1. Introduction to Philosophy

okay so this is an introduction to philosophy the meaning of the word philosophy is the love of wisdom or truth which comes from the Greek and there are three sections of philosophy that we're going to be studying in the OCR exam and the first section is epistemology which is the study of knowledge in other words what can we know and how can we know it there are two schools of thought within epistemology that you need to be aware of the first one is empiricism and persists claimant significant knowledge can only be gained by a sense

experience so that seems like observation touch and smell and our scholar primarily for empiricism at the beginning of the course will be Aristotle knowledge gained through sense experience is called a posteriori or empirical knowledge the evidence for this knowledge is called empirical evidence so how might an empiricist test the truth of the claim there is a chocolate muffin in the cupboard they reduce their senses so they might go and have a look in cupboard and see if there really is a chocolate muffin in the cupboard and if there is they would know that the claim

is correct the other school of thought is rationalism in our Russian let's claim that significant knowledge can be gained without sense experience that means through reason logic or innately from birth which is what Plato will be arguing our first scholar that we'll be looking at knowledge gained through reason is called a priori or innate knowledge a rational argument used to obtain this knowledge is called an a priori argument so for example we could discover whether the claim the chocolate flavored muffin has cocoa in it is true without using our senses we might start off with

the first premise a first claim that if something is chocolate flavored it has cocoa in it our second premise or our second way would be the muffin is chocolate flavored and our conclusion would follow logically from those two premises so if something is chocolate flavored it has cocoa in it the muffin is chocolate flavored therefore the conclusion is the muffin has cocoa in it the premises are true by definition and the conclusion follows logically from the premises this type of argument is called a deductive argument as the conclusion is deduced from the premises without the

use of any sense experience one of the more famous did of arguments and philosophy goes like this Socrates is a man all men are mortal therefore Socrates is mortal a deductive argument is valid if its conclusion follows logically from the premises so that's one thing to test to see if it's a good deductive argument and secondly the other thing to check is to see if the argument is sound a sound deductive argument is one that is valid so the conclusion follows logically from the premises but it is also one that has true claims or true

premises so if an argument has true premises and it is valid it is then a sound argument and this is what you're really looking for would do that two arguments you want them to be valid and to have true premises in other words to be sound and the second section of philosophy that we will be dealing with is that of ontology which is the study of existence in other words what sorts of things exist and we're going to be particularly looking at the existence of God there are two schools of thought within this that we

need to be aware of the first is materialism materialists claim that only physical extended that means space occupying things exist and say things like statues wax bodies trees etc and the other school of thought that we'll be looking at is dualism now journalists claim that both physical and non-physical things exist so things like God own Souls and our scholar to begin with for that will be Plato whereas art materialist scholar is Aristotle to begin with and the last area of philosophy that we'll be looking at is metaphysic metaphysics is the study of the structure of

reality how is reality put together how is it structured we will be looking at nominalism normal s plane that particulars concrete entities that is exist so things in our normal life that we are used to seeing and touching like this red pen or that red rose each particular is unique that shares common properties with other particulars so for example this individual muffin bear that individual muffin over there and they are both brown they share the common property of being brown whereas the other school of thought which is realism claims that not only do those concrete

particulars exist but there are also really existing universals or abstract entities such as redness rosiness hilarity and they have a real existence particulars are said to instantiate partake in participate in or possess the various universals to differing degrees or not to say for example the muffin instantiates the universal brownness and it also instantiates the universal muffin as' the universal muffin s being a muffin is instantiated by all of the muffins whereas the universal brow nurse being brown is only instantiated by some of the particular muffins and to differing degrees so some of the muffins are

browner and therefore instantiate brownness better than other muffins which are less brown or not brown at all each Universal is unique but is instantiated or possessed by on many different particulars so for example many things instantiate the universal redness a red rose a red crab a red fire engine and so on anomalous scholarship gimmick will be Aristotle and are realistic honor to a gimmick albeit Plato this video has been brought to you by just education thank you for watching and please subscribe to find out more