Introduction to Philosophy

Below is a current outline/table of contents for this project.

1. Introduction
2. Part 1: Metaphysics

   1. Chapter 1: The ambiguity of metaphysics, with some historical notes

      Metaphysics as a term is simply what is not physics. It may try to capture truly non-negotiable sectors of our conceptual schemes and\or cut reality at its joints.
   2. Chapter 2: Finitism, infinitism, monism, dualism, pluralism (Counting 1)

      Counting 1 (finitism, infinitism, monism, dualism, pluralism): is reality one thing or many (Eleatism?) If either is correct how to count them? Example from cartesianism: is mind a kind of its own or is it reducible to something else? Equally is “matter” a kind or not?
   3. Chapter 3: The case of the mind: a puzzling problem

      While Counting One may decide whether there is one substance (see e.g. Bento Spinoza or Nagarajuna) or more than one, people like Wittgenstein, e.g. would note that there is a self, a mind, a something or other call that mind, that is what the mind does in metaphysics. For someone like a full idealist, it does any philosophical work possible (cfr. Berkeleyan divine minds are the only ground of anything else).
   4. Chapter 4: Fundamentality, or what grounds what

      Are there principles to decide whether one ought to be an idealist or not?
   5. Chapter 5: Case study: what if anything are numbers? (Counting 2)

      Counting 2: what if anything are numbers? Supposing the sentence before this one is made up of five words, are there ONE or TWO objects (the sentence and the number five)? Three?
   6. Chapter 6: Case study: metaphysics on a human scale asks whether there is free action

      Metaphysics on a human scale asks whether there is free action. Brief treatment of free will in two versions. Can one will anything? Is what one can will subject to conditions?
   7. Chapter 7: Case study: what are universals?

      What are universals? Colors and shapes. This chapter can include an appendix on holes.
   8. Chapter 8: Notes on methods: is there an experimental metaphysics?

      Is there an experimental metaphysics? Is metaphysics ratiocination and inference together with imagination, or some of its claims are testable? The example of quantum mechanics can be discussed.
   9. Chapter 9: The difficult contacts between religious and physicalistic metaphysics

      Is god an entity? If so, what are the properties of some such entity?
   10. Chapter 10: Topics for further study

       The following topics are recommended: Causation: Consider a typical test case like Hume vs Pearl The elimination of metaphysics by way of… what? Carnap and his niece Is metaphysics the mirror onto which humans project languages? Which language? Some from T. Hofweber
3. Part 2: Logic

   This part provides an overview of logic as the study of arguments, introducing important logical terms, tools, and distinctions. Since philosophy is primarily concerned with providing arguments for claims, and evaluating those arguments, it is tantamount that we understand what arguments are, how to recognise them, and how to go about evaluating them. The five chapters of this part aim to provide some of this fundamental information. The five chapters are: i) What is Logic? ii) Evaluating Arguments; iii) Necessary and Sufficient Conditions; iv) Informal Fallacies; v) Formal Logic in Philosophy.

   1. Chapter 1: What is Logic?

      This chapter will provide a simple description of what logic is, focusing on logic as the study of arguments, and the role that logic plays within philosophy. The section should clarify what arguments are, introducing the concepts of premises and conclusion, distinguish arguments from simple statements, and explain what logic aims to do with arguments (e.g. identify and evaluate them).
   2. Chapter 2: Evaluating Arguments

      This section will outline the means through which we evaluate arguments. It should begin by distinguishing between types of arguments (deductive, inductive and abductive), and then introduce the concepts that philosophers use to evaluate arguments: validity, soundness, and cogency. It will be important here to choose a suitable articulation of validity, as the concept can be rather slippery outside of formal definitions (which are not appropriate here).
   3. Chapter 4: Informal Fallacies

      This section should outline what fallacies are, distinguishing between informal and formal fallacies. The section will then concentrate on informal fallacies, leaving a full description of formal fallacies to section 5. Famous informal fallacies including appeals to popularity, emotion, and ad hominem should be clarified, and an explanation provided for why each is an example of fallacious reasoning.
   4. Chapter 3: Necessary and Sufficient Conditions

      This section will outline the concepts of necessary and sufficient conditions, and the role that these concepts play within philosophy. It will be important to briefly explain why we need to understand these conditions, with particular emphasis being placed on the relationship between the conditions and both conditionals and definitions. It would also be a good idea to connect the idea of necessary and sufficient conditions to the validity of modus ponens & tollens, and the invalidity of denying the antecedent and affirming the consequent, given the important of these forms of argument.
   5. Chapter 5: Formal Logic in Philosophy

      This last section should outline what formal logic is, and the role that it plays in modern philosophy. Particular attention should be given here to the concept of logical form, the goal of formal logic in capturing logical form, and the explanation of validity in terms of logical form. It will be important here to mention how the notion of validity in terms of logical form allows us to identify formal fallacies. [NB: Propositional logic may be the most appropriate formal logic to use in explaining how modern philosophy attempts to capture arguments’ logical form, given that it is much simpler than first-order logic while actually still used by the philosophical community, unlike syllogistic logic.]
4. Part 3: Epistemology
5. Part 4: Aesthetics
6. Part 5: Social and Political Philosophy

   This part asks “how should we live together?” and how we should organize our society and government. It explores the ways in which social and political philosophies have influenced forms of political institutions, our ways of life, and current sociopolitical debates. It will address the principles that establish and justify societies and governments, including the fundamental yet controversial principles of authority, justice, rights, equality, liberty, and democracy. It will look at how philosophers have conceived of the rights and responsibilities of a society to its members, of the members to society and to each other, and of a society to other societies.

   1. Chapter 1: What is Social and Political Philosophy?

      Introduces the basic themes and questions related to how we should construct our society and our governmental systems. What is human nature and how does that affect how we live together? What do we mean by the concepts of justice, rights, equality, liberty, and democracy? What are the basic forms of government? What are the approaches to justice?
   2. Chapter 2: The Ideal Society

      Deals with idealistic and utopian visions of the ideal society. Will cover the general idea of a perfect society, Plato’s ideal state in The Republic, and John Rawls’s thought experiment about a fair society. Who should rule society and what the basis of their authority is.
   3. Chapter 3: Autocracy, Timocracy, and Aristocracy

      Discusses ancient and medieval conceptions of the legitimacy of autocratic rule. Includes Aristotle’s conception of the city-state, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas on the divine right of kings, and perhaps also Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince discussing the nature of political power and how to wield and maintain it.
   4. Chapter 4: The State of Nature and the Modern State

      This chapter starts with Thomas Hobbes’s defense of autocratic political power in Leviathan and his arguments for political authority and the transition from the state of nature to the commonwealth. It will provide a counterpoint to Hobbes with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s critique of society and his account of the state of nature.
   5. Chapter 5: Constitutional and Representative Government

      Covers John Locke’s philosophy on the origins, nature, and purpose of government and his labor theory of property, the foundations of the U.S. political philosophy and governmental system, Edmund Burke on conservatism, J.S. Mill on democracy, and systems of constitutional monarchy in Europe.
   6. Chapter 6: Capitalism and Marxism

      Adam Smith’s economic theories and his view of the independent individual in competition with other individuals. The development of industrial capitalism in the 19th century. The anti-capitalist response by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ in Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto and the various forms of social and political thought inspired by Marx.
   7. Chapter 7: 20th Century Theories

      The chapter will cover the grand theorizing of the 20th century, such as Post-Marxist theory including György Lukács, the Frankfurt School, later generations of critical theory, and fascism. Also: Theories of democracy and representative government such as John Dewey. 20th century defenders of capitalism like Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman.
   8. Chapter 8: Human Rights, Liberty, and Social Justice

      This chapter will discuss the development of the concept of human rights leading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ideal of liberty by J.S. Mill and Isaiah Berlin, and conceptions of equality. It will also introduce basic questions of international social and political concerns such as immigration, asylum, and so on.
   9. Chapter 9: Radical Social Theories

      Post-modern and anti-modern critique, Michel Foucault, feminist and gender theory, critical race theory, anti-colonialism, radical socialism. It will also deal with issues of injustice, subordination, and oppression. Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution and Totalitarianism.
7. Part 6: Ethics

   Each of the the following chapters would have a similar sort of framework involving the main presentation, some key arguments (perhaps integrated into the text, perhaps as sidebars or separate subsections), some account of important figures from the history of philosophy, and a few case studies which could either come from real stories that bring up relevant issues in ethics or could be made up examples or thought experiments to illustrate the main points. The order of exposition is not strictly historical but more “dialectical” in the sense that it seems to me at least to follow a certain logical development.

   1. Chapter 1: Aren’t right and wrong just matters of opinion? On moral relativism and subjectivism.

      This opening chapter would deal with the kinds of issues surrounding discussion of philosophical approaches to ethics that students tend to have at the outset (in my experience at least). In particular it would provide an overview of ethics as a discipline, a provocative example or two to raise the questions of how to live one’s life or what the right thing to do is, and examine the arguments in favor of and against cultural relativism and moral subjectivism. These are best dealt with first since both amount to denials that the philosophical project of clarifying ethical thought, decision-making and action is at all possible.
   2. Chapter 2: Can we have ethics without religion? On Divine Command Theory and Natural Law Theory

      This chapter addresses the relationship between religion and ethics by looking at the claim that ethical norms require some form of divine authority to back them up (Divine Command Theory) and the claim that ethics only makes sense within the context of a divinely ordered and oriented universe (Natural Law Theory). Backers of both of these positions are often motivated by the assumption that appeals to such metaphysical foundations of moral order are the only alternative to the anything goes attitude of relativism. This claim will be critically examined.
   3. Chapter 3: How can I be a better person? On Virtue Ethics

      This chapter explores a variety of approaches to the question of moral virtue and what it means to be a good person. It examines Aristotle’s virtue ethics; Aquinas’ Christian version of Aristotelian virtue ethics and Buddhist virtue ethics. All three will be presented as different ways of understanding what it might mean to live as a good person. For Aristotle this is to be understood in terms of striving for the mean between extremes in the context of a well-ordered political community. For Aquinas it is to be understood within the context of Christianity and Natural Law Theory. And for Buddhism in terms of the four noble truths and the key role of the “perfections” (paramitas) in a life oriented towards being fully awake.
   4. Chapter 4: What’s in it for me? On Egoism and Social Contract Theory

      This chapter examines three approaches to ethics that are suggested by the modern philosophical and political conception of human beings as first and foremost rational, self-interested individual agents. These are psychological egoism, which claims that ethical behavior and motives are illusory given the underlying selfish motivations which characterize all human decision-making; ethical egoism, which argues that giving free reign to the self-serving motives of individuals leads to socially optimal outcomes; and social contract theory which conceives of social rules and ethical norms as founded in the self-interest of agents living in a real or hypothetical state of nature.
   5. Chapter 5: Can the ends justify the means? On Utilitarianism

      This chapter introduces utilitarianism by looking at the question of whether sufficiently good consequences might justify otherwise morally questionable means of getting those consequences. Utilitarianism answers yes to this question (even though rule utilitarians hedge this answer a bit) since it is primarily an ethics that gives priority to the good, measuring the moral worth of an action by the consequences of that action. The chapter presents utilitarianism as the first of two universalist ethical theories which claims to provide a general rational basis for adjudicating ethical claims. This chapter will consider some of the technicalities of utilitarianism (What exactly are we comparing when we claim that one outcome is better than another? How can we compare qualitatively different outcomes?) and will address some major criticisms (Does utilitarianism arbitrarily discount the future to make moral calculation tractable? Can the moral status of an action of decision change as a result of the continued unfolding of consequences such that more or less good is produced at a certain point? Can we really predict the consequences of our actions as utilitarianism requires?)
   6. Chapter 6: But isn’t anything just plain wrong? On Kantian Deontology

      This chapter looks at Kant’s ethics as an attempt to articulate a rationally justifiable objective ethics based on the notion of universal reciprocal respect among rational agents. Kant’s theory is presented as an attempt to show how ethics is best understood as an end in itself and not as a means to realize a greater good. The connection of Kantian ethics with the concept of moral rights and duties is explored.
   7. Chapter 8: Evolutionary Ethics
   8. Chapter 7: What does philosophical ethics look like now?

      This chapter introduces some contemporary discussions in ethics by focusing on a variety of voices not typically included in the narrative followed by the text so far. These would include feminist perspectives on ethics from Gilligan’s work onwards, continental philosophical discussions of ethics including some discussion of Levinas and Foucault and contemporary ethical naturalism from the work of the Churchlands, Flanagan and perhaps some recent work on the relation between biological evolution and ethics. All of this will be somewhat of a rough sketch, but this chapter is intended as a bridge to further study of some vibrant streams in contemporary ethics.
8. Part 7: Philosophy of Science
9. Part 8: Philosophy of Mind

   The main questions in the philosophy of mind are derived from puzzles involving trying to develop a coherent theory of the nature and functions of the mind. Beginning with the nature of the mind, they include: Are minds separate from bodies or is the mind really just the body? If the mind is immaterial and the body material, how do they interact? How can this fit in with science? If the mind is just the body, then how is consciousness explained? How can we have experiences or free will to think and act? How can we explain the special relationship we seem to have with knowing our own mental states?

   1. Chapter 1: Descartes and Substance Dualism
   2. Chapter 2: Behaviorism and Materialism
   3. Chapter 3: Functionalism
   4. Chapter 4: Property Dualism
   5. Chapter 5: Qualia and Raw Feels
   6. Chapter 6: Consciousness
   7. Chapter 7: Knowledge and Other Mental States
   8. Chapter 8: Concepts and Content
   9. Chapter 9: Freedom of the Will
   10. Chapter 10: The Self
   11. Historical Commentary Boxes
10. Part 9: Philosophy of Religion

    1. Chapter 1: What is (a) god? What is (a) religion?

       Tentative outline for this chapter is: Atheistic Religions (e.g., Jainism) (vs. theistic vs. mono-theistic), Nature of a “god” / Divine Attributes, Transcendence and Apophatic vs. Cataphatic Theology, Taylor on Religion v. Secularity
    2. Chapter 2: Theoretical Reasons to Believe

       Cosmological Argument(s), Teleological Argument(s), Ontological Argument(s), Reformed Epistemology
    3. Chapter 3: Practical Reasons to Believe

       Pascal’s Wager, Kantian Argument(s) / Moral Argument(s), Religious Experience / “Spiritual Senses”, (Presuppositionalist Arguments?)
    4. Chapter 4: Reasons Not to Believe (Part I)

       Incoherence of Divine Attributes The Paradox of Omnipotence Perfect Goodness and Perfect Freedom Etc., etc.… Inconsistency of Divine Attributes and Other Facts The Problem of Evil Divine Hiddenness Others? Suggestions welcome
    5. Chapter 5: Reasons Not to Believe (Part II)

       The Problem of Religious Diversity / Pluralism, Is Science Opposed to Religion?, Evolutionary Explanations of / Debunking of(?) Religious Beliefs, Etc.
    6. Chapter 6: Philosophical Theology v. Philosophy of Religion

       Suggestions on what to include in this chapter are welcome.