Download Name: PHI ISL – Introduction to Philosophy Ancient Philosophy

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PHI ISL – Introduction to Philosophy
Ancient Philosophy: Explain its evolution from the age of Mythology (which tries to answer the most difficult and the most basic questions of
human existence. To the ancients the meaning of the story was most important, not the literal truth of the details of a certain version of a tale.) to the
Pre-Socratic philosophers (who rejected traditional mythological explanations of the phenomena they saw around them in favor of more rational
explanations. These philosophers asked questions about "the essence of things"). Ancient Philosophy dealt with a wide variety of subjects,
including political philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, logic, biology, rhetoric, and aesthetics.
Name an individual from each of the following periods and what they held:
Mythology and what was its influence. (Demeter: Goddess of grain, agriculture, harvest, growth, and nourishment. Zeus: King of the gods, ruler
of Mount Olympus, and god of the sky, weather, thunder, lightning, law, order, and justice.
Ancient philosophy: two philosophers?
Pre-Socratics: Thales is reputedly the father of Greek philosophy; he declared water to be the basis of all things, Anaximander the first writer on
philosophy. He assumed as the first principle an undefined, unlimited substance without qualities (apeiron), out of which the primary opposites,
hot and cold, moist and dry, became differentiated. To Heraclitus, fire, one of the four classical elements earth, air, water; posited that all things in
nature are in a state of perpetual flux, connected by logical structure or pattern, which he termed Logos.
Ancient philosophy: Socrates (Socratic dialogue is a formal method by which a small group, guided by a facilitator, finds a precise answer to a
universal question (e.g. "What is happiness?", "What is integrity?", "Can conflict be fruitful?” etc.).
Plato: The dialogue form in which Plato writes is an expression of Plato’s understanding of the purpose and nature of philosophy. For Plato,
philosophy is a process of constant questioning in the form of dialogue. Plato considers the sophists to be one of the primary enemies of virtue, who
were a class of itinerant teachers who instructed young statesmen in the arts of rhetoric and debate for a fee. They taught that values are relative.
Their teachings were trying to replace mythology with reason. The Theory of Forms or metaphysics maintains that two distinct levels of reality
exist: the visible world of sights and sounds that we inhabit and the intelligible world of Forms that stands above the visible world and gives it being.
For example, Plato maintains that in addition to being able to identify a beautiful person or a beautiful painting, we also have a general conception of
Beauty itself, and we are able to identify the beauty in a person or a painting only because we have this conception of Beauty in the abstract. In other
words, the beautiful things we can see are beautiful only because they participate in the more general Form of Beauty. The Theory of Forms
envisions an entire world of such Forms, a world that exists outside of time and space, where Beauty, Justice, Courage, Temperance, and the like
exist untarnished by the changes and imperfections of the visible world. Plato's epistemology holds that knowledge of Platonic Ideas is innate, so
that learning is the development of ideas buried deep in the soul, often under the midwife-like guidance of an interrogator. In several dialogues by
Plato, the character Socrates presents the view that each soul existed before birth with the Form of the Good and a perfect knowledge of Ideas.
Thus, the theory of recollection holds that when an Idea is "learned" it is actually just "recalled."
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Aristotle: Metaphysics involves a study of the universal principles of being, the abstract qualities of existence itself. Perhaps the
starting point of Aristotle's metaphysics is his rejection of Plato's Theory of Forms. In Plato's theory, material objects are changeable
and not real in themselves; rather, they correspond to an ideal, eternal, and immutable Form by a common name, and this Form can
be perceived only by the intellect. Thus a thing perceived to be beautiful in this world is in fact an imperfect manifestation of the
Form of Beauty. Aristotle's arguments against this theory were numerous. Ultimately he rejected Plato's ideas as poetic but empty
language; as a scientist and empiricist he preferred to focus on the reality of the material world (substance). The relationship
between form and matter is another central problem for Aristotle. He argues that both are substances, but matter is potential, while
form is actual. The two are not separate but intertwined, and actuality precedes potentiality. Although the actual is produced from
the potential, it is the actual that makes the production possible. The disagreement that Plato and Aristotle had on the point of
knowledge is very interesting, as it laid the foundation for two separate camps of epistemologists for centuries to come. On one side
you have the rationalists who believe that our senses can be deceiving and that we should only rely on reason and logic to arrive at
truth. Prominent rationalists include Plato, René Descartes, and Immanuel Kant.
On the other side you have
the likes of Aristotle, John Locke, and George Berkeley who believe that all that we know is gained through experience. We should
not deny our senses, we should trust them wholly. And the debate between rationalism and empiricism has been waging ever
since… but it all began with two great philosophers who found themselves at odds.
Doctrine of the Four Causes: Aristotelian Doctrine which holds that to truly know what a thing is, one must know four things about
it. That is, to explain what a thing is as it is and behaves as it does one must know four things about it:
1. Material Cause: (What's it made of?)
2. Efficient Cause: (Who or what brought generated it.)
3. Formal Cause: (To what species and genus does it belong?)
4. Final Cause: (What is it supposed to do?)
Medieval philosophy: two philosophers?
Modern philosophy: two philosophers?
Contemporary philosophy: two philosophers?
Address their Metaphysics
Epistemology
Theory of Ethics
Logic
Logic (from the Greek "logos", which has a variety of meanings including word, thought, idea, argument, account, reason or
principle) is the study of reasoning, or the study of the principles and criteria of valid inference and demonstration. It attempts to
distinguish good reasoning from bad reasoning.
Aristotle defined logic as "new and necessary reasoning", "new" because it allows us to learn what we do not know, and "necessary"
because its conclusions are inescapable. It asks questions like "What is correct reasoning?", "What distinguishes a good argument
from a bad one?", "How can we detect a fallacy in reasoning?"
Logic investigates and classifies the structure of statements and arguments, both through the study of formal systems of inference
and through the study of arguments in natural language. It deals only with propositions (declarative sentences, used to make an
assertion, as opposed to questions, commands or sentences expressing wishes) that are capable of being true and false. It is not
concerned with the psychological processes connected with thought, or with emotions, images and the like. It covers core topics
such as the study of fallacies and paradoxes, as well as specialized analysis of reasoning using probability and arguments involving
causality and argumentation theory.
Logical systems should have three things: consistency (which means that none of the theorems of the system contradict one
another); soundness (which means that the system's rules of proof will never allow a false inference from a true premise); and
completeness (which means that there are no true sentences in the system that cannot, at least in principle, be proved in the
system).
Mention your experience with Service Learning – where, how much time, with whom did you works, and
what did you learn.
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