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//***************** What's Philosophy? - August 21st, 2019 ******************//
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- So, things to do after this class:
    - Decide what I am doing after this class
- The people around me are also suddenly growing gregarious (as Professor Rosenberger paces back across the room)
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- Alright, let's start the class proper!
    - So, I'm assuming most of you have never taken a philosophy class before, so let's try to answer something: "What's philosophy?"
        - ...this is actually a kinda complicated question, but here's a WRONG (or at least incomplete) definition to start with: "Philosophy is defending your position with reasons"
            - Students will often say "philosophy's just, like, your opinion man", but philosophers will get annoyed when people say that because they want to know WHY you hold that opinion; WHY are you voting for candidate X?
            - Isn't this what lawyers do, though? Kinda! Lawyers do make arguments, but no court case ends with the defense attorney saying "Y'know, they got me!"
                - So, maybe philosophy should be specifically oriented towards discovering the truth instead
            - One beef our professor has with the textbook: it tries to increasingly make up new terminology to eliminate "vagueness", or redefines common words in a "technical way"
                - This is a common technique in philosophy papers, but it can be confusing

- Maybe another way to define philosophy is to define it HISTORICALLY
    - "Keep in mind I am NOT a historian, so a lot of this is going to be handwavey, over-simplified, or just plain wrong"
    - Around 500 B.C., the Ancient Greeks had an explosion of culture called the "Golden Age of Athens" where democracy is invented, lawyers and courts begin, famous playwrights emerge, historians begin keeping systematic records (not just religious records - "NO LIGHTNING BOLTS!"), and so on
        - This age gave us the term "Philosophy," and Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle began to formalize the system of thinking started by earlier people like Heraclitus and Thales
            - "Who's Socrates? Socrates was a homeless person...who bothered people"
                - So, why do we know his name? Because Plato wrote down all his stuff!
                - Socrates would bother people in a specific way: he'd go to the agora marketplace in Athens and say things like "Ah, you're a judge - you must know what justice is! Tell us what justice is!" And then he'd tear their definition apart, they'd give a new definition, and they'd go back and forth until they'd say "screw you Socrates!"
                    - Spoiler alert: Socrates NEVER answered what justice was, but he saw himself as advancing knowledge forward and making progress towards truth
            - Plato, then, was a rich guy who liked Socrates and followed him around - and also happened to be a next-level genius
                - He wrote down many "Platonic dialogues" with Socrates as the main character, doing this debating stuff
                    - We're still not sure how many of these conversations between Socrates and people actually happened, but we know Plato was a genius because several of the dialogues contain people who were dead before Socrates was born, so he must have invented at least these conversations
                    - He also wrote about the death of Socrates in "Euthyphro", "Apology", "Crito", and "Phaedo" (where he talks about the nature of the soul before drinking hemlock)
                - He wrote a TON more stuff, and his dialogues literally cover ALL the fundamental topics of philosophy. Plato's still brought up constantly, and he founded the first university that lasted hundreds of years
            - Aristotle, then, was a student of Plato, and he should ALSO be on your top 5 list of smartiest people ever
                - Aristotle basically invented science, revolutionized philosophy, and everything else
                    - "I had a brand-new Atari 2600 when I was a kid, and all the sports games were just called 'Football', 'Baseball', and so on, because it was the first one"
                        - Aristotle was like that; he was literally the first person to ever write about Physics, Biology, and so on
                        - His basic ethical theory is also still one of the 3 big schools of ethical thought today
        - So, Aristotle tutors Alexander the Great, we fast forward to the Roman empire, and then Rome falls around 476 A.D. before there's the so-called 1000 years of dark ages with plagues, wars, and ostensibly dragons
            - There's STILL philosophy going on here in the Catholic church, and there are some philosophical monks who do legitimately first-rate work here like Aquinas and Anselm
        - Around 1500 there's the Rennaisance and Protestand Reformation, and suddenly modern science as we know it enters the scene; for the first time, people start challenging Aristotle's approach to science as "natural philosophers"
        - Next up, Newton sciences really hard and starts convincing people this science thing really is REALLY cool (Professor Rosenberg seems to see it as science "breaking free" of the church, which I strongly object to as unhistorical)
            - So, we enter the Enlightenment with "science is the all-good truth seeker", and people like Thomas Jefferson apply it to EVERYTHING
        - ...are we still in the Enlightenment? Some people still think so, while other people argue that we're in the "postmodern" period, since we've seen how science is NOT always a path to truth and good (*cough* Nazis, nukes *cough*)

- So, those are TWO ways of defining philosophy and a whirlwind historical tour; next week, we'll cover the 3rd way, so come back for that!