PHIL 101 Lecture Notes - Center For American Progress, Mereology, Category Mistake
Words
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sentences
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Language
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Emotional
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Politics
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?
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Life
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Bearers of Meaning
Part life = meaning of life
Whole life = meaning in life
More/less meaning of life
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Linguistic meaning = means something or it does not
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Meaning as a matter of degree
Only part lives makes life more meaningful
1.
Only relationship between the parts of an entire life can make a life
somewhat more meaningful
2.
A life is meaningful of balance while maintaining that this would be
a function of the aggregate of the parts of a life
3.
Something rather than nothing
▪
What's the purpose
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Universe
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Cosmic Sense
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An individual persons life
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An individual persons part of humans life
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Individualist sense
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There are two senses
Did my life matter?
Parts of your life didn't matter: prison
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Did part of my life matter?
Field of inquiry
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Takes about relation between parts and wholes and relations
between parts within a whole
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Are we just a sum of our organs? Would that still be us?
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Mereology
Whole is the sum of parts
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Whole is greater than the sum of parts
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Two main theories
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fewfhewi
Life is meaning full as it is a matter of personal development of the course
of ones existence
Parts are not capable of being significant
Only some subset of a person's existence can bear meaning
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Part life
Virtual world but its fake
▪
Happy but meaningless life
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A monk?
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Miserable but meaningful life
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Happiness
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Immoral but meaningful (Moa)
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Moral but meaningless
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Morality
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Free but meaningless life
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A convict citizen in a dictatorship
▪
Unfree but meaningful life
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Freedom
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Meaning = actions that conform to God's will
▪
Meaning - actions that ensure communion with God after death (afterlife)
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Existence is significant insofar as one has a certain relation with some spiritual realm
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The view that a significant existence is nothing but being constituted by a soul that
lives forever in a certain way
▪
Afterlife
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Supernaturalism
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Life could be meaningful in a purely physical world, the spatio-temporal universe as known
by scientific means
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Denies that life would be meaningless without God or Souls
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Naturalism
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Relation to other values
Meaningful conditions vary, depending on the subject
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What is meaningful is a function of those things that we make our ends and ultimately achieve
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Lives are meaningful solely by virtue of obtaining mental states such as wants, emotions, goals,
that are about states of affairs and are obtained
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Subjectivism:
You want to become a doctor, but you don't, does that mean your life is meaningless.
There is no independent standard by which to determine which states of affairs are meaningful
Some features of our lives makes them meaningful, but not because we have a positive attitude
toward them
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There are particular ways of being and behaving in the physical world that constitute a significant
existence
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Objectivism:
Nonsense
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Category mistake
1.
Attributing properties to objects that cannot have said properties
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Ambiguity and concepts
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Meaningfulness in the case of life is a matter of degree, the same does not hold for symbols
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Positivism
2.
For something to matter it must matter to someone
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What you do now will probably not matter to someone alive in a million years
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But what you do now matters to you
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What I do know doesn't matter in a million years.
Thoughts?
A necklace could mean something to someone due to
sentimental value but mean nothing to someone else who finds
it and throws it out
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Family, friends, good acts to strangers, profession - gives
meaning as you are providing value to someone else's life
○
Therefore, life is meaningful when the persons life holds value
to someone else
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For something to have meaning it must mean something to someone
Life has no meaning
We give it meaning
Created languages
Created numbers - labelled them
Created the idea of math ?
Created colors - labelled them
Love will dwindle
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Things matter to someone
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Someone's life matters because it matters to someone else
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When you have that much time to live than you have less
meaning
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If we lived for a million years our lives would lose meaning
Kids stuffed animals
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Therefore, meaning is related to time
Go over today's in class notes
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Prepare for next class
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Read papers and make questions
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How to write a philosophy paper
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What is the meaning of life
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How to understand and communicate
in philosophy
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Why is philosophy important
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Tips for students taking phil classes
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What are the exams like
▪
What should I take out of the
lectures
▪
HELP ME
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ASK BRYCE: how do I get tested
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Research:
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To do before Thursday's class:
Lecture 2
Thursday, May 17, 2018
1:35 PM
First Year Page 1
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Document Summary
Linguistic meaning = means something or it does not. Only relationship between the parts of an entire life can make a life somewhat more meaningful. A life is meaningful of balance while maintaining that this would be a function of the aggregate of the parts of a life. Takes about relation between parts and wholes and relations between parts within a whole. Whole is greater than the sum of parts fewfhewi. Life is meaning full as it is a matter of personal development of the course of ones existence. Only some subset of a person"s existence can bear meaning. For something to have meaning it must mean something to someone. A necklace could mean something to someone due to sentimental value but mean nothing to someone else who finds it and throws it out. Therefore, life is meaningful when the persons life holds value to someone else.
