Summary of Metaphysics + Introduction to Logic

What is Metaphysics
Branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world

Causation
Causality (also referred to as causation) is the relation between an event (the cause) and a second event (the effect), where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first.

Time
Presentism: Only the present moment exists, the past and future do not.
Eternalism Future events are "already there", there is no objective flow of time. The entire universe is contained within the block

Philosophy of mind
Dualism That the mind and body are two separate entities.
Monism That there is only one substance which comprises all of existence

Free will
Hard Determinism
The theory that all human decisions and actions are determined by other events and actions that happened prior to that moment. This removes any individual moral responsibility as a persons decisions are determined by external factors.

Libertarianism (Free will)

The theory that we are free to act as we wish and therefore the individual is morally responsible for their own actions as people are self-determining, which means they make their choices of their own volition.

Knowledge
Do we posses A Priori knowledge (knowledge that is acquire BEFORE experience) or only A Posteriori knowledge (knowledge that is acquired after some experience)

I think, therefore I am.

(1) S believes that P is true i.e. Josh (S) believes that he is Australian (P) (2) P is true Josh (S) is Australian (P) (3) S is justified in believing that P is true Josh is justified in believeing that he is Australian as he has seen his birth certificate

Someone S knows that P if and only if:

What does Judaism say?

Well Judaism contains within an entire metaphysical system Is it in contradiction with secular philosophy?
Depends on the specific philosophy/idea
I certainly think not

Philosophy is, in a sense, a kind of thinking that has a beginning but no end. In it, the awareness of the problem outlives all solutions. Its answers are questions in disguise; every new answer giving rise to new questions. In religion, on the other hand, the mystery of the answer hovers over all questions. Philosophy deals with problems as universal issues; to religion the universal issues are personal problems. Philosophy, then, stresses the primacy of the problem, religion stresses the primacy of the person. Abraham Joshua Heschel

What we are building towards

Philosophical arguments Discussions about G-d
This requires us to delve into the world of Logic

What is Logic
The purpose of logic is to distinguish correct forms of argument from incorrect forms of argument This is done using only the form of the argument, independently of the subject matter. What this means is that we can reduce arguments to symbols and equations.

Argument
An argument is a statement along with one or more reasons for thinking that the statement is true. The reasons or evidence are called the premises of the argument. The statement the premises are used to support is called the conclusion of the argument.

A good argument
The premises must support the conclusion; the conclusion should follow from the premises. All the premises must be true. However there are multiple ways of analyzing arguments. We are going to cover a few of them now

Consistency
A set of sentences is consistent if it is POSSIBLE for them all to be true. A set of sentences is inconsistent if it is NOT POSSIBLE for them all to be true. POSSIBLE here refers to logical possibility. In logic the paradigm kind of impossibility is the CONTRADICTION:

Example
A is true and A is false Josh is awesome AND It is not true that Josh is awesome Something is logically impossible only if it entails an outright contradiction like this. i.e. it is not possible for both of these statements to be true

Validity
A valid argument is one in which IF all the premises are true, the conclusion MUST be true too. In other words: A valid argument is one in which it is IMPOSSIBLE for all the premises to be true and the conclusion false. However to be a valid argument it is not required that the premises be true

Lets introduce a little bit of Symbology

All P are Q. All Q are R. Thus all P are R.

Is this a valid argument? Yes Can you see how swapping the letters for any phrase would still make the argument valid? Lets see some examples.

Examples
All Melbournians are Australians. All Australians are Earthlings. Therefore all Melbournians are Earthlings. Is this argument valid? Yes! All animals live on Mars All humans are animals Therefore, all humans live on Mars. Is this argument valid? Yes!

Examples continued
All Melbournians are funny. All Melbournians are Earthlings. Therefore all Earthlings are funny. Is this argument valid? No In logic, an argument is valid if and only if its conclusion is logically entailed by its premises and each step in the argument is logical

Negation
The negation of a sentence is the sentence with the opposite truth value. If the sentence is true, its negation is false and if the sentence is false, its negation is true. In Logicians English we can always form the negation of a sentence by putting the phrase It is not true that or It is false that in front of the sentence.

Sentence Josh is Australian

Its negation It is not true that Josh is Australian (Josh is not Australian) It is not true that all men are pigs (Not all men are pigs or Some men are not pigs)

All men are pigs

Logic is not a useful subject

It is not true that logic is not a useful subject. (Logic IS a useful subject)

Consistency and validity

A valid argument is one in which it is IMPOSSIBLE for all the premises to be true and the conclusion false. This means that: A valid argument is one in which it is IMPOSSIBLE for all the premises to be true and for the NEGATION of the conclusion to be true.

SO

 If the premises and the negation of the conclusion are inconsistent, the argument is valid. If the premises and the negation of the conclusion are consistent, the argument is invalid.

Examples
All men are mortal. Socrates is mortal. Therefore, Socrates is a man
How about if we swap the conclusion to: Therefore, it is false that Socrates if a man. Is this argument consistent? If the premises and the negation of the conclusion are inconsistent, the argument is valid.

Examples continued
Here is our example from earlier: All Melbournians are funny. All Melbournians are Earthlings. Therefore all Earthlings are funny.
Lets change our conclusion to it is not true that all Earthlings are funny. Does the argument still work with this change? Are the premises and the negation of the conclusion consistent?

Validity and soundness

A good argument must satisfy the two conditions mentioned above. But an argument can satisfy one condition without satisfying the other.

 A valid argument can have FALSE premises: All car manufacturers are computer manufacturers. Ford is a car manufacturer. Therefore: C. Ford is a computer manufacturer. An argument with TRUE premises might be invalid. Josh is Australian. Therefore: C. Josh is awesome

Soundness
An argument which is BOTH valid and has all true premises is called a SOUND argument. An argument is sound if and only if 1. The argument is valid. 2. All of its premises are true.

Examples
All organisms with wings can fly. Penguins have wings. Therefore: C. Therefore, penguins can fly. Is this argument sound? No! All people with the name Josh Back are cool The Person reading this out has the name Josh Back Therefore : C. The person reading this out is cool Is this argument sound? Yes though I guess its a matter of interpretation

Worksheet
Take a quiz and see if you can work out the answers. There is one tricky question at the endlets see if you can solve it