Transcript Document

Home Ground and the Nature of
Philosophy
Lawrence Lawyer
Sally SB Scientist
Hannah Historian
Enrique Engineer
Rory Religious
Maude Medicine
Arthur Artist
Phil Philosopher
Philosophy is….
The search for self-understanding.
Philosophy is….
Love and pursuit of wisdom.
Philosophy is….
Asking of questions about the meaning of our basic concepts.
Philosophy is….
Search for fundamental beliefs that are rationally justified.
Where did philosophy come from?
• What is a myth or “mythos?”
• What does a myth do?
• Why is a mythos valuable?
Situates the world within a context the
provides meaning to life and events—e.g.
natural events have supernatural causes
(Zeus and thunder).
Promotes community—we’re all in the
same story.
Very stable society: “So behaved the sacred
ancestors; so must we behave.”
Provides moral code.
What is this
hurricane and why
is it happening?
Theater of Miletus
6th Century BCE (600 BCE-501 BCE); near coast of present-day
Turkey.
Collapse of social and political structures leads to collapse of
mythos.
Collapse of mythos: You’re still in the story, but it’s not clear in what
sense it’s a story with characters. The story itself is in question.
Logos
The force of thought leads to
wisdom (Sophia) & those who
have love (Philo) for wisdom and
Source of English “logic”—
devote themselves to its pursuit
psychology, biology, sociology, are engaged in “philosophia”—
etc.
the love of wisdom.
Greek for “word.”
Logos refers to speaking or
setting forth ideas in words,
which implies a certain kind of
thinking about, reflection upon,
and evaluation of those
words—LOGICAL ANALYSIS.
The “Pre-Socratics”
The challenge: Find a way to
create order and harmony
without the myths.
“Inquirers” who used reason
and senses (and not just
gods and myths) to
determine the nature of the
universe & its phenomena.
Began the Western tradition
of “philosophy.”
Idea: “I can create
explanations of what
happens by observing
phenomena and using
reason/logic to draw
inferences.”
Empedocles fragment
Thales of Miletus (@580c. BCE)
Things change—bodies decay, plants
grow, etc.
If there is change, there must be
something that changes AND
something that doesn’t change—
otherwise, chaos.
Therefore, unity (Oneness)
underneath the plurality of the
world.
So what is the unifying, unchanging
substance that is hidden by the
appearance of constant change?
It changes without
changing.
“The first principle and basic
nature of all things is water,”
says Thales.
Hogwash? How far is the
leap from the claim that
water is the building block
of everything and the claim
that atoms are?
Key insight? Plurality of the
world must be reducible to
Rivers turn into deltas….waters turns
one category.
into ice and then back into
water….which turns into
steam…which becomes air….which
becomes wind….which fans fire, etc.
Anaximander (@610-546 BCE)
Student of Thales.
How can water become its opposite,
fire?
The source of all things has to be
greater than any of the things.
In fact, it has to be greater than any
“thing”—it has to be a non-thing or
beyond-thing.
The “Boundless” or
“Unlimited” (apeiron).
The Boundless is opposed to
nothing because everything
is it.
Boundless originally in
vortex, disrupted,
fragmented into elements
(Big Bang?).
World will end and return
elements to unified
Boundless.
Anaximenes (@545 BCE)
Criticism of Anaximander: An
unspecific, indeterminate,
“something-or-other” is no
better than nothing at all.
Besides, “Nihilo nihil” (from
nothing comes nothing).
Air is it. Less dense=fire.
Condensed=cloud and water.
More condensed=earth and
rock.
Key idea: Differences in
quality are really differences
in quantity.
Some Pre-Socratics Focused Not on Explanations of
the Material World but on Nature of Ideas
Xenophanes of Elea
(@570 BCE)
“But mortals suppose
that the gods are born
(as they themselves
are), and that they
wear man’s clothing
and have a human
voice and body.”
(fragment 5)
(fragment 6)
Parmenides (@515-440 BCE)
Shows that the nature of
reality can be demonstrated
through logic without
observation.
Follow this:
“It is” is a truth of reason
that does not depend on
observation.
“It is” cannot be denied
without self-contradiction:
“It is not” is “It is
nothing,” but if “nothing”
exists, then it is not
nothing; it is something.
“It is.”
So…..
indestructible (if destroyed, it
Since “nothing” cannot be would turn into non-Being,
thought without thinking of but there is no nothing);
it as “something,” there is
no nothing, only Being.
eternal (if it were not eternal it
would eventually become nonBeing must, therefore, be Being);
uncreated (if it were
created it would have been
created from nothing, and indivisible (if it could be
divided, there would be
there is no nothing);
spaces of non-Being between
it parts, but there is no nonBeing).
And, therefore, Parmenides says….
Motion is impossible.
For Being to move, it
would have to go from
where Being is to where
Being isn’t (but there can’t
be any such place where
Being isn’t!)
Zeno of Elea (@490 BCE)
Defended Parmenides.
Even given the possibility
of motion, it is impossible
to ever get anywhere.
Parmenides and Zeno
Force a choice between
sensory observation and
mathematics and logic.
The senses deceive, so
reason/logic should reign.
This later becomes the
tension between empiricism
and rationalism.