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Philosophy branch introduction (Metaphysics (Space and time (cosmology)…

- - - - beauty is objective and universal
      - a second concept involved in a viewer's interpretation of beauty, that of taste, which is subjective and varies according to class, cultural background and education.
- - - - Monism
        
        Heraclitus
        
        Fire
        
        Democlitus
        
        Atomism
        
        Thales
        
        Water
        
        Idealist
        
        Berkeley
        
        German idealist school
        
        Dual aspect theory
        
        Spinoza
        
        Russel
        
        Physicalism
        
        Matter and mind as derivatives of a neutral substance
        
        Draws from atomic theory, neuroscience, evolution and computer technology
        
        Realist
      - Dualism
        
        Descartes
        
        Cartesian dualism
      - Philosophy of mind
        
        Mental events
        
        Mental functions
        
        Mental properties
        
        Consciousness
  - - - No change
    - - Everything is change
  - - - Berkeley
      - German idealist school
      - space and time are mental constructs used to organize perceptions, or are otherwise unreal
    - - time and space have existence independent from the human mind
    - - Pantheists
        
        Spinoza
        
        Deists
        
        God created the universe and then left it to its means
        
        Voltaire
  - - - Polytheism
      - Monotheism
      - Pantheism/Monism
  - - - Spinoza
    - - Hobbes
  - - - Plato's world of forms
  - - - Identical objects have identical attributes
- - - - Phenomenalism
      - Positivism
      - Scientism
      - Logical positivism
    - - Indirect realism
  - - - Intuition
    - - Perception, data analysis, inferences
  - - - Infinite regress problem
        
        Possible soloutions
        
        Instrumentalism / Pragmatism
        
        Foundationalism
    - - Pragmatic approach to knowledge
- - - - Consequentialism
        
        morality of an action is contingent on the action's outcome
        
        Utilitarianism
        
        an action is right if it leads to the most happiness for the greatest number of people ("happiness" here is defined as the maximization of pleasure and the minimization of pain)
        
        Epicurus
        
        Jeremy Bentham
        
        John Stuart Mill
        
        Hedonism
        
        Egoism
        
        Asceticism
        
        Altruism
      - Deontology
        
        rightness or wrongness of actions themselves
        
        one's duties and other's rights (the Greek 'deon' means 'obligation' or 'duty')
        
        Divine Command Theory
        
        Descartes
        
        Natural Rights Theory
        
        Hobbes
        
        Locke
        
        humans have absolute, natural rights
        
        Categorical Imperative
        
        Kant
        
        rational capacity
        
        inviolable moral laws
        
        motives of the person who carries out the action that make them right or wrong, not the consequences of the actions
        
        one should only act in such a way that one could want the maxim of universality
        
        treat people as an end as well as a means to an end
        
        Contractarian Ethics
        
        moral acts are those that we would all agree to if we were unbiased
      - Virtue ethics
        
        inherent character of a person rather than on the nature or consequences of specific actions
        
        virtues (those habits and behaviors that will allow a person to achieve "eudaimonia", or well being or a good life)
        
        practical wisdom to resolve any conflicts between virtues
        
        Eudaimonism
        
        originated by Aristotle that defines right action as that which leads to "well being"
        
        practicing the virtues in one's everyday activities, subject to the exercise of practical wisdom
        
        Agent-Based Theories
        
        virtue based on our common-sense intuitions about which character traits are admirable
        
        Moral exemplars
  - - - Moral Realism
        
        there are objective moral values
        
        truth or falsity are independent of our beliefs, feelings or other attitudes towards the things being evaluated
        
        Cognitivism
        
        the belief that moral language consists of truth-apt statements
      - Moral Anti-Realism
        
        there are no objective moral values
        
        Types
        
        Ethical Subjectivism
        
        moral statements are made true or false by the attitudes and/or conventions of the observers, or that any ethical sentence merely implies an attitude, opinion, personal preference or feeling held by someone.
        
        e.g. moral relativism
        
        Non-Cognitivism
        
        ethical sentences are neither true nor false because they do not express genuine propositions, thus implying that moral knowledge is impossible.
        
        Moral Nihilism
        
        ethical claims are generally false. It holds that there are no objective values, no moral truths
        
        Moral Skepticism
        
        no one has any moral knowledge
        
        Alternative division
        
        Moral relativism
        
        The position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect objective and/or universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to social, cultural, historical or personal circumstances
        
        Moral absolutism
        
        there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are right or wrong, regardless of the context of the act
        
        Moral universalism
        
        there is a universal ethic which applies to all people, regardless of culture, race, sex, religion, nationality, sexuality or other distinguishing feature, and all the time
  - - - Examples
        
        Medical ethics
        
        Bioethics
        
        Legal ethics
        
        Business ethics
        
        Environmental ethics
        
        Information ethics
  - - - Socrates
        
        "There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance"
        
        equated knowledge and wisdom with self-awareness, virtue and happiness
        
        the truly wise (i.e. self-aware) person will know what is right, do what is good, and therefore be happy
      - Aristotle
        
        "Nature does nothing in vain"
        
        self-realization (the awareness of one's nature and the development of one's talents) is the surest path to happiness
        
        moderation
        
        e.g. courage is the moderate virtue between the extremes of cowardice and recklessness
        
        the right thing to the right person at the right time to the proper extent in the correct fashion and for the right reason
      - Diogenes of Sinope
        
        Cynicism
        
        a simple life is essential to virtue and happiness
      - Hedonism
        
        Epicureanism
        
        observed that indiscriminate indulgence sometimes results in negative consequences
      - Stoic
        
        Epictetus
        
        the greatest good was contentment, serenity and peace of mind, which can be achieved by self-mastery over one's desires and emotions, and freedom from material attachments.
        
        difficult problems in life should not be avoided, but rather embraced as spiritual exercises needed for the health of the spirit.
      - Skepticism
        
        Pyrrho
        
        self-interest is the primary motive of human behavior, and he was disinclined to rely upon sincerity, virtue or Altruism as motivations
      - Humanism
        
        dignity and worth of all people
        
        universal human qualities (especially rationality)
        
        Thales
        
        instrumental in the move away from a spiritual morality based on the supernatural, and the development of a more humanistic freethought
        
        beliefs should be formed on the basis of science and logic, and not be influenced by emotion, authority, tradition or dogma
- - - - Logic
      - Rhetoric
      - Grammar
  - - - the study of inference with purely formal and explicit content
        
        A formal system (also called a logical calculus) is used to derive one expression (conclusion) from one or more other expressions (premises)
        
        These premises may be axioms (a self-evident proposition, taken for granted) or theorems (derived using a fixed set of inference rules and axioms, without any additional assumptions).
    - - studies natural language arguments, and attempts to develop a logic to assess, analyze and improve ordinary language
    - - the study of symbolic abstractions that capture the formal features of logical inference
        
        deals with the relations of symbols to each other, often using complex mathematical calculus, in an attempt to solve intractable problems traditional formal logic is not able to address
    - - Logicism
        
        perhaps the boldest attempt to apply logic to mathematics, pioneered by philosopher-logicians such as Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell,
      - Intuitionism
        
        the application of internally consistent methods to realize more complex mental constructs
  - - - concerns what follows necessarily from given premises
      - An inference is deductively valid if (and only if) there is no possible situation in which all the premises are true and the conclusion false.
      - At the core of deductive reasoning is the syllogism (also known as term logic)
        
        one proposition (the conclusion) is inferred from two others (the premises)
        
        Major premise: All humans are mortal.
        
        Minor premise: Socrates is human.
        
        Conclusion: Socrates is mortal
      - Given the rule and effect, deduce the effect
        
        Truth preserving
    - - deriving a reliable generalization from observations (i.e. from the particular to the general)
        
        All observed crows are black.
        
        Therefore:
        
        All crows are black.
      - Counter
        
        Hume argued that it requires inductive reasoning to arrive at the premises for the principle of inductive reasoning
      - Given a cause and effect, induce a rule
    - - Give rule and effect, abduce the cause
    - - Formal logic that attempts to deal with modalities (expressions associated with notions of possibility, probability and necessity)
    - - concerned only with sentential connectives and logical operators (such as "and", "or", "not", "if ... then ...", "because" and "necessarily")
    - - unlike Aristotelian syllogistic logic, where the forms that the relevant part of the involved judgments took must be specified and limited Predicate Logic is also able to give an account of quantifiers general enough to express all arguments occurring in natural language, thus allowing the solution of the problem of multiple generality that had perplexed medieval logicians.
    - - any sort of mistake in reasoning or inference, or, essentially, anything that causes an argument to go wrong.
      - Fallacies of Ambiguity
        
        a term is ambiguous if it has more than one meaning
        
        equivocation: where a single word can be used in two different senses
      - Contextual fallacies
        
        which depend on the context or circumstances in which sentences are used
        
        Fallacies of Significance
        
        where it is unclear whether an assertion is significant or not.
        
        Fallacies of Emphasis
        
        Fallacies of Quoting Out of Context
        
        Fallacies of Argumentum ad Hominem
        
        a statement cannot be shown to be false merely because the individual who makes it can be shown to be of defective character.
        
        Fallacies of Arguing from Authority
        
        Fallacies of Arguments which Appeal to Sentiments
        
        Fallacies of Argument from Ignorance
        
        Fallacies of Begging the Question
        
        Fallacies of Composition
        
        he assumption that what is true of a part is also true of the whole.
        
        Fallacies of Division
        
        the converse assumption that what is true of a whole must be also true of all of its parts
        
        Fallacies of Irrelevant Conclusion
        
        Fallacies of Non-Sequitu
        
        Fallacies of Statistics
    - - a statement or sentiment that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true in fact
      - Conversely, a paradox may be a statement that is actually self-contradictory (and therefore false) even though it appears true
      - Common causes
        
        self-reference
        
        infinity
        
        circular definitions
        
        a proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in one of the premises
        
        vagueness
        
        false or misleading statements
        
        including half-truths