Introduction to Philosophy
Why even study philosophy?
Well, I was sort of ignorant to what philosophy even really was. Prior to this, it was mostly Freud’s bullshit or some of Plato’s Republic. So, this is one of those courses that gets your feet wet to all the big questions of philosophy. Whether it be general dinner party conversations or the study of the mind, philosophy plays a role.
I actually came across this podcast by BrainInspired.co with Ida Mommenejad and she is a philosophy major that has done a lot of research in the brain and really that’s the point I was really sold to the point that philosophy matters. After all, it is well-formed arguments that the mind needs to agree with and conform to. If we were truly looking at creating a brain then it would also raise philosophical arguments and we would need to find solutions to them. If these robots were to take any actions, they may have to evaluate every reason for it and whether it complies with whatever morality structure they’ve been built on.
Topics of this Course
- Epistemology, where we’ll consider what our knowledge of the world and ourselves consists in, and how we come to have it.
- Philosophy of science, where we’ll investigate foundational conceptual issues in scientific research and practice.
- Philosophy of Mind, where we’ll ask questions about what it means for something to have a mind, and how minds should be understood and explained.
- Political Philosophy, where we’ll investigate whether we have an obligation to obey the law.
- Moral Philosophy, where we’ll attempt to understand the nature of our moral judgments and reactions – whether they aim at some objective moral truth, or are mere personal or cultural preferences.
- Metaphysics, where we’ll think through some fundamental conceptual questions about free will and the nature of reality.