Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and exercises for Philosophy and ethics for Baccalaureate

David Hume

His Impact on Philosophy and the Critique of Causality

David Hume (1711-1776) is one of the most influential philosophers, and exerted a profound impact on Immanuel Kant. Among the most important aspects of his philosophy is his criticism of the principle of causality.

Limitations of Knowledge and Future Events

According to Hume, our knowledge of facts is limited to current and past impressions. We cannot have knowledge of future events because we cannot have impressions of an event that has not yet happened. However, in our daily lives, we constantly assume that certain events will occur in the future. For example, we place a container of water on the fire, expecting it to heat up. But if we initially only feel cold water over the flame,...

Kant's Concept of Duty and Free Will

According to Kant, our choices are free only if they are determined by duty. The human will is autonomous when it acts according to its own dictates, irrespective of other considerations. These actions are undertaken out of a sense of duty.

Rawls's Theory of the Original Position

Rawls's concept of the original position imagines a group of individuals behind a "veil of ignorance." They are unaware of their gender, wealth, race, religion, or any other characteristic that could lead to biased interests. This total ignorance defines the original position.

Justice According to Plato and Rawls

Plato views justice as the state where each part of the soul fulfills its specific virtues. The rational part of the soul...

New Christianity Characteristics

New Christianity encompasses several key characteristics:

• Monotheism: Belief in one God.
• Creationism: The belief that God created everything from nothing.
• Timeline: Placing events within a historical context.
• Truth: Holding onto fundamental truths.
• Man: Created in God's image.

The Ethics of Epicurus

Epicurean ethics focuses on material well-being, defining good and evil based on their ability to achieve happiness. Pleasure is central to human nature, experienced as the absence of pain in both body and soul. Epicurus identifies three types of pleasure:

• Natural and necessary (e.g., food, rest)
• Natural but not necessary (seeking greater satisfaction)
• Neither natural nor necessary (e.g., wealth, honor)

To avoid pain and suffering,...

Aquinas: Harmony of Faith and Reason

The position of Aquinas is both harmonizing and innovative. Many truths are treated by both faith and reason, albeit differently. While paths and perspectives may initially diverge, they ultimately converge at the same point: truth.

Reason and Philosophy

Philosophers, Aquinas reminds us, employ principles accessible to human reason. Thomistic epistemology incorporates the Aristotelian perspective, distinguishing between sensible knowledge and intellectual knowledge, utilizing the mental tool of abstraction. Both philosophers and theologians use reason, but theologians also accept the principles of authority, faith, and divine revelation.

Faith and Theology

Theology and philosophy cannot contradict each other,...

What If Everyone Did It? (Immanuel Kant)

• If you help because it hurts you, it is not a moral action.
• Morality depends on what you do and why you do it.
• You should never lie.
• We all have an absolute duty to tell the truth → Categorical imperative (order).
• We act on the basis of “maxims”. For something to be moral, it must be applicable to everyone (maxims applicable in all cases).
• Always ask yourself the question of what if everyone did it?

Such Practice (Jeremy Bentham)

• Panopticon (a machine to make rogues honest).
• Utilitarianism or the Principle of Greatest Happiness → It consists of the idea that what is correct is what produces the greatest happiness.
• Happiness is pleasure and absence of pain. We seek pleasurable experiences and avoid painful

What is Epistemology?

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies knowledge and how we understand reality. This document delves into the main questions philosophers have asked about human knowledge, focusing on our two primary cognitive faculties: reason and the senses.

Key Areas of Epistemological Inquiry

• Methods proposed to guarantee rigorous and trustworthy acquisition of knowledge.
• The objective of all knowledge: truth. What is truth, and what criteria have been proposed for identifying it?
• Philosophical theories that question whether human knowledge is limited or limitless.

Cognitive Faculties: Reason and the Senses

Reason and the senses are the two main instruments we use to experience reality. Our senses allow us to be aware of our...

Liberalism:

Individuals should have freedom to live their lives as they see fit. It is an idealist ideology, they know what is best for them. Choose what's best for you even though it isn't.

Strength:

Humans do best when allowed to make their own decisions, no one is able to say in certainty what is best for us, only I know what is best for me, humans are fallible.

Weakness:

Individual freedom may be an illusion since we are not as free as we might like to think. Many people are manipulated by corporate and government interests. Advertising.

Socialism:

Workers control the means of production and distribute profits according to need. Critical response to capitalism, tries to solve the unfair situation of the employees.

Strengths:

A fair distribution...

Pre-Conventional Morality

The pre-conventional level of moral reasoning is especially common in children, although adults can also exhibit this level of reasoning. Reasoners at this level judge the morality of an action by its direct consequences. The pre-conventional level consists of the first and second stages of moral development and is solely concerned with the self in an egocentric manner. A child with pre-conventional morality has not yet adopted or internalized society's conventions regarding what is right or wrong but instead focuses largely on external consequences that certain actions may bring.^[7][8][9]

Stage One: Obedience and Punishment Driven

In Stage one (obedience and punishment driven), individuals focus on the direct consequences...

Definitions

Nature: A term used in several ways: the essence or substance of being, regarded as a principle or origin of operations (in the nature of man is growing, talking, etc., not roasted fly), all external things as opposed the subject's interiority, the world itself as everything tidy and created by God.

Cosmos: The world as an orderly universe. It opposes Chaos, which, according to the ancients, preceded it.

Environment: Everything that affects a living being's circumstances and the special conditions of the life of people or society.

Culture: In one sense, culture refers to the potentialities and personality of a human (to be a cultured, educated human). In another, it is the higher feature set of a people, period, or civilization. In...

Alienation and Disposition

Alienation or disposition is the phenomenon of eliminating personality, depriving the individual of their personality, or breaking an individual's personality, controlling and overriding their free will to make the person dependent, dictated by another person or organization. The alienated person stays within themselves, absorbed by their social disorientation. It is a process that can be self-induced.

Theocentrism

Theocentrism is the doctrine that God is the center of the universe, all things were created by Him, are directed by Him, and there is no reason to desire anything other than the will of God.

Humanism

Humanism is an intellectual, philological, and philosophical movement closely linked to Europe's cultural Renaissance,...