DO NOW - Journal: DO NOW - Journal: What would you be willing to give up your live for, and why? Try to include the word “value” in your answer. ( Value can be a verb or a noun.)

 Everyone will have a personal answer to this question that is unique to their situation.  They will refer to specific things they care about.  This is called subjective value. These things have subjective, or personal, importance.  (Opposite –universal or “Objective” value)  For Socrates, one universal value: TRUTH  This value was worth dying for…

 Greek City-State  Birthplace of Western philosophy  Socrates  His Pupil Plato  Socrates develops his Socratic method  Plato founds the first college to teach philosophy  Plato’s student Aristotle develops the field

 Socrates compared himself to a “Horse-fly” on society’s butt  He managed to piss off lots of powerful people with his constant questions  Eventually he was arrested on 2 charges: 1. Impiety (for his “strange” view on the Gods) 2. Corrupting the Youth (for encouraging the young not to fight in Athens’s constant wars over territory)

 “ I would rather die having spoken in my manner, than speak in your manner and live. … The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs deeper than death…”  Quoted from Plato’s Book on the trial, Apology, 38e-39a

 Socrates had a student, Plato, who was greatly upset by his execution. He was furious at his fellow Athenians (some voted to kill Socrates.)  He decided the world needed philosophy, so he founded the first college: ACADEMY Here, he began to teach his famous THEORY of FORMS, a theory about True Reality

Allegory (Myth) of the CAVE -Plato’s famous fable about Truth -Come down on the floor – demonstration -Video: om/watch?v=LTWwY8 Ok5I0 -After: Each element of the story is symbolic. Figure out the symbolism, and the message of the myth. om/watch?v=LTWwY8 Ok5I0  1 PEOPLE= 2 CAVE= 3 CHAINS= 4 SHADOWS= 5 ESCAPEE= 6 OUTSIDE= 7 SUN= 8 REJECTION=

 Plato sees that things in the material world do not last, but decay over time (impermanence)  Ideas and Concepts, however, are Eternal  He reasons that Ideas represent a Higher Realm than the world of sensory experience  Trust thought, not your senses  Truth is not a physical thing, but an Idea (Form) -  What kind of epistemology is this?  Why are its (scary) implications?

 If there are “other Realms” that we lack the faculties to perceive, what else don’t we know?  If our senses deceive us, how can we be sure our experience is the Truth?  These kind of questions lead to an epistemology of doubt: SKEPTICISM  Various “Skepticisms” about Reality

 Anyone who’s had a vivid dream knows it feels “Real” to your mind until you wake  It is impossible to prove this is not a dream (How would you prove it 100%?)  If this was a dream, what would you “wake up into?” “ Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream? “ – Edgar Allan Poe

 French Philosopher Rene Descartes asked: What if what I think of as the Outside World is an illusion created by an Evil Demon to trick me?  He didn’t really think this: he was testing the limits of knowledge. He was shocked he couldn’t disprove it!  Descartes finally decided: “Cogito, ergo Sum.”  This means, “I think, therefore I exist.”  Because he could experience his own thoughts from “within,” he was convinced his mind was real, but not necessarily his body or the Outside World!