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Big Questions of Philosophy

Series: Great Courses
4.5
(68)
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Episodes
36
Rating
NRC
Year
2016
Language
English
Publisher
The Great Courses

About

We have all pondered seemingly unanswerably but significant questions about our existence - the biggest of all being, "Why are we here?" This course gives you the tools to follow and create logical arguments while exploring famous philosophers' viewpoints on these important questions. Join Plato, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Mill, Marx, and many others in an exploration of fundamental questions.

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Episodes

1 to 3 of 36

1. How Do We Do Philosophy?

30m

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The first four lectures of the course pose the big question: What is philosophy? Start by exploring the kinds of problems that philosophy addresses, the way philosophy works, and the distinction between philosophy and opinion. Discover that philosophy is arguably the most important pursuit there is.

2. Why Should We Trust Reason?

30m

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Hone your philosophical thinking by identifying the categories of fallacious reasoning that ensnare us all. Investigate examples of gut-thinking, confirmation bias, appealing to ignorance, the correlation fallacy, begging the question, and equivocation. Learn how to check your reasoning for flaws.

3. How Do We Reason Carefully?

30m

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Avoiding fallacious reasoning is just the beginning of philosophical thinking. Go deeper by studying the rules of deduction and induction. In the process, learn Aristotle's three axioms of logic, the difference between truth and validity, common mistakes in logical arguments, and why practically all scientific arguments are inductive.

Extended Details

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Artists

David Johnsonwriter

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