Today Hank begins to teach you about Philosophy by discussing the historical origins of philosophy in ancient Greece, and its three main divisions: metaphysics, epistemology, and value theory. He will also introduce logic, and how you’re going to use it to understand and critically evaluate a whole host of different worldviews throughout this course. And also, hopefully, the rest of your life.

Before we dive into the big questions of philosophy, you need to know how to argue properly. We’ll start with an overview of philosophical reasoning and breakdown of how deductive arguments work (and sometimes don’t work).

We continue our look at philosophical reasoning by introducing two more types: induction and abduction. Hank explains their strengths and weaknesses, as well as counterarguments and the Socratic method.

Today Hank gains insight from that most philosophical of figures...Leonardo DiCaprio. In this episode, we’re talking about the process of philosophical discovery and questioning the relationship between appearance and reality by taking a look at Plato’s famous Myth of the Cave. All with a little help from our good pal Leo.

This week Hank introduces skepticism, exploring everything from the nature of reality through the eyes of a 17th century philosopher and, of course, The Matrix.

This week we answer skeptics like Descartes with empiricism. Hank explains John Locke’s primary and secondary qualities and why George Berkeley doesn’t think that distinction works -- leaving us with literally nothing but our minds, ideas, and perceptions.

On today’s episode...CATS. Also: Hank talks about some philosophy stuff, like a few of the key concepts philosophers use when discussing belief and knowledge, such as what defines an assertion and a proposition, and that belief is a kind of propositional attitude. Hank also discusses forms of justification and the traditional definition of knowledge, which Edmund Gettier just totally messed with, using his Gettier cases. Many thanks to Index the cat for his patience in the filming of this episode.

The early 1900s was an amazing time for Western science, as Albert Einstein was developing his theories of relativity and psychology was born, as Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis took over the scientific mainstream. Karl Popper observed these developments firsthand and came to draw a distinction between what he referred to as science and pseudoscience, which might best be summarized as science disconfirms, while pseudoscience confirms. While the way we describe these disciplines has changed in the intervening years, Popper’s ideas speak to the heart of how we arrive at knowledge.

Today we are introducing a new area of philosophy – philosophy of religion. We are starting this unit off with Anselm’s argument for God’s existence, while also considering objections to that argument.

Our unit on the philosophy of religion and the existence of god continues with Thomas Aquinas. Today, we consider his first four arguments: the cosmological arguments.

Last week we introduced Thomas Aquinas’s four cosmological arguments for the existence of god; today we introduce his fifth argument: the teleological argument, and the ensuing dialogue it initiated.

Today we are moving on from the existence of God to look at the philosophical debate surrounding the traditional divine attributes - omnipotence, omniscience, omnitemporality, and omnibenevolence. We are exploring the puzzles that these attributes create as well as some possible solutions to those puzzles, from Aquinas’ ideas of analogical predication, to the work of Eleanor Stump.

After weeks of exploring the existence of nature of god, today Hank explores one of the biggest problems in theism, and possibly the biggest philosophical question humanity faces: why is there evil?

Today we explore what obligations we hold with our personal beliefs. Hank explains epistemic responsibility and the issues it raises with everything from religious belief, to ship owning, to vaccinations.

Today we conclude our unit on Philosophy of Religion and Hank gets a little help from Indiana Jones to explain religious pragmatism and Pascal’s Wager, fideism, and Kierkegaard’s leap to faith.

Now that we’ve left behind the philosophy of religion, it’s time to start exploring what other ways might exist to find meaning in the world. Today we explore essentialism and its response: existentialism. We’ll also learn about Jean-Paul Sartre and his ideas about how to find meaning in a meaningless world.

Today we are talking about death, looking at philosophical approaches from Socrates, Epicurus, and Zhuangzi. We will consider whether it’s logical to fear your own death, or the deaths of your loved ones. Hank also discusses Thomas Nagel, death, and Fear of Missing Out.

Hank explores different ways of understanding identity – including the Indiscernibility of Identicals, and essential and accidental properties. In what ways does affect identity? In what ways does it not? What does it mean for a thing to persist over time?

Today Hank is building on last week’s exploration of identity to focus on personal identity. Does it in reside in your body? Is it in the collective memories of your consciousness? There are, of course, strengths and weaknesses to both of these ideas, and that’s what we’re talking about today.

How can Daenerys Targaryen help us understand personal identity? Find out as Hank continues our exploration of personal identity, learning about Hume’s bundle theory and Parfit’s theory of survival through psychological connectedness.

Now that we’ve started talking about identity, today Hank tackles the question of personhood. Philosophers have tried to assess what constitutes personhood with a variety of different criteria, including genetic, cognitive, social, sentience, and the gradient theory. As with many of philosophy’s great questions, this has much broader implications than simple conjecture. The way we answer this question informs all sorts of things about the way we move about the world, including our views on some of our greatest social debates.

Today we continue our unit on identity by asking where the mind resides. Hank explains the mind-body problem and several approaches to the question of where our minds reside, including reductive physicalism, substance dualism, and mysterianism.

Today Hank explores artificial intelligence, including weak AI and strong AI, and the various ways that thinkers have tried to define strong AI including the Turing Test, and John Searle’s response to the Turing Test, the Chinese Room. Hank also tries to figure out one of the more personally daunting questions yet: is his brother John a robot?

Do we really have free will? Today Hank explores possible answers to that question, explaining theories like libertarian free will and its counterpoint, hard determinism.

As we continue explore free will, today Hank considers a middle ground between hard determinism and libertarian free will: compatibilism. This view seeks to find ways that our internally motivated actions can be understood as free in a deterministic world. We’ll also cover Frankfurt Cases and Patricia Churchland’s rejection of the free-or-not-free dichotomy and her focus on the amount of control we have over our actions.