© Roger M Tagg 2010, links updated January 2011
Welcome to FROLIO – a new attempt to merge philosophy and the "semantic web" . This website is under continuing development.
This is a text book for philosophy students. However it doesn't take the usual "historical" line, but tries to look at the "isms" that one needs to know about. One feature of the book is that it challenges students to express their individual position in certain "spectra" or dimensions by identifying which of a number of statements they feel they can best agree to. This would enable a useful discussion of the differences to follow.
| Chapter | Page | Highlight |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | Philosophy is "taking a pattern of thinking and asking how well it works". | |
| 9-10 | Conviction, belief, opinion and doubt - based on what authority? Religious? Textbook? Intuition? Generalizing? Other reasoning? Consensus? | |
| 12-13 | How does one escape from a "closed belief trap" (i.e. making all observations fit the predefined pattern one has already adopted)? | |
| 22 | Metaphysics is "concerned with our really basic beliefs about reality, those which it would be very hard to doubt or for that matter to find evidence for". | |
| 25 | Two extremes are dogmatic and skeptical; skeptical is not the same as cynical (which means without moral limitations). | |
| 56 | Can one trust what's on the internet? It helps if the author is identified, with his qualifications, his employer, any funding he has, and his contact details; if a date updated is given; if there are sources and references; if it is declared as an opinion; and if it is clear who has placed any advertisements with the information. | |
| 57 | Reason always requires assumptions or premises; i.e. an "if …" or "in these circumstances". | |
| 66 | Descartes' optimism - that it will eventually become clear which of our thinking patterns and ideas will stand up to rational analysis. | |
| 82 | 'I', the first person, is itself a concept or construct. | |
| 84 | There are always degrees of certainty. | |
| 86 | Puzzlement is not the same as confusion. Philosophy is difficult because it seeks the missing assumptions or premises, e.g. "but that assumes …". | |
| 114 | Evading existential choices. | |
| 138 | Deduction is more certain than induction, which can only suggest a relationship. Example: Europeans thought all swans were white until anyone saw an Australian black swan. | |
| 158 | Can one have certainty about values? Some tribes believed that it was right to kill off old women; there have been many slave-owning societies. We can have more or less confidence in the values of our tribe; e.g. westerners believe in "no suffering" (but does that include some or all animals?). Value is not one-dimensional or measurable simply; and different value scales can interact. | |
| 160 | Is it better to have thought about values (as an individual) or to accept a set of values by tradition? These two alternative sets of values will often converge in practice. Do we want a dogmatic society or a debate-centered society? | |
| 161 | Tolerance - how tolerant are we of other views? Can we really tolerate any views? | |
| 163 | John Stuart Mill said that "do no harm" was a universal principle; is that too simplistic? | |
| 167 | To abandon certainty is not to abandon reason. | |
| 174 & 191 | Naïve utilitarianism: "the greatest good of the greatest number" (or the least amount of pain) - at least this principle is simple. | |
| 193 | A Game Theory approach - making a decision on the estimated risks and possibilities; the problem is that the amount or likelihood of pleasure or pain in the future is not certain. | |
| 200 | Utilitarianism focuses on consequences; this is very different from Kant's ethics which focus on motives, general rules and not treating people as means. Kant's view: there are some things you just shouldn't do. | |
| 204 | Kant's categorical imperative: "act only from motives which you would want to be general principles regulating everyone's actions; treat others as ends, never as means". | |
| 204 | Consequentiality (i.e. what will be the result?) versus deontology (what ought we to do?) - neither are ridiculous but neither may be totally right. | |
| 221-3 | Empiricism: the view that everything arises from experience. Morton gives 7 views on it, 2 being from Aristotle. | |
| 224 | There are three angles on empiricism: 1) evidence through perception; 2) hostility to speculation; 3) concepts arise from perception. British Empiricism (Locke, Hume, Berkeley) said that reality is "ideas of sensation" - although Locke thought some were innate. | |
| 231 | Sensations are personal; beliefs may be true or false (RT: or more or less accurate). Concepts can't be true or false, but we need them in order to have beliefs, desires, hopes etc. | |
| 236 | Limitations on our thinking: 1) cognitive (too complicated); 2) inadequate experience (never seen one); 3) inadequate knowledge (never heard of that idea); 4) inadequate social environment (never discussed it); 5) body defects, e.g. deafness, blindness, colour-blindness. | |
| 247 | Rationalism versus Empiricism - do we want accuracy (less risk if we are wrong) or informativeness (being right and useful more often)? | |
| 250 | Empiricism's 'other minds' problem: how can we verify (by observation etc) what anyone else is thinking? | |
| 253 | Folk psychology - a culture's collected knowledge of peoples' minds. | |
| 256-61 | Inference to the best explanation (IBE) - we believe something if there's nothing better around. But this could be used to justify Astrology - if that gives the best advice we can get. (RT: probably the same as Abduction.) | |
| 264 | Our perceptions are not always reliable - examples are mirages and echoes. We can often compensate for these if we know how they occur. | |
| 267 | Falsifiability: what we can be most certain about are the things that we can prove are definitely not true e.g. because they lead to contradictions. (RT: see also Shuttleworth 2008) | |
| 267 | Non-scientific theories are difficult or impossible to falsify unless one can do proper experiments. | |
| 270 | A falsification strategy is: 1) accept beliefs when they provide the best explanation of which you are confident; 2) reject beliefs when they conflict with empirical evidence; 3) search for ways of finding empirical evidence that might conflict with your beliefs including those beliefs that seem most certain. | |
| 273 | Hypothetico-deductive method (see diagram) "recognizes risk and confidence, inspiration and carefulness, empiricism and rationalism - but is not skeptical or individualistic". | |
| 280 | Plato's cave - some captives locked in a dark cave only ever see shadows on the wall in front of them. Is that the total of reality? What happens if one captive is taken outside and then returns? | |
| 282 | Probability - if a tossed coin has fallen heads up 9 times, what do we think will happen on the tenth toss? Bayes' theorem would say that the odds are still 50-50. But maybe the coin is biased? We have to reconcile the hypothesis with the evidence. | |
| 287 | Moral agents are defined as "all those beings with rights". Earlier societies didn't regard slaves as having rights, let alone animals. Most societies now regard all humans as moral agents. | |
| 288 | Moral beliefs do develop as we meet more different cultures; will these beliefs ever converge? | |
| 293 | Goodman - a rule is amended if it yields a judgment we are unwilling to accept; an inference is rejected if it violates a rule we are unwilling to amend. | |
| 293 | Rawls - a principle is amended if it yields a judgment we are unwilling to accept; a judgment is rejected if it violates a principle we are unwilling to amend. | |
| 295 | Ethics is a bit like science - it evolves but not in quite the same way. | |
| 301 | Fallibilism: the idea that everything could turn out to be wrong. Limited optimism: with reasoning evidence and analysis we can find some true beliefs and eliminate many false ones. Together these offer a possible method against skepticism. | |
| 308 | Reality: there are two possibilities - the "common sense" picture and the scientific picture. | |
| 312 | Materialism: the idea that only things made of matter exist - the mind is just an functioning of our brain cells and neurons. | |
| 313 | Idealism: only thoughts really exist. Naturalism: everything is governed by the same laws. Spiritualism: there is a dimension to reality that is independent of everything physical. Dualism: mind and matter are two very different things. | |
| 314 | Eliminative materialism: means ignoring "folk psychology", claiming that much "common sense" can be wrong - maybe even words like 'belief' and 'desire'. | |
| 338 | "Without a 'sacred bond' life is empty" (Kirkegaard). He is unable to face "randomness". | |
| 339 | If we cannot understand God's purposes how can we know they are good? | |
| 343 | "Life is too bad if we are in a state of nature" (Hobbes). He was arguing for civilization and/or a single powerful moral authority. | |
| 350 | Prisoner's Dilemma: - 2 prisoners know that if they confess the other will hang. | |
| 355 | The Social Contract (Rousseau), and imaginary social contracts. | |
| 362 | Faking decency - a hypocritical strategy. | |
| 373 | Is there Free Will or are we governed by Determinism (i.e. everything is predestined by what happened earlier)? What about Compatibilism (we are free enough if action can be triggered by a person's own beliefs and desires)? | |
| 382 | Chaos and determinism - there probably is a deterministic outcome, but it is far too difficult for us to predict. | |
| 383 | Freedom says "if you acted differently the future would have been different". Determinism says "OK, but you could not have acted differently". Fatalism says "even if you had acted differently, the future would still have been the same". | |
| 384 | Identity as "sum of the parts" is not good enough (compare Aristotle's form/structure/function). One can have splitting, fusing or cloning. Identity is a relationship - we can say that 2 things are "one and the same". | |
| 387 | The form and structure - and function - of an individual can change over time (e.g. human, aging car being repaired). | |
| 388 | There are three alternative meanings with Identity: 1) it is the same body 2) everyone thinks it's the same 3) the individual human can remember their own experiences. | |
| 391 | Luck is an illusion. | |
| 392 | What is the meaning of life? 1) Accomplishment (have plans and sometimes achieve)? 2) Pleasure? 3) Transcendental approval (i.e. God loves us)? 4) Existential courage (we don't believe number 3, but we take pride in doing OK regardless)? | |
| 400 | Alternative views on Science versus the 'everyday world': 1) the scientific picture is real and the everyday picture is an illusion; 2) the other way round; 3) both are real: the everyday picture can be interpreted in scientific terms; we can just take our pick of the different views. | |
| 408 | It's a known fact that people can experience pain in amputated body parts. | |
| 412 | Verificationism: the meaning of a sentence is the evidence which would confirm or disconfirm it. | |
| 414 | Logical Positivism (Neurath, Schlick and Carnap of Vienna, refer also AJ Ayer) - a philosophical view based on symbolic logic combined with verificationism. "A proposition is meaningful only if it can either be established or refuted." | |
| 416 | Instrumentalism: regards scientific theories as "data-predicting devices". Realism: says that scientific theories are either true or false, and could be false even if they predict data well. |
Index to more highlights of interesting books
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.
This version updated on 13th January 2011
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .