1. Introduction to the Major Themes of Philosophy

all right there is no textbook for this class in philosophy I am your textbook however I'm going to rely on various sources that I'll provide to you for example today I'm going to hand out to you a little reading which is called the apology does anybody know off the top of your head who wrote the apology there is this brand-new - you ever heard of it the apologies famous piece of philosophical literature Spencer Plato is correct very good anybody know the circumstances of the authorship of the apology what was Plato describing in this writing anybody know you haven't - no go ahead the good thought he was apologizing but apologizing in the way that an apology is framed in a fast like apologetics so he wasn't apologizing in kind of the casual sense but it's the more technical sense so what's going on Nicole it only tangentially good thoughts Plato's world of the forms is only passingly mentioned in there Spencer one more bite of the Apple and all yes excellent thought good thought not quite but good stab at the dark there this is a Plato discarding for us the defense that Socrates gave when he was on trial for his life in Athens now you remember from Bible context if not from elsewhere it's only been what four years the year that Socrates died executed for crimes against the state in the city of Athens that year was thousands of hands in the air what is it Josiah what year was it whoopee excellent yes that's good good start okay we're in the PC era no sorry pal not even close anybody know now we go ahead haha well you're closer 399 $3.99 and this is the this is the defense that Socrates gave to the jury of the Athenians who was evaluating whether he should live or die it's a classic piece in philosophical history my point right now is not to start talking about it directly but simply to say to you I'm going to give you handouts like this through the years up through the year years plural and these will be your responsibilities to read and digest and when I give you tests from time to time their content will be part of what I will check out and we'll talk about them to sender great class the purpose for your binder is to keep track of these handouts and so I will try to remember to hole punch them as I have here so they'll easily go into your binder hints you don't want to just toss them in there you know some students have a bad habit of just kind of cramming stuff in to their binders and then eventually their binder looks like you hit by a nuclear bomb and you just don't want that to happen so that's that's the deal all right philosophy philosophy ah gelato or filet is the noun it's a verb Sophia means what what's the fundamental rudimentary etymology of the word philosophy and it is then it is exactly that of of wisdom philosophy typically is conceived of in three great branches okay three broad thematic areas and those three areas are the words are first of all ontology Ont Olo gy secondly epistemology et is te mo l o gy and thirdly the word that would be less commonly used but I like it because it rhymes and to me that's the main and it's the word axiology all right so those three words what is ontology the idea Jordan you know what ontology is that a brand new word you have some idea what it might refer to anybody ontology Sydney it is exactly it's the study of being that helpful what is being what is that Sydney company idea it's the study of being what's that supposed to mean yes yes okay well you're you're on the right is another word that's used for sometimes is essence who we are in our essence would be a more narrow idea it's much much broader than that but it would be included in that being what is it Trevor any idea what do you think not exactly not how we came about although that might be implied in it yeah anybody take a stab at this it's you know you say the word being is pretty common isn't it we talk about a human being we talk about being at the soccer game yeah it's a word we use all the time isn't it probably multiple times a day what is being that's the question what is it what are we 20 suppose we're studying we were dealing with being or more technically ontology Avery go ahead yes almost hang on to that though Avery says existence I want to just play with that a little bit and make it you had your hand earlier reality that's really the idea so for app for now this is all you need to understand is that this is the question of what is actually real and technically Avery philosophy has concluded that to exist is not quite to be real okay and it's an odd little thing there's if you think about these two words BA what would be the absolute opposite of being what we would be call that the opposite of being would be what are they mr. Culberson what would be the opposite of being good start excellent it is it's called non-being and another term that sometimes used for that is nothingness right I want you to all close your eyes and try to imagine for 10 seconds nothing I mean nothing not no space no time nothing nothing you may not feel your neighbor I don't know what that has to do with the exercise but Culver is over there he look Joe I don't know what's up with this all right the human mind it's pretty well demonstrated is not capable of thinking of nothing you know to try to think of nothing is is the human brain sort of starts blowing fuses there after a while but but that's the opposite of being so being has to do with something is actually there nothingness has to do with fact there's nothing and existence Avery is somewhere in the middle the literal meaning of that word from its latin derivatives is X estar a which is to stand out of and the meaning was to stand out of being to exist in other words is sort of this place of having one foot in being and one foot in nothingness it's transient it's changing and philosophy has always thought you know if there's something that is that's there that seems to be changing and trying there must be something behind it that is not changing and is not transient that is there as a fixed reactant cut is that so that's what we're talking about with ontology talk about what is really behind the scenes real all right what about epistemology now know if you didn't quite get that don't worry about it we'll be spending more time way more time on that as we go along but for now let's get something in your notes what is epistemology Steven okay it's the study of knowledge as such it's not knowledge of any particular thing its knowledge of knowledge you know we all think we know some things I think I know the Pythagorean theorem I think I know that you know it's the middle of the day I think I know this I think I know that there's things in my head here that I think I know the epistemology is turning the question back on that whole idea of knowing in and of itself and asking what is this thing that I call knowledge how to come to know anything how do I know that what I think I know is actually corresponding to anything that's real so in terms of the connection we've got ontology is the question what is real epistemology is the question how do I know what is real and how do I know that what I think is real really is maybe Trevor here is just a Fig Newton of my imagination maybe I had some bad pizza last night and some strange indigestion happened and this guy ain't here maybe he's just a hallucination who ever saw the movie A Beautiful Mind huh great movie it may it got me to thinking after I watched the movie are you really there or am I just kind of creating you out of some sort of schizophrenia ever wondered that hmm sometimes you have an optical illusion you sort of experience something you think you see it and then it's not quite what you thought it so it really is the whole question of how we know how the confidence with respect to the things we know axiology the the word you've heard for this one is actually something we've studied together but we're looking at it in a slightly different way we had otherwise but unfortunately ethics doesn't rhyme with ontology and epistemology and you will sometimes hear this word use this is the question you might say in broad terms what should I do about it alright so what is what is real how do I have confidence that what I think is real really is and and once I reflect what should I do about is there I should Ness is there an honest to life is there some kind of responsibility that falls to me because you know I have come to know certain things that are real let me just say as we're kind of reaching the conclusion here of this first session together I have heard from countless well countless I guess that's a little overstated I've heard from several we'll put it that little more modesty graduates who've come back and come to me privately usually and said you know of all the classes that I took at the Oaks philosophy is what helped me the most now I don't maybe they go tell every teacher that they go say to mr. art it was laughing that just got me there I don't know they saw I at this point I don't I don't know but at least I think these are sincerely driven comments because what you're going to cover in this class is and it is a historical survey of the thinkers in history that have created the world in which you live intellectually in terms of the culture the values and so on and I and to me I never tire of teaching it and my experience is that students again and again have these sort of aha moments you know as you're going along and you begin to see that the cook what you see on TV is a culture that's been produced by certain forces you may know nothing much about Frederick Nietzsche but if you know Nietzsche you'll see him in every TV commercial you watch you see you may not know a lot about you know Hegel or you know other characters but if you learn to see how they have shaped your world then as you look at your world you'll say wow that was really a galleon and you're not just kind of showing off that you know something about Hegel you'll really realize that we didn't just plop into this world kind of you know out of the blue that there are forces that have created the world in which you live and so while these ideas may seem somewhat academic sterile not very significant or even relevant trust me by the time we start looking at some of this you'll see that a if you're paying attention you know if you're half away I think you'll see that it's not only relevant but extremely helpful and I really am sincere about that and I every year I've usually had some you know graduate from the Oaks who comes by visiting and they always want to come into this class and give a pep talk to the seniors who are taking philosophy and usually the pep talk will go something like this I never solicit it I never write the script for it but I'm always happy when it happens they'll come in and say you guys need to really pay attention this is going to help you when you get to college so I want to be the first on the block you know to to give you that encouragement that it's not easy material and some of the reading you'll say whoa you know I didn't get anything out of that but kind of work with it and you'll find that in the great scheme of things I think you'll find it pays off alright

Channel: Bruce Gore

Views: 45,407

Rating: 4.9081631 out of 5

Keywords: philosophy ontology metaphysics epistemology axiology ethics Bruce Gore

Id: N13BTlQe01c

Length: 18min 7sec (1087 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2015