Introduction to Philosophy

Cheatsheet Content

### What is Philosophy? - **Definition:** The study of fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. - **Etymology:** From Greek *philosophia*, meaning "love of wisdom." - **Core Purpose:** To understand the world and our place in it through critical thinking and rational argument, rather than empirical observation (science) or faith (theology). ### Major Branches of Philosophy #### Metaphysics - **Definition:** The study of the fundamental nature of reality, including abstract concepts like being, knowing, cause, substance, time, and space. - **Key Questions:** What is real? Does God exist? What is the nature of consciousness? Do we have free will? - **Sub-branches:** Ontology (study of being), Cosmology (study of the universe's origin/nature), Philosophy of Religion. #### Epistemology - **Definition:** The study of knowledge; its nature, origin, and scope. - **Key Questions:** What is knowledge? How do we acquire knowledge? Can we know anything for certain? What is truth? - **Concepts:** Justification, belief, truth, reason, experience, skepticism, rationalism, empiricism. #### Ethics (Moral Philosophy) - **Definition:** The study of moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an activity. - **Key Questions:** How should we live? What is good and bad? What is justice? What are our moral duties? - **Sub-branches:** - **Meta-ethics:** Investigates the nature of moral judgments (e.g., are moral truths objective?). - **Normative ethics:** Seeks to establish moral norms or standards of conduct (e.g., utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics). - **Applied ethics:** Examines specific controversial issues (e.g., abortion, euthanasia, animal rights, environmental ethics). #### Logic - **Definition:** The study of reasoning and argumentation; the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. - **Key Concepts:** Argument, premise, conclusion, validity, soundness, deduction, induction, fallacies, formal logic, informal logic. - **Purpose:** To distinguish good arguments from bad ones. #### Aesthetics - **Definition:** The study of beauty, art, and taste. - **Key Questions:** What is beauty? What is art? What is the purpose of art? How do we judge art? Can art be objective? #### Political Philosophy - **Definition:** The study of fundamental questions about the state, government, politics, liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority. - **Key Questions:** What is the best form of government? What are the rights and responsibilities of citizens? What is justice in society? What justifies state authority? #### Philosophy of Mind - **Definition:** The study of the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness, and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. - **Key Questions:** What is consciousness? Is the mind separate from the body (mind-body problem)? Can machines think? What is the nature of pain or perception? #### Philosophy of Science - **Definition:** The study of the fundamental questions, assumptions, and implications of natural science. - **Key Questions:** What is a scientific theory? How does science progress? What is the relationship between theory and observation? Is science objective? What is falsifiability? #### Philosophy of Language - **Definition:** The study of the nature, origin, and use of language. - **Key Questions:** How do words acquire meaning? How does language relate to thought? What is truth in language? How does language refer to the world? #### Other Branches - **Philosophy of Religion:** Examines religious concepts, beliefs, arguments, and practices. - **Philosophy of History:** Explores the meaning and purpose of historical events. - **Philosophy of Education:** Investigates the goals, methods, and problems of education. - **Environmental Philosophy:** Focuses on environmental ethics, values, and issues. - **Feminist Philosophy:** Critiques traditional philosophical concepts from a feminist perspective. ### Historical Periods & Key Thinkers #### Ancient Philosophy (c. 600 BCE - 500 CE) - **Pre-Socratics:** Thales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides (focused on cosmology, nature of reality). - **Socrates:** "The unexamined life is not worth living." Emphasized ethics, Socratic method (questioning). - **Plato:** Theory of Forms, Allegory of the Cave, *The Republic*, founded the Academy. - **Aristotle:** Student of Plato, emphasized empiricism, logic, ethics (Nicomachean Ethics), politics, metaphysics. - **Hellenistic Schools:** Stoicism (virtue, reason, living in harmony with nature), Epicureanism (pursuit of pleasure as absence of pain), Skepticism. #### Medieval Philosophy (c. 500 CE - 1600 CE) - **Focus:** Reconciling classical philosophy with Christian (or Islamic/Jewish) theology. - **Key Thinkers:** - **Augustine of Hippo:** Christian Neoplatonism, problem of evil, free will. - **Thomas Aquinas:** Synthesized Aristotle with Christian theology (Scholasticism), Five Ways to prove God's existence. - **Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides:** Major Islamic and Jewish philosophers influencing Western thought. #### Renaissance & Early Modern Philosophy (c. 1600 CE - 1800 CE) - **Shift:** Away from religious dogma towards reason, science, and human experience. - **Rationalism:** Knowledge primarily through reason and innate ideas. - **Descartes:** "Cogito, ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am), mind-body dualism. - **Spinoza:** Monism (God/Nature is one substance). - **Leibniz:** Monads, pre-established harmony. - **Empiricism:** Knowledge primarily through sensory experience. - **Locke:** Tabula Rasa (mind as a blank slate), natural rights. - **Berkeley:** Idealism ("to be is to be perceived"). - **Hume:** Skepticism about causality, induction, and self. - **Kant:** Synthesized rationalism and empiricism, critical philosophy, categorical imperative (ethics). #### 19th Century Philosophy - **German Idealism:** Building on Kant, emphasized the role of mind/spirit in shaping reality. - **Hegel:** Dialectic, absolute spirit. - **Utilitarianism:** Ethics based on maximizing overall happiness/utility. - **Bentham, John Stuart Mill.** - **Existentialism (Precursors):** Focus on individual freedom, responsibility, meaning in a meaningless world. - **Kierkegaard, Nietzsche:** Critique of traditional morality, will to power. #### 20th Century & Contemporary Philosophy - **Analytic Philosophy:** Emphasis on logic, language, and conceptual analysis (dominant in Anglo-American world). - **Russell, Wittgenstein, Frege, logical positivists.** - **Quine, Kripke, Davidson.** - **Continental Philosophy:** Broad term for philosophical traditions from mainland Europe, often critical of science/objectivity. - **Phenomenology:** Husserl, Heidegger (study of conscious experience). - **Existentialism:** Sartre, Camus (freedom, responsibility, absurdity). - **Post-Structuralism/Postmodernism:** Foucault, Derrida (critique of grand narratives, power structures). - **Critical Theory:** Frankfurt School (critique of society and culture). - **Other Key Developments:** Philosophy of Mind (functionalism, computational theory of mind), Epistemology (naturalized epistemology), Ethics (virtue ethics revival, applied ethics), Political Philosophy (Rawls's theory of justice). ### Key Philosophical Concepts - **Truth:** Correspondence, coherence, pragmatic theories. - **Reality:** Objective vs. subjective, idealism vs. materialism. - **Knowledge:** Justified true belief (JTB), foundationalism, coherentism. - **Reason:** Rationality, logic, inference. - **Experience:** Empiricism, sensation, perception. - **Free Will:** Determinism vs. libertarianism vs. compatibilism. - **Mind-Body Problem:** Dualism vs. monism (materialism, idealism, neutral monism). - **Justice:** Distributive, retributive, restorative. - **Good/Evil:** Objective vs. subjective, moral relativism. - **Identity:** Personal identity, self, numerical vs. qualitative identity. - **Meaning of Life:** Existentialism, teleology, nihilism. ### Philosophical Methods - **Socratic Method:** Cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas and underlying presumptions. - **Logical Argumentation:** Constructing arguments with premises and conclusions, evaluating their validity and soundness. - **Thought Experiments:** Imaginary scenarios used to investigate the nature of things (e.g., Plato's Cave, Ship of Theseus, Trolley Problem). - **Conceptual Analysis:** Breaking down concepts to understand their components and relationships. - **Dialectic:** A method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to European and Indian philosophy since antiquity.