Attempting to summarize thousands of years of philosophy in a brief lecture.
Key questions: What is philosophy? What are its main problems?
Core Concepts of Philosophy
What do we know?
Inquisitivity: The need to ask deep and significant questions.
Epistemology: How we know what we know is a central question of philosophy.
Ethics: Consideration of what we ought to do.
Note: Ethics will not be the main focus of this course.
Central Questions in Philosophy
Connection between the mind and reality:
How thoughts relate to the world around us.
Example of Thought and Reality
Use of a triangle as an example:
Thought Content: "That's a triangle."
Connection to Reality: Skepticism about accurately capturing reality.
Interpersonal Skepticism:
Concerns about whether different people have the same understanding of concepts, like a triangle.
Ambiguity in Concepts
Example of God: Different interpretations lead to potential misunderstandings.
Euthyphro's dilemma exemplifies this ambiguity.
Plato's Forms as a Solution
Forms: Abstract representations of concepts (e.g., triangularity).
Thought content is tied to the form.
Aims to solve the problem of skepticism by connecting thoughts to a universal form.
Critiques of Plato's Forms
Skepticism remains about whether concepts align with forms.
Counterfeit Forms: Different interpretations of forms can lead to confusion.
Historical Development: Plato's ideas were soon challenged by skepticism.
The Question of Knowledge
The challenge of knowing if we accurately capture forms or concepts.
Dynamic Skepticism: Refers to how I might use terms differently across time or in different contexts.
Skepticism about whether knowledge is universal across different people or cultures.
Historical Reactions to Skepticism
Kant's Distinction: Between phenomena (things as they appear) and noumena (things in themselves).
Both categories exist, but the noumena are unknowable.
Hegel's Position: Suggests everything is a mental construction—reality is shaped by our minds.
The Role of God in Knowledge
Early Christian Philosophy: Ideas of forms exist in the mind of God, offering a stable solution to the problem of knowledge.
Descartes' Evil Deceiver Argument: Raises doubts about the reliability of innate ideas, challenging previous beliefs about God and knowledge.
Reaction to Idealism
Analytic Philosophy emerges partly as a response to the idealist tradition.
Critical view of historical and cultural relativity in concepts.
Consequences: Concerns about moral and ethical relativism and the loss of objective truth.
Conclusion and Further Thoughts
Questions how knowledge and moral understanding can be established in a potentially fragmented world.
Future Discussion: The implications of differing interpretations of reality and concepts, leading to a debate over the nature of knowledge and understanding.