Intro to Philosophy Class Notes

  11/25/2025 [Philosophy Club every Tuesday at 5:00pm in CAS 436 ("The Cave")] [Challenge for today: Try to think of (and possibly ask) at least one question.] Suppose you are offered a mysterious lottery ticket for $1. You are told that IF the lottery gets 1 billion players, there will be ONE winner who will receive $1 billion. But one other randomly selected player will die. If fewer than 1 billion tickets are sold, the lottery will be canceled. Would you play? Would it be WRONG to play?   Deontology Virtue ethics       Normative/applied ethics   Bypasses defenses of ethical theories.     Broad theory-independent heuristics/principles.   e.g., “First of all, do no harm” (Principle of non-maleficence)   or: “respect people’s rights” ACED   Affirm The foundation of the ethical mindset is the affirmation of the other .   What is involved in affirming the o...

  11/20/2025 [Philosophy Club every Tuesday at 5:00pm in CAS 436 ("The Cave")] [Challenge for today: Try to think of (and possibly ask) at least one question.]   Have you ever been a victim or perpetrator of bullying?     Why, exactly, is bullying wrong? If authoritarian ethics is wrong, then what alternatives are there?   1.           Consequentialism 2.           Deontologism (ethics of duty/rules) 3.           Virtue theory (character ethics)         Consequentialism: Actions are made right/wrong by their consequences. What makes an action good is that it has good consequences.     Good how?   Good for whom?       Utilitarianism: Actions are good to the extent that promote happiness/pleasure/desire-satisf...

  11/18/2025 [Philosophy Club every Tuesday at 5:00pm in CAS 436 ("The Cave")] [Challenge for today: Try to think of (and possibly ask) at least one question.]   Is necrophilia (sex with a corpse) morally wrong or merely against social conventions?   Ethics: the use of reason in the service of the good.     Meta-ethics: the examination of ethical concepts (good, bad, right, wrong, obligation, etc.)   “What, exactly, does that mean?”   Normative ethics: How do we decide what is right and wrong? (Includes ethical theories)   Applied ethics: Are specific types of actions permissible or impermissible. (Include questions like is the use of autonomous weapons systems permissible?)   Both normative and applied ethics make use of the other main methodologies from this class:   “Why should we do that rather than something else?”   “What (moral) difference might it make if we act ...

  11/13/2025 [Philosophy Club every Tuesday at 5:00pm in CAS 436 ("The Cave")] [Challenge for today: Try to think of (and possibly ask) at least one question.] Assuming you could travel into the past, is there anything in your own life you’d want to try to change? In the Grandfather Paradox, how, exactly, does “chronology protection” work? What prevents you from killing your grandfather?       Bootstrap “paradox” (is it really a paradox?) Could you write a novel that you merely copy from the future? Time is the measure of change.   Is time possible WITHOUT change?   In the absence of something that changes that can serve as a “clock” there can be no passage of time. For time to pass is for time to pass relative to some changing thing that “measures” (or observes) it.   If all “clocks” were to stop and nothing existed by which the passage of time could be marked, then it makes no sense to talk about...

  11/11/2025 [Philosophy Club every Tuesday at 5:00pm in CAS 436 ("The Cave")] [Challenge for today: Try to think of (and possibly ask) at least one question.]   How fast does time pass?   What is time?   Time is often compared to space   Time line   Time is often considered to be symmetrical with respect to past and future   Does time have a direction?     There are different conceptual models of time   There are three dominant models of time:   1.    Presentism (only the present exists) a.    The past used to exist but doesn’t anymore b.    The future will exist but doesn’t now c.    The present exists, but not for long (Analogy: novel written in disappearing ink)   2.    Fixed past open future (growing block view) a.    The past is “fixed”. What has happened is a permanent part of history a...