1. Introduction to Philosophy What is Philosophy?
Week 1: What is Philosophy?
[Welcome to the first handout of your Introduction to Philosophy MOOC! This handout
is designed to complement the video lecture by giving you a written summary of the key points
covered in the videos. You can use it, or not, however you like! In my seminars at University of
Edinburgh I encourage my students to write their thoughts on the material we cover alongside
the relevant parts of the handout. Or you might like to simply have it open alongside the videos
as you watch them, or to read back over it after watching, to refresh the key points in your
mind. However you choose to use it, we hope you enjoy this week’s material, and the course!]
1. What is Philosophy?
Thinking about this question is our mission for this week. Here are some first
strategies for thinking about it:
• The practical strategy: ‘There ain’t nothing to it but to do it!’
In fact, I think this is the best strategy – to understand what philosophy is, you
need to get stuck in to thinking about philosophical problems, and the ways other
thinkers have approached them. This is what we’ll be doing on the rest of the
course. So much of philosophy is learning specific tools and techniques to reason,
argue, and express yourself. We won’t focus on that this week, but the best way to
get a grasp of those tools and techniques, and to get a sense of the questions that
interest philosophers, is to work your way through the rest of the course!
• The definitional strategy: What does ‘philosophy’ mean?
The word ‘philosophy’ comes from the Greek ‘philosophia’ meaning, roughly, the
love of knowledge. This does capture something important, but we need to know
more: what kind of knowledge are we interested in? How do we go about getting
that knowledge?
• The deferential strategy: What do other people say philosophy is?
In the video, I give some examples of how other people have defined philosophy.
Two of my favourites:
‘Philosophy is an activity that uses reasoning and rigorous argument to promote
human flourishing’ (Martha Nussbaum)
‘[Philosophy is] thinking clearly and well about reality and our place in it’ (Barry
Smith)
At the end of the lectures, you might like to return to the quotes from the first
video, and think about what they all have in common: are they all saying the same
thing, or do they express different visions of what philosophy is?

2. Introduction to Philosophy What is Philosophy?
Here’s my attempt at a definition: Philosophy is the activity of working out the right way of
thinking about things.
So this week, we’re doing philosophy about philosophy (or meta-philosophy) – trying
to work out the right way of thinking about philosophical enquiry.
2. Is Philosophy ‘Fundamental’?
It is often claimed (often by philosophers!) that philosophy, or the questions it asks,
are in some sense fundamental. What might this mean? Is it true?
• One sense in which it’s not true: There are plenty of questions you can ask, and
activities that you can pursue, perfectly legitimately without doing any philosophy.
• The sense in which it is true: No matter what sort of questions you’re asking, or
activities you’re pursuing, further philosophical questions can always arise.
o This is because philosophy involves stepping back and examining the
presuppositions of what you’re doing, or the questions you’re asking. What are
those presuppositions? Are they the right ones?
o This is why philosophy, as a subject, is so broad – this ‘stepping back’ is
something we can always do, whatever we’re asking or thinking about.
In the video, I suggest that it might be interesting to think here (or perhaps at the end
of this week’s lectures) about what a philosopher would, or should, say in response to
a claim like Steven Hawking’s: that philosophy is dead, and has been replaced by
science. See the appendix for some links if you’d like to see what others have said!
3. Is Philosophy Important?
As with the claim that philosophy is fundamental, when trying to define philosophy it’s
often said that the subject, or the questions it asks, have some special importance. Is
this true?
• Again, there’s a sense in which it’s clearly not – because (as I’ve suggested)
philosophical questions can arise about anything, there will be many that are too
trivial or boring to bother asking!
• But there are reasons for thinking philosophy, at its best, often is important:
o Most philosophy (or at least, most worthwhile philosophy) aims at thinking clearly
about the things that matter most to us.
o Thinking philosophically (for example, stepping back and examining
presuppositions) can help us to question or see past dogma or accepted wisdom
that may not be the best thing for us to think or believe.

3. Introduction to Philosophy What is Philosophy?
o These ideas come together in this great quote from Isaiah Berlin:
"[People] cannot live without seeking to describe and explain the universe to
themselves. The models they use in doing this must deeply affect their lives, not
least when they are unconscious; much of [their] misery and frustration… is due to
the mechanical and unconscious, as well as deliberate, application of models where
they do not work... The goal of philosophy is always the same, to assist [people] to
understand themselves and thus operate in the open and not wildly, in the dark."
So I’d like to suggest a new definition: Good philosophy is the activity of working out
the right way of thinking about the things that matter most to us.
4. Philosophy and the (question of the) Meaning of Life
The rest of the course will give you plenty of examples of the sorts of questions that
philosophers try to answer, and how they go about it. But to illustrate what we’ve said
so far this week, let’s think how philosophers might approach the question ‘what is
the meaning of life?’
• One approach would be to try to dismiss the question – to argue that it’s not a
sensible one to ask, that its presuppositions are somehow confused.
o And one way to do this might be to claim that the question presupposes
a confused way of thinking about meaning: it presupposes that a life is the
sort of thing that can have a meaning, whereas (someone might argue)
words, phrases and sentences are the only sorts of things that really have
meanings.
o For this to be convincing, it’d need to be shown (1) Why that is the right
way to think about meaning; (2) Why it seems to make sense to ask about
‘the meaning of life’
• Another approach would be to try and answer the question, rather than dismiss
it. But suppose someone has actually made the challenge above – they’ve
suggested that the question we want to answer is somehow confused. Then it
seems we need to justify why we should keep trying to answer our question.
o The obvious way of doing this would be to dispute the above claim
about meaning: to argue that words, phrases, sentences, aren’t the only
kinds of things that can have meaning.
o So perhaps before we can answer our question, we need to think about a
dispute between two alternative ways of thinking about meaning:
 Designative: To mean something is to stand for it, or point to it. The
word ‘jumper’ stands for the object jumper. The meaning of the
word is the thing in the world it stands for.

4. Introduction to Philosophy What is Philosophy?
 Expressive: To mean something is to express something – the act of
expression brings about the meaning in a same way that a great
piece of music or film might bring about the feelings or ideas it’s
trying to convey.
o Perhaps on this second, expressive view, lives are the sorts of things that
have meanings. But can we state this view clearly? Can we give
convincing reasons that it’s a better way of thinking about meaning than
the designative view?
Our job for this week is not to try to answer these questions [Though you’re encouraged
to discuss them in the forums if they interest you!]. The purpose of the above was to give
you an example of the way philosophy can put all kinds of different questions on our
agenda, and the unexpected places that those questions can lead. We’ve just seen, for
example, how trying to think clearly about ‘the meaning of life’ might lead us to
thinking about the way a piece of music can express a mood.
Importantly, if we did want to settle the above dispute, we’d need to do so through
reasoning and critical thinking – we’d need to give reasons for one of the above views of
meaning over the other, and show how the reasons given by our opponents were
either wrong, or not in fact incompatible with our view.
Thinking through the issues and questions that we’ll consider on this course will give
you a good grasp of what tools and methods philosophers use for this, as well as of
the sorts of questions they apply these tools to.
* * * * * *
[Remember,
after
thinking
about
the
material
from
each
week,
it’s
a
great
idea
to
go
and
discuss
it
with
your
fellow
students
in
the
course’s
discussion
forums.
What
didn’t
make
sense?
What
do
you
disagree
with?
Did
any
parts
of
the
week’s
material
seem
especially
important,
or
interesting?]
Appendix
One potential topic to think about and discuss in the forums is how we should think
about Steven Hawking’s statement that ‘philosophy is dead’. Is he right? How might a
philosopher respond? If you’d like to see what others have thought (on behalf of the
philosophers!), then here are a couple of resources:
http://www.economist.com/node/16990802
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/30/stephen-hawking-
disproved-gods-role-creation