PHLA10F
PHLA10F – Reason and Truth
PHLA10F
Administrative Details - I
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Course Web Page
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Instructor
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www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~seager/a10.html (works
best on firefox, safari, chrome)
William Seager
PO102-103 (Tue 10-11; Thur 1-2pm, or appt.)
Text
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Core Questions in Philosophy, (6th Ed.), Elliot
Sober
PHLA10F
Administrative Details - II
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Course Schedule
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Tutorials
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Parts I – IV of the Sober textbook.
Check webpage for ‘where are we’.
Each of you should be registered in a tutorial.
Tutorials start meeting in third week (10 meetings in total).
Evaluation
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Mid-Term Exam (16% of grade, October 6, in class)
Two Term Essays (22% of final grade each)
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1000-1200 words (Topics to be announced).
Due: November 3, December 1.
Weekly exercises (5% of final grade in total, posted
on webpage).
Final examination (35% of final grade).
PHLA10F
What is Philosophy ?
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903):
Where do we come from?
What are we?
Where are we going?
PHLA10F
What is Philosophy ?
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Big Questions
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‘Is there a god?’
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‘What is existence?’
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‘What do we know?’
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‘What is consciousness?’
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‘How should we live?’
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Investigated by reason
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The ‘Hand Off’
Aristotle
PHLA10F
What is Philosophy ?
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The Main Branches of Philosophy
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Logic
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Metaphysics
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Epistemology
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Value Theory
Descartes
PHLA10F
What is Philosophy ?
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Logic
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Reason and argument
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Example argument
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All students are frivolous.
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Anyone who is frivolous is dilatory.
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Therefore, all students are dilatory.
What do we notice about this?
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Form versus Content
Gottlob Frege
PHLA10F
What is Philosophy ?
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Metaphysics
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Deals with issues in Ontology and Being
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What is the structure of ultimate reality?
Why is there anything at all?
What is consciousness?
Recall the ‘Hand Off’
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Some metaphysical issues have ‘gone
science’.
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What is matter?
What is time?
There remain many philosophical issues
about science related questions (plus a whole
sub-field, the philosophy of science).
David Lewis
PHLA10F
What is Philosophy ?
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Epistemology
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What is knowledge?
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Knowledge and the mind
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Simone de Beauvoir
the difference between belief and knowledge
Epistemology and Logic
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Example: the stopped clock ...
How is knowledge acquired and secured?
Epistemology and Metaphysics
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The assessment of metaphysical claims.
PHLA10F
What is Philosophy ?
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Value Theory (not covered here, see PHLA11)
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Ethics
● The nature of right and wrong.
● Example: the trolley car problem.
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Social Theory
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Political philosophy
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Aesthetics
● What is art?
● Does art have special value?
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Metaphysics, Epistemology and Value Theory
● What is value?
● How do we know?
G. E. Moore