Philosophy to me is about asking questions which have no obvious answer, and which you can entertain yourself with for hours, by argueing with yourself. If you find an answer, its a bonus. if you dont, your probably infinetly smarter for what you have just discovered is not the answer.

What i’m looking forward to in this subject is the emphasis on Truth. What is truth. It is usually accepted that a statement can be true or false. My name is Damian. True. But, do I actually have a name? Do I exist? If I don’t exist, can I possibly have a name?

According to the chap on the right, Associate Proffessor David Elliott (Department Head, Philosophy and Classics), there are three lots of three in Philosophy:

3 Questions:

1. What is the nature of reality? (Metaphysics)
2. What (and how) can I know? (Epistemology)
3. What should I do or how should I live? (Moral and political philosophy)

3 Features:

1. Makes the obvious problematic
2. Informational Chaos
3. Presentation of an overal vision/perspective

3 Practical Inferences:

1. One should never assume anything is obvious–or at least always be careful about what assumptions one is making.
2. Develop the strongest, most coherent argument that you can.
3. Try to see the “big picture”, how your argument relates to other issues arguments/counterarguments of other philosophers.

We will use these three lots of three to try to understand a phillosopher called Rene Descartes:

“The two most widely known of Descartes’ philosophical ideas are those of a method of hyperbolic doubt, and the argument that, though he may doubt, he cannot doubt that he exists”

“He resolves to trust only that which is clearly and distinctly seen to be beyond any doubt. In this manner, Descartes peels away the layers of beliefs and opinions that clouded his view of the truth. But, very little remains, only the simple fact of doubting itself, and the inescapable inference that something exists doubting, namely Descartes himself.”

Read more of the above about Descartes at http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/d/descarte.htm

I promised a post on my subjects, and whilst it is not a usually entertaining topic, its probably going to be a future source of aggravation (I imagine somewhere in the league of groin tinea) so to justify my future complaining, whining and soul searching heres the low-down:

They mentioned philosophy somewhere in the subject outline and so it kind of tied in with my other subjects. It is a split lecture system and the 2 lecturers spent the first lecture telling us how good the other was.

The main lecturer was very passionate, a great speaker, clearly a feminist and so enthusiastic about the class she forget to mention what the point of it was. Has anyone ever gotten a subject outline that didn’t mention the goals or objectives of the class? If yes, are you also an arts student? I’d like to know what they are trying to achieve. Bonus is we get to read Nietzsche.

More raving later. We spent the second class discussing what the moral of the story was to Adam & Eve being evicted from Eden. Come on people, what was the name of the apple tree? I expect to see lots of comments on this, and I promise I’ll plagerize them in my first Essay. One thign I did learn is that arts students seem to be very very judgemental, they have a category for everyone! Post-modernists, neo-socialists, pre-modernists, social socialists, fascists democratics even! WTF?

To come: Intro to practical Logic 100 and Philosophy!