PHIL 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Wilfrid Sellars, James Rachels
Document Summary
Originates with ancient greek study of nature. The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term. Argument a statement or sequence of statements (truth claims called premises") which logically support the truth of some further statement (a truth claim called conclusion") Main focus: determine the premises and if those premises are true or false. Deductive argument the conclusion follows from the premises necessarily (from reasoning) Simple deductive argument: all human are mortal. 2: we can conclude john is mortal. Structure: all a are b, x is a. Inductive argument the conclusion is made probable by the premises (probability) Abductive argument inference in the best explanation; the conclusion is the best explanation of the truth of the premises. There is no reason to think that there are any absolute moral truths.
