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[00:00:00] when I was still in high school I
[00:00:00] decided I wanted to learn about
[00:00:02] philosophy and I did what I think a lot
[00:00:05] of people would think is natural I went
[00:00:07] to a bookstore and then I just found
[00:00:09] some books that I wanted to read of
[00:00:11] course that meant that when I came home
[00:00:12] I had two books and it was the birth of
[00:00:15] tragedy by Frederick n and introduction
[00:00:18] to metaphysics by Martin heiger if you
[00:00:20] know anything about philosophy I think
[00:00:22] you know that that was probably not the
[00:00:23] ideal way to start I didn't have any
[00:00:26] sense of like what basic terms meant I
[00:00:29] just knew that philosophy sounded like
[00:00:31] something that was interesting and
[00:00:32] something I wanted to spend some time on
[00:00:34] but I was going in totally blind so if
[00:00:35] you're in a position where you want to
[00:00:37] start reading some philosophy but you
[00:00:38] don't even know what the basic landscape
[00:00:40] of philosophy is like this is the video
[00:00:42] for you this is my sort of beginner's
[00:00:45] guide to philosophy this is not a list
[00:00:47] of recommended readings I've done that a
[00:00:49] couple of times I'll link them down
[00:00:50] below Instead This is a tour through
[00:00:54] five major areas of philosophy and those
[00:00:56] areas are logic metaphysics epistemology
[00:01:00] ethics and political philosophy now if
[00:01:03] you're someone who would click on a
[00:01:04] video like this it's because you like to
[00:01:06] learn things and you probably like to
[00:01:08] learn things in a free and easy way and
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[00:02:02] video now when I talk about philosophy I
[00:02:04] usually like to start by talking about
[00:02:05] Logic the study of logic can be broken
[00:02:07] up really into two major categories the
[00:02:09] first category is about the art of
[00:02:12] thinking and about becoming a better
[00:02:14] thinker one of the best examples of that
[00:02:16] from the history of philosophy is the
[00:02:17] 17th century book by Arno and Nicole
[00:02:20] called logic or the art of thinking this
[00:02:23] book was actually intended as a kind of
[00:02:24] manual to help you become a more
[00:02:27] rational thinker Arno and are trying to
[00:02:30] help the reader train themselves so that
[00:02:32] they can have more true beliefs while
[00:02:34] also avoiding false beliefs and there's
[00:02:36] a lot of value in what Arno and Nicole
[00:02:39] are trying to do you could go and try
[00:02:41] and read that book yourself but I think
[00:02:43] most of us would probably want a bit
[00:02:45] more of a modern update and this is
[00:02:47] really the topic that you would find
[00:02:48] discussed in textbooks that fall under
[00:02:49] the heading of critical thinking and if
[00:02:51] you spent any time on the internet
[00:02:53] around philosophy or critical thinking
[00:02:55] then you've probably encountered a
[00:02:56] couple of the basic concepts like
[00:02:58] fallacies you might have even even seen
[00:03:00] a YouTube video where someone tried to
[00:03:01] give a quick list of 19 fallacies and
[00:03:04] also accidentally said that Richard
[00:03:05] Nixon walks on the moon and the comment
[00:03:08] section let him know that he made a
[00:03:09] mistake who knew fallacies really simply
[00:03:11] put are bad patterns of reasoning it's
[00:03:13] not that every fallacious argument has a
[00:03:15] wrong or false conclusion it's that the
[00:03:18] kind of reasoning that's being employed
[00:03:20] in a fallacious argument is not the kind
[00:03:22] of reasoning that will reliably take you
[00:03:24] from truth to truth so here's a quick
[00:03:26] example this is the fallacy of guilt by
[00:03:28] association this is probably the
[00:03:30] internet's favorite fallacy so suppose
[00:03:33] that we have two friends Arthur and
[00:03:34] Buster and they've decided to have a
[00:03:37] debate about vaccines suppose that
[00:03:39] Arthur holds the belief that vaccines
[00:03:41] cause autism now Arthur is wrong about
[00:03:44] this and Buster needs to figure out how
[00:03:45] he can argue against Arthur and try to
[00:03:48] convince him one of the ways he could do
[00:03:49] this is talk about the different studies
[00:03:50] that show that there really isn't much
[00:03:52] evidence that supports any kind of
[00:03:54] causal link between vaccines and autism
[00:03:56] but sometimes Buster maybe gets a little
[00:03:58] ahead of himself and he says instead
[00:04:00] that you shouldn't believe that because
[00:04:01] crazy and bad people like Alex Jones
[00:04:04] believe that notice here that even if
[00:04:06] Buster is correct about vaccines not
[00:04:08] causing autism he still made a bad
[00:04:11] argument the truth is that bad people
[00:04:13] and sometimes even crazy people have
[00:04:15] true beliefs so just associating a
[00:04:18] belief with a bad person isn't enough to
[00:04:21] show that the belief is false the point
[00:04:22] is pretty simple if you want to figure
[00:04:24] out if a belief is true or false you
[00:04:26] need to focus on the relevant kind of
[00:04:27] evidence and just like the fact that
[00:04:29] good people believe something doesn't
[00:04:30] make it true bad people believing
[00:04:32] something also doesn't make it false so
[00:04:35] if you understand logic this way I think
[00:04:36] you can see how it's going to help make
[00:04:38] you a better thinker you're going to
[00:04:39] learn about good reasoning whether
[00:04:41] deductive inductive or abductive and you
[00:04:44] don't really need to use formal logical
[00:04:46] Tools in order to learn this stuff it
[00:04:48] can also go really nicely with some more
[00:04:51] modern psychology in the last couple of
[00:04:53] decades psychologists have become very
[00:04:54] interested in cognitive biases now some
[00:04:57] of the research on cognitive biases
[00:04:58] proed to not nearly as robust as we had
[00:05:01] previously believed particularly the
[00:05:03] work on implicit bias that really did
[00:05:05] not hold up to replication but there are
[00:05:07] still well documented and well supported
[00:05:09] cognitive biases which are basically
[00:05:11] these bad heris STS that we tend to
[00:05:13] naturally do in order to determine if
[00:05:15] something is true or false learning
[00:05:17] about cognitive biases is a lot like
[00:05:19] learning about fallacies the more you
[00:05:20] learn about them the more you can try
[00:05:21] and recognize them in your own thinking
[00:05:23] and the better kind of thinker you're
[00:05:25] going to become and this is going to
[00:05:26] help you when you're studying philosophy
[00:05:28] but it's also really going to help you
[00:05:29] when you study absolutely anything this
[00:05:31] is one of the reasons that I bring it up
[00:05:32] at the beginning of this video and why I
[00:05:34] think it's an important way to start
[00:05:36] your philosophical Journey now the
[00:05:37] second way of understanding logic is as
[00:05:39] a formal or mathematical system we have
[00:05:43] a precedent of this in the history of
[00:05:44] philosophy as well while formal
[00:05:47] mathematical logic really becomes its
[00:05:49] own kind of subject in maybe say the
[00:05:51] 19th century in the Medieval World we
[00:05:54] had incredibly robust logical analysis
[00:05:57] and medieval logicians were really
[00:05:59] worried about the structure of argument
[00:06:01] in the way that contemporary
[00:06:02] mathematical logicians are even if you
[00:06:04] go back to Aristotle we're talking about
[00:06:06] the form of argument rather than the
[00:06:08] content of argument which is that first
[00:06:09] distinction you need if you're going to
[00:06:11] study formal logic when most
[00:06:13] philosophers today talk about logic they
[00:06:15] are talking about formal logic so logic
[00:06:18] in our second sense and not that first
[00:06:20] sense in making you a better thinker so
[00:06:22] the study of formal logic really started
[00:06:23] to flourish in the 19th and 20th
[00:06:25] centuries one of the key figures for
[00:06:27] this is gotb frga frer was the inventor
[00:06:30] of something called the B Griff shrift
[00:06:32] this translates to a concept script from
[00:06:34] German his idea was to create a formal
[00:06:37] notation which could represent arguments
[00:06:39] especially the kinds of arguments that
[00:06:40] you would find in mathematics so
[00:06:42] logicians would actually translate
[00:06:44] arguments into this formal
[00:06:46] representation and then using
[00:06:48] well-defined rules try to assess whether
[00:06:50] or not they were valid or invalid it can
[00:06:52] feel tedious to try to spell out all of
[00:06:54] these rules but this level of precision
[00:06:56] is useful for the sort of work that
[00:06:57] logicians want to do formal logic really
[00:06:59] originally was supposed to provide a
[00:07:01] grounding for all of mathematics but
[00:07:03] this actually proved a little bit
[00:07:05] difficult due to things like Russell's
[00:07:06] Paradox and girdle's incompleteness
[00:07:08] Theorem so Russell's Paradox showed an
[00:07:10] essential contradiction in fraga's
[00:07:12] system it actually showed that fra made
[00:07:14] inconsistent assumptions as he was
[00:07:16] laying out his entire formal system and
[00:07:18] then girdle's incompleteness theorem
[00:07:19] shows that there are some truths of
[00:07:21] mathematics which cannot be proven but
[00:07:23] formal logic is not only useful because
[00:07:25] it could provide a grounding for
[00:07:27] mathematics it's also useful for our
[00:07:28] kind of prise modeling of other
[00:07:30] philosophically interesting Concepts and
[00:07:32] that's why we have modal Logics temporal
[00:07:34] Logics epistemic Logics fuzzy Logics and
[00:07:36] so on some philosophers also spend their
[00:07:38] time thinking about paradoxes and a
[00:07:41] paradox is where we get an absurd
[00:07:43] conclusion from plausibly true pries and
[00:07:46] reliable inference rules they seem to
[00:07:48] show us that there's a problem with the
[00:07:50] way we think about reasoning here's a
[00:07:52] famous example the Liar's Paradox so
[00:07:55] consider the sentence this sentence is
[00:07:57] false now let's ask ourselves an OB
[00:07:59] question so is that sentence true or
[00:08:02] false if you say that it's false then
[00:08:04] the sentence is true because after all
[00:08:07] it says of itself that it's false and
[00:08:09] it's false so it's true that's absurd
[00:08:11] right but if it is true then we get the
[00:08:13] inverse reasoning since it says of
[00:08:15] itself that it's false and we've suppos
[00:08:17] that it's true then it actually
[00:08:19] describes itself incorrectly and a
[00:08:21] sentence that describes itself
[00:08:22] incorrectly is false which again is
[00:08:24] absurd the liar traps us in a kind of
[00:08:27] pattern of circular reasoning we can go
[00:08:29] back back and forth concluding that it's
[00:08:30] true and then it's false and it's true
[00:08:32] and then it's false and if you accept
[00:08:33] some common inference rules like modus
[00:08:35] ponents you actually get to this
[00:08:36] principle called explosion the idea
[00:08:39] behind the principle of explosion is
[00:08:41] that when you when you've arrived at a
[00:08:42] contradiction you can actually prove any
[00:08:44] sentence at all and that obviously is
[00:08:47] absurd not every sentence is true so
[00:08:49] paradoxes tell us something important
[00:08:51] but actually figuring out what they tell
[00:08:53] us about our language or about our logic
[00:08:55] is a matter of debate I didn't even
[00:08:57] bother to count how many different kinds
[00:08:59] of solutions to the paradoxes there are
[00:09:01] on offer but I would guess probably in
[00:09:02] the hundreds at least when it comes to
[00:09:04] theories when you look at all the
[00:09:05] variance and subvariant of the solutions
[00:09:08] so to say that there's any kind of
[00:09:09] consensus I think would be an
[00:09:11] overstatement so logicians study good
[00:09:13] thinking and the laws of logic but
[00:09:16] metaphysicians study the nature of
[00:09:18] reality itself metaphysicians debate
[00:09:20] topics like truth identity endurance
[00:09:22] necessity contingency the existence of
[00:09:25] God the relationship between the mental
[00:09:27] and the physical those are just the
[00:09:29] topics that I could think of off the top
[00:09:30] of my head actually for a short video
[00:09:31] like this we're just going to focus on
[00:09:33] two of the big issues that we've seen in
[00:09:35] the history of philosophy and those are
[00:09:36] the nature of truth and the problem of
[00:09:38] universals so probably from the very
[00:09:41] beginning of philosophy philosophers
[00:09:42] have felt like they had to say something
[00:09:44] about truth and to tell you what it is
[00:09:46] but for a very long time they never felt
[00:09:47] like they had to go into tremendous
[00:09:49] detail truth was sort of just taken for
[00:09:51] granted as a kind of obvious or simple
[00:09:55] concept so they didn't actually tell you
[00:09:56] us much about the nature of truth
[00:09:58] there's a quote from Aristotle in the
[00:10:00] metaphysics where he gives a little
[00:10:02] definition of truth that actually is
[00:10:03] pretty straightforward so Aristotle
[00:10:05] writes to say of what is that it is not
[00:10:08] or of what is not that it is is false
[00:10:11] while to say of what it is that it is
[00:10:14] and of what is not that it is not is
[00:10:16] true Aristotle seems to have inherited
[00:10:18] that definition from Plato and basically
[00:10:21] he's just giving you the conditions
[00:10:23] under which something is true or false
[00:10:25] that doesn't actually tell us much about
[00:10:26] the nature of the property of Truth and
[00:10:29] eventually philosophers felt like they
[00:10:30] had to give a theory of Truth and a
[00:10:33] couple of theories emerged as like the
[00:10:34] main contenders the correspondence
[00:10:36] theory of Truth says that a sentence is
[00:10:38] true when it corresponds to reality this
[00:10:41] seems to be really similar to what Plato
[00:10:43] and Aristotle would have said about
[00:10:44] truth this view is often associated with
[00:10:46] another view in metaphysics called
[00:10:48] realism which is the belief that there
[00:10:50] are mind independent truths so truths
[00:10:53] that we don't make true with our minds
[00:10:56] but rather we discover I would say that
[00:10:57] probably this is the most popular view
[00:11:00] of Truth most philosophers would defend
[00:11:01] this view including me by the way I
[00:11:03] wrote my dissertation on the nature of
[00:11:05] Truth and I did not start off wanting to
[00:11:08] defend a correspondence theory I had
[00:11:09] alternative ideas but by the end I ended
[00:11:11] up offering a kind of Novel version of a
[00:11:14] correspondence theory of Truth in my
[00:11:15] dissertation so I do have some skin in
[00:11:17] this game the verification theory of
[00:11:19] Truth says that a sentence is true when
[00:11:20] it has been verified the verification
[00:11:23] theory is often associated with
[00:11:24] anti-realism and according to this view
[00:11:26] before something has been verified it's
[00:11:27] neither true nor false this view was
[00:11:30] actually pretty popular in the 20th
[00:11:32] century partly due to the influence of a
[00:11:34] philosopher named Michael dummit but it
[00:11:37] was never really the dominant view
[00:11:39] related to the verification theory of
[00:11:40] Truth is the pragmatist theory of Truth
[00:11:42] which says that when we say a belief is
[00:11:44] true what we really saying is that it's
[00:11:45] useful for achieving our practical ends
[00:11:48] this this does seem like another
[00:11:49] anti-realist theory of truth but it has
[00:11:51] nothing to do with verification in this
[00:11:53] case and it's more about the utility of
[00:11:56] certain beliefs this is closely
[00:11:58] associated with the American pragmatist
[00:11:59] like CS purse and William James and John
[00:12:02] Dewey the final prominent theory of
[00:12:04] truth would be the coherence Theory
[00:12:06] which says that a sentence is true just
[00:12:08] when it coheres with some privileged set
[00:12:10] of beliefs now this view is associated
[00:12:12] with another metaphysical view called
[00:12:14] idealism idealism is the view that all
[00:12:17] of reality fundamentally is mental
[00:12:19] idealism is closely associated with a
[00:12:20] lot of different German philosophers
[00:12:22] probably most famously Kant and Hegel
[00:12:25] and a coherence theory of Truth has been
[00:12:27] attributed to Hegel though I have read
[00:12:29] some scholarly work that disputes
[00:12:31] whether or not Hegel actually has a
[00:12:32] coherence theory of truth but there are
[00:12:34] later idealists like the British
[00:12:35] idealist FH Bradley who seems to
[00:12:38] definitely hold a coherence theory of
[00:12:39] Truth and then you have to mention this
[00:12:41] one weird view that popped up in the
[00:12:43] 20th century but has really been
[00:12:46] prominent in discussions of Truth since
[00:12:48] then and that's the deflationary theory
[00:12:50] of Truth this theory of Truth really
[00:12:51] took off I think with the logical
[00:12:54] positivist and is associated with a book
[00:12:55] called language truth and logic by AJ a
[00:12:58] but has also been defended by
[00:12:59] philosophers like Paul horwitch and a
[00:13:01] bunch of others in the 20th century and
[00:13:03] the deflationist theory of Truth says
[00:13:05] that truth isn't a property that has a
[00:13:07] nature they deflate the whole concept
[00:13:10] and in fact truth is kind of like the
[00:13:11] word and it plays a logical or
[00:13:13] functional role in our language but it
[00:13:15] doesn't pick out anything significant in
[00:13:17] the world now that's a quick
[00:13:18] introduction to truth so let's move on
[00:13:20] really quickly to talk about universals
[00:13:23] so we can divide the world into two
[00:13:24] categories individuals and universals
[00:13:27] we'll actually use some examples to make
[00:13:28] this a little bit clearer and let's talk
[00:13:30] about my cats so I have two black cats
[00:13:33] Carl and bark yes the second one is
[00:13:35] named bark like the sound a dog makes my
[00:13:38] wife thought it would be funny so both
[00:13:39] Carl and bark are individuals so they
[00:13:42] are discreet and distinct things they
[00:13:45] exist out in the world we could be more
[00:13:47] specific and say they are concrete
[00:13:48] individuals so they're distinct things
[00:13:50] that we can interact with physically and
[00:13:52] directly but they also seem to have some
[00:13:54] things in common namely they're both
[00:13:55] black and they're both cats so when we
[00:13:57] say that they're both cats cats what
[00:13:59] we're doing is classifying Carl and bark
[00:14:01] we're saying that they both belong to
[00:14:02] this common class of cats and there are
[00:14:05] things that are not in the class of cats
[00:14:06] like this this bottle if you're a
[00:14:08] certain kind of philosopher you might
[00:14:09] ask why is that for some philosophers
[00:14:11] the answer is that Carl and Burke both
[00:14:14] instantiate a common property which
[00:14:16] we'll call the universal and that is
[00:14:19] they they both instantiate or
[00:14:20] participate in the Universal of cat well
[00:14:24] let's call it cattiness Carl and bark
[00:14:26] both instantiate the universal of being
[00:14:27] a cat and and this bottle doesn't that
[00:14:30] explains why two of them are cats and
[00:14:32] one of them isn't the idea that there
[00:14:33] are these universals is closely
[00:14:35] associated with Plato who gave his
[00:14:38] theory of forms so forms are just
[00:14:40] Plato's word for universals for Plato
[00:14:43] the forms are Timeless and eternal and
[00:14:46] unchanging and they live in this kind of
[00:14:48] other realm we actually call it the
[00:14:50] platonic realm in philosophy so the
[00:14:52] platonic forms are actually treated as
[00:14:54] abstract objects now Aristotle actually
[00:14:57] agreed that there were universals but he
[00:15:00] disagreed that they had to exist
[00:15:02] abstractly instead he thought that they
[00:15:04] existed in the objects which
[00:15:06] instantiated them so Plato and Aristotle
[00:15:08] both agree that there are universals
[00:15:10] they just disagree about the details of
[00:15:12] the theory but there are some
[00:15:14] philosophers who say that there's no
[00:15:15] such thing as universals or properties
[00:15:18] and maybe they even go further and say
[00:15:20] no such thing as abstract objects and we
[00:15:22] call those philosophers nominalists so
[00:15:25] some philosophers base their arguments
[00:15:26] for nominalism based on a principle
[00:15:28] Simplicity which basically says that we
[00:15:30] should prefer simpler theories if they
[00:15:32] do the same kind of explanatory work
[00:15:34] this is closely associated with a
[00:15:36] principle of reasoning that we sometimes
[00:15:37] call aam's razor which is associated
[00:15:40] with the medieval philosopher William of
[00:15:42] aam now William of aam was a nominalist
[00:15:45] but as this article in the Stanford
[00:15:47] encyclopedia makes clear he does not
[00:15:49] base his argument on his razor this
[00:15:51] principle instead William aakam wanted
[00:15:53] to argue directly against the existence
[00:15:56] of universals he didn't just think that
[00:15:57] universals were unnecessary he thought
[00:15:59] that universals were incoherent
[00:16:01] eventually aam says that the only sense
[00:16:03] in which something Universal exists is
[00:16:05] when there is an act of the mind which
[00:16:07] thinks of two or more objects and this
[00:16:10] is roughly what nominalists tend to say
[00:16:12] about properties and things properties
[00:16:14] don't exist in the objects or in another
[00:16:17] realm they only exist in so far as we
[00:16:19] sort of make them up as we're
[00:16:21] classifying objects so you can find
[00:16:23] nominalism throughout the history of
[00:16:24] philosophy and not just in Western
[00:16:27] philosophy this is a case where Buddhism
[00:16:29] is a pretty interesting example a lot of
[00:16:32] Buddhist philosophers say that
[00:16:33] everything is temporary and nothing is
[00:16:36] eternal and if everything is temporary
[00:16:39] and nothing is eternal then there can't
[00:16:41] be any kind of universals which exist in
[00:16:43] some other realm certainly the platonic
[00:16:46] theory of universals just can't be true
[00:16:48] because again those are supposed to be
[00:16:50] timeless and unchanging and eternal if
[00:16:52] universals are Timeless but everything
[00:16:54] is temporary then universals just don't
[00:16:56] exist so let's talk about epistemology
[00:16:59] which is the study of knowledge comes
[00:17:01] from this Greek word episteme one of the
[00:17:03] fundamental questions of epistemology is
[00:17:05] what is knowledge what is the definition
[00:17:08] or nature of knowledge and one very old
[00:17:10] Theory again can be traced back to Plato
[00:17:13] sometimes we call this Theory the JTB
[00:17:15] theory of knowledge this Theory says
[00:17:17] that knowledge is Justified true belief
[00:17:21] I said this Theory could be Trace back
[00:17:22] to Plato and that's because it's put
[00:17:24] forward by one of the characters in his
[00:17:26] dialogue the Theus many have accepted
[00:17:29] some version of the JTB Theory but
[00:17:31] they've typically argued over the nature
[00:17:33] of justification and then we also find
[00:17:35] arguments directly against the JTB
[00:17:38] theory in the 20th century the famous
[00:17:40] example of this is Edmund gor's paper
[00:17:42] geder wrote a paper which outlined a
[00:17:44] series of cases where the JTB Theory
[00:17:46] would be satisfied but where we wouldn't
[00:17:49] say that the people in question knew
[00:17:51] anything and mostly all of cases
[00:17:53] centered on a kind of epistemic luck
[00:17:56] they had justification for their beliefs
[00:17:57] and it was true but the alignment of
[00:17:59] that justification and the truth it's
[00:18:01] just really kind of a matter of luck and
[00:18:02] we say that oh you just got lucky it
[00:18:05] actually really is about as worthwhile
[00:18:06] as having a lucky guess and thus we
[00:18:08] don't want to say that you really know
[00:18:10] it and so the JTB theory is at best
[00:18:13] insufficient especially in the
[00:18:14] englishspeaking world we've come to call
[00:18:15] these sorts of cases the gettier problem
[00:18:19] there is one major problem with this and
[00:18:21] that's that Geer didn't actually invent
[00:18:23] the problem there seems to be evidence
[00:18:25] that an Indian philosopher in the 8th
[00:18:27] Century uh d Atara actually raises
[00:18:30] similar kinds of problems for roughly
[00:18:32] this theory of knowledge and there's a
[00:18:34] similar Point that's raised by the 14th
[00:18:36] century Italian philosopher Peter of
[00:18:38] Mana but there is a more fundamental
[00:18:40] epistemological problem and that's the
[00:18:43] question of whether or not it's possible
[00:18:44] to know anything at all some
[00:18:46] philosophers throughout history have
[00:18:47] argued the answer is no we call them
[00:18:50] Skeptics when we call them Skeptics we
[00:18:52] mean something very different than the
[00:18:53] modern usage of the term for some reason
[00:18:55] we've decided to call people Skeptics if
[00:18:57] they are basically Richard Dawkin style
[00:19:00] new atheist or something Skeptics in the
[00:19:02] philosophical tradition are typically
[00:19:04] significantly more radical philosophical
[00:19:06] Skeptics tend to deny the possibility of
[00:19:08] knowledge one problem you face if you
[00:19:10] claim that knowledge is impossible is
[00:19:11] that someone can ask the kind of smart
[00:19:12] Aly question do you know that if you
[00:19:15] answer yes then you've contradicted your
[00:19:17] own position because you've said
[00:19:18] knowledge is impossible but in fact you
[00:19:20] know something and if you say no then it
[00:19:23] seems like you've undermined your own
[00:19:24] position because you've actually said
[00:19:26] that you don't even believe it this is
[00:19:27] why Skeptics tend to actually try to
[00:19:29] hedge their position the ponist school
[00:19:31] of Greek philosophy we mostly know
[00:19:33] through the later writer seus empiricus
[00:19:36] tended to teach their followers to
[00:19:38] suspend judgment which is a way of
[00:19:40] saying to train yourself to not believe
[00:19:42] anything at all there's also a variety
[00:19:44] of academic skepticism the academics are
[00:19:46] the followers of Plato in the classical
[00:19:48] world and we can see a little bit of
[00:19:49] this skepticism in the writings of
[00:19:50] Cicero skepticism can be found in the
[00:19:52] Buddhist tradition and it can be found
[00:19:54] in the western medieval tradition for
[00:19:56] instance John dun scotus and William of
[00:19:58] aam were engaged in a very Lively debate
[00:20:00] about skepticism and the possibility of
[00:20:02] knowledge in the modern era though we
[00:20:04] see a slight turn in skepticism instead
[00:20:07] of viewing skepticism as a position
[00:20:08] which can be occupied philosophers
[00:20:10] started to use skepticism and doubt as a
[00:20:12] kind of tool in their inquiry the two
[00:20:15] most famous examples of this would be R
[00:20:17] deart and David Hume deart uses a method
[00:20:19] of radical doubt so deart is on a quest
[00:20:22] for certainty and what he would do is
[00:20:24] examine all of his beliefs and if he
[00:20:26] could find any reason to doubt them he
[00:20:28] would discard his beliefs what he was
[00:20:30] searching for were those beliefs which
[00:20:31] he could know with absolute certainty he
[00:20:33] had this idea that once you had
[00:20:35] identified those fixed truths then you
[00:20:37] would be able to build an entire system
[00:20:39] of knowledge using those truths as a
[00:20:41] foundation because of this we call
[00:20:42] dart's epistemological project
[00:20:45] foundationalism so deart uses
[00:20:47] methodological skepticism to try to
[00:20:49] identify those foundations if you know
[00:20:51] anything about the history philosophy
[00:20:52] then you might have heard the phrase I
[00:20:54] think therefore I am this is part of day
[00:20:58] C's foundationalist project he thinks
[00:20:59] that that is an inference that he cannot
[00:21:02] doubt so the existence of his own mind
[00:21:04] which is a thinking thing proves to be
[00:21:06] the foundation for dayart dayart would
[00:21:09] then go on and try to rebuild all of his
[00:21:11] knowledge so all of these things that he
[00:21:12] had previously doubted like the
[00:21:14] reliability of our perceptions or the
[00:21:16] existence of God he would try to prove
[00:21:18] using this as a foundation the other
[00:21:20] famous modern skeptic would be David
[00:21:22] Hume who used his skepticism in a very
[00:21:24] different sort of way where deart was a
[00:21:27] rationalist who believed in the power of
[00:21:28] human reason to arrive at knowledge
[00:21:30] David Hume believed that all human
[00:21:32] knowledge was based in experience when
[00:21:33] we have an experience this leaves an
[00:21:35] impression on the mind and and Hume
[00:21:38] thought that all of our ideas were built
[00:21:41] out of these simple Impressions and his
[00:21:43] idea was to use a kind of skeptical
[00:21:45] methodology to examine our ideas and see
[00:21:48] if they could have actually been
[00:21:49] constructed out of Impressions based on
[00:21:52] experience and if you could not show
[00:21:55] that such a construction was possible
[00:21:57] then you had had to actually discard the
[00:21:59] belief because it was in fact
[00:22:01] meaningless Hume famously doesn't
[00:22:03] believe in induction which is the belief
[00:22:04] that the future will be like the past
[00:22:07] and that is because he thinks that
[00:22:08] experience alone cannot prove it he
[00:22:10] doesn't believe in causation because he
[00:22:11] thinks we cannot form the complex idea
[00:22:14] based on our experiences he doesn't even
[00:22:16] believe in the existence of a stable
[00:22:18] self from one time to another so humans
[00:22:21] aart are both using skepticism in their
[00:22:22] philosophical methodologies but they
[00:22:24] actually diverge pretty wildly on their
[00:22:27] conclusions now ethics is the study of
[00:22:29] right and wrong there are three major
[00:22:31] schools of Ethics first we have the
[00:22:34] consequentialist consequentialist
[00:22:35] believe that you can assess the
[00:22:37] rightness or wrongness of an action
[00:22:38] based on the consequences that it
[00:22:40] produces consequentialists tend to have
[00:22:43] a theory of value that they add and that
[00:22:45] allows you to figure out if a
[00:22:46] consequence is a good consequence or a
[00:22:48] bad consequence for instance the
[00:22:49] utilitarians who are closely associated
[00:22:51] with Jeremy benam and John Stewart Mill
[00:22:53] or Peter Singer they have a theory of
[00:22:55] value and namely that's hedonism
[00:22:57] Hedonism is the belief that all that is
[00:22:59] good is pleasure and all that is bad is
[00:23:01] pain when you add Hedonism and
[00:23:03] consequentialism together you get
[00:23:04] utilitarianism which is the moral theory
[00:23:07] that says that you ought to maximize
[00:23:08] pleasure then we have the deontologist
[00:23:10] deontologists have a law conception of
[00:23:13] Ethics instead of talking about the
[00:23:14] rightness or wrongness of particular
[00:23:16] actions based on their actual
[00:23:18] consequences deontologists like to come
[00:23:20] up with rules for classes of actions the
[00:23:23] most famous deontologist is probably
[00:23:25] Emmanuel Kant Kant believed that
[00:23:27] Memorial law could be deduced from the
[00:23:28] principles of rationality so all human
[00:23:31] beings as rational creatures were Bound
[00:23:32] by the same moral law and in fact the
[00:23:34] the moral law was knable because we all
[00:23:36] should have been able to know it in
[00:23:38] virtue of our own rationality but the
[00:23:39] third School of Ethics that we will
[00:23:41] discuss is a little bit different that's
[00:23:44] virtue ethics instead of thinking about
[00:23:46] the rightness or wrongness of particular
[00:23:48] actions virtue ethics tends to start by
[00:23:50] talking about the question of character
[00:23:53] or the development of virtue I like to
[00:23:55] say that virtue ethics really is about
[00:23:57] how to be a good human being for virtue
[00:24:00] ethics the rightness or wrongness of
[00:24:01] actions is actually a secondary question
[00:24:04] we know that if we become virtuous
[00:24:05] people will typically do the right thing
[00:24:07] so we focus on sort of self-development
[00:24:09] in an ethical manner this is a school of
[00:24:12] Ethics that was very popular in ancient
[00:24:13] Greece and in Rome you can also find it
[00:24:16] across the world especially in the
[00:24:17] confusion tradition in Chinese
[00:24:19] philosophy you see an emphasis on the
[00:24:21] development of virtue the most famous
[00:24:23] virtue ethicist is probably Aristotle
[00:24:25] though Aristotle wrote this fantastic
[00:24:27] book the nicoman ethics in which
[00:24:29] outlines a whole theory of virtue and
[00:24:31] also discusses many of the individual
[00:24:33] virtues like justice and courage and
[00:24:36] prudence and Temperance and then
[00:24:38] eventually goes on to apply this like to
[00:24:39] living the good life the life of
[00:24:41] contemplation and also discussing what
[00:24:44] it means to be a good friend in light of
[00:24:46] virtue Aristotle very famously thinks
[00:24:48] that vicious people people who lack
[00:24:50] virtue actually can't be friends but
[00:24:52] Aristotle's theory of Ethics fell out of
[00:24:54] favor and I think this is actually part
[00:24:56] of a larger down fall of Aristotelian
[00:24:58] thought in the west but in the late
[00:25:00] 1950s GE ancom published a paper called
[00:25:03] modern moral philosophy that paper is
[00:25:05] highly critical of the ethical theories
[00:25:08] of the day that paper along with works
[00:25:11] like Alistair McIntyre's after virtue
[00:25:13] led to a Resurgence of interest in
[00:25:15] virtue ethics in the academy and you
[00:25:17] actually see way more working virtue
[00:25:19] ethicist now it's it's certainly a a
[00:25:22] really robust field of Ethics in
[00:25:24] contemporary philosophy and even those
[00:25:26] who maybe say are consequential want to
[00:25:28] discuss virtues in some way in their
[00:25:31] ethical theories but you might have this
[00:25:33] question in the back of your head when I
[00:25:34] talk about goodness and Badness and all
[00:25:35] of these theories which like isn't all
[00:25:37] of this ethic stuff kind of and
[00:25:40] if you think the answer to that question
[00:25:42] is yes then you're probably a moral
[00:25:44] nihilist now when some people start to
[00:25:45] doubt ethics they can go in two
[00:25:47] directions sometimes they become
[00:25:49] subjectivist they say that ethics is
[00:25:51] just a matter of subjectivity what's
[00:25:53] right for you isn't right for me
[00:25:55] something like this I think this is the
[00:25:57] wrong path to go down subjectivism is
[00:25:59] very rarely taken seriously in
[00:26:00] philosophy I think that it's it's
[00:26:02] basically a copout and it doesn't
[00:26:03] actually wrestle with any of the major
[00:26:05] problems with realism the more radical
[00:26:07] step is to become a moral nihilist and
[00:26:09] say that there is no such thing as
[00:26:11] rightness or wrongness now there are
[00:26:12] many different strands of moral nihilism
[00:26:15] one name that gets brought up quite a
[00:26:17] bit if you talk about nihilism would be
[00:26:18] Frederick nche but the question of
[00:26:20] whether or not N is a proper niist is
[00:26:22] actually quite contested nche was
[00:26:24] certainly highly critical of
[00:26:26] conventional morality especially IM
[00:26:27] morality that was inherited from
[00:26:29] Christianity which he thought was a
[00:26:31] worldview that was dead was
[00:26:32] intellectually bankrupt I'm actually
[00:26:34] working on a video about n and the death
[00:26:36] of God and all of this stuff uh so you
[00:26:38] could look out for that eventually but
[00:26:40] whether or not N is a nihilist is
[00:26:42] actually a matter for some debate among
[00:26:44] Scholars the question is when he says
[00:26:46] that he wants to move Beyond Good and
[00:26:47] Evil is he abandoning moral categories
[00:26:49] or is he abandoning those specific
[00:26:51] categories that we've inherited from
[00:26:53] Christianity a more contemporary form of
[00:26:54] nihilism actually comes from the
[00:26:56] philosopher JL Macky who wrote this
[00:26:58] really nice little book called ethics
[00:27:00] inventing right and wrong at the
[00:27:02] beginning of that book Macky gives this
[00:27:03] argument based what he calls on
[00:27:05] queerness at the time macki meant
[00:27:07] queerness as strangeness it was a very
[00:27:09] common term for something that was
[00:27:11] strange obviously we say the word queer
[00:27:13] to mean something a little bit different
[00:27:14] nowadays so we'll say the argument from
[00:27:16] strangeness just to be clear essentially
[00:27:19] Macky observes that if moral properties
[00:27:21] exist they are the kind of properties
[00:27:23] that sort of lead to objective
[00:27:26] prescriptions of action but no other
[00:27:28] properties that we know of actually lead
[00:27:30] to these kind of objective prescriptions
[00:27:33] and so in this way they are very strange
[00:27:35] properties and he says that they are so
[00:27:37] strange in fact that we would be better
[00:27:38] off just abandoning them in our ontology
[00:27:41] and say that there is no such thing as
[00:27:43] an objective prescription notice what
[00:27:45] we've done here though we've actually
[00:27:46] left the realm of Ethics we're no longer
[00:27:48] talking about whether or not particular
[00:27:50] actions are right or wrong or whether or
[00:27:52] not we are good or bad human beings and
[00:27:54] now we're asking foundational questions
[00:27:56] about ethics we call this field meta
[00:27:59] ethics very roughly meta ethics is the
[00:28:01] field that asks all those meta questions
[00:28:03] about ethics about the language of
[00:28:05] Ethics about the epistemology of ethics
[00:28:07] and about the metaphysics of Ethics so a
[00:28:09] field that is closely related to ethics
[00:28:11] is the field of political philosophy
[00:28:13] well traditionally ethics focuses on
[00:28:15] individuals political philosophy tries
[00:28:17] to actually deal with human beings at a
[00:28:20] larger scale so one of the major issues
[00:28:22] that we find in political philosophy is
[00:28:24] the problem of Justice which is closely
[00:28:26] related to the distribution of wealth
[00:28:29] some philosophers have held that there
[00:28:30] is a moral imperative for the state to
[00:28:31] redistribute wealth to make it at least
[00:28:34] somewhat more equal and other
[00:28:36] philosophers have argued that there's
[00:28:37] actually a moral imperative to not do so
[00:28:39] because to do so would infringe on
[00:28:41] certain rights that individuals have so
[00:28:43] to see the differences in these
[00:28:44] positions we're going to consider two
[00:28:46] philosophers really briefly those John
[00:28:48] rolls and Robert nosic these are both
[00:28:50] 20th century political philosophers and
[00:28:52] they're very interesting in part because
[00:28:54] they were actually both at Harvard's
[00:28:56] philosophy department at at the same
[00:28:57] time and they came to such radically
[00:29:00] different conclusions about what Justice
[00:29:01] demanded nosic develops his theory of
[00:29:03] Justice in a book called Anarchy State
[00:29:05] and Utopia and here nosik is developing
[00:29:07] a very libertarian view of justice nok's
[00:29:10] theory is sometimes called the
[00:29:11] entitlement Theory and for our purposes
[00:29:13] what's most interesting though is that
[00:29:14] it's a historical Theory so what it does
[00:29:17] is says that if we want to figure out if
[00:29:18] our current state of affairs is just we
[00:29:21] have to go and Trace back all of the
[00:29:23] steps in history through which property
[00:29:25] has been acquired and transferred and
[00:29:26] when something unjust has happened has
[00:29:28] it been rectified basically to see if
[00:29:30] our current situation is just we have to
[00:29:32] look backward and see how did we get
[00:29:33] here this is contrasted with r's Theory
[00:29:35] which he outlines in a theory of Justice
[00:29:38] R basis is his theory on something
[00:29:40] called the veil of ignorance now under
[00:29:43] this thought experiment we imagine a
[00:29:45] group of people and this group of people
[00:29:46] are deliberating about what they think a
[00:29:48] just society would look like but here's
[00:29:50] the big catch they don't know who
[00:29:52] they're going to be in that Society so
[00:29:54] they don't know if they'll be men or
[00:29:55] women what religion they'll be if
[00:29:57] they'll be rich or poor how smart
[00:29:59] they're be or anything like that and R
[00:30:02] says in that situation what sort of a
[00:30:04] society would we prefer the result is a
[00:30:06] society that is very different than
[00:30:08] nosix so nosic is totally okay with vast
[00:30:10] amounts of inequality as long as they
[00:30:13] come about in a just manner RS on the
[00:30:15] other hand thinks that we're going to
[00:30:17] have a principle that says that all
[00:30:18] inequality has to be justifiable to
[00:30:20] those who are least well off and he
[00:30:22] thinks that's going to mean we're going
[00:30:23] to live in a vastly more equal Society
[00:30:26] if we live in a ORD with these
[00:30:28] principles nosik really is basing a lot
[00:30:29] of his stuff on property rights while RS
[00:30:32] thinks that even though you're going to
[00:30:33] have a lot of Rights in his Society
[00:30:35] perhaps even more rights than we
[00:30:36] currently enjoy property rights are
[00:30:38] something that could be overridden in
[00:30:40] the name of Justice another foundational
[00:30:42] issue in philosophy is democracy many of
[00:30:45] us take for granted that democracy is a
[00:30:47] good thing we're happy that we live in
[00:30:48] Democratic societies and many of our
[00:30:50] philosophers take for granted that
[00:30:52] whatever the ideal Society is it's going
[00:30:54] to be somewhat Democratic but actually
[00:30:56] in the history hisory of philosophy I
[00:30:58] think this is a minority position so
[00:31:00] ancient Greece might have been the place
[00:31:02] where democracy was born but both Plato
[00:31:04] and Aristotle were anti-democratic
[00:31:07] thinkers in Plato's Republic he gives a
[00:31:09] theory where he prefers the rule by a
[00:31:11] kind of elite the philosopher Kings
[00:31:13] they're intellectually gifted and their
[00:31:15] job is to look after the people of the
[00:31:17] city and aristot actually classifies
[00:31:19] different kinds of governments and he
[00:31:22] classifies some of them as deviant and
[00:31:23] on that list of deviant governments are
[00:31:26] democracies the that Plato and Aristotle
[00:31:28] both had I think is that if you believe
[00:31:30] in majority rule you're actually
[00:31:32] allowing for the tyranny of the majority
[00:31:34] though there is also a kind of aism both
[00:31:36] to Plato and Aristotle and many other
[00:31:38] anti-democratic thinkers they just think
[00:31:40] that the the people in general are not
[00:31:43] smart enough or capable enough to rule
[00:31:45] themselves this is also another case
[00:31:46] where you see some parallels with
[00:31:48] Chinese philosophy it's taken for
[00:31:49] granted in a lot of classical Chinese
[00:31:51] philosophy that there will be a ruling
[00:31:53] bureaucratic Elite or a king who has the
[00:31:55] Mandate of Heaven the issue of democracy
[00:31:58] isn't really even on the table so much
[00:31:59] so that many classical Chinese thinkers
[00:32:01] aren't even arguing against democracy
[00:32:04] directly another sort of critique of
[00:32:05] democracy that you find comes from the
[00:32:07] anarchist tradition anarchists
[00:32:08] historically understood democracy to be
[00:32:10] a form of majority rule and this was
[00:32:13] just another form of tyranny for them
[00:32:15] other anarchists have not been as
[00:32:16] critical of democracy in fact they've
[00:32:18] some argued that Democratic states are
[00:32:20] not Democratic enough and that truly the
[00:32:22] most Democratic states would be properly
[00:32:25] Anarchist to understand this you have to
[00:32:26] go a little bit far into Anarchist
[00:32:28] Theory and I think that's a little bit
[00:32:30] too much of a deep dive for a video like
[00:32:32] this

Output a JSON array with sections as follows:
{
  "sections": [
    {
      "title": "Section Title",
      "timestamp": "hh:mm:ss"
    },
    ...
  ]
}
All timestamps must not exceed the video duration.
Assistant: