CoHN Notes

01/13/2025:

• Sound > Valid > Invalid

• Deductive > Inductive

• Fallacies of Reasoning:

  • Ad Hominem → “Why should I believe that? You’re Just Drunk/Crazy”

  • Slippery Slope → “But if X happens, then Y will happen, and then Z!

  • Begging the Question → “How do you know God exists. Because this book says so. How do you know that that book is right? Because God made it. But how do you know that God exists? Because this book says so…”

  • Equivocation → Shawn is in love. Love is in the air. Therefore, Shawn is in the air.

• Subfields

  • Metaphysics: What exits? What properties, substances, forces?

  • Epistemology: What do we know and how do we know it?

  • Ethics/Value Theory: What is morally/ethically good/bad - What ought I do/not do

• WHAT IS A HUMAN?

• Plato, Statesman (Latin: Politics) ~360 BC

  • human = featherless biped (or an animal that walks on two feet and has no feathers

  • also suggests some people are “born” for certain roles

• Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

  • disagreed with human definition → plucked a fowl and brought it into lecture-room with words, “Here is Plato’s Man” → Plato added “having broad nails” to the definition

• Aristotle In De anima (III.11)

  • humans = rational animals; plants = nutritive principle; other animals = instinctive + Nutritive, Reasoning

• Anaximander (c. 610-c. 545 B.C.E(

  • all life ← from the sea

• Empedocles (c. 492-432 B.C.E)

  • all life ← mixing “root” properties + cosmic forces of “love” and “strife”

• Bible

  • Genesis 2:7 → “God formed man of the dust of the ground”

  • Many other religions and people have a similar view—humans originating from mud or clay

• What is our nature—sense of good and evil

• Bible

  • Gensis 1:1 → God created good and evil Adam and Eve apple

• Xunzi (c. 310-219 BCE)

  • Humans are born evil

• Aristotle

  • Virtue // Nicomachean ethics

  • Norm: “What is the right thing to do?” vs. Artistole: “Who ought I be?”

• Character is Key

• Intentions also Matter

  • have to do it for the right reasons

• What is our place in the Universe?

• The Center?

• Ptolemaic Model of the Universe—Earth at the Center ~ 140 AD

  • Made some sense

    • We saw the sun go around the earth

    • It doesn’t feel like the earth is moving

  • Problem:

    • Retrograde movement

• Copernicus—Sun at the center ~1543 AD

  • Made some sense

    • made sense of retrograde motions

  • Problems:

    • still had to use “epicycles”

  • Controversial:

    • now humans are no longer center of universe!

01/15/2025

What is a human?

• Modern biology → Biological Taxonomy

• Living thing part of evolution

What is a “living thing”?

• no fully agreed upon definition

• attempts:

  • Growth or metabolism

  • Adaptation and response to stimuli

  • has a brain

  • has a heart

• Potential Problem:

  • Polygenesis

    • multiple origins of life; perhaps multiple converging or non-converging evolutionary trees)

  • Monogenesis

    • one singular origin on life

  • human must be part of process of natural selection

Behavioral Modernity

• anatomically modern humans (look like us) - ~250,000 years ago

• 50-60,000 years ago humans started acting like us

  • ex. art, work together, language

• humans changed 60,000 years ago somehow

  • developed a more sophisticated brain

• Signs

  • Icons - resemble their objects

    • picture of a cat looks like the cat

  • Indexes - correlate/correspond to their objects

    • a bell rings every time dinner is served

  • Symbols - Symbolize their object arbitrarily by convention

  • Complexity: Symbol > Index > Icon

• “Sender-Receiver Model” - State of World → Sender —Sign> Receiver → Act

• “ready to mate” signal of fireflies → Symbol

• Problem Solving, Caring for others, Asking Questions/Teaching the young, Teamwork/cooperation

Cosmology

• Johannes Kepler + Albert Einstein = Modern Scientific View

• universe could be better understood if perfect circles and ellipses were removed and imperfect circles were chosen instead ← Kepler

• no absolute center to universe + math used to describe universe could be switched out for another one to make explanations simpler (non-Euclidean geometry) ← Einstein

• solidified modern scientific view of universe as made of atoms following laws of nature ← Einstein

• Einstein’s theory made predictions + explanations that Copernicus’s model couldn’t

  • ex. light of stars bent by gravity