PHIL 1010 Exam 1 Review - INTRO and PRE-SOCRATICS

Philosophy

Love of Wisdom - “love” (philo in Greek) of “wisdom” (sophia)

Definition - A systematic study of general and fundamental questions about existence, reason, knowledge, and values.

(Philosophy is sometimes called the great conversation)

Theoretical Philosophy

philosophical activity that aims at knowledge in and of itself, and concerns itself then with the ultimate features of reality.

Practical Philosophy

philosophical activity that understanding value of things, actions, and choices.

Branches of Theoretical Philosophy

include metaphysics, epistemology, and logic.

Logic (theoretical physics)

Study of correct form reasoning and structure of arguments including the concepts of proof, validity, and soundness.

Metaphysic (theoretical physics)

Study of being (ontology) and the fundamental nature of reality, exploring questions about what exists, what are things, or what kind of ‘stuff’ exists in the universe?

Epistemology (theoretical physics)

Study of knowledge exploring questions about what is knowledge and how we know what we know.

Argument

a collection of statements (called premises) that intend to provide evidence or support for a final statement (called a conclusion)

Rationalism

the belief that all of our knowledge can be understood through pure abstract arguments.

Deduction, a priori reasoning that is independent of experience.

Empiricism

the belief our knowledge is based on experience or sense experience.

Induction, a posteriori reasoning based on experience using trial and error, and gathering data.

Branches of Practical Philosophy

Ethics and Moral Philosophy, Political Philosophy, and Aesthetics

Ethics and Moral Philosophy

Study of right and wrong, good and bad, and how people should act, exploring moral principles, values, and how to make moral judgments.

Political Philosophy

Study of government, politics, and society, exploring concepts like justice, freedom, and the nature of political power

Aesthetics

Study of the nature of beauty, art, taste, and the experience of appreciating them, exploring questions about what constitutes beauty, how we perceive and judge beauty, and the role of art in human experience.

Ancient Greek Philosophy

 Philosophical thought developed in the ancient world, primarily in Greece and Rome, from the 6th century BCE to the 5th century CE.

 No hard distinction between science and philosophy

 Focuses on physics, metaphysics, ethics, political thought, and more

 Preserved in manuscripts, fragments, and testimonies

Hesiod (c. 750-650 BC)

“Theogony” - organized narrative that tells how the gods came to be and how they established permanent control over the cosmos.

Homer (c. 8th century BCE)

“Iliad” and “Odyssey” – epic narrative of the heroic deeds of Achilles and travels of Odysseus during and after the Trojan War.

Cosmology

Branch of metaphysics which deals with the idea of the world as a totality of all phenomena in space and time.

Particular account or system of how the universe is ordered and its laws.

Hesiod’s Creation Myth

“Her broad bosom the ever-firm foundation of all,” - everything came from the earth

Thales

“Thales, the founder of this school of philosophy, says the permanent entity is water (which is why he also propounded that the earth floats on water). Water is the first principle of the nature of moist things.”

Mythology

Myth is defined as a story which attempts to make sense of our environment. - Provide non-rationalist explanations to explain natural phenomena. - Appeals to supernatural agents and events for explanations

Philosophy vs. Mythology

Philosophy represents a turn away from mythological (mythos) to the use of reason (logos) to explain our environment. - Provides rational argument for explanations to explain natural phenomena - Appeals to rational arguments for their explanations and conclusions

Presocratic

Used to distinguish the philosophers that were primarily concerned with cosmological and physical speculation from Socrates who was primarily concerned with moral problems. - The fundamental commitment of the Presocratic was to explain the world naturalistically, in terms of its own inherent principles.

Monists

Believed in a single foundational source (or substance) of everything

Dualists

Believed in two foundational substances of everything

Pluralists

Believed in multiple foundational substances of everything

Milesian School Philosophers

Thales = Water ; Anaximander = undefined infinity ; Anaximenes = air

Anaximander

Fundamental Element is the Apeiron - Perhaps the earliest metaphysician - Arguments based primarily on reason, not merely derived from experience.

The Apeiron (infinite boundless, or indefinite)

Anaximander’s first principle is the Aperion - That which has no limit and is eternal in time and infinite in space that stenches out beyond the cosmos where we live.

Origin of Elements and Entities (Anaximander)

Things with definite nature (e.g., earth, fire, water etc.) are separated out from the Apeiron - Entities such as fire and water are in constant opposition and it is this opposition that accounts for the existence of the world around us

Anaximenes

Fundamental Element is Air - Traditionally known as the student of Anaximander - Theory is much like a combination of Thales and Anaximander

Fundamental Element of Air (Anaximenes)

Why Air? Air gets thinner and thicker

Thinner air gets hotter and becomes fire

Thinker air gets colder and becomes wind → clouds → water → earth → rocks.

Anaximenes’ Metaphysics

Soul made of air (or breath) - The universe made of matter and soul, both contracted out of air

Pythagoras

Credited with fusing philosophy with mathematics - Founder of Pythagoreanism; Arcane religious ideas ascribed to him to ethics and religion

Dualism - Soul and the body are two distinct substances and they can exist apart from each other

Heraclitus

Fundamental Element is Fire; dry, warm stuff (not just flame)

EMPIRICIST

Fundamental Element of Fire (Heraclitus)

All nature and souls are made of fire(body heat) - Fire consumes things into itself; example burring forest turns trees into fire - Fire can be turned into water and earth and these are the opposites of fire

Heraclitus Unity of Opposites

Opposite qualities or conditions are actually interconnected and part of a larger, unified reality

Example: “Seawater harmful for humans, but is essential for the survival of fish, who need it to live.” or “The road up is the road down”

Heraclitus Change and Flux

"On those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow”

Representative of the Unity of Opposites - The river is both the same and different at the same time,but it remains the same and stable river throughout time.

Parmenides of Elea

Father of Metaphysics - Epistemology - First philosophy (study of being, study of what the world is) - No fundamental element; argued for existence of a single, eternal, unchanging reality that he called "Being"

RATIONALIST

Democritus and Leucippus

Lived at the time of Socrates - Hard to separate their ideas – Ancient atomism ascribed to both.

Atomism

Atomism – Greek: átomos, meaning uncuttable - all bodies are made of particles and their interaction explains phenomena we see in the world

Atomistic Metaphysics

Why Atoms? If you keep dividing matter, you will find something that is small enough that cannot be dividing, and that is an atom.

Ontology of the Atomists

a subfield of metaphysics that focuses on the study of being, existence, and the nature of reality. Asks what kinds of things actually exist.

Atomism as a Rejection of Eleatic Philosophy (i.e., Parmenides)

Pluralism: Everything is fundamentally multiple (multiple atoms v. is fundamentally one) – only thing that is fundamental real is atoms and their interactions

Allows for the existence of Non-being - All motion consists of atoms moving from being into non-being

Empedocles

Four Fundamental Elements : Air, Water, Earth, and Fire - Pluralism: reality not a single fundamental substance. Instead, he argued for the existence of multiple, distinct elements that combine to form the diversity of the world

Empedocles Two Principles of Love and Strife

Forces that cause the elements to combine and separate, leading to the formation of different substances and phenomena.

Empedocles’ Theory of Cosmic Cycles

When Love Dominate – all elements are mixed in harmony and thoroughly

When Strife Dominates – elements are separated into basic elements

Our world exists in the middle of these two phases

Empedocles’ Response to Eleatic Philosophy

Denies Parmenides’ unchanging universe. The universe is ever-changing combinations of the four elements.

Presocratic Monism

• Thales

• Anaximander

• Anaximenes

• Heraclitus

• Parmenides

Presocratic Dualism

• Pythagoras

Presocratic Pluralism

• Democritus and Leucippus

• Empedocles