Phil 1: Reality and Knowledge or Metaphysics and Epistemology: In class versionThis course investigates the ways philosophy is a search for wisdom; that search involves both speculative and practical wisdom. Philosophers all over the world from earliest human times, through classical Eastern and Western cultures, and on into Modern and Contemporary Philosophy have been remarkably similar in the ideas of wisdom they advocate: all have held that wisdom entails a theoretical knowing that centers on "encompassing" ideas that are important because they are carriers of other significant ideas useful to human life.. Yet it is not merely "encompassing" theoretical ideas that make for wisdom; it is also doing or living ideas about a good life in a good society. For this reason, we will stress the speculative and practical, or living character of wisdom and its three characteristics 1) speculative "encompassing" ideas, 2) acting consistently for what is lasting good: habits of virtue, and 3) analysis of good that leads to enjoyment and fulfillment in life.
I usually like to start each quarter with a quick "thumb-nail sketch" of Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligence Theory so that students can identify the 2, 3 or 4 intelligences that are combined in a unique way in each person. I will spend time in the first week on this subject of the unique combination of intelligence skills we each have. I do so because I am convinced that each student will be successful in school and life if they can identify, develop, and become proficient in one or more of the natural psycho-biological intelligences that makes them the unique person they are. In other words, each person's success and full development in life centers around the development of the multiple intelligence skills they have by nature. These intelligence skills, developed through one's lifetime are Wisdom for each person. For more information on Gardner's theory and the possible 9 intelligences Gardner identified click on Project One: Multiple Intelligence Essay listed on the left side of this web site.
Multiple Intelligence Essay
Wisdom is not just any kind of knowledge and activity; in philosophy, it stands not for the amassing of information in an encyclopedic way, but centers on important, significant ideas that link many other ideas together in a coherent way of thinking and/or living well. It is this quality of ideas that makes wisdom more than information and more than just knowing; it is more than knowing and saying what is wise because it is "doing" what is wise as well. We want to investigate the big wisdom movements in human history that have affected all of us, and we want to focus on what wisdom philosophers identified when they focused on three subject areas: what is real, what difference it makes, and how do we know it. Habits of speculative thought, and habits of practical analysis about what is a good way to live mark the wise person;we will look for these perspectives as we analyze different philosophers as they focused on questions about knowing and reality.
Today philosophers are increasingly coming to identify wisdom with a large number of theoretical and practical domains and they see Philosophy itself as a conversation partner with Economics, Political thought, Natural Science, Social Sciences, Arts, Humanities, Diplomacy, Health Care, Social Activism, and many other fields. For that reason, how philosophy dialogues with all these subject areas in the solving of serious problems, like starvation, ethnic cleansing, political corruption, terrorism, war, human health and environment, and many other issues, is of major concern. For that reason, the project of a Multiple Intelligence Essay for each student is a way for students to understand philosophy in connection with their own psycho-biological intellectual tendencies. Be sure to click on Project One; review the summary of Gardner's Intelligence Theory located there, and do the essay. We will spend the first week in class going over the essay and Gardner's theory; the two page essay is due no later than Oct. 1, 2009.
Wisdom Areas associated with Reality and Knowledge
Knowledge, Reality, and the difference they make are wisdom areas in philosophy; usually they are identified by the words metaphysics for reality and epistemology standing for knowledge. Metaphysics means everything REAL, even though the word literally means "what is beyond the physical", or what is "spiritual", while Epistemology means knowledge and includes the criteria for knowing anything we claim to know. For the metaphysician, reality is both what is perceptible or sensible and what is beyond the perceptible. If what is perceived or sensed is what appears to our senses, then metaphysicians want to know if there is anything beyond what we sense. In other words, is there anything beyond the changing or is there anything permanent? Another way of asking the same question is: does everything real include only what is visible or apparent to our senses? Is there some aspect of reality that is not entirely visible? Is it even partly invisible? Is it spiiritual or partly spiritual?
Most metaphysicians have included five to seven ideas associated with the invisible or beyond what we can clearly sense, and have concluded some sort of meta-physical character to these ideas. The ideas are: self, soul or spirit, substance, human freedom of choice, immortality, the caused, and the uncaused or uncreated (some have referred to the uncreated as "God", but most have not because they thought "God" was proper to Religion not to Philosophy).
Besides these eight ideas identified above as belonging to a metaphysical realm, we will find some philosophers emphasized "human freedom" and "immortality for the human soul or spirit." Some philosophers emphasized "substance" or the "uncaused." All eight ideas will form a basic story about metaphysics in this course.That story is more like an adventure in ideas, a search for clues to give us some answers in a subject area where no one philosopher nor any group of philosophers has been able to come up with "the" final answer. Why have philosophers not been able to come up with a final answer about how we are to "understand" these eight ideas? In my mind, this is the most important question for our whole course. The clue to answering the question lies in a view of philosophy, especially metaphysics, as a "limit area" or horizon between what we can know clearly and what we cannot know clearly. As we will see in metaphysics especially some ideas are "thought-defying" and "speech defying." They are knowable, but in a limited way; they are not clear, and their content is very different than the content of clear ideas. This should not surprise us because if the metaphysical stands for what is partly spiritual it should be unclear or vague in some ways.
Epistemology is the part of philosophy that refers to a critical study of human knowledge and its limits. It asks questions like: what does it mean to know? how many kinds of knowing can we identify? what are the limits to knowing clearly? Is clear knowing all there is to knowing? how should we understand the human mind? what do we know when we know? what makes knowledge of any kind possible? what kind of reasoning is usable in metaphysics? is this form of reasoning unclear or vague? why? what is consciousness? what is experience and what does being "experimental" mean? These questions from epistemology were faced by philosophers over the whole long course of the history of philosophy, but in the modern west (c. 16th cent. ace.) they were faced with increasing attention. At that time, metaphysics and epistemology became intertwined with one another because the realm of metaphysical ideas seemed, in a scientific age, especially difficult to understand. Nevertheless, philosophers found the realm of the metaphysical could be explained once we understood the limits of human understanding. What did philosophers find out about the limits of human understanding? Some answers to that question will be one goal of this course, but no answer will be the 'final answer" about the limits of understanding or the intelligible.
Outline
In this course we will adopt the following outline of subjects:
Philosophy as Wisdom
Types of Philosophy
Eastern (Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist) Metaphysics
Animist ( e.g. Native American) Metaphysics
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle
Descartes, Locke, Hume
Kant, Hegel, James
Exams and Grades
There will be at least 2 exams, a mid-term and a final; both will be objective and essay. The objective part will include T and F questions as well as multiple choice, and a scantron will be required (available @ the bookstore). The essays will require accuracy, coherence, analysis, and interpretation. I will explain in class what an essay must have to be accurate and coherent. In addition to the exams, there will be some unannounced quizzes periodically that can amount to as many as 60-70 points; anyone missing these quizzes for any reason will not be allowed to make them up. Finally, project assignments to write an Essay on Multiple Intelligences, and an Essay on the movie  will be required. These projects will be worth 20 points each. I may assign another essay on Kant when we get to that subject or I may make a question on Kant part of an extra credit quiz
Grades will be calculated by the points you score on the mid-term(s), quizzes. final, project assignment, and class attendance and participation. Class attendance and participation includes asking and answering questions in class and is an essential part of the grade. The total points required for an A grade is 90%, 80% for a B grade, and so on.
Assignments
Assignment One is usually the Multiple Intelligence Essay required to help students identify the 2-4 intelligence types that are unique to them. The reason for this assignment is to give students a chance to articulate their own self understanding, goals for life, and plans for developing what is most likely the area where they will find the most fulfilling field for success in life.
Because the emphasis in this class is on how the "practical" and "speculative" sides of wisdom are intertwined, I usually require as the 2nd project assignment that all students view the motion picture Gandhi which is available on DVD in several video locations. The De Anza library will have a copy of Gandhi reserved for your use as well. After viewing the motion picture, each student must type a one-page, double-spaced, reflective analysis of the movie on the subject of "Gandhi's Wisdom." The paper will be due during the fourth week of the quarter. It is essential that each paper be a double spaced, coherent and accurate analysis of a characteristic from the movie, and that for coherence it must be separated into at least two paragraphs each focusing on a separate idea linked to the subject, Gandhi's Wisdom. About 10-14 days after the Gandhi paper, we will have a mid-term exam which will cover everything from the first class through and including Aristotle.
A 3rd project assignment may be assigned toward the end of the quarter and will be on the philosopher, Immanuel Kant. If I do ask for that assignment, I will let you know. If not, I will have an in class quiz worth 10 or more points to replace it. If I choose the project, it will be either an in-class essay or a take-home essay on the subject of What does Kant mean by a "Metaphysics of Morals", and how do "God, freedom, immortality, and soul" function in that type of metaphysics? I require from 2-3 pages, clear and coherent, in separate paragraphs if the assignment is a take-home essay. If I choose the in-class quiz worth 10 points, I will require two paragraphs, clear and coherent .
Attendance and Participation
Every student is expected to attend class every day; any student absent more than 4 times may be dropped or loose one letter grade because of non-partcipation. Late arrivals will be allowed the first week of class only; after that, any student who arrives late four times or more will lose points . The same goes for any student who leaves early without permisssion. If you think you will have trouble coming on time or will have trouble making each class or will need to leave early, you are strongly encouraged to take the distance learning version of this class.
Course Emphasis
After we discuss the kinds of intelligence that philosophy requires, and the meanings to philosophical Wisdom, we will analyze the types of philosophy practiced in both western and eastern cultures. Then we will begin to assess how philosophers have explained the metaphysical ideas of self, soul, spirit, substance, cause, uncaused. Throughout our discusssion of these metaphysical ideas we will also raise epistemological perspectives about how we know these metaphysical ideas. In this way, we will intertwine metaphysics with epistemology. Modern Western Philosophy has been associated with this peculiar effort to intertwine metaphysical ideas with their epistemological justification. We will be most interested in why and in what ways this intellectual phenomenon occured.
Required Readings
Notes and Study Questions (rev. 2008), Phaedo, Meditations of Descartes, Pragmatism, by William James are required readings which should be purchased at the book store or any place you can find them including this web site or the web site for Phil 1 Course # 2 Distance Learning Version. Be sure to do this right away; begin with the Notes and Study Questions because these are the guide for the whole course. If a student does not have time to read each of the three books entirely, I have in the Notes and Study Questions a synopsis of the three books that should be read and studied carefully.
The Notes and Study Questions are pages (131) that I have written to give you an explanation of the whole course, all the readings and lectures, and the outline we will follow. Most importantly, I have included Study Questions for you at the end of each section of the Notes so that you will have a guide to follow in preparation for the quizzes,mid-term(, and the final exam. Do not underestimate the importance of the study questions. And remember that the Notes and Study Questions for Philosophy 1 are the most important of all your readings because they summarize all the three books and the lectures. Be sure to read and re-read these Notes many times; write down and ask in class questions about what you have read, and listen carefully to anything in the class lecture that raises a question for you. Asking questions is the key to learning. The Notes and Study Questions can be found in the bookstore, and for students who cannot afford that cost, they are in a pdf file on this web site that students can download for the cost of the paper to do it. Be sure to have a copy of this syllabus and a copy of the Notes and Study Questions for the whole quarter; they are he most important documents.
Important Questions
Besides the questions listed at the end of every section of your Notes and Study Questions, the following questions are meant to help you focus on the material that is most important.
1) Explain the five types of wisdom that philosophers have used to describe their type of philosophy. How does the 5th type illustrate what contemporary philosophers and psychologists think about wisdom today, and why is it important?
2) Why are the ideas of Brahman, Atman, and Tao metaphysical? What is the significance of these ideas in what is called the axial revolution? Explain how reasoning and intuition can be ways of arriving at these ideas and why some traditions think that Yoga meditation is a form of intuition?
3) Compare and contrast the Naturalism in Taoism and Animist metaphysics.
4) Explain why Animists connect words with spiritual power and wny this connection is important in their formation of myth as a predominant literary form. Why does this idea of myth have importance today?
5) Explain the dualism of Socrates and Plato. How does it compare with the psycho-somatic unity held by Aristotle?
6) Explain what Socrates meant by caring for the soul; why was it so important for him and for the history of moral philosophy, freedom, and religion?
7) Compare and contrast Plato and Aristotle on intellectual knowing, the world of forms, and the idea of science.
8) What was Descartes' method and why did he feel it was important? What consequences did his method have on philosophy after Descartes?
9) Summarize and critically evaluate Descartes' argument for the existence of God?
10) Compare and contrast Hume and Locke on a) method, b) self, c) idea of God.
11) Explain Kant's mental theory. Why did he hold for the a priori? What did he hope to achieve with his mental theory?
12) Explain what Kant meant by a metaphsyics of morals; why did freedom function as the necessary ground for moral development and moral identity and why was it important for Kant's Philosophy of Religion?
13) Why is Hegel's philosophy focused on "geist" and on "reconciliation" of opposites?
14) How and why does James' version of Pragmatism reflect post-Hegelian philosophical concerns?
15) Explain in detail how James' Pragmatism develops the significance of a) hypothesis, b) common sense, c) social construction of knowledge.
Mid-term Exam Winter 2009 will focus on the following essay questions: Students will be expected to accurately and coherently answer one (1) of the following.
1. In what two (2) ways do the Upanishads think we can experience Brahman, and why is this experience important?
2. What kind of experience allows people to hold that Tao is a metaphysical possibility? What effects in behavior are attributed to this experience?
3. Explain the Animist association of spirit with words and why Campbell associates it with myth? How does this version of myth hold meaning and truth for us today?
4. What does Socrates mean by caring for the soul? Explain the version of wisdom connected to this kind of knowing.
5. Why is Aristotle a realist and a naturalist in contrast to Plato, and how does he differ from Plato on dualism and on intellectual knowing of universals?
Mid-term Exam Game of Jeopardy
In preparation for the mid-term material from the beginning of the class through and including Aristotle, it may help if you can identify which philosopher(s) or subjects are associated with each of the following.
1. I think the uncaused is named Brahman.
2. I try to think no-thing.
3. I am a name for an intelligence skill needed in philosophy.
4. We are a group who hold for a science of the concrete.
5. I dislike sense experience in my Philosophy.
6. I hold that myth has meaning if we decode its aspirations and hopes.
7. I am an intelligence that likes to focus on peoples' feelings and motives.
8. I think caring for the soul is cultivating virtue.
9. I am a name for the trans-phenomenal self.
10. I am the name for the energy in all of nature.
11. I thought knowing a form of remembering.
12. I wrote the Tao Te Ching .
13. I am a name in the Upanishads that stands for all perceptible reality.
14. We carry meaning and truth to people through dreams and loves.
15. I liked dialogue because it helped people discover what they thought.
16. Virtue is a wise good for me because it hits a balance in human actions.
17. I think the human self is not two things, but one composed unit.
18. We think the human self is one thing only and is not composed.
19. Math definitions played a major role for me in my metaphysics.
20. I am a form of decorating that uses ideas from Taoism.
21. I am the undifferentiated in Upanishads.
22. I am a form of reasoning used to arrive at Brahman in Upanishads.
23. For us wisdom is a type of language analysis.
24. I think wisdom means moral and spiritual development
25. I am a subject in Philosophy that talks about beauty and art.
26. For me abstraction from sense experience is what intelligence does.
27. We hold everything in nature has a spirit connected with it.
28. Every natural unit is composed of matter and a form.
29. I thought teachers were like mid-wives.
30. I thought philosophy began with and maintained a sense of wonder.
31. I held for another world of ideas that were patterns for things in this world.
32. I am a form of thinking that reduces stress and anxiety by focusing on nothing.
33. I am a type of wisdom that likes comprehensive and encompassing ideas.
34. I held all material substances were interdependent and not self sufficient.
35. I am a subject in philosophy that tries to talk about what is thought-defying.
36. Aristotle thought if I existed I did not come into existence.
37.There were four of us identified by Aristotle as important in science.
38. I am a Greek word usually translated as "excellence" or "skill."
39. I held that I am a soul not I have a soul.
40. I thought it unknowable if any human soul lived after separation from its body.
41. We held that words had a power to make or create what they said.
42. I thought soul and body were two different things but only soul was self.
43. I tried to envision an uncaused as a possible reality that was not composed.
Final Exam Game of Jeopardy
In preparation for the final exam, it may help you to identify which (philosopher(s) or subjects are associated with each of the following.
1. I am an empiricist who holds immortality is not an idea that belongs in philosophy.
2. I hold that God is an idea that is a priori but is not cognitive
3. I hold God is an idea not in philosophy but in religion, and it arises because of human fear and insecurity.
4. My method is to trace all philosophical ideas to sense experience or reflection on sense experience.
5. I think every idea is a tool for human use.
6. I think soul is an inferred or supposed ground for psychological acts.
7. We thought the whole western world could progress with scientific rationality.
8. Science in our minds was not primarily mathematical but empirical.
9. I hold God to be a complex idea formed from human experiences of good human qualities we need in a human community.
10. I liked to try to reduce my ideas to a single sense impression
11. I thought I could prove God's existence from my own contingency
12. I was known as part of the skeptical enlightenment.
13. I loved the idea of spirit not machine.
14. We wanted to follow Descartes' agenda but correct his mistakes.
15. Hume "woke me up" to an active view of mind.
16. Resemblance and similarity among sense impressions was the only empirical evidence I could find for personal identity.
17. I held for a metaphysics of morals.
18. I thought alienation an unethical denial of spirit.
19. I held that Kant's a priori was reducible to common sense analysis of language.
20. I thought idealists were very religious.
21. I held self was body sensations remembered over time.
22. Meliorism was a quality of my philosophical outlook.
23. I thought God was an option limited to each individual.
24. I thought reason moved from problems to reconciliations.
25. I thought our minds constructed, in part, every object known.
26. I held progress and reform required useful ideas.
27. I thought bad religions held a god over-against human beings.
28. I played a major role in the social constructionof knowledge.
29. For me social life is congenial when we hold for permanent self.
30. We held substance was not clear but vague.
31. For me, an infinite God was not believable.
32. I liked a science-like method that emphasized certainty in philosophy.
33. Freedom was a necessary postulate for my metaphysics of morals.
34. Humanism meant every idea had hurman purposes and goals connected in my philosophy.
35. I held science was revisable, tentative, and fallible.
36. I thought space and time were in our sense powers.
37. I held that Newton's laws did not have absolute predicatability.
38. Substance and cause were found in every human language for me.
39. I developed a proof for God's existence that began with the idea of God..
40. I thought mind or soul was self and body was a vehicle self could use.
The following essays are important for preparing for the final exam in Winter quarter 2009.
1. Summarize Descartes' ontological argument and explain how it is invalid.
2. Explain how Descartes' philosophy became the "Cartesian Anxiety" for modern philosophers.
3. Why is Hegel a "romantic idealist" and why does his philosophy of geist deal with alienation?
4. Explain Kant's theories of mind and his metaphysics of morals; why is each one important?
5. Compare and contrast Locke and Hume on substance, the origin of the idea of God, and empirical method.
6. What did James mean by the present dilemma in philosophy and how does he use common sense as an alternative to Kant and Hume?
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