PHL100Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Anaximander, Rationality, Xenophanes
Document Summary
Ho(cid:449) it"s like a(cid:374)d u(cid:374)like to religion, science and literature. Nothing in sacred in philosophy, question everything. New vision through argument (mexican riding a bike example) Rationality: best route to truth and understanding, monty python definition. Philosophy caused an important turning point in greece. There might be certain general principles that explain why things are the way they are. Rational arguments, observation, experience and what you can infer. Sound if it has valid premises and therefore has a valid conclusion (all men are mortal example) Providing a good reason to believe the conclusion (e. g. the sun has risen every morning therefore it will rise tomorrow morning) Statements or propositions, including premises, can be true or false but not valid/invalid. Arguments can be persuasive, good, bad, valid, invalid, sound, unsound, fallacious but never true or false. Valid: it is impossible that the conclusion is false when the premises are true. Sound because logically entailed and has true premises (also valid)
