PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENECE
An Introduction of Philosophy
Philosophy literally means ‘love of wisdom’, but defining it beyond this becomes a little tricky. In a nutshell, philosophy concerns itself with deep, fundamental questions: from how best we should live our lives, to the basic nature of the worlds we live in. But within this nutshell resides a whole universe of feeling, reason, and meaning.
Why does anything exist? What's the right thing to do? Is the world around us ‘real’?. The aim of philosophy is not necessarily to give you the answers to these questions, but rather to equip you with the right tools to perform your own investigation — and discover the answers for yourself.
The Value of Philosophy
Philosophy is a branch of human inquiry and as such it aims at knowledge and understanding. We might expect that the value of philosophy lies in the value of the ends that it seeks, the knowledge and understanding it reveals. But philosophy is rather notorious for failing to establish definitive knowledge on the matters it investigates. We do learn much from doing philosophy. Philosophy often clearly reveals why some initially attractive answers to big philosophical questions are deeply problematic, for instance. But granted, philosophy often frustrates our craving for straightforward convictions. Bertrand Russell argues that there is great value in doing philosophy precisely because it frustrates our desire for quick easy answers. In denying us easy answers to big questions and undermining complacent convictions, philosophy liberates us from narrow minded conventional thinking and opens our minds to new possibilities. Philosophy often provides an antidote to prejudice not by settling big questions, but by revealing just how hard it is to settle those questions. It can lead us to question our comfortably complacent conventional opinions.
Introduction to Logic
Logic is the study of the criteria used in evaluating inferences or arguments.
An inference is a process of reasoning in which a new belief is formed on the basis of or in virtue of evidence or proof supposedly provided by other beliefs.
An inference is a process of reasoning in which a new belief is formed on the basis of or in virtue of evidence or proof supposedly provided by other beliefs.
An argument is a collection of statements or propositions, some of which are intended to provide support or evidence in favor of one of the others.
A statement or proposition is something that can either be true or false. We usually think of a statement as a declarative sentence, or part of a sentence.
The premises of an argument are those statements or propositions in it that are intended to provide the support or evidence.
The conclusion of an argument is that statement or proposition for which the premises are intended to provide support. (In short, it is the point the argument is trying to make.)
The validity and strength of arguments
When evaluating arguments, we have two main questions to ask:
Do the premises provide enough logical support for the conclusion?
Are the premises true?
Validity applies to deductive arguments, strength applies to non-deductive arguments.
A valid argument is thus a deductive argument – an argument that attempts to establish conclusive support for its conclusion – that succeeds.
An invalid argument is a deductive argument that fails in providing conclusive support.
Take the following deductive argument:
John’s jeans are blue, therefore, John’s jeans are colored.
Is it possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false? If my jeans are blue, then they have a color. If they have a color, then they’re colored. Hence, it is impossible for the premise (John’s jeans are blue) to be true, and the conclusion (John’s jeans are colored) to be false. Therefore, the argument is valid.
How about this one?
If you throw a dice, either it lands on six or it doesn’t. So the dice has a 50% chance of landing on six.
Some people believe that, but this is an invalid argument. What is the probability for a dice to land on six? There are six faces and the dice is likely to land on any of them. Since six only shows on one face, there’s only a one out of six chance that the dice will land on six. And one out of six is a lot less than 50%. It is thus possible for the premise of the argument to be true, but the conclusion false.
The standard form of an argument
The standard form of an argument is a way of presenting the argument which makes clear which propositions are premises, how many premises there are and which proposition is the conclusion. In standard form, the conclusion of the argument is listed last.
In standard form, an argument is presented like this:
P1 Premise 1
P1 Premise 2
P3 And so on many premises as there are in the argument
Therefore,
C Conclusion
Example:
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