Knowledge, Reality, and Value
Great! Entertaining and Educational. The tone reminds me of Everything and More Very good general introduction to Philosophy.
Focuses on the implications of the "common sense" intuitions of the first-person self.
Ground truth believe systems on which to base philosophy
Determining truth of assumptions makes philosophy hard
Radical skepticism is a means of probing intuitions
To "begs the question" means to makes a circular argument. Advice : Don't use the phrase "begs the question"
Benefit of Philosophy to Other Disciplines
Treat opposition views seriously
Free will incompatible with determinism and not determinism
- The argument that free will is an illusion only compelling if there is Evidence That Free Will is an Illusion
Free will is similar to collapse of the wave function.
Very strong chapter on animal ethics. "Its possible that all the total amount of pain and suffering we inflict through factory farming, in just a few years, may be greater than all the pain and suffering in all of human history"
Score Card
- Truth Relativism is to be hated: it actively discourages the pursuit of truth
- External-world skepticism wrong: cannot account for the coherent reality we experience.
- Global skepticism (skepticism about all knowledge) is obviously false.
- The concept of knowledge cant be rigorously defined (most concepts outside of technical term cant be)
- We have free will
- We have souls
- Ethical intuitionism (we can know ethical truths through intuition) is the most sensible view of meta ethics.
- All ethical theories problematic: Utilitarianism and absolute deontology obviously wrong. Moderate deontology arbitrary.
- You should support factory farming.
- Most human beings are horrifyingly immoral