PHL 105Y Introduction to Philosophy

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PHL 105Y Introduction to Philosophy

• For next Mondays class, read the Weston book up
  to page 52
• No tutorials this Friday tutorials will begin
  Friday, September 24.
• If you are here for the first time, welcome. Take
  a syllabus from the desk at the front, as well as
  the reading assignment sheet. Read the syllabus
  carefully. You missed my Monday-morning rant
  about plagiarism (you lucky thing) but Im sure
  you can imagine how it went, and consider
  yourself advised. The most important piece of
  advice on the syllabus is to do the reading
  before coming to class.

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Dont take these powerpoint slides too seriously

• The slides are a mere starting point, a bare
  outline of questions we will consider they do
  not contain the contents of the lectures.
• If you do feel compelled to take them seriously,
  remember you dont have to write down everything
  you see on the screen
• The slides are posted (within a week) to the
  course website
• http//www.utm.utoronto.ca/jnagel/105.htm
• You are entitled and encouraged to use the
  computers in the Library. (Also try the
  Humanities Computer Lab, North Building 161)

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Rules for Arguments

• Our aim a brief survey of some techniques for
  analyzing the form of arguments
• A question how do arguments differ from other
  uses of language?

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Uses of language other than arguments

• Descriptions
• Commands
• Expletives/expressions of feeling
• Song lyrics? Sometimes
• Poetry? sometimes
• Recipes

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What is an argument?

• A sequence of premises aimed at establishing a
  conclusion

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What is an argument?

• A sequence of premises aimed at establishing a
  conclusion
• Ideally if you accept the premises, you should
  accept the conclusion

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What is an argument?

• A sequence of premises aimed at establishing a
  conclusion
• Ideally if you accept the premises, you should
  accept the conclusion
• Would perfectly rational beings engage in
  arguments with one another?
• Would perfectly rational and perfectly
  well-informed beings engage in arguments with
  each other?

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Westons rules

• Distinguish premises and conclusion
• Present your ideas in a natural order
• Start from reliable premises
• Be concrete and concise
• Avoid loaded language
• Use consistent terms
• Stick to one meaning for each term (avoid fallacy
  of equivocation)

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Westons rules, continued

• Arguments by example
• Give more than one example
• Use representative examples
• Background information is crucial
• Consider counterexamples
• Arguments by analogy
• Analogy requires a relevantly similar example

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Finding the conclusion of an argument

• There is no simple mechanical test you can apply
• If you are lucky, the conclusion will be marked
  with words like therefore, consequently or
  so
• Premises are sometimes marked with words like
  for, since, or because
• But you need to try to understand the passage to
  see what the conclusion is. Ask yourself what
  point is this author attempting to make?

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Hidden premises (and conclusions)

• Sometimes, premises of an argument may be left
  unsaid (especially where they are considered
  particularly obvious)
• Technical name for an argument with a suppressed
  premise enthymeme
• An enthymeme is not a fallacy (but it could be
  vulnerable to attack on the hidden premise it is
  useful to identify hidden premises when they
  might be controversial)

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Hidden premises

• Smoking causes cancer.
• Cancer shortens your life.
• Therefore, you should not smoke
• What is the hidden premise?
• Should it have been stated?

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Westons Rule 12, again

• Analogy requires a relevantly similar example.

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Sample Argument 1

• 1. Accustom yourself to believe that death is
  nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness,
  and death is the privation of all awareness
  therefore a right understanding that death is
  nothing to us makes the mortality of life
  enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited
  time, but by taking away the yearning after
  immortality. For life has no terror for those
  who thoroughly apprehend that there are no
  terrors for them in ceasing to live. Foolish,
  therefore, is the person who says that he fears
  death, not because it will pain when it comes,
  but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever
  causes no annoyance when it is present, causes
  only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death,
  therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to
  us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come,
  and, when death is come, we are not. It is
  nothing, then, either to the living or to the
  dead, for with the living it is not and the dead
  exist no longer.
• --Epicurus, letter to Menoeceus

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Sample Argument 2

• 2. But in the world, at one time people shun
  death as the greatest of all evils, and at
  another time choose it as a respite from the
  evils in life. The wise person does not deprecate
  life nor does he fear the cessation of life. The
  thought of life is no offense to him, nor is the
  cessation of life regarded as an evil. And even
  as people choose of food not merely and simply
  the larger portion, but the more pleasant, so the
  wise seek to enjoy the time which is most
  pleasant and not merely that which is longest.
• --Epicurus, letter to Menoeceus

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Sample Argument 3

• 3. How men, whose plentiful fortunes allow them
  leisure to improve their understandings, can
  satisfy themselves with a lazy ignorance, I
  cannot tell but methinks they have a low opinion
  of their souls, who lay out all their incomes in
  provisions for the body, and employ none of it to
  procure the means and helps of knowledge who
  take great care to appear always in a neat and
  splendid outside, and would think themselves
  miserable in coarse clothes, or a patched coat,
  and yet contentedly suffer their minds to appear
  abroad in a piebald livery of coarse patches and
  borrowed shreds, such as it has pleased chance,
  or their country tailor (I mean the common
  opinion of those they have conversed with) to
  clothe them in.
• --John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human
  Understanding 4.20.6

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Sample Argument 4

• 4. Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is
  young nor weary in the search thereof when he is
  grown old. For no age is too early or too late
  for the health of the soul. And to say that the
  season for studying philosophy has not yet come,
  or that it is past and gone, is like saying that
  the season for happiness is not yet or that it is
  now no more.
• --Epicurus, letter to Menoeceus

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Sample Argument 5

• 5. Throw several pieces of steel together,
  without shape or form they will never arrange
  themselves so as to compose a watch. Stone, and
  mortar, and wood, without an architect, never
  erect a house. But the ideas in a human mind, we
  see, by an unknown, inexplicable economy, arrange
  themselves so as to form the plan of a watch or
  house. Experience, therefore, proves, that there
  is an original principle of order in mind, not in
  matter.
• --David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural
  Religion

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Sample Argument 6

• 6. When reprisal comes as soon as possible after
  the event, it immediately bars the way against
  people who are strongly inclining towards making
  use of their badness while it is in full flow.
  For deferment of the debt of punishment is not
  only more debilitating to the injured partys
  hopes and more depressing than deferment of any
  other kind of debt, but it is also the best boost
  to the wrongdoers daring and audacity on the
  other hand, retaliation which wastes no time in
  challenging audacity not only deters future
  crimes, but is inherently also the greatest
  possible consolation to the victim.
• --Plutarch, On Gods slowness to Punish