PHI 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Meta-Ethics
13 Jan 2017
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What is Philosophy?
• Subject matter is reality
o Investigation into the nature of reality
• Tool of a philosopher is the argument to establish that certain conclusions are true about
the nature of reality
• The goal of philosophy is to provide arguments to show the truth
o Focus on knowledge, truth, art, justice
• Important aspects of philosophical discourse as opposed to scientific discourse
o Generality- philosophical questions are far more general
o Involve fundamental questions concerning justification
o Concept clarification- philosophers like to take concepts that are difficult to
define and do conceptual analysis
▪ A lot of philosophy is done from the “arm chair”
• Apriori reasoning/inquiry
o Reasoning that is done strictly through nonempirical means
▪ Trying to describe why 2 + 2 = 4
o Philosophical inquiry Can’t be done only using the senses
▪ , truth, justice cannot be sensed
• Objective/subjective distinction
o What things are/what things seem to use
o Appearance versus reality
• Truth/falsity
o What is true?
▪ It expresses a fact about the nature of reality independently about what
anybody else happens to believe
▪ Difference between the way things seem to us and how they exist in the
world
o Proposition: a statement expressed by a declarative sentence
▪ Ex: water is identical to H2O
▪ Ex: the mind is identical to the brain
▪ Can either be true or false if it is meaningfully stated
o A true proposition says something correct about the nature of reality
▪ It is true for everyone, so it is objective in that case
o We can have beliefs about the nature of reality but they can be wrong
• Philosophy of Religion/Metaphysics
o Does God exist?
o What kinds of qualities does God supposedly have?
▪ People say he is all powerful, all-knowing, all-good
• A philosopher would ask if having all of these qualities might be
contradictory
o Can they be held simultaneously?
▪ Form of concept clarification
• Epistemology
o Concerns the nature of knowledge
o Primary concern: “What is knowledge?”
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