1. INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY

2. Definition
What is PHILOSOPHY?

3. Etymological (origin of the word)
Philia - love
Sophia – wisdom
Philosophy= love of wisdom

4. What is to love…?
What is wisdom?
How is it to love WISDOM?

5. LOVE
Pursuit of something
Be PASSIONATE in that pursuit
WISDOM
Physis
First principle
The source of all things
The destination of all things

6. Branches or Divisions of Philosophy
Speculative or Descriptive
Interested in nature, essence, or substance of reality (Metaphysics)
Normative philosophy
Interested in the goodness or badness of a human act (Ethics)
Practical philosophy
Interested in TRUTH in relation to action (Logic)
Critical philosophy
Truth without being necessarily related to/with action (Epistemology)

7. LOGIC: ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
Pre-Socratics
Main interest would be the PHYSIS
Physis
The physis problem is a search to identify that thing of which all else is derived and will return (the source or origin of the world)
Cosmological

8. THALES 685 B.C. Miletus in Ionia Achievement: practical triumphs
Military engineering
Geometry
Astronomy

9. Thales’ first cause… WATER
The substance from which the entire cosmos emerged (and perhaps will also return)
Water is a natural phenomenon, not a personified god or goddess

10. Logical reasoning… Biology (Proofs) Life depends on water
Seeds (source of most life has moist)
Heat provides moist
The problem of solid objects?

12. ANAXIMANDER Milesian 610 B.C. Student of Thales
Natural Philosophy, Astronomy
First man to construct a MAP of the known world
First to build SUNDIAL
Build celestial globe with a chart of stars

13. Physis?

14. UNBOUNDED (APEIRON)
Source out of which everything derives and also the unifier within nature.
Indefinite (unlike water), no particular qualities of its own
Neutral between opposites

15. UNBOUNDED (APEIRON) Something that can’t be comprehended
Limitless or infinite (in order to give rise to everything in the universe)
Unlimited potentialities

16. How was the cosmos generated?
UNBOUNDED – moves in eternal motion
As it moves something separates off (creation of something)
Gives rise to the creation of the OPPOSITES; most important forces in the system

17. PLURALITY and MAINTENANCE
Give rise to the multitude of objects
2. MAINTENANCE
Manages to remain stable and predictable

18. The Pre-Evolutionary Theory
Cause and Effect
Human when born needs care from someone else in order to survive
Human = Effect
First human = Cause?
From FISHLIKE creatures

20. ANAXIMENES Student of Anaximander Last Milesian philosopher
Physis: AIR

21. AIR Soul/ breathy thing Unlimited and inexhaustible Proofs:
Living creatures depend on air – life
Holds together and guides living creatures

22. Critics:
Big step backward from Anaximander’s
Was he not aware of this?
Step going back to the natural world
Air is something that can be observed; the apeiron can’t
Air is natural; Apeiron is theoritical

23. Air is somewhat superior to the unbounded
It exists
It is observable
Scientific approach
Unbounded has no qualities, but a source of all in the world?...

24. Air’s qualities… Always on a move (eternal motion)
Can either be rarefied or condensed
when rarefied = it becomes hot/fire
Condensed = wind → water → clouds
→ earth → stone

25. Famous evidence…
Breath
Rarefaction = HOT
Condensation = COLD

27. XENOPHANES Born in Colophon 570 B.C Poet and philosopher
Adamant in rejecting the Olympian gods (anthropomorphic)
There is only one non-anthropomorphic god who is unmoving, but all seeing, all hearing, all thinking; who controls the whole universe with his thought

28. Attacks on the traditional gods…
Result of the human tendency to project our own nature onto the gods (Freudean)
Different people/races have different gods relating to themselves
If animals could draw their gods…
Horses – god horses
Oxen – god oxen

29. epistemology Milesians straight empirical observations + conclusion
Xenophanes
Straight empirical observation, but added:

30. Human knowledge is impossible in most fields of inquiry
Mind cannot comprehend everything there is in the world; once one is focused on one thing, the rest observable things are left unattended

31. Alternative to empirical observation…
Use of REASON
Where human observation fails, we allow our reason to go beyond
THEORIZE
Observation with reason yields true knowledge…