Philosophy for teens

some important extent context

dependent.

change with different circumstances.  

valid measures of human flourishing.

broadly definable human goods

ntellectual power,

ocial organization and cohesion, artistic prowess, physical health, athletic prowess, aesthetic sensitivity and complexity, technological capability, technological achievement, emotional satisfaction, pleasure, political efficiency, virtues,

moral pluralism, not relativism.

Moral pluralism acknowledges that differing moralities, which in particulars may formally contradict each other, can each be ethically approvable given variations in circumstances or given their respective abilities to meet certain thresholds of valuable contribution to life.

Moral relativism would allow for no cross-cultural assessments but would say that the only standard a morality has or needs is the endorsement of a particular individual or culture

ocial scientist’s perspecti

hilosophical,

hat values are best and what moral codes best realize them.

onstitute human flourishing and happiness.

if we have enough historical understandin

Old Testament morality

as in its own time the best and most progressive advance for the people who adopted it

ays it failed a

dismiss the Old Testament as irrelevant to a contemporary context.

t is also wholly unpersuasive to claim, as some try, that God’s values have always been the same even as he has given his people moral codes that fit their times or their understanding at each of their stages

real threat nowadays

we will drown in chaos

unable to concentrate on what is genuinely important and good.

key argument of those who attack ‘censorship’ today is to claim that we all need to hear all the messages all the time. But do we?

Behaviourism

unctionalism,

mind-brain identity theory

omputational theory of mind

nature of mind and consciousness

ndirectly modify behaviour

ealist views say that physical states are really mental.

empirical

product of our collective experience

Dualist views

the mental and the physical are both real and neither can be assimilated to the other.

ato's Phae

rue substances are not physical bodies, which are ephemeral, but the eternal Forms

bodies are imperfect copies

Plato's dualism is not, therefore, simply a doctrine in the philosophy of mind, but an integral part of his whole metaphysics.

Aristotle did not believe in Platonic Forms, existing independently of their instances. Aristotelian forms (the capital ‘F’ has disappeared with their standing as autonomous entities) are the natures and properties of things and exist embodied in those things.

Aristotle t

particular soul exists as the organizing principle in a particular parcel of matter.

Descartes

mechanist about the properties of matter.

The main uncertainty that faced Descartes

but how two things so different as thought and extension could interact at all.