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

Understanding Reason, Knowledge, and Truth

Reason: Practical and Theoretical Rationality: Reason can be understood as the power and the act of explaining something. Theoretical reason is oriented toward the contemplation of the world, that is, to the knowledge of reality. Practical reason, according to Kant, guides action, leading us to a moral idea.

Philosophy and Theoretical Rationality

Philosophy uses theoretical knowledge about reality and truth with the greatest possible rigor. However, unraveling reality requires specifying how we truly know it.

Metaphysical Knowledge

Metaphysical knowledge aims to go beyond scientific explanations. For example, science might discover the human genome, but metaphysics asks if we can reduce ourselves to our... Continue reading "Understanding Reason, Knowledge, and Truth: A Philosophical Analysis" »

Procedural ethics emerged in the 1970s. It shares similarities with deontological ethics, such as Kantian ethics, but differs in its approach. Unlike Kant, it posits that it is not a single person who must determine if a rule can be universalized, but rather those affected by it, using rational approaches. This is the foundation of discourse ethics, as developed by Apel and Habermas.

The starting point of discourse ethics is the recognition that people debate standards, and we seek to identify which ones are morally right. There are two distinct attitudes:

• Acting sicut without any desire to ascertain if the rule is correct.
• Taking the dialogue seriously, because we care about the problem and want to know if we can understand.

The first attitude... Continue reading "Discourse Ethics: Principles and Application" »

Mature vs. Immature Personality Traits

Immature Characteristics

• Inability to see and accept their mistakes: Proud, arrogant, does not mind being alone.
• Antisocial: Not adapted to social norms and society.
• Criticizes everyone and everything: Is a plaintive, unhappy, conflictive person.
• Does not provide adequate and lasting emotional bonds.
• Impulsivity: Passes the decision to act without reason; the unconscious dominates.
• Inability to learn from experience: Inability to learn lessons from their failures and modify their behavior.
• Irresponsible: Does not stay in any job.
• Sexuality is driven by promiscuity: Impersonality in the relationship and the difficulty of integrating sex and love (inability to love).
• Contempt for truth and spirituality: Their state

Possibilities of Knowledge

The most radical question presented by knowledge is your chance. Six types of response:

• Dogmatism: Expresses the naive attitude of those who are sure of knowing.
• Skepticism: Considers it impossible to obtain reliable knowledge, never accepting something as true. There are several types:
  1. Radical skepticism
  2. Moderate skepticism: This has two areas of human knowledge:
     • Statements expressing relations of ideas
     • Statements that express external issues and real existence
• Subjectivism and Relativism: Subjectivism finds that what is true depends on each subject. Relativism means recognizing something as true or false depends on the culture or time.
• Pragmatism: Identifies the true with the useful.
• Criticism: An intermediate position between

Aristotle's Virtue Ethics

Achieving Happiness Through Reason and Moderation

It is not enough to know good practice. Virtue is to know, to look for, deliberate on ways to achieve it, choose between them, and have the will to act decisively. It consists of a mean between two extremes.

As I said before, happiness is to do what is proper to human intellectual activity. But we are not only intellect; we have sensitive appetites, so there are two kinds of virtues:

• Dianoetic: arising from the habit of reasoning, such as prudence, science, etc.
• Moral: arising from the habit of guiding passions; meet but do not allow us to move them.

Rational control of passions leads us to stay in the middle ground. There are irrational governing forces in the soul, such... Continue reading "Aristotle's Virtue Ethics: Achieving Happiness Through Reason and Moderation" »

1. Cosmological Period (6th Century BC)

Western philosophy began in the Greek colonies of Ionia and Magna Graecia. Early philosophers like Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus sought rational explanations for the cosmos.

2. Anthropological Turn

Focus shifted from nature to humans and society, exploring ethics and political issues.

3. The Sophists (5th Century BC)

Professional teachers from various regions came to Athens. Notable Sophists include:

• Protagoras of Abdera: Advocated relativism, stating "Man is the measure of all things."
• Gorgias of Leontini: Argued for radical skepticism, denying the possibility of being, knowledge, and communication.

They focused on rhetoric and persuasion, criticized... Continue reading "Evolution of Western Philosophy: From Cosmos to Socrates" »

Philosophy

Philosophy is an activity that involves thinking and reasoning about concepts and ideas. Philosophical activity is initiated, therefore, by asking questions about concepts. To answer, the philosopher defends or criticizes a thesis using arguments or reasoning. The term "philosophy" means love of wisdom.

The issues raised by philosophy fall into two types: questions about how the world is and how we know it, and issues that address the question of living well in the world and about human behavior.

• Theoretical philosophy is based on reality and knowledge of the world.
• Practical philosophy focuses on human action and moral conduct.

Questions About Reality

Natural phenomena, such as lightning, eclipses, earthquakes, etc., have constantly been... Continue reading "Philosophy: Understanding Reality and Human Action" »

San Anselmo: Faith, Reason, and God

1.1 Ser = Think. This concept belongs to the Presocratics, who are rationalists. The first is Parmenides, for whom both terms are equal, and this underpins all the Presocratics (less critical). For Ockham, the problem is not the existence of God, but the essence of this naming. St. Thomas Aquinas believed that you cannot know God's essence because we would have to be God to know this. According to San Anselmo, that in which nothing greater can be conceived must exist not only in thought but also in reality, for something to reach perfection it must be real. A being that only exists in the mind will be less perfect than another that does so in reality. Ockham defended the justification of reality, stating that... Continue reading "San Anselmo: Faith, Reason, and the Existence of God" »

**Enable and Rehabilitate**

Enable: To make a person fit for something they were not previously capable of. It is the process by which a subject acquires a new function.

Rehabilitate: The process by which a subject retrieves a lost function.

**Special Education**

Special education serves students who do not benefit from regular education systems and require specialized methodologies to achieve learning. It requires a multidisciplinary curriculum, special and differential methods (motor, sensory, intellectual, social, or multi-deficit), and a multidisciplinary support team.

**Education**

Education plays a critical role in the community. It is inherent in the continued existence and lifestyle, performed by a sum of cultural processes of assimilation... Continue reading "Special Education and Rehabilitation: Key Concepts" »

Key Concepts in Anthropology

Man vs. Person

Man: Refers to the human animal, focusing on the human body.

Person: Refers to a man living in a civilized society, engaging in complex social roles. Not all men are considered persons. A person is a subject operating with a persona. A person may cease to be when they no longer exert social roles, such as in death. Animals die, and people die; the distinction lies in the social roles.

When a person uses a basic language, they can communicate with themselves. Through language, a person can plan, but the man knows how to act on the plans, becoming both an individual.

Citizen

A man living in a nation with a state, laws, rights, and obligations. Citizens are not necessarily global; a baby is a citizen from... Continue reading "Understanding Key Concepts in Anthropology" »