The Thinker, August Rodin, bronze cast 1904 from plaster 1880

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? I

• Nigel Warburton says that asking what philosophy is “is a notoriously difficult question.”

• And he suggests that one answer is to say that “philosophy is what philosophers do.”

• You can then point to famous works by famous philosophers, but “it may still be difficult to say what they have in common.”

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? II

• Philosophy in the west begins with the Greeks.

• ‘Philosophy’ is a Greek word that means ‘love of wisdom.’

• Philosophers seek wisdom about man, the cosmos, and man’s relation to the cosmos.

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? III

• JS: Philosophy is an attempt to provide critically acceptable answers to ultimate questions.

• Philosophy thinks about things such as mind, matter, language, life, and death that everyone has some idea of, and that they tend to take for granted, and do not question.

• Philosophy calls common ideas into question and attempts to analyze them, to get at the basic truth or nature of each such concept.

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? IV• In general, philosophy deals with the most general and

abstract features of reality that have been, and continue to be, of interest to mankind, and that cannot be answered by other disciplines, such as science.

• Thomas Nagel suggests that philosophy will appeal to people “with a taste for abstract ideas and theoretical arguments.”

• At one time most of the parts of science, such as physics and astronomy were part of philosophy. The last discipline to break off was psychology.

• Accordingly, what philosophy is or what it concerns can change with time and with the progress of other disciplines.

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? V

• Although disciplines that were once part of philosophy have their own specialized area of concern, that does not mean that they cease to be of interest or relevance to philosophy.

• Philosophers attempt to answer the problems of philosophy through the use of reason.

• Philosophers proceed by thinking about the problems, by writing books and articles about them, by discussing them with other philosophers.

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? VI• Thus we can say that the medium of philosophy – or

the means by which philosophers do philosophy – is thinking, or reasoning.

• And the means by which philosophy is communicated, publicized, and becomes part of culture, is language.

• Warburton calls philosophy an activity that “is a way of thinking about certain sorts of question.”

• Logical argument is of the utmost importance to philosophy, and Warburton calls logical argument the “most distinctive feature” of philosophy.

• Although philosophers “typically deal in arguments,” they “also analyze and clarify concepts.”

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? VII

• Although the aim of philosophy is the truth, and the search for truth is meant to be objective, it is hard to find two philosophers who will agree about everything.

• And, for any book or article that someone has written, there will be philosophers who disagree with some or all of it.

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? VIII

• Typically, philosophy begins with ideas and data of common sense and subjects those ideas and data to critical scrutiny.

• Nagel: “the philosophical raw material comes directly from the world and our relation to it, not from writings of the past.”

• And Warburton says, philosophers “often examine beliefs that most of us take for granted most of the time.”

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? IX

• Again, philosophy begins with ideas and data of common sense and subjects those ideas and data to critical scrutiny.

• Using reason to reflect on ideas and data given to us in ordinary daily reality means that, by reflecting on these things we may become uncertain of what we ordinarily take for granted.

• Nagel: “The center of philosophy lies in certain questions which the reflective mind finds naturally puzzling, and the best way to begin the study of philosophy is to think about them directly.”

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? X• Still again, philosophy begins with ideas and data of

common sense and subjects those ideas and data to critical scrutiny.

• And this is what Nagel is getting at when he tells us that “The main concern of philosophy is to question and understand very common ideas that all of us use every day without thinking about them.”

• Things that common sense does not note or does not question philosophy sees and inquires about.

• William James: “Genius is the ability to pay attention.” Philosophy at least means to be paying attention.

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? XI• The word “attempt” in the definition of philosophy

as an attempt to provide critically acceptable answers to ultimate questions, reflects the fact that philosophy’s answers are provisional and not certain.

• Nagel thinks that most problems of philosophy “have not been solved,” and he thinks that it may be that “some never will be.”

• A reason for this is the difficulty of philosophical problems. Many of these problems may lie at the very limits of human reason.

PHILOSOPHY AND THE HUMAN INTELLECT

• Thinking of the difficulty of philosophy in relation to the human intellect prompts the question, “How smart are we?”

• Samuel Johnson’s view that “There is nothing that the human mind can frame that the human mind cannot solve” stands at the optimistic end of the spectrum.

• J. B. S. Haldane’s saying “Not only is the universe queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we can imagine” marks the pessimistic end of the spectrum.

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? XII

• Philosophy does not have a set of settled facts analogous to chemistry’s periodic table of the elements.

• Part of the reason for that is that philosophy does not operate like science. Scientific theories make predictions that can be tested in the world. Philosophy cannot do that.

• Philosophy also cannot produce strict formal proofs in the manner of mathematics.

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? XIII• Philosophy is an attempt to provide critically

acceptable answers to ultimate questions.• To call answers to questions that philosophers attempt

to provide “critically acceptable” means that they stand the test of reason; that they recognize facts and data that are relevant to a particular inquiry; that they are recognized by other philosophers to have some merit; and that – if important enough – influence the thinking of other philosophers, so that subsequent philosophy takes them into consideration.

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? XIV

• Philosophy is an attempt to provide critically acceptable answers to ultimate questions.

• Calling a question “ultimate” reflects its fundamental importance for inquiring intellects.

• And Nagel notes that “The more basic the ideas you are trying to investigate, the fewer the tools you have to work with.”

• And he says that “There isn’t much you can assume or take for granted.”

ULTIMATE QUESTIONS• Ultimate philosophical questions that we will

consider in this course include:

• What is philosophy? How do we know anything? Can we prove that the external world exists? Do other minds exist? What is the relation of science to reason and reality? What is the relation of mind and matter? How does a word have meaning? What is art? What is equality? What is freedom? Does God exist? Do we survive death? Does life have meaning?

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? XV

• Philosophy is a disinterested search for truth – about man, the cosmos, and man’s relation to the cosmos.

• Main branches of philosophy are: logic, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics and philosophy of art.

• Other main branches include philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of language.

WHY STUDY PHILOSOPHY? I

• Warburton says “One important reason for studying philosophy is that it deals with fundamental questions about the meaning of our existence.”

• Philosophy then is one means by which we can examine our lives, the reality in which we are situated, and our relation to that reality.

• Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

WHY STUDY PHILOSOPHY? II

• Human being are called homo sapiens because of our capacity for, and pursuit of, wisdom.

• And philosophy is a means of searching for wisdom – a search that is often thought to be worth the effort itself, and so independently of whatever results the search may achieve.

WHY STUDY PHILOSOPHY? III• Even if philosophy does not always result in the truth that

it seeks, it is an excellent means of training the intellect, making it better able to reason and argue, and giving it a clarity of thought that it may otherwise have lacked.

• Philosophy is a means of enlarging our lives by enlarging our minds.

• A critical mind makes for a more interesting reality, and so for a more interesting life.

• Philosophy need not though have a pragmatic payoff to be worth the effort. It can be intrinsically interesting in just pursuing ideas for their own sake.

PROTAGONISTS OF PHILOSOPHY

• Socrates (c. 470-399BCE), Plato (c. 429-347BCE), Aristotle (384-322BCE)

• St. Augustine (354-430), St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274)

• Descartes (1596-1650), Spinoza (1632-1677), Leibniz (1646-1716)

• Locke (1632-1704), Berkeley (1685-1753), Hume (1711-1776),

• Kant (1724-1804), Hegel (1770-1831)• Frege (1848-1925), Russell (1872-1970),

Wittgenstein (1889-1951)