"Philosophy is concerned with the justification of basic human beliefs and with the analysis of the concepts in terms of which those beliefs are expressed."According to this definition, philosophy involves two central tasks:
(1) Analysis of Fundamental Concepts;
(2) Inquiry into the Justification of Basic Beliefs.
Many philosophers would, however, also add either or both of the following tasks:
(3) The Discovery of Necessary Truths
This activity is closely related to that of analysis, as it concerns the relationships between fundamental concepts: philosophers attempt to establish truths involving those concepts that could not be otherwise, that are necessary. Some examples:
1. In science fiction stories - such as The Terminator - people sometimes travel backwards into the past. Many philosophers have been interested in how the concept of causation is related to the idea of being earlier than, and some have claimed that it is logically impossible for a cause to be later than its effect. If this is right, then time travel is impossible, since time travel involves causes which occur later than their effects. (The person who travels back into the past remembers events that happen later on, in the future, so those later events are causes of the memories he has at the earlier time in the past.)
2. How is the concept of the mind related to the concept of physical objects and events? Is it logically possible - as many philosophers and scientists today claim - that the mind is just the brain, and that consciousness is just a neural process? Or is it logically impossible, as other philosophers have claimed, for the mental to be identical with anything physical?
(4) The Development of a Systematic Overview - a Synoptic View - of Reality as a Whole
What is involved in this fourth activity? The basic goal here is to arrive at a picture of reality as a whole that is both comprehensive and plausible. Doing this may turn out to be considerably more difficult than one would initially think. For it may turn out that some of the things that one believes do not cohere very well with other things that one believes. There may even be, or appear to be, outright inconsistencies.
One Illustration: The Nature of the Mind, and its Place in Reality
Consider physics. Its goal is to provide a complete account of physical reality - including both all of the fundamental particles and forces that make up the physical world, and all of the laws that govern the those forces, and the interactions of fundamental particles. But how does the mind fit into this picture? Is it something more, something non-physical? If it is, does it act upon the physical world? Do particles in my brain behave differently because of the causal impact of my mind upon those particles? If so, then physics is not the complete story about the behavior of the things, such as electrons, that make up the physical world? So isn't there a serious tension, at the very least, between what physicists tell us about the physical world, and beliefs that most of us have about ourselves?
Another Illustration: Human Freedom and Moral Responsibility, and the Determinism of Newtonian Physics
In some cases, there may be more than tension:
beliefs in different areas may be, or at least appear to be, inconsistent
with one another. As an illustration, suppose that one were living
in the previous century. On the one hand, one would be confronted
with a very remarkable scientific achievement - Newtonian physics - that
explained an extraordinary range of phenomena, and that did so very, very
precisely. Newtonian physics is, however, completely deterministic:
given the positions and the velocities of every fundamental particle at
some specific time, the positions and the velocities of everything at any
other time follows in virtue of the laws of Newtonian physics. But
on the other hand, you might also have been strongly inclined to believe
that you were free in a significant way - so that you had the power, for
example, either to hold on to the pen that you're now holding for another
ten seconds, or to let it go instead. But if Newtonian physics were
true, could you be free in that way? Could you have the power freely
to choose to do either of those things?
There are various ways of attempting to resolve this inconsistency,
or apparent inconsistency. One is to say that there is not really
any inconsistency, on the grounds that when the term "free" is correctly
analyzed, it turns out that freedom is perfectly compatible with complete
determinism. But another way is to give up one of the beliefs in
question: either one could conclude that Newtonian physics is at best an
approximation to the truth, and that the truth about the physical world
is that it is not completely deterministic - a conclusion that would receive
support if one moved from the 19th century into the early part of 20th
century, when quantum mechanics was developed. Alternatively, one
could conclude instead that freedom is really an illusion that arises because
one is not aware of the very small events - namely, events in one's brain
- that cause one's behavior, and that in fact one is not really free.
(1) There is the analysis of fundamental epistemological concepts. Of those concepts, the most obvious is the concept of knowledge itself. But it turns out that there are other concepts that are important as one investigates various problems. Especially important for many later discussions in this class will be the related concepts of (a) a belief that is inferred from another belief, and (b) a belief's being inferentially justified, or being a case of inferential knowledge. Other important concepts include: (i) absolute certainty; (ii) degrees of belief; (iii) subjunctive conditionals, or counterfactual statements.
(2) Secondly, there is the analysis of different types of statements, such as: (a) statements about physical objects; (b) statements about other minds and their mental states - beliefs, desires, sensations, experiences, etc.; and (c) statements about the past, and about the future.
Why is analysis of such statements
important? The reason is that questions of analysis interact with
questions of justification. Thus, for example, what account one gives
of the justification of beliefs about physical objects, or of beliefs about
other minds, turns out to depend crucially upon what the correct account
is of the meaning of statements about physical objects, and about other
minds, respectively.
(1) Can one have knowledge - or at least justified beliefs - that various things are the case? For example, can one know that there are physical objects, that there are other minds, that certain things happened in the past, or that other things will happen in the future?
(2) If one can have such knowledge, or if one is justified in believing certain things, what account is to be given of how it is that one has the knowledge, or of what exactly the justification is?It may well be, however, that though one can raise these two separate questions - the question of whether one is justified, and the question of precisely what the justification is - that there is really only a single task here, since it may well be that the only way of answering the first question is by answering the second - that is, it may be that the only way that one can show, for example, that one is justified in believing that there are other minds is by defending some specific, positive account of how beliefs about other minds can be justified. (This is my own view. Some philosophers hold, however, that the burden of proof is upon the skeptic in these areas, and that unless the skeptic can offer some convincing reason for accepting skepticism, then one is justified in rejecting it. If this view of matters were correct, then one might well be able to answer the first question without answering the second, since if one could show that the skeptic's arguments were unsound, one would have shown that our ordinary beliefs were justified, and showing that the skeptic's arguments were unsound might not require any positive account of the justification of the beliefs in question.
1. These notes will be primarily concerned, first, with the analysis of fundamental epistemological concepts - such as the concepts of knowledge, and inference; secondly, with skeptical challenges to claims to knowledge and justified belief in a variety of areas - such as knowledge of the external world, knowledge of other minds, knowledge of the past, and knowledge of general laws of nature; and thirdly, with the different types of alternative accounts that can be offered of the justification of one's beliefs in various areas.
2. There are, however, other sorts of knowledge claims that people advance - concerning, for example: various religious questions, such as that of the existence of God; questions in ethics, about what actions are right or wrong, and what things are good or bad; questions in aesthetics, concerning the value of different works of art. These are interesting and important questions. They are not, however, questions that will be covered here. An investigation of these and other claims to knowledge in controversial areas call for specialized discussions.
This is not to say, however,
that an understanding of the ways one can attempt to justify beliefs in
areas that - leaving aside for the moment skeptical challenges - are relatively
uncontroversial - is irrelevant to claims in more controversial areas.
On the contrary, it seems to me that familiarity with the issues that arise
in the more mundane areas of perceptual knowledge, knowledge of other minds,
knowledge of the past, etc. can prove invaluable when one comes to examine
knowledge claims in other, much more controversial areas - such as religion,
ethics, and aesthetics.