Week 1

What is philosophy?

Etymology, practice:

• love (philia) of wisdom (sophia)
• characteristic of philosophy is to keep asking questions and not find many answers
• every answer seems to lead to more questions and philosophers don’t flinch

3 Questions:

1. What is the world like? → Metaphysics → What is the world made of? → Is there a god?

2. How are we to live? → ==Ethics== → What is the good life? → Does it pay to be moral?

                                 → ==Social/political philosophy== → What is punishment? → ==Aesthetics== → What is art?
   

3. How and how much can we know about (1) and (2)?

           → Epistemology (Theory of knowledge) → What is knowledge? → What makes science so unique?
   

Logic:

Logic is concerned with the analysis of arguments and straddles all three philosophical sub-disciplines

• It asks what arguments we should accept (values)
• The 3 areas of philosophy are not really separate → What is prejudice? Are we free? Are there any values?

The Meaning of Life:

• The question of life’s meaning or purpose would be ethics → How should I lead my life?
• Are there some facts that make our lives meaningful? → Metaphysics and Ethics

Strive to get as much of an answer as we can to find out at least where the limits of our understanding lie

Is Philosophy “just semantics”?

Problems philosophers are interested in are often the intractable ones leftover from other disciplines, or ones other disciplines don’t address → What is life? → When do we really know a theory is correct?

Semantics?

It generates the response: it depends on what you mean by… (life, ultimate constituent, knowledge) and it’s just a matter of semantics

• It is entirely correct but because an issue is “just” a matter of what we mean, does that make it something we can walk away from?

Sometimes it does:

• It does not really matter whether we call the liquid in oil tankers “flammable” or “inflammable”
• It does not really matter whether tomatoes are properly called the fruit or a vegetable

Abortion Debate:

pro-life: opposed to abortion or euthanasia OR pro-choice: advocating for legal abortion or euthanasia

There must be a difference between the way the pro-life and the pro-choice use “human” or “person”

• The issue is whether “human” means the same as “person”
• Under what circumstances do we correctly call something a “person”
• Semantics: what does the word “person” mean?
• The question is not trivial. The whole debate hangs on it

The two sides will not just agree that they have a trivial misunderstanding about a word.