FeynPhilosophy - Sapere aude!

Starting your philosophical journey can be a daunting task. Philosophy books rely on 2500 years of tradition, use words and concepts in weird ways and contain complex argumentations. Having studied philosophy for 3 years already, I can confirm that this is definitely true. Philosophy doesn’t have to be this complex. There are classical philosophical texts that are easy and provide a great entry point to philosophy. For those who are just starting on their philosophical journey, here are five classic works that are beginner-friendly, readable and still insightful. 5. The Art of Being Right – Arthur Schopenhauer Schopenhauer’s The Art of Being Right is a witty and satirical guide to winning arguments, regardless of truth. This short book examines everyday argumentation and shows the importance of spotting bad arguments. This book is meant to be more playful than serious as it outlines 38 tricks you can use and recognise in everyday debates and arguments.  This is one of the first p...

Is the world around us real? Do physical things truly exist? This question seems absurd, but it plays a fundamental role in Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy , specifically the Sixth Meditation. His goal? To find a foundation of knowledge that is absolutely certain. Why question physical reality? This question is born in the search for indubitable foundations of knowledge. The hyperbolic and methodological doubt of Descartes has put into question the existence of physical things. He imagined the possibility that everything he experiences could be a dream or a deception by an evil demon. However, if physical things do not exist, we need to acknowledge that physics, astronomy, and all other sciences with physical things as their objects are doubtful.  Descartes’ scepticism has led him to conclude one thing for certain: “ I am, I exist ” (often known by the slightly different formulation cogito, ergo sum ). That’s not enough! Descartes also wants to rebuild all knowledge on t...

Philosophers are seekers of truth. They are supposed to love wisdom and, by extension, love truth. It seems only logical that any philosopher should ask the question , What is truth? Surprisingly, Kant argues that this question might not even make sense in the first place. In The Critique of Pure Reason , Kant tackles the problem of truth in the third section of his Introduction to Transcendental Logic , titled “On the Division of General Logic into Analytic and Dialectic”. His conclusion: there is no universal and sufficient criterion of truth because such a criterion is inherently contradictory. The sceptics’ challenge Kant wants to critique the sceptics who used to challenge logicians by demanding, “What is truth?” The logicians of Kant's time studied Aristotle's Organon , in which Aristotle exposed his system of formal logic. This logic studies the correctness of thinking and uses true and false propositions. Because logicians constantly talk about true propositions, the s...

Good philosophers provide new solutions to problems. Great philosophers provide new problems that demand solutions. Kant indubitably falls into the second category. The leading question of the Critique of Pure Reason: how are synthetic a priori judgements possible? It is up to the introduction to pose this question and to properly explain the difference between synthetic and analytical judgements and the difference between a priori and a posteriori judgements. A good understanding of these two distinctions is essential to understanding the first critique.  Let us first understand what is meant by a judgement. All judgements have the same form: “subject is predicate”. The subject is what we talk about; the predicate is what is said about the subject. Take, for example, the judgement “this dog is black”. In this judgement “this dog” is the subject; we are talking about this dog. “Black” is the predicate of this judgement; we add the property of being black to the dog. Kant distinguis...

Is metaphysics a science? This question is answered by Kant in the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason . The goal of the preface is to explore whether metaphysics, at the time Kant is writing, is a science, whether it can be a science and what would be needed for metaphysics to be a science. In order to understand what Kant has to say about metaphysics, let’s first understand what metaphysics is! Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that asks big questions about things that go further than our experience alone. These questions cannot be answered by science. For example, in the time of Kant, metaphysicians were mainly working on 4 questions: Does God exist? What is a soul? Do we have freedom? What is being? This branch of philosophy dates back to Aristotle and his work  Metaphysics,  even though Aristotle did not name this work himself. In this work Aristotle seeks a science which he calls first philosophy. This science is occupied with first principle...

What is this, I? Having established that he exists (as discussed in my previous post ), Descartes wants to further understand who this I, that exists, is. Seeing as the existence of this ‘I’ is the only thing that is given up until now as indubitable truth, then the only logical continuation is examining this thing that exists.  Descartes proposes a certain methodology for investigating who this ‘I’ is. According to Descartes: “I shall therefore meditate once again about what I formerly believed I was [...] I will subtract anything that can be weakened.” This means that every potential knowledge as to what he might be will be tested against the hypothesis of an all-powerful demon trying to deceive him. This hypothesis gives a sufficient condition for truth. If something survives this hypothesis, then it is true. Could it be that my pen is not blue? Yes, and therefore I doubt it; could it be that nothing physical exists? Yes, and therefore I doubt it; could it be that I do not exist...

  The second meditation is arguably the most important meditation of all. Continuing where he left off the day before, Descartes reinstates his radical doubt of the first meditation and tries to find any indubitable knowledge. According to Descartes, he is looking for an Archimedean point. This refers to Archimedes, who claimed he could lift the Earth if he had one solid point. In the same way, if we draw out the analogy, Descartes hopes to find any first truth that is so solid that he can build his entire system of knowledge on it. It is here that Descartes develops, for the second time in his oeuvre, his cogito, commonly expressed as “I think, therefore I am”. Cogito, ergo sum? Descartes starts the second meditation by reinstating the doubt he developed in the first meditation. Imagine there is an all-powerful and cunning evil demon who puts all his efforts into deceiving us; is there anything that can be true? Descartes seems to have some new insights, as he states, “He [the dem...

  The Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) is arguably the most influential work of modern philosophy. It is Descartes' magnum opus in which he finally presents the meditations he talked about in the fourth part of the Discourse on Method. In this book Descartes explains his metaphysical system, proving, by reason alone, the existence of God and of the soul.  Descartes wrote this book in order to further clarify his metaphysical system, which makes an appearance in his discourse but left some readers with a lot of questions. First of all, the metaphysics presented in his discourse is only a very brief account of Descartes’ metaphysical system and leaves out a lot. Radical doubt and the hypothesis of a deceiving God do not appear in the Discourse on Method. This might be because Descartes was scared that, seeing as the text was very accessible as it was in French, some of its readers might misunderstand and accuse Descartes of atheism. Furthermore, the questions of will and j...

  The Discourse on Method, published in 1637 (4 years before the Meditations on First Philosophy), was meant to be an introduction to three essays: Les Météores, La Dioptrique and La Géométrie. This discourse is mostly an autobiographical work telling the story of Descartes’ path in science, starting with his childhood and the high school he attended, all the way to where he is now in his quest for knowledge. In it, Descartes exposes the method he has used during his life to slowly gain more knowledge. He writes about methodology, a provisional code of morals, metaphysics, science, and the reasons to write and publish his work. It is in this discourse that Descartes has first written “I think, therefore I am”. And it contains the last methodological considerations written by Descartes before his Meditations on First Philosophy.  How did this text come to be? The discourse was first part of La Dioptrique, which was part of an even greater work, The World. The World was suppos...