intro to philo

• Emptying

  -is a spending one's judgement and conclusion about a matter and mentally exploring the pros and cons the characteristics and the purpose of an idea or situation.
• metaphysics is to enlighten us in terms of what we identify as real.
• Reality in Metaphysics as "true reality"
• metaphysics is the fundamental source and basis of all reality in the world and existence.
• metaphysics assumes that the reality we see with our eyes is just a temporary cover of the true reality
• Thales, a greek thinker, claims that everything is water.
• Thales - believe that the principal beyond all existent and reality could be best explained by the analogy of water.
• Water for thales is the fundamental shape and movement of all things in the universe
• Water for thales is the fundamental shape and movement of all things in the universe
• plato, socrates most famous student, a metaphysician who drew the sharpest possible contrast and division between reality and appearance.
• According to plato, nothing we experience in the physical world with our five senses is real.
• Plato, called the truth as consisted in ideas and forms, also referred as the universals or absolutes; and such we consider when discussing moral, mathematical, and scientific ideas.
• Plato says that the soul is an idea. Souls exist in kosmos noetos: the world of ideas.
• Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" distinguishes between appearance and reality.
• For plato, there are two worlds: the world of appearance and the real world.
• Plato argued that opinion is the lowest realm of knowlede
• In the illusion in the cave, the person who can reach the highest level of knowledge is a prisoner who was a freed.
• For Bertran Russel (2004), the world of appearance is not completely false. This world is based on our senses: sight, touch, taste, smell and so on (hear)
• ethics is the branch of philosophy that explores the nature of moral virtue and evaluates the morality and virtue of human actions.
• Ethicists appeal to logical arguments to justify claims and positions involving morality
• Ethics has five main positions:

  Natural Law or Divine Command, Teleological theory, Deontological Ethics, Virtue Ethics, Relativism.
• Natural Law or divine Command - a strong sense of individualism does not exist but rather the collective is emphasized.
• Natural Law or Divine Command - The actions and moral reasoning of st teresa of calcutta and saint lorenzo ruiz are examples of this theory
• Teleological theory - Consequences of one's action
• Deontological Ethics - Immanuel Kant, author of this theory.
• Deontological Ethics - Bound to duty and does not focus on what a person think or feels about that situation.
• Virtue ethics - ignored the consequences, duties and contracts instead, it focuses on character development.
• Virtue ethics - socrates, plato and aristotle are proponents of this theory.
• Relativism - ethical pluralism affirm cultural diversity and respect differences among individuals and groups.
• teleological theory - stoics, epicureans, and jeremy bentham are proponents of this theory.
• for socrates, to be happy, a person must concentrate on the goodness of the soul.
• For socrates, knowledge means virtue, the greek word arete which we translate as virtue.
• William Edward Burghardt Du Bois - african american, sought equal rights for blacks.
• Understand Hegel's dialectic.
• thesis (white oppresion) - main argument
• antithesis (black soul) - negation argument
• synthesis (black's consciousness freedom) - tension between the two and combination of thesis and antithesis
• epistemology - deals with nature sources limitations and validity of knowledge.
• Epistemological questions are basic to how we explain philosophical inquiries for instance moral values
• Human knowledge in two parts:Induction and Deduction