.png){kind=icon}
Why Philosophy?
1.1 Philosophy: The Quest for Understanding
- Know the practical and theoretical benefits of studying philosophy.
- Take an inventory of your philosophical beliefs.
- Know the four main divisions of philosophy and the kinds of questions they examine.
1.2 Socrates and the Examined Life
- Understand why Socrates declared, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
- Explain the Socratic method and how Socrates used it in search of understanding.
- Relate how Socrates showed that Thrasymachus’s notion of justice was wrong.
- Explain how reductio ad absurdum arguments work.
1.3 Thinking Philosophically
- Define argument, statement, conclusion, and
- Know the two conditions that must be met for an argument to be good.
- Define deductive argument, inductive argument, valid, sound, cogent, strong, and weak. Understand inferences to the best explanation and how their strength is evaluated.
- Be able to identify arguments in the form of modus ponens, modus tollens, affirming the consequent, and denying the antecedent.
- Be able to identify arguments in various contexts and tell whether they are valid or invalid, sound or not sound, strong or weak, and cogent or not cogent.
- Understand the guidelines for reading and appreciating philosophy.
- Be aware of common fallacies and how to identify them in various contexts.