Matrix doing?
The Cave
The parable of the cave
• Plato here seems to have
abandoned the Socratic
method
• The conclusions reached
can be read as being
extremely close to those of
religion
• The form of the parable
makes it close to being a
literary text
By contrast …
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Much 20 century British philosophy
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Analytic philosophy
Regards philosophical analysis
As being mainly about language
Extremely dry!
“The object of philosophy is the
logical clarification of thoughts ... A
philosophical work consists
essentially of elucidations.”
Wittgenstein, Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus 4.112
= What do we mean when we say
…?
Plato can also be seen as the origin
of this strand of philosophy
Conclusion
• Philosophy is more of an approach
• It involves the application of reason to
problems implicit in human existence and
society
• The precise approach varies across the world
and times
• The problems are often fundamental
• And are often treated in art/literature/film
just as much as in philosophy
Essay questions
• 11. Philosophy
How far is the parable of the cave
a description of a metaphysical
reality?
• 12. Philosophy
• In The Matrix, should we take the
blue pill or the red pill?
• 11. A hard question!
• = Is the cave suggesting a world
out there that only philosophers
have access to
• OR
• Is it just answering questions as
to how we know what we mean
by “good”?
• 12. NB This is not a question
about the Matrix
• Basically it is asking about
Socrates’ “the unexamined life” is
not worth living
• You can however use the Matrix
to illustrate your points