Gifted and Talented Day 5th July 2010Introduction to Philosophy
Introductions
Explanation about what we are going to do
Questions activity
“The Examined Life”
The Alien game
Plenary
Introductions
My school – Claremont Fan Court School- D:\Pictures\Photos for Project
Head of Religion and Ethics and Gifted and Talented Coordinator
Teacher for nearly 20 years
Born and brought up in Africa.
First job was running an Art Gallery in Nairobi, Kenya
Your turn
Courses in school
“The Examined Life”
Some history of Philosophy and Ethics
Problem 1 – Philosophy of Religion
Problem 2 – Ethics or how do we know what is right and wrong?
Applied Philosophy – Just War Theory
Your response – Open evening
Week 2
Over to you – how are you going to record this?
Philosophy of Morality (Ethics)
Deep Questions
Make up a question that you would like to know the answer to
Mill and grab – walk around and find a partner to talk about your question
Find another partner
In groups of 3 or 4 choose one of the questions to discuss and come up with a possible solution
Report back
“An unexamined life is not worth living” Socrates –
It is like driving an unserviced car or following fashion without look in the mirror
“The Examined Life”
It could be dangerous !- You start to question things in your life
You will be dealing with abstract ideas so not any practical use.
Pointless because there are never any answers
BUT
It deals with the fundamental questions about the meaning of our existence
The ups and downs of doing philosophy – what are they?
Our Blog
Type in your first name:
Create a post about your thoughts on what we have done each day
It’ll be a good record for you
And great to see what others say
You choose how to record your response
oral presentation
written report
The Faculty of Wonder
“The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder” Jostein Gaarder
Fractals: Repetitious patterns that naturally occur in the texture of all surfaces. Mathematics is used to described the properties of fractals.
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The faculty of wonder
The capacity to think
Answers - from your experience (a posteriori) and reason (a priori)
Is it true – valid, verifiable, inductive or deductive? Critical evaluation.
Coming up with some alternative views..............
Key words: a posteriori, a priori, inductive, deductive, premise, conclusion
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Do you know what method philosophers use to do philosophy?
It’s ARGUMENT – but not in the disagreement sense
“Philosophical argument” is special
Fenella Ferret and Mr Ferret (Dad):
Please look at situation 1 and 2 and try guessing which one is the argument and which one is a disagreement.
2.
Each philosophical argument is made up of a series of premises which are sentences that state the points in an argument.
These will lead to a conclusion
for example:
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All observed crows are black
Therefore all crows are black
This is called an a posteriori argument meaning it is based on experience
But it is also an inductive argument because even if the premises are all true the conclusion might not be – another example:
Apples are fruit
Therefore all apples are green
So what’s wrong with this?
It is a proper philosophical argument but it is a weak one.
There are strong and weak inductive arguments
Try making up some of your own.................
The second type of argument that philosophers use is called deductive
which means that the conclusion has to follow from the premises provided they are true – for example:
All men are mortal
Socrates was a man
What is the conclusion?
Therefore Socrates was mortal
Deductive reasoning is often used in scientific and mathematical arguments like this:
Gravity makes things fall.
The apple that hit my head was due to gravity.
The are based on an generally accepted truth from which specific instances are drawn.
Now try making some deductive arguments yourself...............
How to criticise an argument
Two ways of criticising an argument:
1. attack the truth of the premises
2. show the argument to be invalid regardless of whether the premises are true
Lets take a look at something philosophers have tackled – the problem of evil
What is the problem?
Work in pairs to look at the statements and put them in order.
Identify the one premise that can be challenged.
A philosopher would then create another argument to make this better.
The right order for the argument is:
And the odd one out is number
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If God is all-powerful………….
Evil exists……..
And now your response
Why is Lego the most ingenious toy in the world?
Key words: empiricist, rationalist, Socratic dialogue or dialectic,
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Blank paper and pen response
Story from Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder
Philosophy Dating Game
Pick a card
Walk around and grab a classmate and ask them the question on the card – if they can’t answer tell them the answer.
Other person now asks his/her question and confirms answer.
SWAP CARDS
Find another person and repeat the process ending with swapping cards.
Soon you will start being asked questions that you have heard before and hopefully you will know the answer
Move on until you have answered at least 6 or more correctly
The story of philosophy – the march of intellectual thought - History in 5 mins
Philosophy of ancient Greece
These philosophers liberated philosophy from myth and legend
They wanted to know about basic substance and the changes they observed
For example Thales, an empiricist believed the basic substance was water
On the other hand Parmenedes, a rationalist, held that reason told him there was no such thing as change
The Natural Philosophers
Why is Lego the most ingenious toy in the world?
Heraclites believed that everything was constantly changing
The last of the great natural philosophers – Democrites did not believe in change, rather he believed that everything was made of tiny invisible blocks which were eternal and immutable called “atoms” which means “un – cutable” in Greek – hence the lego block
Philosophy of ancient Greece contin.
The Metaphysical philosophers
SOCRATES, PLATO, ARISTOTLE - These are the greats!
SOCRATES – believed that the pure qualities of virtue and justice were the true self.
Saw the soul as the seat of conscious and morality.
Believed knowledge gained through questioning – the Socratic dialogue or dialectic.
Western Philosophy continued....
“One thing only that I know, and that is that I know nothing”
Socrates
Contemplating the divine/human relationship
PLATO (b.428 b.c.e)– One of his key ideas was that the material world was a mere reflection of the ideal forms that were metaphysical - Dualism
ARISTOTLE (b.384 b.c.e.)– believed in God the Prime Mover/First Cause but that everything else was firmly rooted in the material world – what you see is what you get and you must use reason to understand it.
Questions for board: Why are 500 cookies all the same? Why are horses all the same? Do we have a body and a soul?
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Plato – tried to “grasp” reality – what was eternal
Plato agreed with the Natural philosophers that there was a core substance and that everything changes
His idea was that while all on earth changes the ideas or “forms” behind do not. So no horse/pigs or crocophants
These “forms” live in the eternal world of “form”
Hence the ideal or “form” of the horse, human beings etc.
Everything has a body which dies and a soul that survives. –dualism.
ARISTOTLE – the last of the great Greek philosophers, the first of the great biologists
“We can only have true knowledge of things that can be understood with our reason” – the earth is transitory so we can only have an opinion about it. Plato
Aristotle disagreed and criticised his teacher. He believed that:
Nature was very real. He studied nature minutely and gave scientists much of their terminology still used today.
He said that ideas are in our head, they come from our observation.
Body and Soul inseperable – form (characteristics) and substance (what things are made from)
Christian Philosophy
AUGUSTINE (b.354 c.e.)
THOMAS AQUINAS (1225c.e.)
He used many of Plato’s ideas of body and soul. Born in North Africa he had a great influence on the early church with his ideas of original sin so that man can only fulfil his destiny by God’s grace. He was a dualist.
Another Christian philosopher who achieved the remarkable feat of uniting medieval Christianity with ancient Greek philosophy especially Aristotle’s work. He is the only philosopher to have a system of thought named after him – Thomism.
The rise of modern western philosophy
Rationalism and Empiricism
Key words: sceptic, Cartesian, Thomist, atheist, agnostic, theist
Question: How do you know that you are not controlled by a wicked demon?
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“DOUBT EVERYTHING” Rene Descartes(b.1596 c.e)
There is a direct link between these philosophers – all believed that knowledge can only be obtained through reason (not experience) – they are rationalists
The Beginnings of Modern philosophy
Rene Descartes is called the father of modern philosophy. He was both a mathematician and philosopher
He was the next person after Thomas Aquinas for found a whole new philosophical system
His philosophical project was twofold – finding the certainty of knowledge and working out the relationship between mind and body.
Cartesian dualism
Cartesian dualism is that the body and mind are made of two entirely different substances that are joined together in the pineal gland in the brain
and Cartesian method:...........
To doubt everything and breaking things down into their component part. He doubted everything about himself – he thought “what if I am being controlled by a evil demon?” – then he thought but even if his brain was being controlled at least he would be able to think that he was being controlled therefore: “Cognito ergo sum”
David Hume- Scottish philosopher
Unlike Descartes, Hume (b. 1711 c.e) was purely an empiricist but like Descartes he was also a sceptic and atheist (one of the first)
He believed that absolutely nothing can be known unless it could be proved by experience or sense perceptions.
Therefore no real knowledge because it is just our perceptions.
Immanuel Kant (b 1724 c.e.) – attempted to combine rationalism with empiricism
He was a scientist but he was goaded into philosophical action by his encounter with the sceptical empiricism of Hume
He believed that real knowledge was gained both by experience through the senses (a posteriori) and through reason (a priori).
Kant’s view on the existence of God
For example he believed that reason tells us that there is an unknowable God even we cannot prove His existence.
God is known through morality because it is inconceivable there would be not ultimate justice – God is the final judge in the afterlife
Modern Philosophy
“Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent” LudwigWittgenstein
How do we know red is red?
How do we know a concept is true?
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He studied under Bertrand Russell
His philosophy is divided into two periods
He refuted his early work
His early work was searching for a perfect language to mirror the world
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This philosophy is called “picture theory”
The world is made up of a bunch of parts “atoms”
There is a word for every object and its properties
Language represents everything in this world
If there is no object for a word then it is meaningless
Early work which he believed would solve the problem of all philosophy
Like a map is the visual representation
Is good or God an object?
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Words have meaning (reality)
It is a necessary(true) condition that words have meaning for them to represent objects
Therefore objects must exist
Later work – Philosophical Investigations
There are flaws in the early theory
Language depends on the context in which it is used
“I am not angry!” said in an angry tone
Need both his early and his later theory to be true
Flaws – wipes out ethics and philosophy and even wipes out everything he has said. Can not use science methods in philosophy
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