This course will introduce you to some of the main areas of research in contemporary philosophy. Each module a different philosopher will talk you through some of the most important questions and issues in their area of expertise. We’ll begin by trying to understand what philosophy is – what are its characteristic aims and methods, and how does it differ from other subjects? Then we’ll spend the rest of the course gaining an introductory overview of several different areas of philosophy. Topics you’ll learn about will include: Epistemology, where we’ll consider what our knowledge of the world and ourselves consists in, and how we come to have it; Philosophy of science, where we’ll investigate foundational conceptual issues in scientific research and practice; Philosophy of Mind, where we’ll ask questions about what it means for something to have a mind, and how minds should be understood and explained; Political Philosophy, where we'll investigate whether we have an obligation to obey the law; Moral Philosophy, where we’ll attempt to understand the nature of our moral judgements and reactions – whether they aim at some objective moral truth, or are mere personal or cultural preferences, and; Metaphysics, where we’ll think through some fundamental conceptual questions about free will and the nature of reality. The development of this MOOC has been led by the University of Edinburgh's Eidyn research centre. To accompany 'Introduction to Philosophy', we are pleased to announce a tie-in book from Routledge entitled 'Philosophy for Everyone'. This course companion to the 'Introduction to Philosophy' course was written by the Edinburgh Philosophy team expressly with the needs of MOOC students in mind. 'Philosophy for Everyone' contains clear and user-friendly chapters, chapter summaries, glossary, study questions, suggestions for further reading and guides to online resources. Please click "Start Here" and navigate to the "Optional Reading" page for more information.
Further Discussions
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The University of Edinburgh의 강좌에서
Introduction to Philosophy
3478개의 평가
수업에서
Time Travel and Philosophy
(Dr. Alasdair Richmond) In this module we'll think about some issues in metaphysics, a branch of philosophy that investigates the ways that reality could intelligibly be. Our case study will be the possibility, or otherwise, of time-travel. Some have thought that the apparent possibility of creating a machine that we could use to transport a person backwards in time can be ruled out just by thinking about it. But is time-travel really logically impossible? What would the universe have to be like for it to be possible? And can we know whether our universe fits the bill?
강사 만나기
Dr. Dave WardLecturer in Philosophy
University of Edinburgh
Professor Duncan PritchardProfessor of Philosophy
University of Edinburgh
Professor Michela MassimiFull Professor
Philosophy
Dr. Suilin LavelleLecturer in Philosophy
University of Edinburgh
Dr. Matthew ChrismanReader in Philosophy
Philosophy
Dr. Allan Hazlett
Dr. Alasdair RichmondDr.
Philosophy
Guy FletcherLecturer
Philosophy
Elinor MasonSenior Lecturer
Philosophy
How are you there.
Sir Richard speaking to you again, lecturer on the final week, week seven,
of this Introduction to Philosophy course, the Time Travel Lecturer.
And I've been taking part in a quite a lot of online thread discussion with some of
you, and I've enjoyed it very much.
Thank you for all your comments.
Keep your comments, keep your threads coming.
I've tried to address as many questions as I can.
My apologies if I haven't got right to your particular problem or
your particular thread.
I'm doing my best, but there's probably slightly more than I can manage.
Hence in large part, this short recorded follow-up video.
I want to try and revisit some of the points I've made and
to try to address some of the questions that have come up.
Now bear in mind that all I've been doing is to defend David Lewis's argument that
backward time travel is logically possible.
Neither Lewis, nor I, is saying that time travel is physically possible or
physically realistic or that time travelers walk among us.
Why this emphasis on logical possibility?
Well, if something is logically impossible, it's contradictory.
And it's a very plausible assumption that the contradictory cannot possibly be real.
So it's a very powerful tool to establish that your opponent's position commits
the opponent to contradiction.
To make a factual error is bad, but
to contradict yourself is presumably game over.
So one serious implication of Lewis' argument is if he's right,
then time travel can't be dismissed on logical grounds alone.
And consequently, physical models that seem to permit travel,
like Godel's universe.
Gott's cosmic strings that, or a sewing machine, the Tipler cylinder,
et cetera, cannot be ruled out logically.
You need physics, you need the appeal to observation.
They're a crucial part of Lewis' argument is to say that time travel is logically
possible, granted a distinction between personal time and external time.
Personal time is not some other temporal dimension, some meta time.
But rather the way that time is registered by the traveling object.
And for most of us, for
non time travelers among us, I'm certainly not a time traveler by the way.
For the non time travelers among us, personal time and
external time march in lock step.
Five minutes of increasing personal time for
me will be five minutes of increasing personal time for you.
But for a time traveler, personal time and external time diverge.
Personal time can be registered by the accumulation of the traveler's memories,
the progress of the traveler's watch, the progress of the traveler's digestion.
And I stress that this distinction is a well-supported one with negativistic and
quantum physics.
Are very good reasons for thinking that time actually passes at different rates in
different frames of reference.
Time may even have different directions in different frames of reference.
So it may well be that everything that's requisite for
Lewisian time travel is out there.
Something that has caused quite a bit of debate is the distinction between what I
call replacement change and counterfactual change, or counterfactual impact.
Now I stress these are two ways of registering the impact we can have.
It's not our philosopher's play thing.
The replacement change counterfactual change distinction is not a mere jargonese
what cup that Lewis has invented to deal with a particular problem of time travel.
It's actually a very well-supported tool for assessing different kinds of impact.
Here again, Lewis thinks that you can make replacement change to concrete objects,
but you can't make replacement change to times.
You can make a concrete object go away.
And another concrete object take its place.
But you can't make one and the same type be replaced at that time.
An example, as I speak to you now, it's approximately 12:52.
Imagine that at 12:53, I bring this presumably fragile and
brittle glass down sharply on the edge of this table, and the glass shatters.
So at 12:53, the series of events constitutive of
the intact glass phase of history ceases.
And the intact glass is replaced with a series of glass fragments.
That's a replacement change.
And you can also see, counterfactually, if I hadn't smashed the glass off the desk,
it wouldn't have generated all the fragments.
So one in the same event can be assessed in replacement or
in counterfactual impact terms.
It's not either or.
But here's the thing.
What I can't do is to take a version of history where the glass
is shattered at 12:53, and then replace it with another
version of history where the glass is intact at 12:53.
I can replace an intact glass with a shattered glass, but
I cannot replace an intact glass time.
That's the point.
And counterfactual impact is something that we, that we use all the time.
It's not something made up, eye strains.
Something else that's caused a few problems is Lewis' tu quoque,
or you also, argument about causal loops.
Now, a causal loop occurs when an event proves to be among its own causes.
It seems to present some remarkable problems because it seems to suggest that
information can be generated from nothing.
And various people have said, entropy explains where information is generated.
Well, I would submit that entrop,
that entropy explains where information is transmitted.
How information gets from one place to another.
Lewis's point is this, explaining the ultimate origins of a causal loop
is no more and no less difficult than explaining the ultimate origins
of any other causal chain, be it infinite linear or finite linear.
There's no earlier event that can be appealed to in explaining where the big
bang came from.
If you want to explain the big bang,
you appeal to the laws that govern quantum vacuum fluctuations.
Where do the laws come from?
Who knows?
If it turns out that the big bang has an infinite chain of causes behind it,.
The question where does that infinite chain come from is still equally pressing.
So Lewis is not saying that causal loops only occur when the laws of nature fail or
that information can be generated from nothing, and
we shouldn't be worried about it.
His point is that we don't have natural laws for
where information ultimately comes from.
One interesting possibility that I mentioned on a couple of threads is
the possibility that the universe itself could be the origin of,
could have its origins in a, in a causal loop.
Many astrophysicists take seriously the prospect that the universe can
bud or branch.
And it's a view seriously considered that
this universe may put forth a later branch that loops back and
proves to be the branch whence the earlier universe itself comes from.
A truly self-parenting universe.
In which case the question of the origins of feasibility of causal
loops may turn out to be the questions of the origin and
feasibility of the entire physical universe.
Food for thought.
Various of you have objected to Lewis' analysis on the grounds
that it conflicts with our sense of freedom.
And frankly to that I say, so what?
Who says that our sense of freedom is something that we must adhere
to logically.
It's not illogical truth and submit that we enjoy contra-causal freedom,
freedom from all causal determination.
There's an influential school of thought advanced by philosophers like David Hume
and Thomas Hobbes, to name but two, that holds that
it's not the case that free will and determinism are incompatible.
According to this compatibilist's school,
in order to have a free will, you have to be the cause of your own actions.
And provided your decisions are caused in the right way,
caused by thoughts about you, caused by thoughts about your preferences,
about your decision making, you can be both free and caused.
So a compatibilist, I have no problem in accepting that there are logical
restrictions on a traveler's actions, but yet a traveler can nonetheless be free.
Well, that has summarized some of the questions that I've heard.
I'll try to address more questions as they come along.
I put some threads out there about the physics of time travel.
I put some threads out there about David Hume and testimony to time travel.
I put a link to a podcast that I did recently with other academics from
Edinbury University about the Scottish enlightenment and ghosts and time travel.
So do keep your posts coming.
Do keep your quotes coming.
Do keep your observations coming.
And I shall try to answer them as best I can.
So thank you very much.
And it's nearly time for me, my heart, and my goggles, to wish you a very good day,
and to say that I hope you enjoy whatever remains of this course.
Thank you very much, indeed.
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