Monday 7/02

Monday 7/02

Introduction

Readings

Texts

Notes

Synopsis

As I was thinking about how to run this course, I thought back to all the times I've taught it and realized I was never very happy with how it went. Then I thought all the way back to when I took Intro to Philosophy and realized with horror that I couldn't remember it. At all. Not a bit of it.

Something is amiss, and I think the problem has to do with how we think about philosophy. To wit, I argued in class today that thinking of historical or topical surveys as appropriate for an introductory philosophy course is a mistake--elementary and common, perhaps, but a mistake nonetheless.

It's technically a category mistake, like asking to see the U.S. after driving through all fifty states as if the U.S. were the same kind of thing as (or in the same category as--hence "category mistake") just another state.

You see, despite the fact that the University is organized according to various disciplines like Biology, Theater, Chemistry, English, Mathematics, Philosophy, Education, Business, and so on, putting Philosophy on the grand list of disciplines is like thinking of the U.S. as just another state like Texas or Delaware.

Philosophy, I would argue, is not a distinct discipline in the same way Biology is a distinct discipline from English with its own subject matter and its own history. Fundamentally, the subject matter of philosophy is the subject matter of every discipline; the history of philosophy is the history of every discipline.

Yet if philosophy has neither its own set of topics nor its own history, what, then, is philosophy?

I think in this at least Wittgenstein was right: Philosophy is an activity. It is something you do.

Think about riding a bicycle. We're not going to study bicycle mechanics. We're not going to learn about famous cyclists. We're not going to study the history of cycling, or memorize who won what race when.

We're going to get on bicycles and ride.

Some of you will pick it up quickly. You'll be zooming around the room in no time.

Others will fall, a lot.

Eventually, though, we should all be up and riding.

Just don't try to explain to anyone else what you're doing in Intro to Philosophy. Make something up. It doesn't matter what. I give some suggestions for what to say on the syllabus, but it really doesn't matter.

It may get bumpy at times, but I hope that, unlike me, you'll remember your introduction to philosophy. If Wittgenstein was right, you will.

The upshot of all this is that this semester, we won't study philosophy or philosophers, we will do philosophy.

Having introduced the curious, almost athletic nature of the course today, I proceeded to introduce the foundation for the course - logic. Logic is foundational in the sense that virtually everything we do in the course involves the presentation and critical assessment of arguments. Of course, it is completely unfair to expect students to understand logic after a single lecture; it's the best we can do in a course of this nature, nonetheless.

I do not expect, require, demand, or even believe that you understand every concept from this lecture. At best, the terminology of arguments is "in the air", as it were, and definitions are available for your repeated review. What I have discovered from previous classes is that once I start using the terminology on a regular basis, students steadily catch on to what is meant. If you feel completely lost, take heart: There are many, many others feeling the same way at this point.

Eventually you will be able (I promise!) to

  • Explain the distinction between inductive and deductive arguments.
  • Explain the distinction between a weak and a strong inductive argument.
  • Explain the distinction between invalid, valid, and sound deductive arguments.

There are a few facts about arguments which are crucial. If you don't understand them at first, you should at least memorize them.

  1. It is always possible for the conclusion of an inductive argument to be false, even when all the premises of the argument are true. (Remember the white crow!)
  2. In a valid deductive argument, the conclusion must be true if the premises are all true.
  3. If one or more of the premises in a valid deductive argument are false, it does not follow that the conclusion is false. The conclusion may still be true; the argument just doesn't give us any reason for thinking that it is true.
  4. If the conclusion of a valid deductive argument is false, at least one of the premises must be false.
  5. A valid argument may have all true premises and (necessarily) a true conclusion, a false conclusion and (necessarily) one or more false premises, false premises and a false conclusion, or false premises and a true conclusion.
  6. The only situation in which the actual truth or falsity of the propositions in a deductive argument tell us anything at all about the validity of the argument is when the premises are all true but the conclusion is false: we then know that the argument is invalid. The validity of an argument is completely independent of the actual truth or falsity of the propositions in the argument in the sense that one can never find out whether the argument is valid based on the actual truth or falsity of the propositions in the argument.
  7. A deductive argument is valid if it has the form of a valid argument; validity is a formal or syntactic feature of arguments.
  8. If a deductive argument is sound, then we know that its conclusion is true.
  9. If a deductive argument is unsound, we know that it is either invalid, or it has at least one false premise.
  10. Critically assessing deductive arguments requires that we first find out whether or not the argument is valid and then find out whether or not the premises are all true. If the argument is invalid or has at least one false premise, then it follows that we have no reason to think that the conclusion is true; it does not follow that we have any reason for thinking that the conclusion is false.

There are other facts, of course, but these are the most important ones for you to grasp from this lecture.

Tomorrow we will begin the first of our philosophy practice sessions.

I look forward to working with you this month!