Philosophy

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We recommend you to start with lesson 1, as lessons build on one another.
1 Introduction to Philosophy
1.1 What Is Philosophy?
1.1.1 Historical Origins of Philosophy
1.1.2 How It All Hangs Together
1.2 How Do Philosophers Arrive at Truth?
1.2.1 Sources of Evidence
1.2.2 Logic
1.2.3 Conceptual Analysis
1.2.4 Trade-offs
1.3 Socrates as a Paradigmatic Historical Philosopher
1.3.1 “The Life Which Is Unexamined Is Not Worth Living”
1.3.2 Human Wisdom Is Worth Little or Nothing
1.3.3 The Importance of Doing No Harm
1.4 An Overview of Contemporary Philosophy
1.4.1 What Can You Do with a Philosophy Major?
1.4.2 An Overview of Your Philosophy Textbook
2 Critical Thinking, Research, Reading, and Writing
2.1 The Brain Is an Inference Machine
2.1.1 The Brain’s Adaptive Ability to Plan Ahead
2.1.2 The Evolutionary Advantage of Shortcuts
2.2 Overcoming Cognitive Biases and Engaging in Critical Reflection
2.2.1 Critical Reflection and Metacognition
2.2.2 Cognitive Biases
2.3 Developing Good Habits of Mind
2.3.1 Strive for Objectivity
2.3.2 Adopt Epistemic Humility
2.4 Gathering Information, Evaluating Sources, and Understanding Evidence
2.4.1 Start with a Strong Foundation
2.4.2 The SIFT Method (Four Moves for Student Fact Checkers)
2.5 Reading Philosophy
2.5.1 Prepare to Read
2.5.2 Engaging with Philosophical Texts
2.5.3 Pre-reading
2.5.4 First Read
2.5.5 Close Read
2.6 Writing Philosophy Papers
2.6.1 Identify Claims
2.6.2 Collect Evidence and Build Your Case
2.6.3 Organize Your Paper
3 The Early History of Philosophy around the World
3.1 Indigenous Philosophy
3.1.1 Challenges in Researching Indigenous Philosophy
3.1.2 Indigenous African Philosophy
3.1.3 Indigenous North American Philosophical Thought
3.1.4 Mesoamerican Philosophy
3.2 Classical Indian Philosophy
3.2.1 The Vedic Tradition
3.2.2 Classical Indian Darshanas
3.3 Classical Chinese Philosophy
3.3.1 Early Chinese Philosophical Thought prior to Confucius
3.3.2 Confucianism
3.3.3 Daoism
3.3.4 Mohism
4 The Emergence of Classical Philosophy
4.1 Historiography and the History of Philosophy
4.1.1 Presentist Approach
4.1.2 Contextualist Approach
4.1.3 Hermeneutic Approach
4.2 Classical Philosophy
4.2.1 Egyptian Origins of Classical Philosophy
4.2.2 Ancient Greek Philosophy
4.2.3 The Presocratics
4.2.4 Socrates and Plato
4.2.5 Aristotle
4.2.6 Epicureans
4.2.7 Roman Philosophy
4.3 Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Philosophy
4.3.1 Defining Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Philosophy
4.3.2 Early Jewish Philosophy
4.3.3 Early Christian Philosophy
4.3.4 Islamic Philosophy
4.3.5 Late Medieval Philosophy in Christian Europe
4.3.6 Jewish Philosophers in the Christian and Islamic Worlds
4.3.7 The Rise of Reason in the Early Modern Era
5 Logic and Reasoning
5.1 Philosophical Methods for Discovering Truth
5.1.1 Dialectics and Philosophical Argumentation
5.1.2 The Use of Reason to Discover Truth
5.1.3 Testing Hypotheses
5.1.4 Laws of Logic
5.1.5 Normativity in Logic
5.2 Logical Statements
5.2.1 Conditionals
5.2.2 Universal Statements
5.3 Arguments
5.3.1 Getting to the Premises
5.3.2 The Difference between Truth and Logic
5.4 Types of Inferences
5.4.1 Deductive Reasoning
5.4.2 Inductive Inferences
5.4.3 Abductive Reasoning
5.5 Informal Fallacies
5.5.1 Fallacies of Relevance
5.5.2 Fallacies of Weak Induction
5.5.3 Fallacies of Unwarranted Assumption
5.5.4 Fallacies of Diversion
6 Metaphysics
6.1 Substance
6.1.1 Fundamentality: The One and the Many
6.1.2 Ontological Perspectives on Substance
6.2 Self and Identity
6.2.1 The Ship of Theseus
6.2.2 Judeo-Christian Views of Self
6.2.3 Hindu and Buddhist Views of Self
6.2.4 Secular Notions of Self
6.2.5 The Mind as Self
6.3 Cosmology and the Existence of God
6.3.1 Teleological Arguments for God
6.3.2 Moral Arguments for God
6.3.3 The Ontological Argument for God
6.3.4 Hindu Cosmology
6.3.5 Problem of Evil
6.4 Free Will
6.4.1 Defining Freedom
6.4.2 Libertarianism
6.4.3 Determinism
7 Epistemology
7.1 What Epistemology Studies
7.1.1 How to Do Epistemology
7.1.2 The Normative Nature of Epistemology
7.1.3 A Preliminary Look at Knowledge
7.1.4 Truth
7.2 Knowledge
7.2.1 Plato and the Traditional Account of Knowledge
7.2.2 Problems with the Traditional Account of Knowledge
7.2.3 Fixing Plato’s Traditional Account of Knowledge
7.3 Justification
7.3.1 The Nature of Justification
7.3.2 Theories of Justification
7.3.3 The Fallible Nature of Justification
7.4 Skepticism
7.4.1 Global Skepticism
7.4.2 Responses to Global Skepticism
7.4.3 Skepticism in Specific Domains
7.5 Applied Epistemology
7.5.1 Social Epistemology
7.5.2 Standpoint Epistemology
7.5.3 Epistemic Injustice
8 Value Theory
8.1 The Fact-Value Distinction
8.1.1 Descriptive vs. Evaluative Claims
8.1.2 The Naturalistic Fallacy
8.1.3 Objections to the Fact-Value Distinction
8.2 Basic Questions about Values
8.2.1 Intrinsic and Extrinsic Value
8.2.2 Fundamentality
8.2.3 Incommensurability
8.2.4 Moral Pluralism vs. Moral Relativism
8.3 Metaethics
8.3.1 Ontology of value
8.3.2 Divine and Religious Foundations for Moral Values
8.3.3 Natural and Human Foundations for Moral Values
8.4 Well-Being
8.4.1 Hedonism
8.4.2 Qualitative Distinctions in Pleasure
8.4.3 Well-Being and the Satisfaction of Desire
8.4.4 Well-Being and Objective Goods
8.4.5 Eudaimonia (Human Flourishing)
8.4.6 Perfectionism
8.5 Aesthetics
8.5.1 Beauty
8.5.2 Aesthetic Judgment
8.5.3 Art and Values
9 Normative Moral Theory
9.1 Requirements of a Normative Moral Theory
9.1.1 Three Areas of Ethics
9.1.2 Three Coherent Frameworks for Understanding Morality
9.2 Consequentialism
9.2.1 Mohism
9.2.2 Utilitarianism
9.3 Deontology
9.3.1 Kantian Formulation
9.3.2 Pluralism
9.4 Virtue Ethics
9.4.1 Confucianism
9.4.2 Aristotelianism
9.5 Daoism
9.5.1 The Dao
9.5.2 Wu Wei
9.5.3 Daoist, Mohist, and Confucian Ethics
9.6 Feminist Theories of Ethics
9.6.1 Historical Critique
9.6.2 Ethics of Care
9.6.3 Intersectionality
9.6.4 Development of Alternative Normative Moral Frameworks
10 Applied Ethics
10.1 The Challenge of Bioethics
10.1.1 The Abortion Debate
10.1.2 Euthanasia
10.1.3 Human Augmentation and Genetic Modification
10.2 Environmental Ethics
10.2.1 The Emerging Crisis
10.2.2 Political and Legal Dimensions
10.2.3 Philosophical Contributions to Environmental Ethics
10.3 Business Ethics and Emerging Technology
10.3.1 Codes of Ethics
10.3.2 Corporate Responsibility
10.3.3 Ethics and Emerging Technologies
11 Political Philosophy
11.1 Historical Perspectives on Government
11.1.1 The Just City in Ancient Greece
11.1.2 Mohism in China
11.1.3 Al-Farabi’s View of Rulership
11.2 Forms of Government
11.2.1 Monarchy
11.2.2 Aristocracies and Caste Systems
11.2.3 Representative Government
11.2.4 Totalitarian Forms of Government
11.3 Political Legitimacy and Duty
11.3.1 Divine Rule
11.3.2 Thomas Hobbes and Absolute Monarchy
11.3.3 John Locke and Representative Government
11.3.4 Max Weber and Descriptive Legitimacy
11.3.5 Political Obligations
11.4 Political Ideologies
11.4.1 Distributive Justice
11.4.2 Conservatism
11.4.3 Liberalism
11.4.4 Egalitarianism
11.4.5 Socialism
11.4.6 Anarchism
12 Contemporary Philosophies and Social Theories
12.1 Enlightenment Social Theory
12.1.1 Rationalism and Empiricism
12.1.2 Kant and Ethical Progress
12.1.3 Comte’s Positivism
12.1.4 Du Bois and Empirical Sociology
12.2 The Marxist Solution
12.2.1 Hegel’s Dialectic Method
12.2.2 Marx’s Dialectical Materialism and the Proletariat Revolution
12.2.3 Revolutionary Movements of the 20th Century
12.3 Continental Philosophy’s Challenge to Enlightenment Theories
12.3.1 Hermeneutics
12.3.2 Phenomenology
12.3.3 Existentialism
12.4 The Frankfurt School
12.4.1 The Formation of a Critical Theory
12.4.2 Critique of the Enlightenment Concept of Knowledge
12.4.3 Jürgen Habermas’s Communicative Action
12.4.4 Paulo Freire’s Critical Pedagogy
12.5 Postmodernism
12.5.1 Structuralism and Post-structuralism
12.5.2 Deconstruction
12.5.3 Ethics in Post-structuralism
12.5.4 Political Movements Informed by Critical Theory