Study guide: Introduction to Philosophical Activity

📋 Course Outline

1. Philosophy and Its Methods
2. Philosophical Questions and Disciplines
3. Problems and Conceptual Analysis
4. Concepts, Terms, and Propositions
5. Types of Propositions
6. Formulating and Assessing Theories
7. Arguments and Their Reconstruction
8. Validity, Soundness, and Cogency
9. Fallacies and Counterarguments
10. Refuting Theories and Arguments

📖 1. Philosophy and Its Methods

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Philosophy: An investigative activity concerned with fundamental problems about the nature of reality, knowledge, and value.

📝 Essential Points

📌 Unlike empirical scientific problems, philosophical problems are not resolved through observation and experience, and unlike mathematical problems, they are not settled by formal proof; philosophers mainly use critical discussion and argument.

• Philosophical activity includes:
  • formulating problems
  • analyzing fundamental concepts
  • proposing theories
  • arguing for those theories
  • imagining possible objections

💡 Memory Hook

Science observes; mathematics proves formally; philosophy argues critically.

📖 2. Philosophical Questions and Disciplines

★ Must-know

• Philosophy is considered a conceptual a priori activity because its problems can be addressed by thought alone, although some philosophical inquiry uses empirical information supplied by the sciences.

• The named disciplines and their subjects are:

  • metaphysics: reality
  • epistemology: knowledge
  • axiology: values
  • ethics: correct action

Further detail

• To decide how to act concerning pain, philosophers may need empirical information about which kinds of creatures can feel pain, while investigating nervous systems and pain mechanisms belongs to empirical research.

📖 3. Problems and Conceptual Analysis

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Explicit definition: A statement of the properties shared by everything to which a concept applies, giving necessary and sufficient conditions for applying it correctly.
• Characterization: A presentation of some properties shared by things to which a concept applies without giving a rigorous, exhaustive definition.

📝 Essential Points

• A central philosophical competence is formulating problems adequately and clarifying their content and relevance.

📖 4. Concepts, Terms, and Propositions

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Concept: A concept is an idea expressed by one or more terms; different terms can express the same concept, as “porta-minas” and “lapiseira” do in the source, and one ambiguous term can express more than one concept, as “bank” can mean a seat or a financial institution.
• Proposition: A thought that is literally expressed by a declarative sentence and is capable of being true or false.

★ Must-know

📌 Only non-absurd declarative sentences express propositions; interrogative, exclamatory, and imperative sentences do not express truth-evaluable content.

Further detail

• Different sentences can express the same proposition, while one ambiguous sentence can express different propositions; the course illustrates ambiguity with “The students only consult books in the library.”

• “Green ideas sleep furiously” is declarative but absurd, so it does not express a proposition according to the course.

💡 Memory Hook

A term expresses a concept; a declarative sentence expresses a proposition.

📖 5. Types of Propositions

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Categorical proposition: A categorical proposition affirms or denies something absolutely and unconditionally, attributing a predicate P to a subject S and having the underlying form S is P.
• Conditional proposition: A proposition expressing an implication between propositions, with the underlying form “If P, then Q” or “P only if Q.”
• Biconditional proposition: A proposition of the form P if and only if Q, meaning that P implies Q and Q implies P, so each condition is necessary and sufficient for the other.
• Antecedent: In a conditional “If P, then Q,” the proposition following “if.”
• Consequent: In a conditional “If P, then Q,” the proposition following “then.”

★ Must-know

📌 In “If P, then Q,” P is a sufficient condition for Q and Q is a necessary condition for P; “if” typically expresses sufficiency, while “only if” typically expresses necessity.

• Categorical propositions are classified by:
  • affirmative quality
  • negative quality
  • universal quantity
  • particular quantity
  • singular quantity

Further detail

• The course's categorical examples are “All boys play Fortnite” (universal affirmative), “No boy plays Fortnite” (universal negative), “Some boys play Fortnite” (particular affirmative), “Not all boys play Fortnite” (particular negative), “Fortnite is cool” (singular affirmative), and “Fortnite is not cool” (singular negative).

• Being Portuguese is sufficient for being European, while being European is necessary but not sufficient for being Portuguese.

• The course gives “Something is water if and only if it is H2O” as an example of a biconditional definition.

📖 6. Formulating and Assessing Theories

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Consistency: A set of propositions is consistent when all its propositions can be true simultaneously and inconsistent when they cannot all be true simultaneously.

★ Must-know

• Assess a theory by asking whether:
  • it answers the problem it intends to solve
  • it is consistent
  • it is more plausible than its alternatives

📌 Prefer theories with greater explanatory power, fewer unsupported complications or unresolved additional problems, and strong arguments in their favor; the preference for avoiding unnecessary complications is called the principle of parsimony.

• A philosophical theory or thesis is a proposed answer to a problem, and the idea underlying it is a proposition rather than merely the sentence used to express it.

Further detail

• For the free-will problem, the course lists three positions: no free will because everything is determined (radical determinism), free will and therefore not everything is determined (libertarianism), and free will despite everything being determined (moderate determinism).

• The claims that God exists, that evil exists in the world, and that God would not permit evil cannot all be true together, so at least one must be false.

📖 7. Arguments and Their Reconstruction

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Argument: A set of propositions in which one proposition, the conclusion, is supported or justified by the others, called premises.

★ Must-know

• Philosophers formulate, evaluate, and counter arguments, and they clarify or reconstruct arguments presented in a confused or disordered way.

• 🔄 Reconstruct an argument by: identifying its conclusion, identifying its premises, adding any legitimate implicit premise, writing numbered premises followed by the conclusion

Further detail

• “Because” typically indicates a premise, while “therefore” typically indicates a conclusion.

• The course reconstructs “God does not exist, since God would not allow evil” by making explicit the premises that if God exists there is no evil and that evil exists, followed by the conclusion that God does not exist.

💡 Memory Hook

Conclusion, premises, implicit premises, explicit layout.

📖 8. Validity, Soundness, and Cogency

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Validity: A property of an argument in which it is impossible or very improbable for the premises to be true and the conclusion false.
• Soundness: An argument that is valid and has true premises.
• Cogency: An argument that is sound and whose premises are more plausible or acceptable than its conclusion.

★ Must-know

📌 Truth is a property of propositions, while validity is a property of arguments and concerns the relation between the truth values and logical form of premises and conclusion.

Further detail

• The argument “If it rains, the ground gets wet; it rains; therefore the ground gets wet” is valid, while “If it rains, the ground gets wet; the ground is wet; therefore it rained” is invalid because the ground could have become wet for another reason.

• The argument “Donald Trump is Chinese; if Donald Trump is Chinese, Mount Everest is in the United States; therefore Mount Everest is in the United States” is valid in form but unsound because its premises are false.

• The argument “Socrates was a philosopher; therefore Socrates was a philosopher” is valid and sound but not cogent because its premise merely restates its conclusion rather than offering a more plausible basis for it.

💡 Memory Hook

Validity checks support; soundness adds true premises; cogency adds more plausible premises.

📖 9. Fallacies and Counterarguments

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Formal fallacy: A fallacy in which an argument seems valid but is invalid because of its form.
• Informal fallacy: A fallacy in which an argument seems sound and cogent but is not for a reason other than its form.

📖 10. Refuting Theories and Arguments

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Negation: The negation of a proposition reverses its truth value: if the proposition is true its negation is false, and if it is false its negation is true.

★ Must-know

• An argument supporting a theory can be challenged by: showing that it is invalid, giving a counterexample with true premises and a false conclusion, showing that at least one premise is false

• One way to challenge a theory is to construct an argument whose conclusion is the negation of that theory; a successful argument for the negation shows the theory false.

• A reductio ad absurdum assumes a theory and derives an absurd or unacceptable consequence, showing that the theory should be revised or rejected.

Further detail

• A counterexample to an argument can be constructed by describing a situation in which its premises are true and conclusion false, or by giving another argument with the same structure, true premises, and a false conclusion.