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April
13, 2005
I. Book/Media Discussion – 6:00 – 6:10
o Lecture Series “The Great Ideas of Philosophy” by Dr. Robinson available
at the
This lecture series by The Teaching Company
features 60, ½ hour lectures on audio cassettes covers the major ideas
in philosophy from the ancient Greeks to the 20th century. The
teacher is Professor Daniel Robinson from
o Two new recommended Books
§ The Philosophy Gym by Stephen Law
I added this to my recommended list. It’s an excellent way to get up to speed on philosophy. This book uses interesting dialogs with explanations interspersed to discuss major philosophical problems and some of the main ways philosopher’s have answered them.
§ The Big Questions by Nils Ch. Rauhut
This book is great. It presents a chapter for each major philosophy problem. Various approaches to answering the question are compared and contrasted. Some philosophers are mentioned but not in an overwhelming manner.
II. Introduction – Theme is Epistemology ‘Lite’ 6:10
– 6:30 PM
Definition: It’s all about knowledge. The key question is ‘How do we know what we know?’
Other questions: Can something be taught such as virtue or leadership, etc.?
What is the best way to confirm a belief?
What are the sources of knowledge?
Sources of Knowledge? What
are they?
- Reason, empirical observation, experience, authoritative texts, other people/experts
Focus: Generally philosophers try to justify their beliefs via a solid case through a combination of reason, empirical evidence, and/or experience. Contradictions are deadly and what the opponent seeks.
At the Heart is Skepticism: The Show Me demand like a Missourian. The whole search for truth began with doubt. Doubt based on reason is Skepticism. Any philosopher knows he must respond to the skeptics demand for justification. Skepticism is NOT pessimism.
Example: Extreme
-> Dialog: Will the Sun Rise Tomorrow?
III. Debate Question: 6:30 – 6:45 All beliefs must pass the test
of reason before being accepted. Reason here means a sound basis
through some combination of logic, empirical evidence and/or experience.
o This is the only common ground you can appeal to.
o Only means to be justified in belief.
Limitations:
· Can lead to the wrong answer.
· When there is not enough of a case one way or another.
· When the belief can affect the outcome such as I believe I can do
it.
· Does not include decisions,
just beliefs.
· Working assumptions.
· Experience phenomena cannot be expressed or reduced to logic. ->
Phenomenalism and Existentialism.
· Really big questions like life after death, purpose, etc.?
IV. Open Discussion Question 6:45 – 7:30
What is faith?
- Accepting a belief without any evidence. The question was raised if evidence could exist but not be the basis for the belief, is it still faith? There were opposing opinions on this point.
- People get faith because of:
§ Apparitions
§ Experience of others communicated to them
- Faith is not only found in religions. For example, science holds faith that they can find the Theory of Everything but all experience so far shows that they cannot tie it all together. Therefore science is operating on faith and it helps them.
- Faith in some order helps us feel better and cope with life. For example, one person had been in their car in a very difficult traffic situation and just had faith it would all come out Ok, which it did.
- Faith gives us hope that there is a reason and order to things.
- Why Faith?
§ Provides a model of life and how to behave. It provides values. It also makes you put trust in authority. Some saw this as a means by society to control the people.
§ Much focus was on Christian faith but then someone mentioned that faith permeates almost all societies so it must be multi-cultural and serve a common purpose. Perhaps this purpose is hope and self preservation.
§ Faith affects your actions.
The main point about discussion faith is to realize that we basically have two options for accepting a belief: reason or faith. It is important to realize that some of your beliefs are probably coming from faith and what these beliefs are. The challenge is that when you are going to accept some beliefs on faith and others based on reason, how do you determine when to invoke faith and when to invoke reason. This is critical because as you learn to apply philosophy, you need to know what beliefs to apply it to. Religion is one place where you may want to hold faith based beliefs but there are more. For example, believing in your ability to overcome the odds, do something you’ve never done before or just have hope that things will work out, are faith based and extremely useful. However, it needs to be employed judiciously if it is to be balanced with reason.