Introduction to Philosophy

I.  Traditional Fields of Philosophy:

   Philosophical fields in these two courses:

      Political Philosophy - Theories on government, rights, justice.  Representative, and later, fully republican government by Constitution, consent of the governed and the right to revolution, separation of powers, separation of church and state, etc.  Political philosophy also includes the realm of international politics and international law.


     Ethics - Theories of "right and wrong" or  "good and bad"  /  virtuous living: "what is the good life?" 

     A combination of political philosophy and ethics includes Just War Theory.  This discusses both what are ethical justifications for going to war and what is ethical fighting a war.  


     Epistemology  -  Theories of human knowledge.  Early modern rationalists thought humans were born with innate ideas.  Empiricists thought that the human mind was "table rasa" (a blank slate) at birth.  Immanuel Kant will combine the two views in his 1781 book The Critique of Pure Reason. 


     Philosophy of Mind  -  For our purposes, consciousness will be a central issue. A second is the relationship between reason and the passions (emotions, the will).  A third is dualism and the mind/body problem.  A fourth is free will and determinism.  Contemporary discussions in fields such as ethics, psychology, and artificial intelligence have their beginnings in the thoughts of 17th century philosophers. 


      Metaphysics  -  the study of "ultimate reality" (this can include "God").  "There are two broad conceptions about what "world" is studied by metaphysics. The strong, classical view assumes that the objects studied by metaphysics exist independently of any observer, so that the subject is the most fundamental of all sciences. The weaker, more modern view assumes that the objects studied by metaphysics (e.g. time, space, causality) exist inside the mind of an observer, so the subject becomes a form of introspection and conceptual analysis. Some philosophers, notably Kant, discuss both of these "worlds" and what can be inferred about each one. 


Not in these courses:

        Logic -  Theories of argumentation

        Ontology - Theories of existence, "being"

        Philosophy of:  Language, Science, History, Education, Mathematics, Law, Religion