Speaker 1: Welcome everybody, Thank you for having me. Rich Really cool
Speaker 1: to be here. You know, I did when I was
Speaker 1: doing undergrad and grad work, I did teach quite a
Speaker 1: few student class situations, but I never taught an entire semester.
Speaker 1: I left the university setting because I really felt like
Speaker 1: I could do better doing it autonomously, and here we
Speaker 1: are at autonomy. So I think Richard has the right
Speaker 1: idea about where to go with education. But I've been
Speaker 1: into and studying philosophy at various levels and in various
Speaker 1: ways for about twenty years. So I'm happy to be here,
Speaker 1: honored to be here. I do have some unique takes
Speaker 1: that I think will be different than what you would
Speaker 1: get in a traditional legacy university setting. So hopefully we
Speaker 1: can get into some of that tonight kicking it off,
Speaker 1: and we're going to get pretty deep, so you know,
Speaker 1: jot down your questions. I'm a big fan of open
Speaker 1: Q and A at the end. You know, we've done
Speaker 1: in my discord. I think we have about eight or
Speaker 1: nine thousand in the discord, and we've been doing these
Speaker 1: open q and as that go sometimes six ten hours,
Speaker 1: so I'm totally used to that. Very happy to have
Speaker 1: people ask you know lengthy end of lecture Q and as, so,
Speaker 1: be sure and jot down your questions and I will
Speaker 1: answer them to the best of my abilities. You're not
Speaker 1: gonna offend me, You're not gonna it's not gonna bother
Speaker 1: me if you disagree, if you think I'm wrong about
Speaker 1: something you know you don't like. UH. We're not gonna
Speaker 1: be talking a whole lot about theism or any of
Speaker 1: that tonight. That doesn't really play into tonight's topic. So
Speaker 1: if you're an anti theist, if you're agnostic, none of
Speaker 1: that bothers me. It's fine for you to have your positions.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be coming at you or critiquing your
Speaker 1: positions unless you want that right, So you can request that, Sir,
Speaker 1: I would like you to request I would like to
Speaker 1: request a demolished to goet my paradion. I'm happy to
Speaker 1: offer that if you want that. Most people don't really
Speaker 1: want that. But it's gonna just gonna be an introduction.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna look at what is a philosophy all about.
Speaker 1: The object of this course will be to take us
Speaker 1: from this introductory UH situation to a pretty good knowledge
Speaker 1: of deep knowledge. Hopefully that's what we're gonna shoot for
Speaker 1: of the history of Western philosophy. Obviously, we have to
Speaker 1: pick some starting points. We can't go back and do
Speaker 1: all of Indo European philosophy, we can't do all the Babylonian,
Speaker 1: a Syrian philosophy and whatnot. But what's most relevant, I
Speaker 1: think for us in the West is the history of
Speaker 1: Western philosophy. And like I said, I've you know, I've
Speaker 1: had this course at the legacy institutional setting many times
Speaker 1: over and in many in many in many different ways.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna give you a better version of that.
Speaker 1: And I think again, this is really the way to
Speaker 1: do it. Really, Richard is really pioneering when it comes
Speaker 1: to where education is going. So let's get into philosophy.
Speaker 1: What is philosophy? Well, hm, you say, I have there
Speaker 1: a couple of figures that's from actually from a monastery,
Speaker 1: an Orthodox monastery, where you have five philosophy guys, and
Speaker 1: you know they don't have halos. So in the Orthodox view,
Speaker 1: there's not going to be a perception of the philosophers
Speaker 1: as equivalent to what you would get in divine revelation.
Speaker 1: But regardless, some of the things that are going to
Speaker 1: be present in my lecture is that we're not going
Speaker 1: to see a strict divide between the various theisms, because
Speaker 1: we're gonna notice that as we go through the history
Speaker 1: of philosophy, there's a ton of theisms. So again, no
Speaker 1: matter what you think about theism, we're going to need
Speaker 1: to understand these people's positions from their vantage point, all right.
Speaker 1: Ariosol has a famous quote attributed to Aristotl that it's
Speaker 1: a mark of an educated man to understand the opponent's
Speaker 1: position without adopting it. And we want to keep that
Speaker 1: in mind as we work, as we work through these
Speaker 1: various philosophers, because this is crucial to having the upper
Speaker 1: hand right. And when I say the upper hand, I
Speaker 1: mean in anything, if you're if you're in business, if
Speaker 1: you're in debate, if you're in law, right, whatever you're into.
Speaker 1: If you want to have the upper hand, if you
Speaker 1: want a personal advantage, it's always better to know your
Speaker 1: opponent's position at least as good as they do. Right.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we can't achieve that, but to have that edge,
Speaker 1: that's what you want to shoot for. So keep in mind,
Speaker 1: no matter what your view, what we want to strive for.
Speaker 1: And I think this is a virtue. We're going to
Speaker 1: get to what virtue and vice and all that is
Speaker 1: later on. We'll get to ethics. I think it's actually
Speaker 1: a virtue to know the position that you're against, even
Speaker 1: if you completely hate it and reject it, know it
Speaker 1: is best you can. That's what we're going to shoot for.
Speaker 1: And so those are some of the preliminary considerations as
Speaker 1: we get into this. I want to remind you too
Speaker 1: that I find it most helpful to break philosophy down
Speaker 1: into three main branches. Those branches are epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the phrase or the word esthetics is added to ethics.
Speaker 1: We will get to that as well. Let's get into it.
Speaker 1: So I will I did choose source materials. You don't
Speaker 1: have to get these source materials unless you choose to.
Speaker 1: I would recommend them because they're going to be what
Speaker 1: I'm working from. In terms of the text, I will
Speaker 1: at times refer to these texts for various source material
Speaker 1: for pages that I think are really, you know, insightful.
Speaker 1: That will be the famous text from Copplestone, which is
Speaker 1: History of Western Philosophy or History Philosophy. I think it's
Speaker 1: like four or five volumes. We're only going to be
Speaker 1: early on concern with volume one. In volume two because
Speaker 1: that covers the ancient and medieval periods, I will be
Speaker 1: using and sourcing at times the well known text on epistemology.
Speaker 1: It's very common in a lot of grad courses or
Speaker 1: undergrad courses by Lawrence Bonjour epistemology. And there's a three
Speaker 1: part series that matches up to the classification system that
Speaker 1: I gave by these guys, and I think they're very
Speaker 1: good because again they focus on virtue in these in
Speaker 1: these domains, especially in terms of epistemology and ethics, and
Speaker 1: that's going to be very crucial for where we go
Speaker 1: in this course. You know, I know Richard makes a
Speaker 1: lot of a great point throughout his talks to talk
Speaker 1: about ethics and why, you know, having an edge in business, iss,
Speaker 1: it's necessary to be ethical. We want to be ethical.
Speaker 1: We want to display not in a showy way, but
Speaker 1: we want to have a good reputation. Right, How you're
Speaker 1: going to have a good business or good business at
Speaker 1: repertoire if you have a bad rep right, if you're
Speaker 1: known as the dude that scams everybody in lies and cheets, right,
Speaker 1: So ethics will definitely play into this, and you're going
Speaker 1: to see I think that ethics is very important and
Speaker 1: crucial to philosophy, and that a lot of this is practical,
Speaker 1: although it may seem early on that a lot of
Speaker 1: what we're going to talk about is abstract. You know,
Speaker 1: how does this relate to my business? We're talking about
Speaker 1: freaking monads, We're talking about you know, crazy four elements
Speaker 1: and all this mystical crap that doesn't relate to the practical.
Speaker 1: I assure you that it will. But if you stick
Speaker 1: if you stick it out right, you're going to see that.
Speaker 1: You might not see that early on, but if you
Speaker 1: stick it out you will. And so I recommend the W. J.
Speaker 1: Woodbook on Epistemology, the William Hasker text on Metaphysics, and
Speaker 1: the Arthur Holmes text on ethics. Now, the three on
Speaker 1: the right are very easily accessible to people that may
Speaker 1: not know a lot about philosophy. So if you're new
Speaker 1: to philosophy, I'm gonna recommend the three on the right
Speaker 1: there to start with, because the Bonjour Epistemology text is
Speaker 1: a little advanced and the the Coppleston text is maybe
Speaker 1: in between. Right, So you might you might see that one.
Speaker 1: It's kind of in between the other two. And then,
Speaker 1: as I said, I didn't put it on screen. But
Speaker 1: there's also Coppleston's Volume two, which deals with medieval philosophy.
Speaker 1: So those are our sources. Obviously, there are some other
Speaker 1: sources that are gonna matter or be referenced here and
Speaker 1: there for students of philosophy. Everybody should know about the
Speaker 1: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It's very well known in academia.
Speaker 1: It's commonly referenced as well as I forget which university
Speaker 1: puts this one out, but it's the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Speaker 1: Those will also be sourced at times, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: just for very various reference references to words, terms, definitions,
Speaker 1: and so forth. When I refer to Plato. I'll put
Speaker 1: some of these up later when we do other slides,
Speaker 1: but we'll be we'll be using various texts from Plato's Republic.
Speaker 1: I use the Groove translation, and then also the bol
Speaker 1: Engine series of Plato, which is a collected works of
Speaker 1: Plato for some of the dialogues. That'll be the next lecture,
Speaker 1: though we're not going to be getting into Plato tonight,
Speaker 1: because one of the things that we want to we
Speaker 1: want to understand is that philosophy is a centuries long discourse.
Speaker 1: And just as if you were to walk into a
Speaker 1: bar right and you were right in the middle of
Speaker 1: some dirty story right to you know, drunk dudes in
Speaker 1: the bar, or some wine mom in the bar whining
Speaker 1: about her ex husband, you wouldn't know the whole story,
Speaker 1: would you. You would only know you know what wine
Speaker 1: mom is saying at this moment. Right. You want to
Speaker 1: know who's let with who. You want to know where
Speaker 1: they're from. You want to who's shooting on who? Right, Well,
Speaker 1: maybe you guys don't. But that's what I'm getting at
Speaker 1: with knowing the whole story here, is that the way
Speaker 1: philosophy works is that it's a centuries long conversation. Basically,
Speaker 1: the dude that's selling his stuff today is going to
Speaker 1: be destroyed and demolished by the dude critiquing him tomorrow,
Speaker 1: and this will go on for basically the last twenty
Speaker 1: five hundred years. And that's what we're going to be
Speaker 1: focusing on in terms of this course. So we need
Speaker 1: to know, for example, who was saying what before Plato
Speaker 1: that put Plato into the setting that he was in, right,
Speaker 1: because there's a bunch of discourse and debate prior to
Speaker 1: Plato that really you can't really understand Plato without that.
Speaker 1: So in other words, we're going to have to step
Speaker 1: back and understand some of the pre athens philosophy, the
Speaker 1: pre Socratics or they're sometimes called the Milesians or the
Speaker 1: Ionian philosophers, and what they were to be, what they
Speaker 1: were asking, because they really initiate philosophy. In fact, Aerosol
Speaker 1: himself says that it's the pre Socratics that, and we'll
Speaker 1: look at this specifically in a moment, that initiate or
Speaker 1: begin the process of what is properly philosophy. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: you could widen that definition such that any ancient religion
Speaker 1: or empire had a philosophy, and we're gonna look at
Speaker 1: a little bit of that too, But for Western philosophy
Speaker 1: in particular, again, thinking about our threefold division of epistemology, metaphysics,
Speaker 1: and ethics, it's going to be the pre Socratics that
Speaker 1: first initiate this question. And they do it because they
Speaker 1: begin to move out of the domain of myth and storytelling.
Speaker 1: So prior to them. We'll look at in a minute, Homer, Hesiod,
Speaker 1: these playwrights, these oral tradition storytellers. For them, virtue and
Speaker 1: vice is essentially known via mythic or mythopoetic storytelling, not
Speaker 1: primarily known through abstraction. This is gonna be a huge
Speaker 1: step that a lot of these prestocratics are going to
Speaker 1: take away from myth towards reason, rationality, abstraction, and stepping
Speaker 1: away from myth and storytelling. Now this is not to
Speaker 1: cast aspersions on myth and storytelling. We're not making judgments
Speaker 1: either way. We're simply understanding the course of philosophy as
Speaker 1: it progresses historically. Because again this I have to stress
Speaker 1: this because a lot of people don't know how to
Speaker 1: approach philosophy. Right. They just pick up David Hume and
Speaker 1: start reading him. And you can't understand David Hume if
Speaker 1: you don't understand the metaphysics of the Middle Ages, right.
Speaker 1: Because Hume comes on the scene in the Enlightenment. It says,
Speaker 1: as a skeptic, right, we need to throw out all
Speaker 1: the metaphysics that came before. Well, if I don't know
Speaker 1: what the metaphysics came before, or I don't know what
Speaker 1: he's talking about. Likewise, I can't understand Kant without understanding
Speaker 1: David Hume, because Kant's whole philosophy is a reaction to
Speaker 1: human and we're going to see that throughout the history
Speaker 1: of Western philosophy. It's a constant position, reaction, interchange. And
Speaker 1: sometimes this is referred to as dialectics. Now, dialectics, I'm
Speaker 1: going to I'll have more definitions later on screen for
Speaker 1: you guys, but as we get into more of the
Speaker 1: precise terminology, we don't have to really worry about dialectics tonight,
Speaker 1: but I do want to bring it up because it's
Speaker 1: going to be recurring themes. I want you guys to
Speaker 1: pay attention to themes that will recur throughout this lecture series.
Speaker 1: Dialectics will be one of them, because we're going to see,
Speaker 1: especially in the Greeks and throughout the whole history of
Speaker 1: Western philosophy, dialectical tension. And remember, dialectics means different things
Speaker 1: in different contexts. Sometimes dialectics means just the methodology of teaching,
Speaker 1: to back and forth question asking dialogue right. Sometimes dialectics
Speaker 1: means something more metaphysical, which in the sense of like
Speaker 1: actual principles in the world that are intention with one another.
Speaker 1: Is there a stark war between determinism and free will? Right?
Speaker 1: That's a dialectical characterized question. Right. The setting for that
Speaker 1: is already kind of set up as dialectical. Are you
Speaker 1: a determinist or do you believe in free will? Well,
Speaker 1: that assumes that there's not some form of compatilist compatibilism
Speaker 1: right now. I'm not saying which of those is correct
Speaker 1: the wrong. I'm just saying that you can see that
Speaker 1: a lot of times questions can be framed in a
Speaker 1: dialectical way, and I want you to pay attention to that,
Speaker 1: because as we go through a lot of these especially
Speaker 1: these pre socratics, you're going to notice that they really
Speaker 1: are operating in a lot of these kinds of assumptions.
Speaker 1: So we want to pay attention to that. We want
Speaker 1: to have some of those things in mind. But before
Speaker 1: we get to that, after we've looked at some of
Speaker 1: these course materials rough course syllabus, this is what we're
Speaker 1: looking at doing here, We're going to do this introductory class. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is then we're going to move to playto. I'm
Speaker 1: going to try to squeeze playto into one talk these
Speaker 1: could ease each of these people, as we know, could
Speaker 1: easily be an entire course. They're very difficult, especially the
Speaker 1: pre Socratics play aristotol, but we're gonna tackle it. I
Speaker 1: have a lot of friends that are in academia that
Speaker 1: are also solid people that I think you guys would
Speaker 1: really like, you guys really benefit from. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have a couple of guests, uh expert lectures come in
Speaker 1: to also co teach and to do a little Q
Speaker 1: and A with me on the epistemology class. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do the metaphysics class. We're gonna lump aesthetics with ethics.
Speaker 1: I'll bring a guest expert in as well for that,
Speaker 1: probably somebody who's a Renaissance expert. Then we're gonna look
Speaker 1: at the Stoics and the new Platonists together for the
Speaker 1: early non Christian philosophy of the meditations of for example,
Speaker 1: Marcus Aurelius, and we'll look at some of the Roman philosophers.
Speaker 1: Then we're gonna move to the what's called the Patristic period,
Speaker 1: which means the Church Fathers. Again, regardless of what you
Speaker 1: think of Christianity, you know it doesn't I'm not really
Speaker 1: here to get into that with you tonight. Unless you
Speaker 1: guys want to talk about those things, I'm happy to,
Speaker 1: but that's not really prominently. The focus of this course
Speaker 1: is not gonna essentially be Christianity. It's just gonna be
Speaker 1: the history of West and philosophy. However, whatever one thinks
Speaker 1: of Christianity or religion, we do have to treat this
Speaker 1: very crucial, very influential period in the history of the West.
Speaker 1: And we're not going to restrict it to Latin or
Speaker 1: Western Church fathers as many college courses do. We're going
Speaker 1: to look at figures who were crucial and very influential
Speaker 1: in other civilizations like Byzante, particularly the Cappadocians John Emascus,
Speaker 1: very famous Patristic church fathers as they're called, who were
Speaker 1: heavily philosophical. So Augustine, a towering figure obviously in the
Speaker 1: early Church, had many, many, many thousands of pages of
Speaker 1: philosophical writings, and we're going to look at those. And
Speaker 1: he's crucial as well because he's very influenced by the
Speaker 1: Neoplatons right, as are the Cappadocian Church fathers Basil Gregory
Speaker 1: and Gregory. Basil and to Gregory's Basically, we're going to
Speaker 1: look at them in terms of their metaphysics. Their approach
Speaker 1: to help the world is structured, and as you can see,
Speaker 1: I mean this encompasses you know, at least this isn't
Speaker 1: even all of them, weir. I've got thirty eight volumes
Speaker 1: up here, and probably half of these volumes deal with
Speaker 1: Augustin Cappadocian of John Damasca. So I'm going to compact
Speaker 1: all of that into one long course. Then we're going
Speaker 1: to get into medieval philosophy in general, which those guys
Speaker 1: prepare the way for. And then we have to know
Speaker 1: this because we're not gonna be able to understand the
Speaker 1: Enlightenment what it's reacting against unless we understand some of
Speaker 1: the medieval scholastic philosophy. So again that'll be compacted. We
Speaker 1: won't go super deep into all that because that could
Speaker 1: be its own course, right, people get their PhD in
Speaker 1: even just one of the thinkers in any of these domains.
Speaker 1: So we want to shoot for an overview. We like
Speaker 1: I said, when we get to Descartes and the Enlightenment,
Speaker 1: we're going to look at that as its reaction to
Speaker 1: the medieval period. Again, this is not to demolish or
Speaker 1: destroy all the Enlightenment philosophers. In fact, they're going to
Speaker 1: have a lot of good arguments against medieval philosophers. So
Speaker 1: we want to try to look for good art arguments
Speaker 1: is another thing to try to train yourself to do
Speaker 1: in terms of philosophy. We want to look for good
Speaker 1: arguments irrespective of the man, irrespective of the person making
Speaker 1: the argument, do they have a good argument? Because guess what,
Speaker 1: even the worst philosopher, I don't care who you think
Speaker 1: is the worst, he's probably got one good argument here there.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of on a spectrum. Right, I'm not
Speaker 1: a big fan of Hegel, but I think Hegel has
Speaker 1: some really interesting insights here and there. Same with Emmanuel Kant. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm not a contient. I'm not super into KNT, but
Speaker 1: I think Kant has some really fascinating insights that we're
Speaker 1: going to talk to when we get to number eleven there,
Speaker 1: which is the Enlightenment empiricists and Kant's transcendent idealism that
Speaker 1: is the human Kant Berkeley Locke period, and then modern
Speaker 1: collapse of philosophy, And yes, I will argue that it
Speaker 1: has pretty much collapsed, and by that I mean, what
Speaker 1: we classically thought of the doing of philosophy as doesn't
Speaker 1: really exist anymore. Then. That's not to say that in
Speaker 1: the academic world or in the academic setting there aren't
Speaker 1: people doing philosophy. There are, there are, But this is
Speaker 1: but what we thought of as philosophy in terms of
Speaker 1: the ancient and medievals has collapsed in the sense that
Speaker 1: we don't do that anymore. Now. Philosophy has turned into postmodernism,
Speaker 1: which is essentially an anti philosophical movement. It's actually ironically
Speaker 1: reverted back to storytelling. That's the irony here is that
Speaker 1: what the pre Socratics there in Part one are going
Speaker 1: to be reacting to in Homer and Hesiod. Ironically, we're
Speaker 1: going to notice that the modern collapse of philosophy has
Speaker 1: basically returned in terms of postmodernism, has returned to myth
Speaker 1: and storytelling, because of course they will say that really
Speaker 1: every philosopher and everything is just myth, storytelling or power
Speaker 1: relations right, power oppressor narratives and so forth, And certainly,
Speaker 1: you know, we could include marks and so forth in
Speaker 1: all of these modern figures or this modern era, but
Speaker 1: it's just really difficult to put everything into one course,
Speaker 1: and so, like Richard said, you know, if everything works out,
Speaker 1: we'll probably just do a second season of covering modern stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, and then we can do a class on
Speaker 1: dar when we can do a class on Mark. So
Speaker 1: we can do a class and you might think, well, Darwin, No, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're gonna notice tonight. Just like with what I just
Speaker 1: said about postmodernism being a return of an ancient view,
Speaker 1: you're gonna notice quite a few things that are normative
Speaker 1: popular views today. We're already in the presocratics and in
Speaker 1: the ancient philosophers. Again, I'm not here to try to
Speaker 1: convince you either way on these things. I have my views.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to give my takes. But again, what we
Speaker 1: want to stress and what we want to really really
Speaker 1: strive for because this is very difficult for a lot
Speaker 1: of people. I don't think this audience will be too difficult.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you guys are a sharp crowd. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you're striving to achieve objectivity. That's what we want to do.
Speaker 1: We want to understand these people no matter what we think,
Speaker 1: even if we think it's the stupidest thing, right, that is,
Speaker 1: even I think if that dude is retarded, right, I
Speaker 1: think if we think, you know, oh, Aristotle is the
Speaker 1: most rhetorded of all the philosophers. Right, he was riding
Speaker 1: the short bust to the Athens Academy, right, right, whatever
Speaker 1: you think, I at least want you to understand Aristotle
Speaker 1: and be able to give the basics of what he
Speaker 1: thought to the to the appeasement of me or anyone
Speaker 1: else who knows a decent amount about aerosolt Right. If
Speaker 1: you can do that, then you have achieved what I'm
Speaker 1: after in this course, which is to give you the
Speaker 1: ability to speak to these topics fluently, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: understand again how it relates to your life. A lot
Speaker 1: of this, again will seem obscure and weird, but again
Speaker 1: you're gonna notice some of the most prominent views that
Speaker 1: people have in the world today that are thought of
Speaker 1: as new, aren't really new. They're just repackaged, resurfacing, and
Speaker 1: they kind of represent similar debates, copy and pasted actually
Speaker 1: almost from twenty five hundred years ago. So what is philosophy? Yeah, obviously,
Speaker 1: probably many of you already know this. I won't spend
Speaker 1: too much time on the basics, but we do need
Speaker 1: to have just a little bit of an overview of
Speaker 1: what the basic terms are what they're referring to, because
Speaker 1: we're going to have some people that are brand new
Speaker 1: love of wisdom, fly low Sophia, Love of wisdom. Socrates
Speaker 1: famously said the examined life is the only life worth living.
Speaker 1: Now technically said the unexamined life is not worth living.
Speaker 1: But I'm paraphrasing to say, Look, basically, he's just telling
Speaker 1: you that if you're just going through through your your
Speaker 1: emotions day to day, if you've never sat down to
Speaker 1: contemplay what is life? Who am I? What's the meaning
Speaker 1: of all this? Is there a point to life? Does
Speaker 1: the universe have a beginning? Right? If you've never thought
Speaker 1: about those things, then you're kind of like a boring
Speaker 1: ass rock. And literally that's how I think, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the Greek philosophers would sort of especially the
Speaker 1: ones who kind of had disdaining for the masses, right,
Speaker 1: some of these guys would just be like, these people
Speaker 1: are really no different than rocks. And they're even gonna
Speaker 1: liken some of the people to rocks because they're weighed
Speaker 1: down by the cares of this world and the material
Speaker 1: possessions and pleasures. Right the base passions or whatnot. They
Speaker 1: keep people focused not on the here and the now
Speaker 1: or me, not on the transcendent or on the ideal,
Speaker 1: or on the true or whatever, but on the here
Speaker 1: in the now, And so they're kind of like determined
Speaker 1: in PCs. This is the ancient Greek idea of the NPC.
Speaker 1: And I think if we were to think of somebody
Speaker 1: like Socrates who will be the teacher of Plato, he
Speaker 1: would definitely resident with the NPC meme, right, He would
Speaker 1: probably be etching it out on tablets, right and showing
Speaker 1: it to his fellow philosophy students in his class. And
Speaker 1: so the idea here is that we want to not
Speaker 1: just go through the motions, but want to understand the
Speaker 1: world and not just have knowledge. This is an important
Speaker 1: distinction that will come up in the early Greek philosophers,
Speaker 1: not just having a bunch of data. Right. There's clearly
Speaker 1: there's a difference between you know, some guy who's just
Speaker 1: a Spurg and like memorize his sports statistics. Right, what's
Speaker 1: the dust at Hoffman character rain Man? Right? Would you
Speaker 1: call rain Man wise? No, he's just this sort of
Speaker 1: weird savant, you know, Spurg, Right, But what about a
Speaker 1: situation where you know, take the again, what dover you
Speaker 1: think of the Bible the character of Solomon. Solomon in
Speaker 1: the Bible and Ecclesiastices, Proverbs, he's touted for his wisdom,
Speaker 1: and certainly he, according to the Bible, well knew a
Speaker 1: lot of things. But he wasn't just a key figure
Speaker 1: in history because he knew facts and could list them
Speaker 1: on a spreadsheet or whatever, right ancient Hebrew spreadsheet, but
Speaker 1: because he had the application of that knowledge in the
Speaker 1: right way at the right time. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: what we're shooting for for wisdom. So again, not just
Speaker 1: love of bear knowledge, but love of wisdom, the appropriate
Speaker 1: virtuous application of that knowledge at the right time and
Speaker 1: in the right way. Those are going to be some
Speaker 1: of the key questions that come up for philosophy and
Speaker 1: what a philosopher is? What so, what are we after here?
Speaker 1: What do we do? What is a philosopher? What do
Speaker 1: they do? Some of the basic questions they're going to
Speaker 1: be looking at philosophers do things like cross examine. We
Speaker 1: want to know, is what's being said to me coming
Speaker 1: from a rational, reasonable place? Is somebody lying to me?
Speaker 1: Are they trying to scam me? Are they duping me. Am,
Speaker 1: I watching movies that are full of propaganda, Right, maybe
Speaker 1: I want to analyze this movie and say, hey, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, this is a raytheon Boeing trying to sell
Speaker 1: me on some new Pentagon War that has you know,
Speaker 1: the face of Jessica Chastain and Matt Damon on it
Speaker 1: or whatever. Right, so I'm cross examining a piece of
Speaker 1: art or piece of propaganda in that case. Right, you're
Speaker 1: going into law, you're going into business. You want to
Speaker 1: you want to cross examined to see if this is
Speaker 1: a good deal. I don't know, is it? So what
Speaker 1: you might have thought isn't really the domain of philosophy
Speaker 1: for philosophers, it is philosophy. Right, we're engaged in cross examination.
Speaker 1: Obviously you could apply the law court. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think hopefully the law court example is obvious. There don't
Speaker 1: have to go into that really, but you know, cross
Speaker 1: examination could come into anything. It could come into a
Speaker 1: conversation that you're having at Thanksgiving dinner. Right, you're trying
Speaker 1: to convince your family members of their their their terrible politics, right,
Speaker 1: and how they're you know, idiots for believing the normy
Speaker 1: story of nine to eleven who knows right. So let's
Speaker 1: say you're having that company and you want to cross exams,
Speaker 1: you want to analyze their bad arguments. So something philosophers
Speaker 1: are interested in. Philosophers are analytical. That means they do analysis. Now,
Speaker 1: not every philosopher is always engaged in this, but it's
Speaker 1: certainly part of what philosophers do, and that's obviously very valuable.
Speaker 1: It's valuable in today's world. Obviously a lot of what
Speaker 1: we do, whether it's economics, whether it's the arts, whether
Speaker 1: it's computer program whatever you're into, you're going to need
Speaker 1: the skills and tools that allow you to be highly analytical.
Speaker 1: As we get into modern philosophy, this actually becomes its
Speaker 1: own branch of philosophy, analytical philosophy, which sometimes contrasted with
Speaker 1: continental philosophy in the modern period. It's not exactly what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here, we're just speaking in a more
Speaker 1: general sense, but it will actually become its own kind
Speaker 1: of school, so to speak, of philosophy. So philosophers are
Speaker 1: definitely engaged in analysis, and primarily we're engaged in analysis
Speaker 1: of what those three things that we talked about at
Speaker 1: the beginning, that subdivision epistemology, metaphysics and ethics. That's in philosophy.
Speaker 1: But again, this is one of the unique things about
Speaker 1: philosophy is that philosophy can be a philosophy of anything.
Speaker 1: That might sound weird at first, but if you think
Speaker 1: about it, if you think about some of the famous
Speaker 1: modern philosophers, there is, of course character he does philosophy
Speaker 1: of Now that seems ridiculous, but that's exactly what z
Speaker 1: Zek does. He's one of the most famous living philosophers
Speaker 1: out there today, one of the few existing still explicitly
Speaker 1: sort of Marxist philosophers. And z Zek, who you know,
Speaker 1: recently debated Jordan Peterson for example. No, no, no, z
Speaker 1: Zech does analysis from a Marxist fantash point of things
Speaker 1: like toilets. And on the one hand, that's kind of ridiculous,
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you think, well, toilets are
Speaker 1: part of our lives, aren't they. We spend quite a
Speaker 1: bit of our time on the toilet, right, So is
Speaker 1: it theoretically possible that you could do a analysis of toilet? Sure?
Speaker 1: Because didn't they say at one point that I don't
Speaker 1: know Trump has a golden toilet. I didn't know if
Speaker 1: that's true. But does Trump have a gold and tool.
Speaker 1: What does that signify in terms of the figure of
Speaker 1: Trump Saudi princes with golden, golden toilets. Right, So this
Speaker 1: is the sort of beautification of a ritual that is
Speaker 1: very mundane but also sort of you know, base and gross, right, shitting, right,
Speaker 1: So a philosophy of shitting. Now, I'm being kind of
Speaker 1: you know, silly here, but I'm also kind of making
Speaker 1: a point that it really is the case that you
Speaker 1: can do a philosophy of anything. For example, in some
Speaker 1: of my grad classes, we were getting into some of
Speaker 1: the guys who had done I forget the guy's name,
Speaker 1: but he's a Semiititian guy who had done a analysis
Speaker 1: of comedy philosophy of comedy. What is it that makes
Speaker 1: us laugh? What is it that makes this thing funny
Speaker 1: versus absurd and not funny? What is it that makes
Speaker 1: you know, faces funny? You could do a philosophy of anything,
Speaker 1: is my point. So it will it's broad in its scope,
Speaker 1: and that it will range from a philosophy of things
Speaker 1: in the domain of philosophy, knowledge, metaphysics, ethics, two weird
Speaker 1: and sort of fanciful figures and characters, and philosophy who
Speaker 1: do philosophies of anything. We can do the philosophy of
Speaker 1: literary there, we can do the philosophy of music, do
Speaker 1: the philosophy of comedy. As I said, so again there's
Speaker 1: a potentially a philosophy of anything and an analysis of anything.
Speaker 1: From this kind of perspective, philosophers are not just analytical, however,
Speaker 1: they are also intuitive. There's a lot of creativity actually
Speaker 1: that goes into the process of philosophy. Some mathematicians, for example,
Speaker 1: I think Roger Penrose, and if you read Paul Davies's
Speaker 1: book Mind of God, he will talk about how there's
Speaker 1: actually a creative element that goes into even things like
Speaker 1: mathematics and geometry. Right, I mean, some of the great
Speaker 1: philosophers and thinkers and mathematicians, they have the flashes of
Speaker 1: insight that don't come from some obvious source. We don't
Speaker 1: really know where they get these flashes of insight, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, for example, you know, the story about Nikola
Speaker 1: Tesla is that he would get a lot of his
Speaker 1: insights into these you know, elaborate engines that he would
Speaker 1: build through these just visions that he would sort of
Speaker 1: pass out or whatever. That's the story at least, right,
Speaker 1: So philosophers are intuitive in that we are not just
Speaker 1: analytical robots. We also have a will and intention of
Speaker 1: creativity that we bring to the analysis. Again, we can
Speaker 1: be analyzing anything, it doesn't matter. Philosophers are constructive. In
Speaker 1: other words, they don't just focus on the particulars. Now,
Speaker 1: they may in certain cases if they're doing their dissertation
Speaker 1: on the particular and that will actually be something very
Speaker 1: important in philosophy, But generally speaking, the philosopher is not
Speaker 1: just concerned with that. He also wants to get a
Speaker 1: big picture. He wants to construct a total picture about
Speaker 1: what's going on, what's our situation in the world, what
Speaker 1: does life mean, et cetera? Is their meaning in order
Speaker 1: in the world? Does there meaning order to be found? Right?
Speaker 1: These are the kinds of questions that we're going to
Speaker 1: be asking. And so philosophers are constructive and that they
Speaker 1: seek to build a total picture. Now there's limits to that. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we don't mean it in a literal sense of like
Speaker 1: I'm going to build a total picture of everything in
Speaker 1: reality and everything that exists. Now, some of the technocrats
Speaker 1: might think that with total information awareness and you know,
Speaker 1: this kind of internet of things, they might think that.
Speaker 1: But typically, speaking outside of these sort of maniacal mad
Speaker 1: scientist positions, like the technocrats, typically philosophers, the people that
Speaker 1: we're going to be analyzing and looking at are seeking
Speaker 1: a total picture within some fixed domain or within some
Speaker 1: general framework. Okay, they're not looking for or attempting to
Speaker 1: create omniscience. However, we're going to see in some cases
Speaker 1: where they actually do try to reach that. Right, We're
Speaker 1: going to see what for example, deve cart, the cart's
Speaker 1: going to try to find this indubital and infallible reference point.
Speaker 1: Hegel will try to find this sort of omniscience or
Speaker 1: pseudo omniscience within his process philosophy, for example. But typically
Speaker 1: that's not what we're doing. However, many of them will
Speaker 1: try to build world systems right from scratch, and that's
Speaker 1: something that we want to pay attention to. So you
Speaker 1: guys want to jot down your questions and just save
Speaker 1: those for the end, and you can feel free when
Speaker 1: we get to the end to come back to questions
Speaker 1: at any point. So just just jot down if you
Speaker 1: want to that you want to ask a question about
Speaker 1: sort of stuff early on, but it might be better
Speaker 1: to wait until we get through some of this preliminary
Speaker 1: stuff before we start taking any questions philosophers. Thus, in
Speaker 1: my and this is sort of this is more so
Speaker 1: my my approach because some people would disagree with this,
Speaker 1: But I think that the philosophy and what philosopher's really
Speaker 1: about is worldview thinking. This is the attempt to characterize
Speaker 1: and systematize man's knowledge and experience and show how these
Speaker 1: things are interrelated. That man's knowledge is not totally fragmentary,
Speaker 1: it's not totally disconnected discreet from other pieces of knowledge,
Speaker 1: other facts, and other humans and their experience, but that
Speaker 1: there is a commonly experienced world, and our experiences and
Speaker 1: the facts that we experience and the knowledge that we
Speaker 1: obtain from the world is interrelated. There is a world
Speaker 1: historical we might say, there is a worldview from which
Speaker 1: man can build a system and pause it right. Facts
Speaker 1: about the world predicate things about the world. And lastly,
Speaker 1: philosophers are concerned in my view, with presuppositions. Now, this
Speaker 1: is specifically what the philosopher will be doing as he
Speaker 1: does philosopher right, as we go through the history philosophy,
Speaker 1: you're going to notice that each philosopher kind of does
Speaker 1: this thing where he reads the guy before him, and
Speaker 1: especially maybe the generation right before him, and he critiques.
Speaker 1: Philosophy doesn't have to be relegated to only critique, but
Speaker 1: critique is going to be crucial to the entire process
Speaker 1: of philosophy. In the history of the West, each guy
Speaker 1: will be critiquing the guy before him. Pretty much across
Speaker 1: the board. There might be a few outliers here and
Speaker 1: there who try to do different things, and maybe they
Speaker 1: pop up and you know, they just focus on maybe
Speaker 1: a literary theory, philosophy of aesthetics or something like that.
Speaker 1: But most of the big people that we're going to
Speaker 1: be focusing on are the ones that are known as
Speaker 1: the big philosophers. They're typically concerned with critiquing the presuppositions,
Speaker 1: the basic commitments and assumptions of the guys that came before.
Speaker 1: So that's what we're going to be doing as well.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind that a lot of what you
Speaker 1: see there on that page is also what you, as
Speaker 1: a philosopher, will begin to do. Now you might think, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not a philosopher. I didn't take all these classes. Well,
Speaker 1: guess what, you have a philosop and you are a philosopher.
Speaker 1: Even if you don't know it. Even if you know
Speaker 1: nothing about philosophy, if I ask you simple questions in
Speaker 1: the domains of epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics, you might have
Speaker 1: any know where those words are. But if I ask
Speaker 1: you basic questions, you're going to have a view on
Speaker 1: some boys. You're going to have some idea about knowledge.
Speaker 1: Even if you think that we can have knowledge. That's
Speaker 1: still a position, right, that's an agnostic position, but it's
Speaker 1: still a position in a pistemology, right that you don't
Speaker 1: believe anybody has knowledge, or you don't have knowledge, or no,
Speaker 1: we can have knowledge. If I asked you a question
Speaker 1: about ethics, right, well, I think it's wrong to kill people. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: then so now you have a philosophy of ethics, right
Speaker 1: of virtue and vice right away, whether you know it
Speaker 1: or not. So everybody is a philosopher, even if they
Speaker 1: don't know it. Everybody has a philosophy because they have
Speaker 1: a worldview, even if it's a commitment to agnosticism, because
Speaker 1: everybody has basic commitments or believes or presuppositions. When it
Speaker 1: comes to what are the three branches epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics,
Speaker 1: all right, why one more point here. I'll try to
Speaker 1: go through this kind of quick because I don't want
Speaker 1: to spend too much time on This is kind of
Speaker 1: a restatement kind of what we talked about. Be for
Speaker 1: a lot of times people hear about philosophy and they'll
Speaker 1: say philosophy is useless and impractical word sol And I
Speaker 1: can't tell you how many times last twenty years, I've
Speaker 1: heard this and my most off repeated boomer phrase when
Speaker 1: I chose to study philosophy, Every boomer, Oh, the philosophy
Speaker 1: corporations hiring around you. They thought that was the greatest show, right.
Speaker 1: I never thought it was funny that was done the
Speaker 1: first time, and I still hear it's still done. But
Speaker 1: these are common objections that most people have to this
Speaker 1: whole domain. And that's why, for example, people like Neilagrass Tyson,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple few years ago, if you guys, remember,
Speaker 1: basically said don't waste your timehilosophy is a useless enterprise.
Speaker 1: I wonder why he was so emphatically opposed to philosophy. Well,
Speaker 1: that might be because he doesn't fare very well when
Speaker 1: asked philosophical questions, So that might have something to do
Speaker 1: with maybe more of a personal motivation. But what are
Speaker 1: the some of the pros? Then again that what does
Speaker 1: philosophy help us do? Right? So maybe you're not so
Speaker 1: interested in what philosophers do. How does it help you?
Speaker 1: What do I get out of this? Philosophy helps us
Speaker 1: to think creatively because it makes us better at analysis.
Speaker 1: As I said, of anything, you're not going to fall
Speaker 1: for bad arguments. You're not going to fall for fallacy.
Speaker 1: You're not going to fall for dumb, stupid arguments, for example,
Speaker 1: emotional appeals. Now, I know that one of Richard's buds
Speaker 1: has taught a really excellent logical fallacies course, right, And
Speaker 1: one of those logical fallacies that comes up all the time,
Speaker 1: for example, is something like emotional appeal. Right, Oh, you
Speaker 1: don't want to support the war effort in XYZ country.
Speaker 1: I guess you hate the kids in those countries, don't you.
Speaker 1: I guess you want the kids to die? Right? You
Speaker 1: want Saddam to kill the kids? Right? These are all
Speaker 1: ridiculous emotional appeals. Right. In other words, only a person
Speaker 1: who anols their position cares about kids. Well, that's a fallacy. Right.
Speaker 1: So understanding philosophy helps us to think critically makes us
Speaker 1: better at analysis of anything. Doesn't have to be politics.
Speaker 1: It's going to help you analyze again, business situations, right,
Speaker 1: business deals. It's going to help you analyze the crypto
Speaker 1: market right. For example, crypto deals a lot with human
Speaker 1: emotions in human psychology. Right. If whales are dumping, you
Speaker 1: know that people are going to follow the whales and dump.
Speaker 1: So it's going to make you better at analysis if
Speaker 1: you know the modus operandi of human operation in markets,
Speaker 1: for example, and that's involved with that involves philosophical critical thinking,
Speaker 1: even if we don't know these terms. Philosophy help just
Speaker 1: think creatively. As we said, we have new approaches and
Speaker 1: angles to things. I remember one of my philosophy professors
Speaker 1: met a good point when I was first coming into
Speaker 1: to philosophy, and I met with him and I said,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if I should choose this
Speaker 1: as a profession. I said, because you know, I just
Speaker 1: don't know if I'll be able to get a job
Speaker 1: and make money and do this for it. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: I know a really famous guy who studied a lot
Speaker 1: of philosophy that you might have heard of. And I said,
Speaker 1: who's that? He said, Steve Martin. So Steve Martin used
Speaker 1: a lot of his philosophy to go on into the
Speaker 1: world of comedy. So I'm not guaranteeing you you know
Speaker 1: that I'm going to teach you to be some great
Speaker 1: comedian if you study philosophy. But he's an example of
Speaker 1: a person who you studied philosophy, and I don't know
Speaker 1: if you just did undergrad or if he went further
Speaker 1: than that, but he utilized that to kind of give
Speaker 1: him a unique approach to comedy. And although we look
Speaker 1: back on Steve Martin as kind of a typical, you know, boomer,
Speaker 1: a seventies eighties comedian, when Steve and came out in
Speaker 1: the seventies, he was very unique and very weird and
Speaker 1: odd in his approach. And I think that, as my
Speaker 1: professor was arguing, that had to do with his taking
Speaker 1: of a lot of philosophy classes when he was a
Speaker 1: younger guy. So philosophy does help us to think creative
Speaker 1: because it gives us new angles and new ways to
Speaker 1: approach questions and things in the world. Philosophy helps us
Speaker 1: systematize and particularize knowledge. Again, a classic example this is
Speaker 1: that the taxonomy that we still use today for animals, kingdom, phylum, species, etc.
Speaker 1: Genera that's from Aristotle. Aristotle, the great philosopher of Greece,
Speaker 1: the student of Plato, gives us that taxonomy that we
Speaker 1: still use today.