Philosophy for Beginners

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This is a brief introduction to philosophy, designed to be beginner-friendly. I talk about logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy. There are many details I was unable to discuss, but this video should help a beginner get their bearings as they explore philosophy.

Philosophers discussed include: Plato, Aristotle, Frege, Anscombe, Nietzsche, MacIntyre, Rawls, Nozick, Descartes, Hume, Confucius.

Thanks to Jimmy Nutts for comments on the script.
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Logic, Or the Art of Thinking: https://amzn.to/3Su09NE
Frege’s Foundations of Arithmetic: https://amzn.to/3S84EMv
Paradoxes: https://amzn.to/3HvjQhK
Plato’s Complete Works: https://amzn.to/4b5b5IR
Beyond Good and Evil: https://amzn.to/3StsBPP

→ Citations

Davidson M. Vaccination as a cause of autism-myths and controversies. Dialogues Clin Neurosci. 2017 Dec;19(4):403-407. doi: 10.31887/DCNS.2017.19.4/mdavidson. PMID: 29398935; PMCID: PMC5789217.

Schimmack U. Invalid Claims About the Validity of Implicit Association Tests by Prisoners of the Implicit Social-Cognition Paradigm. Perspect Psychol Sci. 2021 Mar;16(2):435-442. doi: 10.1177/1745691621991860. PMID: 33709849; PMCID: PMC8167921.

FitzGerald, C., Martin, A., Berner, D. et al. Interventions designed to reduce implicit prejudices and implicit stereotypes in real world contexts: a systematic review. BMC Psychol 7, 29 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-019-02...

https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/3...

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kn...

Anscombe, G.E.M. “Modern Moral Philosophy”: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3749051

Spade, Paul Vincent and Claude Panaccio, "William of Ockham", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/s....

Ichikawa, Jonathan Jenkins and Matthias Steup, "The Analysis of Knowledge", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/s....

→ Other Videos
7 Philosophy Books for Beginners:    • 7 Philosophy Books for Beginners  
The First 5 Philosophy Books You Should Read:    • The First 5 Philosophy Books You Shou...  
How to Read (And Understand) Hard Books:    • How to Read (and Understand) Hard Books  

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00:00 - How I Started with Philosophy
01:02 - Brilliant
02:02 - Logic and the Art of Thinking
05:37 - Formal Logic
07:37 - Paradoxes
09:11 - Metaphysics
09:36 - Theories of Truth
13:18 - Universals (and Cats)
15:23 - Nominalism
16:57 - Epistemology
18:39 - Philosophical Skepticism
20:03 - Cartesian & Humean Skepticism
22:28 - Ethical Theories
25:32 - Nihilism & Metaethics
28:08 - Political Philosophy & The Problem of Justice
30:41 - Philosophers Against Democracy