Intro to Philosophy

Today we went over some contemporary philosophers I had on my list and assigned those for the term papers. Everyone should have a philosopher to research now though there were several that might still change their minds depending on what they find out as they start looking various philosophers up. The quiz assignment for this was for each student to email me with their chosen philosopher so I could make some recommendations. Then we talked a little about Plato's philosophy of mind before moving on to Aristotle. After a little of a biography I talked about how his philosophy of mind differs from his teachers, in that instead of Matter and Ideas there can only be Matter with a Form, changed by Efficient causes for the Purposes - that is the Final Cause for which each thing is defined. We then talked about the three Laws of thought. This led to the categories and categorical statements. I went to the Traditional Square of Opposition and talked about the four kinds of statements that can be either true or false. The next step is to exam arguments and we began discussing those with Barbara - AAA-1. But we need to pick up from there next week. A second quiz question was to explain how you thought movement is possible given that there are an infinite number of points between A and B on a line.