I've recently stumbled upon your channel. As a retired engineer I tended to dismiss Philosophy as idle naval gazing. However as I've gotten older have come to appreciate its value. For me this has been driven largely by what the hard sciences have learned over my lifetime and being in awe that brains evolved to prevent being eaten by lions have been able to figure out so much. The models our brains have evolved to create do not do a very good job of describing the underlying reality. I loved the stoner reference, I did have a lot of those back in the 1970s.
I wish I had taken philosophy seriously when I was at school. Not because of the career prospects but because of the enormous personal benefits. Absolutely loving these videos.
I studied philosophy as part of my MA in Theology at Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology. Loved it because it was challenging and clarifying. Your videos are excellent.
I don't comment a lot, but I feel that I have to do it. Thanks a lot for your channel. I came here a few weeks ago to learn about philosophy of the mind, and stayed there since. It's such a wonderful endeavor to explain those difficult concepts with such pedagogy, and for free, open to everyone ! You are one very useful teacher :)
I agree to a point. I agree that philosophical questions can be outside the realm of mathematics and empirical science, however the questions of mathematics and science are themselves a part of philosophy. In other words science and mathematics and religion are a subfield of philosophy but philosophy is not a subfield of any of these things.
@@jan_v_ier im glad to hear it but I have a question or two of my own. Who’s @Kurt Mohler and what was his question? You have me feeling like the supercomputer from Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy.
Mathematician here. I would argue that a society is no more real than a triangle is. Of course, it depends a lot on your definition (as it depends for the triangle). If you define a society simply as a group of individuals, then may be it is "more real" (more tangible, more physically present) than a triangle. But I do think that the shared culture of those individuals, their share rights and responsibilities, their shared knowledge, and their institutions are integral parts of a society, without which a society is not a society. Those are as abstract and intangible as a triangle.
And keep in mind that no triangles exit, and, if they’re stipulated to exist, they’re never 2-dimensional but are 3 dimensional- owing to the 3D atoms in the ink used to describe the 2-dimensional plane that itself is actually 3-dimensional. 😂 And I get that. 🤵⌒🐬⌒µ⌒🦉
I was fortunate enough to have a full semester of philosophy in College. By far, my favorite subject and the most indespensible part of the method and validity of scientific thyeory, method and existence itself. Thank you so much for this. You are a kick-a##, bad-a## prof, the best I have ever seen anywhere. Thank you so much for giving your time to educate us.
I am 72 years old man ,learning from your channel and realized that if your channel would have been available to me when I was younger my life would have been very different, perhaps a happier one . It helps me now , and for that I kindly thank you.
So many people learn these things very late in life. It's not their fault. I hope you are doing well ! I wish you good health so that you are able to engage in philosophical discourse !! 😄
While building a fair society certainly involves philosophical reflection, I don’t believe doing so can necessarily be divorced from empirical investigation. Provided one believes how people feel and their well-being are relevant to building a fair society, then one will necessarily run into empiricism as one investigates, even scientifically, how people actually feel and fare in various societies, past and present. Indeed, one might well spend much more of the process diving into empirical research than engaging in philosophical discussion.
At 14:41 Professor Kaplan raises the question of “What is the fair way to arrange society?”, and then goes on to assert that it cannot be answered empirically. Yes, it cannot be answered through controlled experiments, but if we have information about various ways in which past societies were arranged and, for each, how fair it turned out to be, then we can run a correlational test to see if there is any relationship between the two variables (societal arrangement and fairness). It is through such scientific studies of history that we know societies arranged based on totalitarianism and injustice do not last long because the human spirit yearns for freedom and justice. But philosophy would still be useful in this context as it would help define terms such as “societal arrangement” and “societal fairness” operationally before any data can be collected. Philosophy can also be useful in interpreting the results, as to why a particular connection exists between these two variables.
I don't know what you would say at the age of 45 years I will enroll myself as a student of M.A. in philosophy from IGNOU in our country! I like the subject very much. I will follow your channel obviously. you're really doing a nice job.
Thank you for posting your lectures and reading lists online. May I know if it is possible for us to have a look at the essay and quizzes questions for your courses? I am new to philosophy and would like to know how difficult it would be to write a piece of philosophical article. Thanks a lot.
So, to sumarize: The question "What is philosophy" is philosophical in itself. But you argue, that it is the search for answers with rational arguments, that can't be observed or calculated. Therefore (this are my 2 cents), it is very useful to predict consequences, that you don't want to risk find out impericaly.
Back in 1996 I was in Greensboro college area with my Air Force comrades... we were partying with the college gals, wow small world, fast forward, I degreed in Phil + Social Sci for a double, worked hard in other occupations for many many years, half retired now after hard work grinding and investing, enjoying these awesome vids... !
The perception of mathematics is insanely wrong. When non-mathematicians are talking about "mathematics", they often refer to arithmetic and such. They obviously don't have a slight idea of what mathematics actually is, that aside. Saying "we're not gonna prove this by calculating things on a calculator" is extremely ignorant which I would not expect to be said by a philosopher. This contributes to the misconception of what mathematics is. Apart from that awesome video, keep it up!
I am from India, I like watching your video they are informative and easy to understand. While watching your videos I feel like I have always been wanting to watch videos on Philosophy and legal Philosophy like your videos. Thank you. I want to ask, do you write on a transparent glass backwards, so that it is visible to us the right way.?
10:51 - Never seen a triangle? Consider the Kanizsa triangle illusion. Since the triangle we are seeing isn't there, I submit that it is in fact a abstract triangle. And it's a real triang because you can't not see it.
The chief philosophical question about fairness is: what is fairness? (Which might be best approached by first asking: what is "fairness"? Ie what do we mean by the *word* in our language games?) Once we have a shared understanding of what constitutes "fairness", the question of whether a given social arrangement is fair becomes empirical. Yes?
Next class we'll try to define what's art. (My nephew is studying philosophy - he's a good student. We need more philosophy, more philosophers and more non-philosophers applying the throught process philosophers use.)
Great video, clear and well explained. A few questions though 9:50 Couldn't you lay out say nine apples and visually observer them? And could you physically experiment with the nine apples? Therefor making it empirical? Also 10:43 Couldn't God take the place of the triangle in this scenario where I could draw my take on God with the ink and therefor making it non-empirical?
Fair is a matter of perception - I think what is a fair society or fair structure for society is subjection - it is subject to your perception, your taste. What you percieve, what you think "tastes" fair. I think we can find a definition of "fair" that most reasonable people would agree on, something like "a situation wehre all parties benefit or suffer equally". The problem comes with measuring equal benefit of suffering.
is the philosophical question not so much the complete "what is the fair way to arrange society" but more so "what is fundamentally fair and just" and then therefore abiding by what you philosophically conclude as "fundamentally fair and just" how you can accordingly implement that within the way you arrange society. Unless what is "fundamentally fair and just" doesn't correlate exactly to what it is to "fairly arrangement" something although i think it might be. Great video would be great to hear what you or anyone thinks!
Thinking philosophically is good exercise for the brain. It can help clarify the issues to examine and can identify some flaws in reasoning. But without connecting to empirical evidence, it ultimately is impotent. Without connecting to real life .. to empirical evidence ... any attempt to answer questions like the existence of a god, or life after death, or the nature of consciousness becomes a gross overreach of reasonable conclusions, and little more than mental masturbation. And questions like "what should you do?" are better answered by relating those axiological questions to desires (individual and collective) - in Kantian terms as hypothetical rather than categorical Imperatives.
"What is Philosophy?" In three words: Let me think. In ONE word: Thought. Thought is the absolute basis for Philosophy. Thus ... Philosophy is ... thought.
TRUE Philosophers are hated. Because ... we question ALL! That includes ... ourselves. Hell, I even question my questions. Philosophers are the nemesis of science as is today, since we do not mere accept what we've been told. We analyse it, verify it, and therein lies the issue: We find errors. And science no longer wants this, instead, they want you to accept, without further thought. Same for politics. This is pure evil, that established and pushed an ever greater evil: Economy. And economy was pushed so far, "God died" and economy became the new god, indoctrinated so deeply, it cannot change any more. Since we've been indoctrinated to fight everything that stands in the way of politics and economy. The corruption got too deep within us, it went SO deep and rooted SO strongly, it virtually became part of our DNA. Politics and economy is what kills people, what eradicates nature, what destroys the planet. And we LOVE IT. Even at the cost ... of ourselves ... . Sad. Philosophise on that.
I love philosophy and I value it. But it is disappointing that we still haven't actually answered any of those questions. It seems that philosophy has made zero progress since the time of the Ancient Greeks. Perhaps the only reason to do philosophy is to learn how to think, so that we can apply what we've learnt to other facets of our lives.
Not sure if this question has been answered / posed: HOW does the clear board work?? Is he writing backwards?? Is it even glass, why is there no reflection?? Why are the markers neon?? Where do you get them! How have I hated philosophy classes in college yet am now watching this at 1am?? Grateful for you professor. (But I need to know about the magical invisible board!!!)
Many after holding degrees of attainments could neither understand nor therefore teach... that makes educational attainments meaningless and wastage of resources. It's a good presentation. Thank you!
Philosophy and Philosophers are nothing but people with an opinion. Their opinions live on, and if their opinions are correct, their opinion will survive the test of time.
15:30 i think you actually could answer this imperically. you would get bias and subjectivity and it might leave something things out but you could definitely try to answer it imperially. first create/find a bunch of kinds of ways societies are set up and then measure overall happiness of the people living there (through dopamine production or whatever else) and then which has the highest is the best way.
Philos - From Phileo, to love (familial/brotherly) + Sophia (the embodiment of Wisdom). The seeking of Wisdom. In fact it is the evaluation of ideas to determine validity of the methods used, and to follow valid methods to evaluate Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics, and Metaphysics, among others. Logic is the root of all other philosophy, so to understand Logic is to understand the root of all other questions.
Great lecture. Here are some thoughts. I think it's great how it distinguishes it from science and math, but then could do more to relate them all. When you take these three (and possibly religion or "faith", four) together, only then you can be confirm your "sophos". What do I mean by that? Let's take "What is a fair way to arrange society". The first needed is consensus about the meaning of Fairness, assuming that can be achieved. It's not even an argument about how to organize anything, but runs prior to that. The meaning, usually, will be derived by observing commonality in examples that we thought were more or less fair, or more fair in some ways than other examples. Now, there may be no way to organize it fairly, because there may be no agreement on the definition. Now, if someone can provide a definition and have all others agree, we are not far from a religion: a definition is just a concept explained with words attached to a label. The abstract concept of fairness when narrowed, can be reasoned now logically and mathematically. But since we are talking about "organizing Society", it's likely that whatever the axioms and rules at play, wherever logic takes us, if applied to an actual Society, would have effects on its members. Do they matter? For example, is it fair to organize society in a way that gets all it's members killed? Half the members drowning? All of them sad and depressed? So from axioms (what is the essence of "fairness" if it exists, or its fruits, and what is the noun "society"), we develop arguments and reach conclusions or "wise" answers, which are supposed to be wise irrespective of actual examples. But if in practice by Society we mean societies like any, including ours, then when applied to societies, we would expect the outcomes to be congruent with what we have defined is Fair. Now, what if, and that's what often happens in practice, what is fair ends up resulting in the most unfair, horrendous consequences, abhorrent and a mockery of any fairness and patently unjust and unfair? We could argue that it is Fair, but that unfortunately humans (or any other society) can live fairly. Well then, is it fair to organize societies in a way that results in unfairness? This would inform the definition, which may need fine-tuning. And this makes Mayeutics more interesting. For it is about logic (math), it is also about experiments (ie. reasoning by bringing to mind past real life experiences and actual observations as in Plato's dialogs, and making predictions), and making effort to try to predict the consequences ofways to organize society, as it is about Wisdom, either by faith (if religiously), or reasoning i(f philosophically addressed). Usually, we have these separated, because philosophy isn't about experiments, nor math, then we can arrive at false wisdom, for example, concluding that in order to organize society in a way that is fair, we'd have to organize it in a way that results in unfairness. The fault isn't the logic, it's either the definitions or the misunderstanding of important details - the wrong model. And this is in part why philosophy can't be just about things that aren't math or experiments, but rather, the perfect complement in tandem with them, for those with Sophos in their hearts.
I have studied Psychology and Philosophy. Philosophy covers Wisdom,Experience,Knowledge,Intellect,Etc.. There is a saying,”The Alpha is the Omega”.Never forget that.
The shadow of a cylinder illuminated from the side is 2-dimensional rectangle on a flat surface. The shadow of a pyramid on a flat surface in certain orientations is a 2-dimensional object. - from an engineer...
I have a philosophy class next semester, so I figure I would watch the series so i have a bit of an idea of what the class will be about and what some of the material will be over.
The purpose of philosophy is to discover reality/ontology. Science and religion are part of philosophy to answer this question. Wisdom is knowledge of reality. All is a dream is the reality.
I tend to make a little odd comment with thiscquestion, sometimes students don't see the point of studying philosophy. I tell them that, in essence, it isn't real, is not a science or discipline where you become versed on a kind of process, we ALL have philosophy in us, it is the wisdom we apply in our lives based on our experiences, knowing things is not enough, we have to apply it. And we do cuz otherwise, we wouldn't even be alive, it is an aspect of survival, our social features take above merely surviving, we take decisions and function in society with what we have liced. So to study philosophy, is to study the applied wisdom of others, to enrich our own applied wisdom, without having to live what they did, we don't have to live as an ancient philosopher, or live the horrors of the inquisition or revolution, or the existential crisis of their times. we just need tobread, judge and apply. Not only for the consecrated philosophers, but from anyone, for each and everyone of us makes philosophy everyday. That's how I get studénts to like the subject.
Can a certain experience be still a philosophical question? "Let's say a person that pronounced dead then came back to life" is that considered as observation or experimental in a way?
Philosophy is the logical estimation of emergent properties of the universe that have not yet been empirically apprehended, and the pragmatic application of those estimations to the individual life. When everything is eventually treated as an empirical science, philosophy as a distinct discipline will cease to be.
As an enlightened individual, I find this video rather entertaining. Philosophy professor: Triangles are stipulated, they are made up. They don't exist. Also the Philosophy professor: *Stipulates a physical reality made up of space and time and atoms and stuff and implicitly stipulates this is absolute* Sorry, but this video makes me laugh 😄a like is well deserved. Being aware of ourselves constructing reality is called "construct-awareness" and is one of the advanced stages you can reach before enlightenment.
"It produces well supported answers to the kinds of questions we were talking about earlier that I wrote on the board". What's your definition of "answers"? A more accurate term would be "reactions", "thoughts", or "responses" (all well reasoned, of course) "Answers" is a little grandiose, no?
Good question. To answer that we need to first answer: what's a shadow? A shadow is not an object. It's not like a table or a mountain or a cat or whatever. A shadow is the area on some surface where light is not hitting that surface because something is blocking the light from hitting that surface. Let's say, for example, that the surface is the sidewalk and on the sidewalk there is a pointy birthday hat and it is blocking the sunlight from hitting part of the sidewalk and that part of the sidewalk where the sunlight is being blocked is in the shape of a triangle. So the triangular shadow, it turns out, is just part of the sidewalk that is not being hit by sunlight. Is that part of the sidewalk 2 dimensional? Definitely not. The surface of the sidewalk (like every surface, no matter how smooth) is made up of atoms. The surface is not perfectly smooth. No surface is. When you zoom in close enough you will find that there is an atom and then a gap and then the next atom. The atoms are 3 dimensional. So the surface is three dimensional.
I guess I’d have to disagree with the maxim you stated a few times that philosophy is unlike mathematics in that it isn’t proofs or calculations from definitions and axioms. It seems to me that that is historically how philosophical argumentation was done, I.e., argumentation from axioms & definitions
Funnily enough based on your definition of philosophy, it could be assumed that philosophy is actually the oldest form of science. When we first discovered math, or science of any other sort, we would have had to have used only our thoughts and rational arguments to determine the outcomes that we wanted. Especially math.
That reminds me of when the parents offered to pay Socrates to make their child wise like he was to which he replied there are already places in the world that you can pay to educate your children but I'm not one of them. Socrates knew that he didn't know that's why the Oracle told him he was the wisest of them all. Men have a certain form of wisdom and it's reflected in their philosophy it's the kind you can pay money to be taught in.
I think your proposal for what philosophy is about is really cool, but it works better as a normative claim than as a descriptive one. Here is one counterexample for both your claims: 1) Philosophy is not empirical. X-phi, like it or not, is currently considered a branch of philosophy (if anything, because philosophers publish on the topic on phil journals). 2) Philosophy does not answer questions based on axioms/stipulated definitions. Assume you want to answer the following question: "What is the best theory of free will, ASSUMING incompatibilism is true?". Again, today you would look for the answer on a philosophical journal.
As a skeptic of philosophy, this might be interesting. 1:30 Philosophy is not about wisdom. Good start. 2:04 "Does God exist, do I have free will, and is there an afterlife?" ~ This is not looking good. I'm not aware of any philosophy that can answer these two question. So, this is probably going to be a bait and switch. 7:15 The three above questions are not subjective. That is true. 14:50 If that's his definition then none of the three above questions are philosophical. But, Mr. Kaplan isn't aware of that. So, my low opinion of philosophy as completely useless for construction still stands. 18:00 Intuitive arguments are almost always wrong. He doesn't seem to be aware of that either. 19:00 No, this is incorrect. Philosophy is very bad at producing answers. Mr. Kaplan seems to believe philosophical mythology. 19:50 The idea of an afterlife is an important question that has already been answered by science. Philosophy has never been able to answer it. So, his claim is backwards. 21:30 Philosophy is actually very good at one thing. I have serious doubts that Kaplan knows what it is. 26:00 This is a very poor example. I'm not sure if Mr. Kaplan is just very ignorant or if he composed this example out of personal bias. Either one looks bad for his point. First of all, GMAT is for management programs so I'm not sure what the relevance would be since most areas of study even at the PhD level are unrelated to management. Secondly, GMAT has been shown to have low correlation to actual performance within these management programs. 26:27 LSAT would be a better example since philosophy would be closer to some types of legal work. 27:26 The GRE also has low correlation with actual graduate level performance. So, only 1 out 3 examples. 29:00 So, as I suspected, Mr. Kaplan does not know what philosophy is good for.
'Tastiness of something' doesnt matter if reaction good or bad the flavor is TASTED. So that argument is on the strength of the flavor, the tastiness. Would that still be subjective?
Yes but then eventually you get to the smallest unit that makes up things that we call tangible so someone with a microscope might have seen a triangle shape made of the smallest particles would that be two-dimensional?
