Transcript Welcome to Philosophy

Lecture 1: What is a worldview?
WELCOME TO PHILOSOPHY
What is a worldview?
 Everyone possesses a worldview.
 A worldview is the “sum-total” of one’s
fundamental assumptions about God,
reality, truth, knowledge, humanity,
ethics, and evil.
 A worldview is a habituated way of seeing
and doing
Ground-floor assumptions
include:
 Our view of God;
 Our view of Reality;
 Our view of truth;
 Our view of knowledge;
 Our view of humanity;
 Our view of ethics;
 Our view of evil.
How are worldviews formed:
1. Informally;
2. Uncritically;
3. Inter-generationally (i.e., what is passed down from
parents to children);
4. Intra-generationally (organizations, clubs, or “special
interest” groups that communicate ideas, beliefs, and
activities);
5. Over time;
6. Habits (we form habit-beliefs);
7. Community (shared beliefs).
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The strength of our worldview
is shaped by the following:
Presuppositions: fixed biases that do not
change unless they are placed under extreme
duress.
2. Pre-understandings: moldable influences
that come and go.
3. Faculties of the mind. Is your mind “working
properly?”
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Our View of God: An underlying
presupposition that governs actions and
behavior:
 Atheism: there is no God.
 Agnosticism:
 Hard agnosticism: one cannot know whether God exists.
 Soft agnosticism: one does not yet have enough
information to know whether God exists.
 Pantheism: God is the universe.
 Panentheism: God is in the universe.
 Finite godism: A finite God exists beyond and in the
universe.
 Deism: God is beyond the universe but not in it.
 Polytheism: there are many gods both beyond and in
the world.
 Monotheism: An infinite personal God exists both
beyond and in the world.
Our view of reality: An underlying
presupposition that governs actions and
behavior:
 Reality (Metaphysics):
 The question of the ultimate nature of reality
 Is reality both physical and spiritual? Only
material? Only spiritual?
 What lies beyond physical aspects of nature?
 How do (did) things come into being?
 What does it mean for something to be?
 Is there a realm of being which is not subject to
change?
What is real?
 Materialistic Reality (reality is nothing but
matter; there is no such thing as
something being spiritual or immaterial;
there is no God, no devil, no miracle);
 Illusionary Reality (world is an illusion;
e.g., Matrix program; evil is not real;
cosmic game).
What is real?
 Extensional (Cultural) Reality… “reality is in
the eye of the beholder, an extension of one’s
personality!”
 Materialistic/Spiritual Reality (e.g., God
created this real world where miracles, divine
intervention, and spiritual warfare occur, and
where God’s divine providence is expressed as
He directs history, people, and nations in His
plan for the ages.
What is real?
 What is the relationship between God and the
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universe?
Is the existence of the universe a real fact?
Is the universe eternal?
Is the world best understood in a mechanistic, nonpurposeful way?
Is there a purpose in the universe?
Can God act causally within nature?
 Are miracles possible?
Our view of truth: Everyone has a concept of what
is true/false. This underlying presupposition
governs behavior, decision-making, and actions:

Consider these questions asked by thinking people?
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What is truth?
Can we even define truth
Can we know truth?
Can we know truth with certainty?
Is truth merely opinion controlled by the dominant
forces of our society?
 How is it that so many people have so many different
views of truth?
 Is truth relative?
 How can we say something is “false” if we have not
conception of what is “true.”
Our view of truth: Everyone has a concept of what
is true/false. This underlying presupposition
governs behavior, decision-making, and actions:
 Pragmatism: truth is that which works. If something
works, then it must be true.
 Coherence: internal harmony of ideas. If something
does not harmonize with the ideas that already
cohere, it may not be true.
 Correspondence: truth corresponds to reality,
identifies things as they actually are.
Our view of truth: Everyone has a concept of what
is true/false. This underlying presupposition
governs behavior, decision-making, and actions:
 Poststructuralism is an intellectual movement in
various fields of continental philosophy that whole
heartily rejects “binary oppositions” such as
truth/false; right/wrong; good/evil and formulates
views following that rejection. They argue that
these concepts are rooted not in reality but in
modernistic philosophy that has “scripted”
Western thought and culture.
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Our view of truth: Everyone has a concept of what
is true/false. This underlying presupposition
governs behavior, decision-making, and actions:
 Postmodernism rejects the belief in universal
absolute truth that transcends culture, time, and
space by redefining it to say that truth is that which is
created, defined, and articulated by local (sub)
communities. Interestingly, present statistics show
that young people today are choosing a postmodern
worldview over and against all other worldviews.
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Our view of knowledge:
1. Reason alone to the exclusion of faith.
2. Faith alone to the exclusion of reason.
3. Faith + Reason (God created people to think
rationally).
4. Intuition.
5. Empiricism.
6. Rationalism.
Our view of knowledge:
Consider these questions asked by thinking people:
Can we trust our senses?
What are the proper roles of reason and sense
experience in knowledge?
Are our intuitions more dependable than our
perceptions?
What is the relationship between faith and reason?
Is knowledge about God possible? If so, how?
Should we appeal to “mystical downloads” for
spiritual knowledge?
Our view of Humanity:
 Strictly Materialistic (i.e., all life is
biomechanical machinery; there is no soul, no
spirit, no immaterial aspect within humanity).
 Material/Spiritual (humanity includes both
material and immaterial elements).
1. Life is intrinsically valuable.
2. Quality of life vs. inherent dignity of life.
Our view of Ethics:
A. Virtue Ethics: An action is right if and only if it is what the virtuous person would
do.
B.
Deontological Ethics: An action is right if and only if it is in accord with a
moral principle or command.
C.
Consequential Ethics: An action is right if and only if it promotes the best
consequences.
D.
Situational Ethics: majority or elite determines what is right or wrong.
E.
Situational Contract Ethics: two parties agree what is right from wrong.
F.
Reflective Equilibrium: we use our intuitions to formulate principles to live by
and formulate principles from our situational setting. Then, these two levels
engage each other (i.e., reflect or feedback) to sharpen, refine, or even change
our justifications for moral choices as time and culture changes and more
information is added.
Our view of Evil:
1. Inherent evil with the tendency to sin.
2. Evil is simply making a wrong choice (we are innately neutral
or good, not evil.).
3.
Evil is illusionary.
Consider these questions by thinking people?
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b.
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d.
e.
Why do good people do bad things?
What is evil?
What is good?
Why do good people suffer?
What is good vs. evil?
Questions to ask when examining a
person’s worldview:
a. What are we? Where do we come from?
b. What has gone wrong with the world?
c. What can we do to fix it? [redemption].
Or we can ask these questions:
a. What is real?
b. What are the nature and limits of knowledge?
c. Who is well-off? What is the good life?
d. Who is a really good person?
e. How does one become a really good person?