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THE COMPLETE PHILOSOPHY PRIMER

A Must Have Book For Every Philosophy Student

Welcome

Welcome

Welcome to PhilosophyStudent.org. Our goal is to open the door for novice philosophy students who are starting out with a deep curiosity and an unyielding desire, yet without knowing how best to grow, learn, and succeed in their studies. We are thus offering under one roof everything a novice philosophy student needs to know in order to succeed.

Philosophy sets itself apart from other disciplines by its promise to offer far more questions than answers. This takes some getting used to. These questions typically concern things most people take  for granted. They are questions about existence, knowledge, mind,

reason, language, and values, among other matters. We, however, stand out from other philosophy books and websites by offering more answers than questions. No, they are not the answers to those big philosophical questions. Instead, they are answers to questions you may have—should have—about

what to do now that you are taking a class in philosophy. These answers will inform and enrich your academic study of philosophy. They will help you perform optimally in some of the most challenging and exciting coursework you will ever do, as well as guide and improve your academic performance, your test results, and the grades you receive on the papers you write.

Philosophy opens your mind and imagination, but insists on doing so in a disciplined manner. It is about learning more productive ways to think and to write and to argue, and in writing well and arguing effectively, to think with even more originality and greater clarity.

Here we ask and answer: What is philosophy? What are the branches of philosophy? What is logic and where does logic fit into philosophy? What is the history of philosophy? And then we answer the questions most germane to what you, as a student, will do in a philosophy course: How do you do philosophy? How do you create effective philosophical writing? What processes and skills are needed to write a philosophy paper? What are the

forms of philosophical writing? What strategic writing choices will best serve you in your class assignments? You will also find a concise but comprehensive reference section, containing the key philosophical terms and concepts, biographical essays on philosophers whom most philosophy professors consider most important, and a list of resources, including the books, websites, blogs, films, TV programs, and institutions you need to know about.

We hope we will succeed in introducing you to the many new concepts, approaches, and terms in philosophy. Starting out in Philosophy can be elating and yet bewildering: Where do I start, and what is my best path? We here want to offer the novice philosophy student—a way to avoid aimless wandering.

Another goal is to encourage—no, to recruit—more students to study and love philosophy. But if just one student ends up pursuing a life of philosophy because of something in this website, our work will have been worth the effort. For it surely will have made the world a better place!

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?

Philosophers ask questions and think about things that most people take for granted. So, philosophy is the study of general and fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, mind, reason, language, and values. Strange but true, it is the general and fundamental things that most people take for granted and therefore do not question. Why is this so? That is precisely the kind of question a philosopher would ask. Maybe you should consider asking —and answering—it in an essay for your philosophy class.

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?
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PHILOSOPHY AS METHOD

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WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?
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WHAT IS THE “SUBJECT MATTER” OF PHILOSOPHY

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Branches of Philosophy

Philosophy embraces the most ambitious field of inquiry—the universe, including the self and everything both physical and metaphysical. It is impossible to list all the branches of philosophy, which are not only numerous but, since the realms of the mind defy taxonomy, so does philosophy. We can divide the major branches into two categories, the traditional and the modern.

Traditional Branches of Philosophy

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AESTHETICS

Aesthetics is concerned with the nature of art (whether visual, literary, dramatic, or in some other medium) and the way in which art is experienced. Two principal related issues, therefore, are whether there is a distinctive form of aesthetic experience—to be contrasted with other forms of perceptual experience—and how our aesthetic judgments are to be distinguished from other forms of evaluation.

EPISTEMOLOGY

Epistemology is the study of knowledge, including its nature and its extent, and of justification (that is, whether a belief is formed in a valid way to justify its being deemed “knowledge”). Epistemology attempts to distinguish knowledge from merely true belief.

ETHICS

Ethics is the study of morality and can be divided into three main areas of inquiry. Descriptive ethics concerns the actual moral beliefs held by specific individuals or societies and is perhaps better thought of as a branch of sociology or anthropology than of philosophy.

PHILOSOPHY OF LAW

The philosophy of law is concerned with all aspects of theoretical reflection on laws and legal systems and therefore encompasses historical and sociological studies in addition to the philosophical questions posed by general jurisprudence (a word that usually connotes the theory or system of law.

LOGIC

Logic is concerned with studying the inferences we make, and the formal languages developed to systematize those inferences. This includes both the proof-theories and semantics for these languages, as well as their various metalogical properties, such as soundness, completeness, and decidability.

METAPHYSICS

Metaphysics is the philosophical investigation of reality, including the nature of the world and the entities it contains. While such an investigation inevitably overlaps with natural philosophy—the sciences, especially physics and the natural sciences—it can be contrasted in two important respects.

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

An important historical branch designation rather than a current one, natural philosophy was the study of nature and the physical universe by philosophical (that is, largely empirical reason-based) methods.

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Political philosophy is at least as old as Plato (428/227 or 424/423-348/347 BC) and is concerned with the nature of the state and, more broadly, with coercive institutions, and their justification. One central question, therefore, is whether political rights and obligations can exist independently of state membership, and what rights and obligations may be lost or gained by becoming a member (subject or citizen) of a state.

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Many religions distinguish between truths accessible through reason (natural theology), and truths accessible through faith (revealed theology). Both natural and revealed theology raise interesting philosophical questions about these two sources of knowledge and the relationship between the two.

Modern Branches of Philosophy

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BIOETHICS

A branch of ethics concerned with the moral and political issues raised by medical science, and with advances in medical technology, bioethics has now become a largely autonomous area of study, which intersects with topics in philosophy, legal theory, sociology, and other disciplines.

HERMENEUTICS

Originally applied to scriptural exegesis (interpretation), hermeneutics is more generally the theory and method of all “textual” interpretation. In the modern context, this refers to both verbal and non-verbal “texts” or communications.

PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

The study of natural languages is conventionally divided among questions of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, all of which raise significant issues for the philosophy of language. In terms of syntax for example, it is clear that speakers of a language are able to construct a potentially infinite number of sentences on the basis of (presumably) a finite grasp of its rules; and this places considerable philosophical constraints on any satisfactory grammatical theory.

PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS

The philosophy of mathematics is traditionally concerned with the ontological and epistemological foundations of mathematics. The two questions, of ontology and epistemology, are intimately related, as a satisfactory account of our mathematical knowledge often entails a more controversial metaphysics, and vice versa.

PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Many of the topics within the philosophy of science overlap with topics in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of language insofar as they apply within our scientific practice. Metaphysical issues, for instance, concern the existence of natural kinds and laws of nature, which appear to underlie the regularities investigated by our scientific theories, and whether these are objective features of the world or merely conventional features of our scientific models.

Logic

Logic is the systematic study of patterns of inference and is intended to clarify the underlying structure of “good” arguments. When we call an argument valid, we are not judging the truth or falsity of its premises or conclusion. We are evaluating its structure. An argument is said to be sound if it is both valid in argumentative structure and its premises are in fact true.

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PROPOSITIONAL CALCULUS (PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC)

The simplest formal (logical) language is the propositional calculus. This considers the logical relationships that hold between complete propositions.

PREDICATE CALCULUS (PREDICATE LOGIC)

The next development of the propositional calculus is the predicate calculus. This considers the logical relationships that hold between predicate expressions, along with the quantifiers ∃x (“there is at least one x, such that …”) and ∀x (“for all x, it is the case that …”). The language of the predicate calculus consists of proper names of the form n, m, o, …; arbitrary names of the form a, b, c, …; variables of the form x, y, z,

Higher Order Logics

The language sketched above is better referred to as first-order predicate calculus, as the language only quantifies over (first-order) individuals. A stronger language, second-order predicate calculus, can therefore be constructed by allowing quantification over predicates —that is, second-order sets of individuals.

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MODAL LOGIC

A common extension to the standard formal languages outlined above is to introduce the technical machinery required to evaluate natural language arguments containing modal terminology (that is, talk of possibility and necessity).

Non Classical Logic

While both the predicate calculus and the modal propositional calculus may be seen as extensions of the basic propositional calculus, there are also a variety of formal languages intended as genuine alternatives. These non-classical logics typically argue that the logical connectives are governed by different truth tables (often with more than two truth values), or they impose additional constraints on what counts as a valid inference.

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MANY-VALUE LOGICS

In the classical logics already discussed, the logical connectives are taken to be bivalent—that is, they allow of only two different truth values: true and false. One natural extension to classical logic, therefore, is to introduce additional truth values into our semantics, leading to many-valued logics with corresponding many-valued truth tables.

INTUITIONISM

One of the most familiar non-classical logics is intuitionism, which, in simple terms, is based upon the rejection of the law of excluded middle: (P ∨ ¬P). There are both philosophical and technical arguments that can be offered in favor of this restriction upon classical logic.

RELEVANCE LOGICS

A relevance logic is motivated by the idea that the premises of a valid argument must be somehow “relevant” to its conclusion. The idea is motivated by the fact that the formal notion of implication based upon the truth tables of the logical connectives does not always match our pretheoretical understanding of implication; this includes, for instance, the so-called paradoxes of material implication—for instance, ¬φ ⊃ (φ ⊃ ψ)—and the principle of explosion—(φ & ¬φ) ⊃ ψ. (A logic that denies the principle of explosion is called paraconsistent.)

QUANTUM LOGIC

Most non-classical logics are motivated by either philosophical considerations, such as the metaphysical status of the future, or technical concerns about the neutrality of the logical connectives or the notion of implication. One notable exception to this are the proposals to revise classical logic in the face of empirical results in quantum mechanics.

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BASIC LOGICAL SYMBOLS

¬ one-place logical connective read as “not” or as “is not the case” ~ alternative notation for “not” & two-place logical connective read as “and” ˄ and

History of Philosophy

Because Western philosophy has proved most globally pervasive and has created a remarkably contiguous record—a genuine dialogue among philosophers over the centuries —our concise historical overview focuses on the Western tradition and reviews Middle Eastern, Indian, East Asian, and African philosophies only briefly.

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THE PRE-SOCRATICS

The origins of Western philosophy are usually attributed to Thales of Miletus (fl. sixth century BC), who taught that “everything was made of water” and thus that the universe, all creation, was essentially one. In philosophical terms, however, the innovation Thales introduced was primarily methodological.

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PYTHAGOREANISM

Based on the teachings of Pythagoras (c. 570–495 BC) and the school he established inCroton in southern Italy, we may conclude that, in many ways, Pythagoreanism was more ofa mystery religion than a philosophical school.

THE ELEATIC SCHOOL

Based in the Ionian colony of Elea (modern-day Velia) in southern Italy, and primarily associated with Parmenides (early fifth century BC) and Melissus of Samos (mid fifth century BC), the Eleatic school shared the Pythagorean disregard for the changeable world of everyday appearances and argued that true being was neither created, changed, nor destroyed.

ATOMISM

Atomism was founded by Leucippus (who flourished around 440 BC) but was primarily elaborated by Democritus (c. 460-370 BC) as a way of reconciling the Eleatic doctrine of the impossibility of change with our observational evidence for the reality of change.

THE SOPHISTS

The Sophists were not a single school but a professional grouping of largely itinerant teachers of rhetoric, philosophy, and legal argumentation. Their importance lies not in any specific doctrines but in their general shift of emphasis toward philosophical questions of politics and ethics in contrast to the predominantly metaphysical speculations of the period and in the gradual professionalization of the philosophic discipline.

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CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY

The Classical Period in philosophy was dominated by the teachings of Plato (427–347 BC) and Aristotle (384–322 BC) but gradually fell into a decline following the conquest of the independent Greek city-states by Alexander the Great and, later, by the Roman Republic. While Plato and Aristotle constructed grand systems of metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy, and ethics, all of which were to have a profound influence on the development of Western thought, the subsequent Hellenistic Schools—Skepticism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism—largely reflected the political uncertainty of the time. They either rejected the possibility or desirability of objective knowledge and advocated a retreat from…

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PLATO

Plato (427–347 BC) was born into a powerful family in Athens but abandoned politics after the execution of his teacher, Socrates; he subsequently traveled, became influenced by the Pythagoreans, and eventually established his own school—the famed Academy—in Athens. Almost all of Plato’s surviving work takes the form of a dialogue between Socrates and other interlocutors, and while the earlier dialogues merely demonstrate that many of our (primarily ethical) concepts are poorly understood, later dialogues increasingly present a positive philosophical doctrine.

ARISTOTLE

Aristotle (384–322 BC) was born in Stagira but moved to Athens as a young man to study at Plato’s Academy. Following Plato’s death, Aristotle traveled, became tutor to Alexander the Great, and eventually returned to Athens to establish his own school, the Lyceum. He produced an extraordinary wealth of material on almost every topic, although much that remains and has come down to us are lecture notes and drafts rather than finished books.

SKEPTICISM (PYRRHONISM)

Pyrrhonian Skepticism was founded by Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360–275 BC), who argued that knowledge is impossible. The Skeptics proposed various arguments for their conclusions, including Platonic doubts about the world of our senses, and through offering opposing arguments for any position.

CYNICISM

Founded by Antisthenes (c. 445–360 BC), who taught the importance of individual virtue over material luxury, Cynicism was contemptuous of political institutions and organized religion. It rejected refined philosophical speculation and sought instead conversation with the “common man.”

EPICUREANISM

Founded by Epicurus (341–271 BC), this eponymous philosophy is best known through the Roman poet Lucretius (mid first century BC). Like the Atomists, the Epicureans maintained that everything is made up of indivisible atoms in a constant state of flux.

STOICISM

Founded by Zeno of Citium (334–262 BC), early Stoicism shared many similarities with Epicureanism, including the belief that the world was largely deterministic and that the overall goal of the ethical life consisted in the resigned acceptance of this fact.

Medieval Philosophy

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SAINT AUGUSTINE

Like his contemporaries, Saint Augustine (354–430) was primarily influenced by Neoplatonism, and, indeed, credited Plotinus with helping him to understand Christian theology.

SCHOLASTICISM

A general term for those philosophers influenced by the medieval rediscovery of classic texts, Scholasticism is broadly characterized by an interest in logic and disputation and is motivated to resolve the metaphysical disagreements between Aristotle and Plato, especially on the subject of universals.

THOMISM

A school of thought based on the work of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), Thomism is, like Scholasticism, principally concerned with metaphysics and understanding the attributes of God.

The Early Modern Period

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RATIONALISM

Rationalism designates a variety of philosophical schools maintaining that reason, as opposed to empirical investigation, is the most important method of acquiring knowledge.

EMPIRICISM

Empiricism covers a range of views prioritizing experience as the primary source of knowledge. During the Early Modern Period, this view was expounded by the so-called British Empiricists—Locke, Berkeley, and Hume—who sought to replace the appeal to authority with an alternative epistemological foundation, articulated in conjunction with a particular view about mental content.

LIBERALISM

A political philosophy whose central claim is that a government’s authority is justified only insofar as it secures the liberty of its subjects, Liberalism is generally traced to John Locke (1632–1704), who argued that man has a natural right to both self-preservation and private property, but that individuals might choose to submit to political authority as a way of best protecting these rights.

TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM

The philosophical system developed by Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Transcendental Idealism sought to overcome the epistemological problems of Empiricism while providing a rational justification for Liberalism.

POST-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

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HEGELIANISM

One common theme in post-Kantian philosophy was an attempt to overcome the remaining divisions between noumena and phenomena, and to reconcile the distinct faculties of sensibility and understanding in to a unified whole.

UTILITARIANISM

The French Revolution sparked legal and political reforms across Europe, which brought with them their accompanying philosophical frameworks.

PRAGMATISM

Pragmatism was a philosophical movement in the United States concerned with the relationship between abstract theory and practical activity, and with the value of philosophical reflection.

CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

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PHENOMENOLOGY

As originally developed by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), phenomenology seeks to provide a detailed description of the way in which things are presented to us—that is to say, phenomena —in an attempt to uncover the fundamental structure of consciousness and our relationship to the world.

EXISTENTIALISM

A broad philosophical and literary movement that flourished during the first half of the twentieth century, Existentialism emphasized the uniqueness of human experience over the generalizations of traditional scientific or philosophical analysis (“existence precedes essence”).

THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL

A group of philosophers, cultural critics, and social scientists based around the Frankfurt (Germany) Institute for Social Research were primarily concerned with integrating philosophical analysis with then-recent results in the social sciences as part of a political critique of society.

STRUCTURALISM

Structuralism refers to research undertaken in the social sciences, predominantly in France, between the 1950s and 1970s, which sought to understand various social phenomena as a “closed system” of elements.

ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

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LOGICAL ATOMISM

Although mostly associated with the logical analysis of language, analytic philosophy began in the philosophy of mathematics. Working independently, both Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell pursued programs of reducing mathematics to logic, and the philosophical motivations behind these projects were to find broader application.

LOGICAL POSITIVISM

Originally founded by Auguste Comte (1798–1857), Positivism was primarily a view about science. Influenced by Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) assertion that knowledge of things-inthemselves was impossible, Comte argued that our scientific theories should be understood as mere tools for systematizing and predicting observation, and that further (metaphysical) speculation must be rejected as unfounded.

ORDINARY LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY

Between the 1940s and the 1960s, analytic philosophy shifted away from investigating the (supposed) underlying logical structure of language. While it was still primarily concerned with conceptual analysis, this was increasingly pursued through studying everyday linguistic practice.

NON-WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITIONS

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MIDDLE EASTERN TRADITIONS

As the Middle East is often called the cradle of civilization, it is also the source of some of the earliest philosophical literature. Much of it is devoted to what the Western tradition calls Ethics, although the philosophies of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia are also rich with astronomical writings (classifiable as Natural Philosophy) and cosmogony and cosmology, the origin of the universe and the nature of creation.

INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

Philosophy on the Indian subcontinent between 1000 BC and the early centuries of the first millennium was comprised of six major schools of Hindu philosophy (Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Mimamsa, and Vedanta) and Jain, Buddhist, Ajivika, Ajñana, and Charvka philosophical traditions.

PHILOSOPHIES OF EAST ASIA

The dominant philosophical traditions in this part of the world began in Ancient China from the sixth century to 221 BC, which saw the development of China’s great philosophical movements during the Hundred Schools of Thought era. The primary movements during this long epoch were Confucianism, Legalism, and Taoism.

AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY

The earliest indigenous African philosophy to produce written documents emerged during the seventeenth century, especially in Ethiopia. Zera Yacob (1599–1692), whose Hatata (1667) has been compared to René Descartes’ Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences (1637) as a manifesto on reason as a method for investigating the key questions of philosophy.

Biographies

Comprehensive biographies of the major philosophers throughout history.

WRITING PHILOSOPHY

GOOD PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING PROCESS

Writing is work, and for many of us, writing is hard work. Writing philosophy adds to this labor an element of intimidation. Whether you are writing an expository—explanatory and descriptive—essay or an argumentative essay, writing for a philosophy class has a higher bar than writing in most other academic contexts.

ESSENTIAL WRITING SKILLS

Having just walked through the basic process of writing a philosophy paper, we turn now to the essential skillset you should develop and apply not only to the writing of papers for philosophy class but to the disciplined study of philosophy itself.

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FORMS OF PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING

The word essay comes from the French infinitive verb essayer, meaning “to try” or “to attempt.” In fact, when the word was first borrowed into the English language, as essay, it served as a verb, with the same meaning as the French original, and as a noun, meaning “an attempt” or “a trial.”

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THE PERSONAL ESSAY

The personal essay is a self-reflective search for meaning. Unlike most philosophical writing, it is not argumentative. Instead, it is exploratory and speculative, often even somewhat confessional. It is typically written in the first person and is broadly autobiographical.

THE ESSAY OF ASSERTION

The essay of assertion takes the position I believe. It is an argumentative essay in which you convey to the reader some belief or beliefs that you hold. If you are assigned to write an essay of assertion—or if you decide to write one—you should write about a belief that is genuinely important to you.

THE ESSAY OF AFFIRMATION

The essay of affirmation takes the position I agree. If you want to write an essay agreeing with—affirming—the ideas of another, such as a philosopher, a simple statement of agreement (“Works for me!”) will not cut it in a philosophy class. You will need to present an exposition of the philosopher’s point of view, identify your areas of agreement, and then present these along with reasoning that supports your agreement.

THE ESSAY OF REFUTATION

The essay of refutation takes the position “I disagree.” Its objective is to persuade the reader that the argument of another is false, flawed, unlikely, implausible, or in some other way objectionable (for instance, unethical). There are three intellectually and philosophically legitimate ways to refute an argument.

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OTHER CATEGORIZATIONS OF PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING

There are other ways of classifying the forms of philosophic writing you may be asked to produce. The most prominent of these are: The Expository Paper The Argumentative Paper The Position Paper The case study The “Socratic” dialogue The research paper

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THE EXPOSITORY PAPER

We have already touched on the expository paper, but let’s discuss it briefly here. Look at the adjective expository. It is derived from the noun exposition, which is the noun form of the verb expose. An expository essay exposes a subject, explaining it and illustrating it.

THE ARGUMENTATIVE PAPER

Essays of assertion, affirmation, and refutation are all examples of the argumentative paper. An effective argument relies on factually true premises or premises for which you have strong support.

THE POSITION PAPER

A position paper may be viewed as a type of argumentative paper in that it states a claim—your position—concerning a topic, issue, or question and presents a justification for that claim.

STRATEGIC WRITING CHOICES FOR PHILOSOPHY CLASS

Writing philosophy should not be easy, but you cannot allow it to become impossible. Here are five strategic rules of thumb for embarking on a successful writing project for philosophy class.

PHIOLOSOPHICAL TERMS AND CONCEPTS

PHILOSOPHICAL BOOKS AND TEXT

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ESSENTIAL READING IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

A comprehensive list of essential readings in the history of philosophy.

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BOOKS TO GUIDE NOVICE PHILOSOPHY STUDENTS

This list is aimed at curating those texts that will both challenge a novice researcher, and continually reward repeated encounters as you develop your philosophical interests.

INTRODUCTORY PHILOSOPHY TEXTS

There is no substitute for grappling primary sources. Nevertheless, secondary sources—including scholarly research, literary reviews, historical summaries—are valuable tools. They not only show you how you can begin thinking about a philosopher, theory, problem, or concept, but also how the reading process works.

GUIDES TO PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING

As with developing any skill, learning to write philosophically takes practice. Here are some links to academic sites, along with several style guides, to aid you.

INTRODUCTORY LOGIC TEXTS

There are some fairly firm distinctions between critical thinking and formal (symbolic) logic texts. Whereas critical thinking focuses broadly on argumentation, formal logic is the study of the principles of correct reasoning, including formal proofs. Hence, the focus is on deductive logic.

CRITICAL THINKING AND LOGIC TEXTBOOKS

Textbooks on critical thinking and logic.

LISTS OF LINKS TO PHILOSOPHY WEBSITES

There are plenty of good philosophy websites that will give you a good idea of what philosophers are (or were) doing and how they do (or did) it. Though this list is not exhaustive, it is fairly representative of what you’ll find (in English) elsewhere.

PHILOSOPHER BLOGS AND PERSONAL WEBSITES

This list is organized alphabetically, by each philosopher’s last name. Given the number of excellent philosophers working today, this list is necessarily short, and almost entirely restricted to blogs and personal sites, rather than faculty pages. Nevertheless, the smattering of links should provide you with glimpses into the workings of these thinkers’ intellectual lives—glimpses not always possible from a book or scholarly paper.

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