Tools for Young Philosophers: The Elements of Philosophy

Tools for Young Philosophers

The Elements of Philosophy

Paul Timothy Jensen

Tools for Young Philosophers

The Elements of Philosophy

Copyright © 2011 P. T. Jensen. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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To the memory of Louis Frederick Jensen Soldier, Husband, Pastor, Father, Missionary, Friend Life-long student and lover of books and ideas

Preface

The liberal arts liberate our minds and the humanities humanize us. Philosophy, as part of the liberal arts and as one of the humanities, can do both. The way to begin your liberation and humanization is by learning the most basic philosophical concepts, a task less difficult than you might think. If you are an aspiring young philosopher or just curious about philosophy, this book will give you a jump start. In about three hours of reading time, you will become familiar with the most basic building blocks of philosophy and will become acquainted with twelve of the most influential philosophers in western history. To make the information as memorable as possible, many of the terms are arranged in pairs so that you get two for the price of one and can quickly grasp how they are related.

Philosophers use many other terms in addition to those explained in this book, but if you don’t learn the most basic ones you will miss interesting and important things written by them over the past twenty-five hundred years. Other disciplines in the humanities use many of the same terms, and so by mastering them you will also obtain tools for understanding historians, sociologists, psychologists, economists, and political scientists. You may even acquire the ability to articulate your own agreement or disagreement with what you have read, and that would indicate that you are making major strides in being humanized and liberated.

I hope you find yourself asking questions as you read. If you are a college student, take your questions first to your professors who are being paid to encourage you to formulate and think about hard questions. But you should also feel free to contact me at PJensen@dbq.edu.

Acknowledgments

David Hill at Augustana College, Roman Ciapalo at Loras College, and Roger Ebertz at the University of Dubuque gave me my first, second, and third opportunities to teach philosophy to undergraduates. I am deeply grateful to each of them for permitting me to do what, next to being a husband and father, I love best. During the past twenty or so years of teaching, I have also learned a great deal from the many hundreds of students who have listened to lectures, entered into class discussions, and studied for exams—my sincere thanks to each of them.

Matt Jensen read the entire manuscript and Ben Jensen read a portion of it. Both made serious suggestions for improving clarity, some of which I initially resisted, but all of which I eventually acknowledged to be improvements and so incorporated. My thanks also to Rachel Jensen, and to my wife Sharon, for their love and encouragement.

1

Science and Philosophy

Nearly six centuries before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, Thales of Miletus (born c. 624 BC) gained fame in the Greek world by making an extraordinary prediction. The ancient historian Herodotus claimed that The Ionians received a prediction of (an) eclipse from Thales of Miletus, who had determined that this was the year in which an eclipse would occur. ¹ In the twenty-first century, predicting a solar eclipse would fall within the jurisdiction of science not philosophy; nevertheless, when Thales’ prediction came true, he gained the designation of being the first philosopher, not the first scientist. The reason for this curious fact is that during most of the past two thousand five hundred years, all human knowledge was part of philosophy. ²

The distinction between science as we know it and philosophy is recent. The Latin root of the English word science is scire, which means to know. During the Middle Ages, any specific body of knowledge, even theology, was called a science. What today we call science was known in the Middle Ages as natural philosophy, and this explains why a person in the twenty-first century who earns a terminal degree in biology, chemistry, or physics is awarded a doctor of philosophy degree (PhD).³

Science in the modern sense can be distinguished from philosophy by considering the difference between a scientific question and a philosophical question. A scientific question can only be answered by some kind of human observation, whereas, . . . a philosopher’s job is to find out things about the world by thinking rather than observing.⁴

With this in mind, the following questions are scientific:

1. What is the atomic weight of hydrogen?

2. What is the speed of light?

3. What effect will a change in the price of gasoline have on consumption?

Question (1) is from the science of chemistry, question (2) is from physics, and question (3) is from economics, one of the social sciences. Unless you make observations about the natural world, these questions can’t be answered. Of course, modern scientists must think in order to answer these questions, but no amount of thinking alone will provide accurate answers.

The following questions are philosophical:

4. Is torture always wrong?

5. Is a person responsible for her action if she did what she wanted to do?

6. If p implies q and q is, in fact, false, does it follow with necessity that p is also false?

Question (4) is from moral philosophy or ethics, question (5) is from metaphysics, and question (6) is from logic. Observing the natural world won’t answer these questions. Of course, philosophers must know what torture is in order to give a sensible answer to question (4), but it makes no sense to suppose they must observe thirty acts of torture under controlled circumstances to determine the wrongness of torture. Similarly, (5) requires that philosophers grasp the difference between a voluntary human action (e.g., pulling the trigger of a gun) and an involuntary motion of the body (e.g., the beating of a heart). It also requires an understanding of the meaning of the word responsible (say, to be rightly praised or blamed) and all this results from prior experience or education. But the question itself can’t be answered by making observations; it can only be answered by thinking.

The priority of thinking over observation is not unique to philosophy. It applies to mathematics as well, but mathematicians use symbols and numerals to think about quantities and their relations (adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing), whereas philosophers use concepts and propositions to think about matters important to human well-being that aren’t accessible to experiment and observation (rightness, responsibility, necessity, beliefs, truth, and the like).

1. Herodotus, The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, 1.74.2, 42. This solar eclipse has been dated to May 23, 585 BC.

2. Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Vol. 1, 23. He was the first to receive the name of Sage, in the archonship of Damasias at Athens, when the term was applied to all the Seven Sages . . .

3. The D in PhD refers to the word doctor, which in Latin means teacher, and the Ph refers to the word philosophy, which in Greek means love of wisdom.

4. Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 402. Russell makes this comment in the course of his discussion of Anselm’s ontological argument for God’s existence. See 7.5 Anselm.

2

Logic

You possess the mental ability to infer one proposition from another. From the proposition Jack is a father , you infer that Jack is a male and that Jack has children . This ability—call it the power of logical inference—distinguishes you from even the higher primates and has at least three components.

First, humans have the power to conceive as well as perceive. Chimpanzees, our close animal relatives, are able to perceive (colors, sounds, smells, etc.), but there is no reason to think they can conceive (form concepts and discern meaning, etc.). The distinction may be illustrated by the difference between hearing a loud sound and understanding the concepts of sound or loudness.

Second, you have the power to formulate propositions. A chimp may sense that danger is near when it hears a sound, but cannot formulate the proposition I hear the sound of a gun or the proposition Danger is near. This is because, unlike the human brain, the chimp brain does not generate language.

Third, when the powers of conceiving and formulating propositions are combined, the ability to infer one proposition from another emerges. You and a chimp may both hear the sound of a gun and run away in fright, but only you will be able to explain later that the reason you knew you were in danger was because you heard the sound of a gun. Giving an explanation requires the power of logic. You must conceive of the concepts danger and gun, then correctly place them within propositions, and, finally, assert that because one proposition is true another one is also true. I heard a gun, so, I knew I was in danger.

Making an inference or drawing a conclusion is the central feature of logic. This power develops as you mature intellectually, but almost everyone benefits from formal training. What follow are the most basic concepts and distinctions you need in