UTS 1

• Philosophy


  Love of Wisdom
• Philosophy


  An activity people undertake when they seek to understand fundamental truths about themselves, the world in which they live, and their relationships to the world and to each other
• Major areas of study in academic philosophy

  • Metaphysics
  • Epistemology
  • Ethics
  • Logic
• Metaphysics


  The study of the nature of reality, of what exists in the world, what it is like, and how it is ordered
• Questions in metaphysics


  • Is there a God?
  • What is truth?
  • What is a person? What makes a person the same through time?
  • Is the world strictly composed of matter?
  • Do people have minds? If so, how is the mind related to the body?
  • Do people have free wills?
  • What is it for one event to cause another?
• Epistemology


  The study of knowledge, primarily concerned with what we can know about the world and how we can know it
• Typical questions in epistemology

  • What is knowledge?
  • Do we know anything at all?
  • How do we know what we know?
  • Can we be justified in claiming to know certain things?
• Ethics


  The study of what we ought to do and what it would be best to do
• Questions in ethics


  • What is good? What makes actions or people good?
  • What is right? What makes actions right?
  • Is morality objective or subjective?
  • How should I treat others?
• Logic


  The study of the nature and structure of arguments
• Questions in logic


  • What constitutes "good" or "bad" reasoning?
  • How do we determine whether a given piece of reasoning is good or bad?
• Socrates: 'The unexamined life is not worth living'
• Socrates


  • First philosopher who engaged in a systematic questioning about the self
  • Socratic Method - method for discovering what is essential in the world and in people, involving the search for the correct/proper definition of a thing
  • His mission is "the true task of the philosopher is to know oneself"
• Body and soul


  Two important aspects of personhood
• Every individual

  Is dualistic, composed of body (imperfect, impermanent aspect) and soul (perfect and permanent aspect)
• Plato: 'Human behavior flows from three main sources; desire, emotion, knowledge'
• Plato


  • Supported the idea of Socrates "man is a dual nature of body and soul"
  • Three components of the soul: Rational soul (forged by reason and intellect to govern the human person), Spirited soul (in charge of emotions), Appetitive soul (in charge of base desires)
• Aristotle: 'Love is composed of single soul, inhabiting two bodies'
• Aristotle's view of the soul

  • The principle which causes movement
  • Principle of movement - life is a movement
  • Humans are a combination of body (matter) and soul (form), with the soul actualizing the body
• Essence


  What makes you, you
• Aristotle's view of the self

  • Self Nutrition and Reproduction (autonomic biological systems = life = begins/generates & corrupts (dies))
  • Perception (5 senses - perceiving atoms which causes your eyes, ears, nose, etc. to take the form of what you believe you are perceiving, selecting focus, helping discriminate)
  • Thinking (reason and logic, attention, knowing and understanding)
  • Desire (body and soul are "in love")
  • Practical Reason (discriminate, choose)
• St. Augustine: 'Love is the beauty of the soul'
• St. Augustine's view of the human person

  • Reflects the entire spirit of the medieval world
  • Adopted some ideas from Plato but with a religious side
  • "Man is bifurcated nature" - there is an aspect of man which dwells in the world that is imperfect and continuously yearns to be with the divine, while the other is capable of reaching immortality
• St. Augustine's view of body and soul

  Body is bound to die on earth, while the soul anticipates living eternally in a realm of spiritual bliss in communion with God
• St. Thomas Aquinas: 'The things that we have tell us who we are'
• St. Thomas Aquinas' view of man

  • Adopted some ideas from Aristotle
  • Man is composed of two parts: Matter (the common stuff that makes up everything in the universe) and Form (the essence of a substance or thing)
  • Soul is what animates the body, and the body is what makes us human
• Rene Descartes: 'I think, therefore, I am'
• Rene Descartes' view of the self


  • Conceived the human person as having a body and mind
  • Does not believe in the soul
  • Body is nothing else but a machine attached to the mind
  • The self has two distinct entities: Cogito (the thing that thinks, which is the mind) and Extenza (the extension of the mind, which is the body)
• David Hume: 'Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them'
• David Hume's view of the self


  • Empiricist who believes one can only know what comes from the senses and experience
  • The self is nothing else but a bundle of expressions
  • Categorizes the self into two: Impressions (the basic objects of our experience or sensation) and Ideas (copies of Impressions)
• John Locke's view of the self

  • The human mind at birth is tabula rasa or blank slate
  • The self or personal identity is constructed primarily from sense experience - what people see, hear, smell, taste, and feel
  • Conscious awareness and memory of previous experiences are the keys to understanding the self
• Immanuel Kant's view of the self

  • The self is not in the body, it is outside the body and even outside the qualities of the body - meaning transcendent
  • Rationality unifies and makes sense the perceptions we have in our experiences and make sensible ideas about ourselves and the world
• Gilbert Ryle's view of the self


  • The self is best understood as a pattern of behavior, the tendency for a person to behave in a certain way in certain circumstances
  • The mind and body are intrinsically linked in complex and intimate ways
  • The mind expresses the entire system of thoughts, emotions, and actions that make up the human self
• Sigmund Freud's view of the self


  • The "I" will never be the same and it will continue to change over time
  • The "I" is the state of the mind: the conscious and unconscious
  • Structure of personality: the id (pleasure principle), ego (reality principle), and super ego (moral principle)