30-Second Philosophies E-Book

Julian Baggini

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: 30-Second
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Seitenzahl: 133

Beschreibung

A full-colour illustrated tour through philosophy's most famous – and most mind-bending – ideas I Think Therefore I Am, Existentialism, Dialectical Materialism? The Socratic Method and Deconstruction? Sure, you know what they all mean. That is, you've certainly heard of them. But do you know enough about them to join a dinner party debate or dazzle the bar with your knowledge? 30-SECOND PHILOSOPHIES takes a revolutionary approach to getting a grip on the 50 most significant schools of philosophy. The book challenges leading thinkers to quit fretting about the meaning of meaning for a while and explain the most complex philosophical ideas – using nothing more than two pages, 300 words, and a metaphorical image. Here, in one unique volume, you have the chance to pick the potted brains of our leading philosophers and understand complex concepts such as Kant's Categorical Imperative without ending up in a darkened room with an ice pack on your head.

Leseprobe

30-SECOND

PHILOSOPHIES

The 50 most thought-provoking philosophies, each explained in half a minute

Consultant Editor

Barry Loewer

Foreword

Stephen Law

Contributors

Julian Baggini

Kati Balog

James Garvey

Barry Loewer

Jeremy Stangroom

Published in the UK in 2010 by

Icon Books Ltd

Omnibus Business Centre

39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP

email: [email protected]

www.iconbooks.co.uk

© 2009 by Ivy Press Limited

The editor and contributors have asserted their moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was conceived, designed,

and produced by

Ivy Press

210 High Street, Lewes,

East Sussex BN7 2NS, UK

www.ivypress.co.uk

Creative Director Peter Bridgewater

Publisher Jason Hook

Editorial Director Caroline Earle

Art Director Michael Whitehead

Commissioning Editor Nic Compton

Designers James Hollywell, Les Hunt

Concept Design Linda Becker

Illustrations Ivan Hissey

Glossaries Text James Garvey

Picture Research Lynda Marshall

Digital Assistant Emily Owen

Digital ISBN: 978-1-848314-50-4

CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

How to become a philosopher

Language & Logic

GLOSSARY

Aristotle’s syllogisms

Russell’s paradox & Frege’s logicism

profile: Aristotle

Russell’s theory of description

Frege’s puzzle

Gödel’s theorem

Epimenides’ liar paradox

Eubulides’ heap

Science & Epistemology

GLOSSARY

I think therefore I am

Gettier’s counter example

profile: Karl Popper

The brain in a vat

Hume’s problem of induction

Goodman’s gruesome riddle

Popper’s conjectures & refutations

Kuhn’s scientific revolutions

Mind & Metaphysics

GLOSSARY

Descartes mind-body problem

Brentano’s intentionality

Fodor’s language of thought

Parfit’s persons

profile: René Descartes

Chalmer’s zombies

Zeno’s paradoxes

Kant’s left hand

Theseus’ ship

Laplace’s demon, determinism, & free will

Ryle’s ghost in the machine

Ethics & Political Philosophy

GLOSSARY

Aristotle’s ethics

States of nature and the social contract

Kant’s categorical imperative

profile: Immanuel Kant

Mill’s utilitarianism

Marx’s historical materialism

The trolley problem

Religion

GLOSSARY

Aquinas’ five ways

Anselm’s ontological argument

profile: Thomas Aquinas

Epicurus’ riddle

Paley’s watchmaker

Pascal’s wager

Hume against miracles

Grand Moments

GLOSSARY

Socrates’ method

Plato’s cave

Aristotle’s four causes

Lucretius’ atomism

profile: Ludwig Wittgenstein

Berkeley’s idealism

Kant’s synthetic a priori

Hegel’s dialectic

James’ pragmatism

Moore’s common sense

Wittgenstein’s picture theory of language

Continental philosophy

GLOSSARY

Nietzsche’s Superman

profile: Friedrich Nietzsche

Derrida’s deconstruction

Heidegger’s nothing

Sartre’s bad faith

Notes on contributors

Resources

Acknowledgments

FOREWORD

Stephen Law

Philosophy addresses what are sometimes called the “big questions.” These include questions about morality (“What makes things morally right or wrong?”); about what we can know, if anything (“Can you know that the world around you is real, and not a computer-generated virtual reality?”); about the nature of human existence (“Are you your brain? Do we possess souls?”); and about the nature of reality (“Why is there anything at all?”).

Religion addresses many of the same questions, but while philosophy and religion overlap in the questions they address, they can differ in the approach they take to answering them. While faith and revelation are typically the cornerstones of religious belief, philosophy places great emphasis on reason—on applying our intelligence in order to figure out, as best we can, what the answers are.

Socrates is supposed to have said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” That’s a strong claim—too strong, I think. Suppose someone devotes themselves selflessly to helping and enriching the lives of their friends, family, and wider community. They can hardly be said to have led a worthless existence simply because they never bothered to step back and ask themselves a philosophical question.

Having said that, I’ve no doubt a little exposure to philosophy can be valuable. The kind of skills philosophy fosters—such as the ability to spot a logical fallacy, or to make a point succinctly and with precision—are the kind of “transferable” skills that employers value. A little training in philosophy can also help us build robust critical defenses and immunize us against the wiles of pretentious wafflers and snake-oil salesmen. But they’re not the only reason why a little philosophical reflection can be worthwhile.

Whether we realize it or not, we all hold philosophical beliefs. That God exists is a philosophical belief, as is the belief that he doesn’t. That right and wrong are not just a matter of subjective opinion is a philosophical belief, as is the belief that they are. Many of us go through life without even registering that we hold philosophical beliefs, let alone questioning them. You may ask: “What does it matter whether we ask such questions? After all, the beliefs and the lives of those who ponder them usually aren’t much different to the beliefs and lives of those who don’t. So why bother?” Perhaps because the unexamined life is not a life chosen freely in awareness of alternatives, but a furrow mindlessly plowed.

If that doesn’t convince you that a little philosophy is a good idea—well, there remains the fact that, good for you or not, philosophy is fun. Within these pages you’ll find some of the most intriguing, clever, astonishing, and sometimes downright disturbing ideas ever entertained by mankind. Dip in and find out.

What’s it all about?

Does God exist or not? How should I behave? What is real? How do we know what we know? In this book, leading philosophical writers will engage your thought processes with a crash course in understanding the foundations of understanding.

Platonic idealism

The “big” questions began with the great Greek philosophers. According to Plato, everything in the world is a reflection of its true ideal form that exists outside the world. Plato likened this experience to the flickering shadows of objects reflected on a cave wall by firelight.

INTRODUCTION

Barry Loewer

Philosophy tries to get to the bottom of things by asking questions and proposing answers. At the bottom of science, for example, are questions like, “What are the aims of the sciences?”; “What is scientific method and why is it so successful?”; “What is a scientific law?”; “What is time?”; and so on. Scientists generally don’t stop to consider “at-the-bottom” questions like these since they are too busy working on science itself. They can get along by accepting, implicitly or implicitly, certain views without questioning them. Thinking about questions at the bottom of things and developing systematic accounts of the foundations of science is left to the philosophers of science.

Other branches of philosophy concern the foundations of ethics, art, religion, mathematics, psychology, language, and thought in general. Indeed, for every subject and human enterprise there is a philosophy of that subject that delves into the foundations of the subject. The most general branches of philosophy are ontology (about what there is), epistemology (about how and how much we can know about what there is), and ethics (about what we ought to do about what there is).

Philosophers have been thinking about at-the-bottom questions for at least 2,500 years. It started with the great Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and has continued to the present day when most (but not all) philosophers are also university professors. Philosophy has evolved as a kind of conversation through the ages among these philosophers. For example, the question “What is knowledge?” was asked by the Greeks, their answers discussed by medieval philosophers, and their answers much debated and added to by the 17th- and 18th-century philosophers Descartes, Leibniz, and Hume. A contemporary philosopher who addresses this question will have one eye on this history and another on what his contemporaries are saying. In the course of this ongoing conversation many problems, positions, and paradoxes have been produced. In this book you will find a sampling of these.

HOW TO BECOME A PHILOSOPHER (IN A LITTLE MORE THAN) 30 SECONDS

Barry Loewer

If you are skeptical that you can become a philosopher in 30 seconds, then you have taken a first small step toward becoming one. The attitude of skepticism and the inclination to question are central to philosophy. By questioning your (and others’) beliefs with an open mind, you will better understand what it is you believe, what your concepts are, and thus come to know yourself better. Although it is not possible for you to become a philosopher (you may be one already) by just reading this text, I can pose some of the questions that may take you a bit farther along the path.

Most of us take it for granted that we ought to keep promises. But is this always true? What if Burt promises to return Hilary’s gun, but learns that Hilary intends to use it to shoot Willard. Should Burt return the gun? Suppose you think, “No, not in this case.” If so, your next philosophical move may be to look for a general principle that specifies when promises ought to be kept. Perhaps you think the correct rule is: “Keep a promise, unless keeping it will harm someone.” (This isn’t quite right either, since keeping your promise to be faithful to your spouse may harm your lover.)

Next, ask yourself: “Why ought we to obey this or any proposed rule of ethics?” Some people think that we ought to obey ethical rules because God commanded it. But even if you believe that God exists this isn’t correct, since (as Socrates would have said) keeping your promises is not right because God commanded it, but rather God commanded it because it is right. So why is it right? If you explore what philosophers have said about this question over the past 2,500 years, you will discover that there is a lot of disagreement.

Some people conclude that thinking about these questions is a waste of time because agreement will never be reached. But a few people are exhilarated by the process of questioning, thinking about tentative answers, questioning deeper, and so on. Even if we don’t settle many of these questions, the process brings us closer to understanding ourselves.

Think about it

If you are already wondering why this book exists, then you are well on your way to becoming a philosopher.

LANGUAGE & LOGIC

LANGUAGE & LOGIC

GLOSSARY

argument A collection of premises offered in support of a conclusion. For example: (1) All men are mortal; (2) Socrates is a man; (3) Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

conclusion The statement that an argument attempts to prove. In the argument “(1) All men are mortal; (2) Socrates is a man; (3) Therefore, Socrates is mortal,” (3) is the conclusion.

deduction An inference from a general claim to a particular conclusion. For example: all snails eat lettuce, this thing is a snail, therefore this thing eats lettuce.

definite description An expression that picks out a person, place, or thing, for example, “The last man standing.”

induction An inference from many particular claims to a general claim, or to other particular claims. For example: this snail eats lettuce, this snail eats lettuce, this one too, etc., therefore, all snails eat lettuce.

inference A mental movement from premises to a conclusion. Sometimes also used as a synonym for “argument.”

logic The study of inference. Logic itself has many branches and manifestations, from informal logic (which examines the structure of argumentation in natural languages) to formal logic (the study of the purely abstract, formal structure of inference), to the study of such things as mathematical reasoning, modality, computer science, fallacies, probability, and much else.

logical form This is revealed through an analysis of the hidden logical structure underlying the superficial syntax of propositions, according to some philosophers. Bertrand Russell, for example, argued that one can get around certain problems associated with referring to something that does not exist by unpacking the hidden logical form of certain suspect expressions.

paradox This involves a certain sort of tension between two claims that seem obviously true. The trouble often comes when conflicting claims seem to follow logically from something else thought to be true.

predicate The part of a proposition that attributes something to the subject. That which is stated or asserted about the subject. For example, in the proposition, “Socrates is drunk,” “drunk” is the predicate.

premise A statement advanced in support of a conclusion. In the argument “(1) All men are mortal; (2) Socrates is a man; (3) Therefore, Socrates is mortal,” (1) and (2) are premises.

reference The object referred to by an expression, according to some philosophers of language, and logicians. For example, the reference of “Mark Twain” is the actual person, Mark Twain.

sense The cognitive significance of an expression, or the way in which something is expressed, according to some philosophers of language, and logicians. For example, the expressions “Mark Twain” and “Samuel Clemens” refer to just the same thing, exactly one person. The difference between the expressions, then, has to do with their difference senses.

subject The part of a proposition about which something is attributed. For example, in the proposition, “Socrates is drunk,” “Socrates” is the subject.

validity The way premises and conclusions hang together logically in successful arguments. If the premises are true and the argument is valid, then the conclusion has to be true.

ARISTOTLE’S SYLLOGISMS

the 30-second philosophy

More than 23 hundred years ago, Aristotle noticed that in certain inferences it is impossible for their premises to be true and their conclusions false. An example is the inference from “All men are mortals” and “All mortals fear death” to “All men fear death.” In modern logic, such inferences are said to be deductively valid. Aristotle discovered that the validity of an inference depends not on its subject matter, but only on the form of the premises and conclusion. All inferences of the form “All Fs are Gs, and All Gs are Hs, therefore All Fs are Hs” are valid. He described a number of such forms, which are called “syllogisms.” Until the 19th century, the subject of logic pretty much consisted of Aristotle’s syllogisms. But syllogisms are only a small portion of all valid inferences, and do not include many of the patterns of valid inference that are employed in science and mathematics. In 1879 Gottlob Frege devised a much more general characterization of valid inference that is sufficient for representing mathematical and scientific reasoning. A descendant of Frege’s system, called “First Order Logic with Identity,” is now generally thought to be capable of representing mathematical theories and proofs, and is taught to all philosophy students.

3-SECOND THRASH

An inference (or argument) is valid when it is impossible for its premises to be true and its conclusion false.

3-MINUTE THOUGHT

In the 20th century two great mathematical results were proved concerning first order logic: it is complete, and it is undecidable. Kurt Gödel demonstrated that it is possible to program a computer to list all the valid inferences (completeness), and Alonzo Church demonstrated that it is impossible to program a computer to determine whether or not every inference is valid (undecidability).

RELATED PHILOSOPHIES

RUSSELL’S PARADOX & FREGE’S LOGICISM

3-SECOND BIOGRAPHIES

ARISTOTLE

384–322 BCE

GOTTLOB FREGE

1848–1925

KURT GÖDEL

1906–1978

ALONZO CHURCH

1903–1995

30-SECOND TEXT

Barry Loewer

To Aristotle it was logical—we are people, we are going to die, and therefore we are frightened. Thanks a lot, Aristotle!

RUSSELL’S PARADOX & FREGE’S LOGICISM

the 30-second philosophy

Bertrand Russell thought up a