Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and problems for Philosophy and ethics

Authoritarian

Expecting others to obey rules completely.

Demanding

Needing a lot of your time and energy.

Consensual

Involving the agreement of most people in a group; democratic.

Coaching

Giving training or advice for a specific job or task.

Mentoring

Advising and helping someone more generally over a longer time period.

Empowerment

Giving control over decisions to other people.

Liaison

Exchange of information between people so that they work well together.

Hierarchical

Where people and jobs are divided into many levels of importance.

Proactive

Taking action before it's needed, rather than waiting until problems develop.

Qualities

Part of your character and personality, often present at birth or developed early in life. Hard to change.

Skills

Can be developed...

The Problem of Induction

Inductive reasoning goes from the particular to the general, from the observed to the unobserved.

Practical Problems

• How many observations are enough?
• Even well-confirmed hypotheses can later turn out to be wrong.
• Most scientists believe they really are discovering the fundamental laws of the universe, yet we have observed only a minute fraction of the universe.

Theoretical Problem

Science is supposed to be an empirical discipline that makes no claims beyond what is observed. However, this would stop any hypothesis from going from the particular to the general.

Key Thinkers and Scientific Method

Karl Popper (1902-94)

Rejected theories that tried to explain everything.

Alfred Adler (1870-1937)

Believed that human beings are dominated...

Symbolism in Literature

Symbolism in literature was a complex movement that extended the evocative power of words to express the feelings, sensations, and states of mind that lie beyond everyday awareness.

Charles Baudelaire and Open-Ended Symbols

Charles Baudelaire created open-ended symbols. He brought the invisible into being through the visible and linked the invisible through other sensory perceptions, notably smell and sound.

A symbol is a keyhole to a different world, giving way to ambitions.

Poets focused on their inner life. They explored strange cults and countries. They wrote in allusive, enigmatic, musical, and ambiguous styles.

W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) and Irish Literature

W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) - Irish literature

• On Baile's Strand (1903)

The Unmoved Mover and Pure Act

For Aristotle, if something is moving, it is because the movement was previously in potentiality, and it was another substance that communicated it into actuality. The chain of things that move and are moved cannot be infinite. Therefore, the existence of a first mover is necessary—one that moves without being moved itself: the Unmoved Mover.

The Concept of Potentiality and Actuality

This concept is reached by considering the Mover as a pure form, already realized as Actus Purus (Pure Act). The substrate is the realm of possibility. Aristotle called this conceptual substrate First Matter, which is pure potentiality, pure plasticity without specific form or concretion.

If we place First Matter at one end of the explanatory...

Descartes' Proofs for God's Existence

René Descartes, starting from the doubt in his own mind, which indicates imperfection, raises questions about the origin of the idea of perfection within him. He doubts everything except his own existence, recognizing his imperfection. Thus, since this idea cannot come from nothing or from himself (being imperfect), Descartes concludes that it must come from a perfect being, God, who has "put us in as the seal of the architect."

The Argument from the Idea of Perfection

This is the first demonstration of God's existence: the idea of perfection must be given by a perfect being. Since we, as imperfect beings, possess this idea but do not embody perfection, the idea must originate from God.

God as Guarantor of

Nietzsche's Critique: Master Morality and the Death of God

Friedrich Nietzsche identifies two types of men and corresponding moralities:

• Gentlemen: In which active forces are imposed on the reactive. They possess natural moral values that promote life.
• Slaves: The opposite case. They possess a moral resentment opposing values to life.

Before Socrates, culture was Dionysian and possessed an aristocratic morality. But since Plato and Christianity, morality has become Apollonian, where slaves were led to believe the gentlemen that their values are defects. European culture is a nihilist culture, hating values that support life. As a result, God is dead; there are no spiritual values respected by society.

Christianity, Nietzsche argues, rejects all...

Nietzsche on the Body

According to traditional philosophers, human beings have a body, but are not a body. Plato or Descartes' concept of the "soul" subsumes all human reality. This is a consequence of their way of valuing: the senses deceive us (by showing becoming as real) and, consequently, everything sensible, like the body, acquires a negative connotation.

On the other hand, the body is related to the passions, to the irrational, and to pleasure—that is, to all those vital values to which the Western tradition has declared hostility.

For Nietzsche, radically opposing such a decadent way of assessing and interpreting the ontological structure of man, man is none other than a living body. The body is the being of man, his own integrity:

"I

Nietzsche vs. Kant: A Philosophical Comparison

Metaphysics

Kant argued that metaphysics isn't a science because it doesn't meet material conditions, yet it remains relevant due to humanity's inherent moral inclination towards it. Nietzsche countered that morality itself fuels false metaphysics, with humans creating it to bear life under a veil of lies.

Human Nature

Kant viewed humans as both phenomena and noumena, shaped by animality, humanity, and personality. He believed that while animality represents a selfish, unsocial being, humanity and personality drive ethical and social development. Nietzsche, however, saw the noumenal reality of humans as a fabrication. He posited that humans are intermediaries between animals and the Übermensch (Superman)...

Kant's Doctrine of Judgments: Universality and Necessity

Kant examines how judgments can possess the characteristics of universality and necessity, similar to those found in physical science and analytical, non-mathematical sciences. He proposes a nuanced division based on:

• The inherent (or non-inherent) relationship between subject and predicate.
• The origin of the judgment.

Based on these criteria, Kant distinguishes between analytic and synthetic judgments:

• Analytic Judgments: The predicate is already contained within the subject.
• Synthetic Judgments: The predicate is *not* contained within the subject.

Examples:

• Analytic Judgment (A Priori): "All bodies are extended." (Extension is inherent to the concept of a body). "The whole is greater than the