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Philosophy Through the Year offers and lively and welcoming space in which to learn about philosophy – and start to explore philosophical questions with others. In each instalment, we will look at one set of big philosophical issues – the problems and questions that have been puzzling people for well over two thousand years. Tutors will give short introductions to some of the most important ideas and arguments in each topic, and provide short philosophical texts for participants to read, think about, and discuss together.
Mind and reality
We begin Philosophy Through the Year by looking at some of the questions that started the philosophical ball rolling, and which continue to perplex people today: what is the nature of reality? Is everything made of the same stuff? What is the relationship between mind and matter? What kind of reality do we live in – and is it at all hospitable to the human concern for meaning? The ancient Greeks began to formulate answers to these questions, but the questions themselves are just as difficult today as they were back then.
Welcome to Reality!
Each week we will be looking at different aspects of the area of philosophy that has the somewhat unhelpful label ‘ontology’, and which is simply the philosophy of ‘what there is’. All of philosophy is interconnected and ontology is one of the linchpins. Below are some starter questions for each of our five topic areas. You are invited to think about these (and argue about them with friends and family) before the session.
You will also see that I have given some reading material(quite a lot actually) to go with each week. Glance through this, but don’t read it carefully (unless you want to)before the session. If our sessions together go well, then you should find, when you do look at them, that the readings gradually make more sense as you go on. They are there for you to explore in the comfort of your own home, as your philosophical urges take you. Each reading has a letter assigned to it(A-D) as a rough indicator of how hard a read it is. B= philosophical but accessible. A=philosophical and easy to understand. C=challenging in parts. D=this is probably quite hard.
I hope that in this course, we will be able to focus on ideas and spend time constructing our own arguments, so that we can get a better insight into what philosophers might be trying to do. Good luck!
Week 1 - Being There
Starter questions:
(a) List ten things that are real and five that are not real.
(b) Fill in the blanks in this one sentence definition: Whatever………………….. is real.
(c) Is there a difference between being real and being there?
(d) Suppose the sentence “it might have rained yesterday” is true. Does that mean “raining yesterday” must be real?
Readings: 11-15
Week 2 Being Something: How to “is”
Starter Questions
(a) Complete each of these phrases in five different ways. (a) ‘This is a………’ (b) ‘This rose is…’
(b) Evaluate the words you have chosen for the right-hand side of the ‘is’. Do some seem ‘realer’ than others?
(c) Imagine an iceberg lettuce. If the leaves were not green, would it still be an iceberg lettuce?
(d) “Socrates is wise”. Could any part of this be real?
(e) What makes a thing the sort of thing that it is? What makes a thing the thing that it is?
(f) (With apologies to Graham Greene’s The Destructors) if you were dismantling a house, at what point would it no longer be a house?
Readings:21-27
1. Contingency of definitions (Kripke) B
2. Aristotle on form and matter, Aristotle on categories BC
3. Wittgenstein on family resemblance and ‘seeing as’ AB
4. Parfit on ontology II (reality, actuality, possibility) C
5. Al Ghazali on causes B
6. Wittgenstein on cause and necessity in the Tractatus C
Week 3 - Things and thing kings
Starter Questions:
(a) Does green exist? Does wet exist?
(b) Does this green, this wet here exist?
(c) How does this green, wet here relate to this lettuce?
(d) Where exactly is this green wet here?
(e) If my world is coherent, does that make it real?
Readings 31-35
(1) Razi’s perception-based categories C
(2) Plato’s Heracleitan theory of perception B and Kant's fusion of concept and object C
(3) Heracleitus, and McGilchrist’s generation of objects B
(4) Husserl on the phenomenological method D
(5) Proust: example of a ‘saturated’ experience A
(6) Heidegger: on the inner space of Dasein (self-aware presence) and death D
(7) Goff describing his belief in qualia AB
Week 4 - Matter over mind
Starter Questions:
(a) Does intelligent awareness exist?
(b) If intelligent awareness exists, where and when does it exist?
(c) How does intelligent awareness relate to the world of physics?
(d) What is a person?
(e) Is all life intelligent?
(f) What would it mean to exist forever?
Readings:41-46
(1) Ibn Sina’s thought experiment on the soul A
(2) Penrose on physics and mind B
(3) Plato’s Soul A , Aristotle’s Soul C, the Epicurean Soul A
(4) The soul as software: Dennett B
(5) The soul as bundles of perceptions: Hume Treatise C
(6) Pan-psychism and qualia: Galen Strawson BC
Week 5 - From Words to Worlds
Starter Questions:
(a)“If something is, then it cannot not be.” True or false?
(b) Which comes first: the chicken, the egg or the idea of the chicken?
(c)“The world consists of facts not things” – what might that mean?
(d)“The laws of nature tell us what can and cannot exist and how.” True or false?
(e)“Value lies beyond the world”. True or false? If true, does that make value unreal?
Readings:51-54
(1) Parmenides on reality and appearance. B Plato’s deconstruction B
(2) Hegel’sself-generating Spirit. B; Plotinus’ One generating intellect C
(3) WittgensteinTractatus: world as facts, propositions, value as the unsayable. C
(4) McGilchriston left brain and right brain reasoning (presencing). B
(5) Quineon constructing views of the world C
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
John Moffatt SJ works at the London Jesuit Centre. His first degree was in Classics. He taught in London secondary schools intermittently between 1985 and 2016 and has worked briefly in University Chaplaincy. He has been involved with teenage and adult faith education in Britain and South Africa and has recently completed a doctorate in medieval Islamic philosophy.
