Meet the philosophers... Touching upon who they are and a couple of points from their set text to get us started.....

NameInfoSet text

Aristotle Plato Nietzsche Weil Descartes Armstrong Kuhn Hume Popper Unit 3 Unit 4 Area 1 Unit 4 Area 1 Unit 4 Area 2 Unit 4 Area 2 The good life Mind, science & knowledge - the nature of mind and body Mind, science & knowledge- knowledge, belief and science

Aristotle A's best known work on ethics Written from notes from his lectures Socratic question: how should men live? Parallels (& repetition of eudemain ethics) Highest good for humans is eudemonia (well being/ happiness) Ethics = being a virtuous being Nicomachean Ethics

Plato Points out the flaws of sophist rhetoric Philosophy is art, rhetoric is not! ( without philosophy it is immoral) Socrates method (questioning) is to find truth It is a dialogue about the good life Socrates - better to suffer a wrong than do a wrong Leaky jar- the pursuit of pleasure is as pointless as trying to fill a leaky jar Gorgias Socrates, the philosopher Chaerephon, a friend of Socrates Gorgias, the rhetorician Polus, a student of Gorgias Callicles, an older rhetorician

Weil Written during WW2 while she was working for the French resistance (nurses for the front lines) It sets out to address the past and to set out a road map for the future of France after World War II. She analyzes the spiritual and ethical milieu that led up to France’s defeat by the German army, and then addresses these issues with the prospect of eventual French victory (Wikipedia) The need for Roots: a Prelude to a declaration of duties towards mankind

Nietzsche Expanding & explaining beyond good and evil It consists of a preface and three interrelated Abhandlungen ("treatises" or "essays"), traces episodes in the evolution of moral concepts with a view to undermining "moral prejudices", and specifically the morality of Christianity and Judaism. On Genealogy of Morality

Descartes subtitled In which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated Discards belief in things that are not absolutely certain 6 meditations = 6 days Meditations on first philosophy

Armstrong best clue we have to discovering the true nature of the human mind is through the findings of science We can only ever seem to reach a consensus through science (scientists can reach agreements, philosophers et al can not!) the nature of the mind and other essays

Kuhn Analysis of the history of science Science has not slowly developed but has hand landmark discoveries that have changed the world! (discovery of anomalies leads to a whole new paradigm that changes the rules of the game) Met with mixed response We can blame him for the reemergence of the word paradigm! ;) the Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Hume Revision of a treatise of human nature (fell flat!) Difference between impressions and ideas Difference between relations of ideas and matters of fact Explain our understanding of the world Mitigated scepticism (so that we can function- it is necessary to make assumptions!) The mind is not meant to help us discover and define truths, we will never be able to come to any definite and rational conclusions about abstract matters An enquiry Concerning Human understanding

Popper Poppers most well known/read work Philosophy of science All scientific conjectures are theories and therefore fallible If it can survive refutations it is closer to the truth (but not infallibly so!) All Knowledge grows through conjectures & "tentative solutions" Tis theory is applied to a host of issues Conjectures and refutations He wouldn't like this!

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