How to Read Philosophy

Summary

In this enlightening video, Jeffrey Kaplan provides insights on effectively reading and comprehending philosophical texts, as one might encounter in college-level philosophy courses. Kaplan proffers six key strategies, emphasizing understanding over memorization, and the significance of reading passages multiple times for deeper comprehension. Through examples from renowned philosophers like Rene Descartes and engaging advice on identifying argument structures and metaphors, Kaplan guides viewers in navigating the complexities of philosophical literature. His practical approach aims to make philosophy more approachable for students and enthusiasts alike.

Highlights

• Understand before you memorize—it's about comprehension, not rote learning. 📖
• Track argument flow: claims support other claims, like bricks supporting a wall. 🧱
• Recognize 'signposts' like 'hence' and 'since' to see how ideas link. 🔁
• Use analogies to turn complex ideas into something you can visualize. 🛠️
• Debate the material in your mind to better understand the author's points. 💡
• Kaplan's biggest tip is about rereading for a deeper grasp of the material. 🔄

Key Takeaways

• Memory happens naturally after understanding. Comprehend first! 🧠
• Identify the argument structure to grasp philosophy texts. Support matters! 🌀
• Pay attention to signposts like 'therefore' and 'because' to see connections. 🚦
• Make abstract concepts concrete with real-world examples. Simplify! 🔍
• Challenge the text by trying to disprove it—boost your understanding. 🤔
• Read more than once to uncover new details and insights. Reread! 📚

Overview

Jeffrey Kaplan's video on 'How to Read Philosophy' is a goldmine for anyone diving into complex philosophical texts. He breaks down the process with six practical tips that help demystify these challenging readings. From René Descartes' meditations on the indivisibility of the mind versus the body to Princess Elizabeth's philosophical letters, Kaplan uses clear examples to illustrate how understanding should precede memory.

Kaplan explains the importance of identifying the structure of arguments within philosophical discussions. His insights suggest that understanding these texts is similar to recognizing how a building stands—where the foundational arguments support the more visible conclusions. Viewers are encouraged to discern these supporting claims, which are often signposted by terms like 'therefore' or 'thus'.

Moreover, Kaplan emphasizes the necessity of rereading texts—a strategy some students initially resist. He reassures them that each read-through offers new understanding, akin to noticing previously unseen details in a familiar painting. Kaplan's engaging presentation style makes even the sternest philosophical concepts accessible, benefiting both newcomers and veterans in philosophical study.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction This chapter introduces the video and its purpose. The speaker mentions that the video will provide six pieces of advice on how to read texts assigned in college-level philosophy courses. The speaker promises to reveal the most effective piece of advice at the end of the video to maintain viewer interest. The introduction is punctuated with a note about the video being posted online, indicating a level of trust required from the audience to take the content seriously.
• 00:30 - 02:30: Advice 1: Understanding Over Memory Chapter Title: Advice 1: Understanding Over Memory Summary: This chapter emphasizes the importance of understanding text over merely memorizing it. The advice given is to focus on grasping the content and essence of the reading material, as comprehension naturally leads to memory retention. An illustration is provided to demonstrate this concept, highlighting that trying to understand will lead to automatic memory recall.
• 02:30 - 06:00: Advice 2: Claims and Support In this chapter, the concept of memory and understanding language is explored through an example written on a board. The example shows that people are more likely to remember information written in a language they understand compared to one they don't, even if they are given less time to read it. The key point is that the two sets of symbols, although different, convey the same meaning, highlighting the importance of comprehension over mere exposure time.
• 06:00 - 10:00: Advice 3: Don't Skip the Signposts Chapter titled 'Advice 3: Don't Skip the Signposts' emphasizes the importance of understanding the author's intent in a reading as a key to remembering the content effectively. The speaker advises against trying to memorize without first comprehending the material, suggesting that a deeper grasp at both the sentence and world level will enhance memory retention. The chapter sets the stage for the next piece of advice, indicating a transition to another useful strategy.
• 10:00 - 14:00: Advice 4: Make Abstractions Concrete In this chapter, the focus is on understanding how claims in a reading support each other by making abstractions concrete. The chapter uses an example from René Descartes, a French philosopher, whose famous work 'Meditations on First Philosophy' is referenced. Specifically, it discusses passages from Meditation number six, highlighting the contrast between the divisibility of the body and the indivisibility of the mind.
• 14:00 - 16:30: Advice 5: Try to Disprove the Reading This chapter explores René Descartes' distinction between the mind and the body. It highlights Descartes' philosophical assertion that while the body, consisting of tangible parts such as the brain, skull, fingers, toes, and lungs, can be divided into parts, the mind or soul is inherently indivisible. The segmentation of the body is contrasted against the indestructible unity of the mind, signaling a foundational principle in Cartesian dualism.
• 16:30 - 18:00: Advice 6: Read Multiple Times The chapter discusses the importance of reading multiple times to understand complex concepts. It uses the example of passages by a French philosopher to illustrate how two sentences support each other in forming an argument. It emphasizes that understanding requires seeing these sentences as a unified thought rather than separate ideas.

How to Read Philosophy Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 because this is a video that i'm posting on the internet you're just gonna have to believe me [Music] this is a video about how to read the texts that are assigned in a college-level philosophy course i'm going to give you six pieces of advice for how to read philosophy and i'm going to save the best most effective piece of advice for the end because that's how you create tension
• 00:30 - 01:00 the first piece of advice is don't remember or don't try to remember what's going on in the text instead just try to understand what's going on in the text you need to first just understand what's happening in the reading and then the memory will just happen automatically here's sort of a cheesy illustration of this point try to remember this one two three one two three do you remember what i just
• 01:00 - 01:30 wrote on the board over here and over here i bet you can remember what it said over here but you can't remember what it said over here the reason for that is that this was written in a language that probably you don't understand and so even though you saw these symbols in fact you saw them for longer than you saw the symbols in english you had six seconds to try to remember what this said and you only had three seconds to try to remember this it turns out by the way that these two sets of symbols mean exactly the same thing they just
• 01:30 - 02:00 mean it in different languages okay that was a cheesy example you get the point the point is if you understand what the author is trying to say not just even at the sentence or world level but you have a grasp of what's going on in the reading then it'll just stick in your head you'll just remember it but if you don't try to first understand what's going on you just try to remember it it's just not gonna work okay fine well how do you understand these readings that brings us to piece of advice number two
• 02:00 - 02:30 figure out which claims in the reading support which other claims i'll illustrate this with an example from renee descartes who was a french philosopher his most famous philosophical work is called the meditations on first philosophy they were published in 1641. here are two passages that appear in meditation number six the body is by its very nature always divisible while the mind is utterly indivisible
• 02:30 - 03:00 and then the next passage is the mind is completely different from the body so let's just say very quickly what's going on in these two passages right so descartes is talking about the human body that is the brain and the skull and the fingers and the toes and the lungs all that stuff and he's also talking about the human mind or the soul or whatever and in the first passage he's saying that the body is always divisible that is it could always be chopped up into parts but the mind can never be divided or
• 03:00 - 03:30 chopped up into parts it's indivisible it's a single unit that you can't split up and in the second passage he's just saying that the mind and the body are two different things they're not the same thing okay mr professor guy thank you very much for reading those two sentences by this dead french philosopher what's the point the point is that these aren't just two random sentences one of them supports the other one this is an argument the
• 03:30 - 04:00 first claim that the body is divisible but the mind is indivisible that claim is meant to demonstrate or prove or be an argument in favor of the second claim which is that the mind and the body are different things if one thing can be chopped up into parts and another thing can't be chopped up well then the first and the second thing can't be the same thing we don't need to dwell on the details of this argument we just need to realize that this is an argument one of these claims
• 04:00 - 04:30 is meant to support the other claim and let's notice that the word support here is a metaphor right like the walls of a house literally support the roof of the house but these words over here don't literally support some other words so when you run into a metaphor when you're reading philosophy you should try to figure out what the literal meaning is here's the literal meaning in this case when one claim supports another claim what that means is that the first claim
• 04:30 - 05:00 if it's plausible or even in the end if it's true then therefore the second claim is also plausible or in the end is also true that's what it is to make an argument for something or to give reasons for something it's to present one claim which seems to show that the other claim has to be true this relationship wherein one claim supports another claim that's the crucial the central relationship in
• 05:00 - 05:30 philosophical texts and this relationship of supporting or demonstrating or being an argument for something that's not the central relationship in like all forms of writing like in some works of literature those works are all about symbolism so like in the great gatsby by f scott fitzgerald i think there's like a billboard in the book and the billboard has this guy's eyes on it it's like an advertisement for an eye doctor or something i think his name was dr t.j eckleburg
• 05:30 - 06:00 and that might be the only thing i remember from the book but the point is those eyes on the billboard they were supposed to symbolize something like maybe they symbolized the emptiness of materialism and consumerism or maybe they symbolized the eyes of god or whatever i have no idea the point is just that symbolism is not the main thing that you want to look out for when you're reading a philosophical text what you want to look out for is some claims supporting
• 06:00 - 06:30 or demonstrating or being reasons for other claims the whole time you're reading a philosophical text that's what you want to be on the hunt for piece of advice number three don't skip the signposts to illustrate this here's a passage by barbara mckinnon mckinnon is a very famous moral philosopher she's still alive today i think she's probably professor emeritus now at the university of san francisco here's something that she says a second reason to believe that what relativism holds is
• 06:30 - 07:00 true is the great difficulty we often have in knowing what is the morally right thing to believe or do okay what does that mean don't just try to figure it out all at once look for the sign posts right sign posts are little signs or signals that get posted in they get placed throughout the reading to point you to what's going on when so the passage begins with a second reason to believe that's a signpost a reason to believe when you see that
• 07:00 - 07:30 she's telling you some reason or argument to believe something what is this gonna be a reason to believe well it comes immediately next in the sentence what relativism holds is true okay so we're getting some argument for relativism relativism is a theory in this case it's a meta-ethical theory and then there's that word second she's numbering things so if you come across the word second then you need to figure out what was the first thing that signpost that word second that appeared in the
• 07:30 - 08:00 text that's your hint oh no i gotta go back and figure out what the first thing was here's some other sign posts therefore hence as a result consequently thus all of these are signposts that tell you when one idea or claim supports another idea or claim if you see the word thus then you know that what came before that word is meant to support whatever comes after that word these sign posts are a
• 08:00 - 08:30 hint or a clue that's telling you about the most important thing that happens in philosophical readings here's some more because since these are also signposts that clue you in to when one idea supports another idea but they do it in the reverse order if you see the word because then you know that the thing that comes after the word is the thing that supports whatever came before that word and the last very common very important type of signpost that
• 08:30 - 09:00 i'll mention here is something like this one might object by saying blah blah blah what happens in philosophical texts all the time is that the author of the text will raise an objection to their own view just so that they can knock down that objection and when they're describing the objection it may take them paragraphs or pages or even a whole chapter or something like that and there may be only one or two little signals like this
• 09:00 - 09:30 that tell you that what they're talking about is not their own view but their opponent's view it's tempting to skip over all of these sign posts because they seem like they might be insignificant but they're hugely important if you skip over a signpost like this then you might not realize that this whole paragraph is the opposite of the view that the author is arguing in favor right like even that passage by mckinnon she's just presenting some reasons to believe that relativism is true
• 09:30 - 10:00 does that mean that she's a relativist like a meta-ethical relativist is that her theory we don't know what we need to do is look at the surrounding parts of the text and find the signposts to figure out whether she's advancing her own view at that part of the reading or whether she's laying out her opponent's view or whatever piece of advice number four make abstractions concrete to illustrate this one here's a passage
• 10:00 - 10:30 from princess elizabeth of bohemia princess elizabeth was a real princess like her dad was a king or something and she lived at the same time as descartes who we were talking about before and they used to write letters to each other about philosophy and in one letter or series of letters from the spring of 1643 she just like demolishes this whole central claim of descartes in this one letter and anyway here's a portion of a sentence
• 10:30 - 11:00 from one of those letters from 1643 the movement of something depends on the kind of impulse it gets from what sets it in motion or again on the nature and shape of this latter thing's surface okay what that's like very abstract it's very hard to understand what's going on in that sentence and so what we need to do this is a tactic for understanding very abstract sentences is you take some concrete example some
• 11:00 - 11:30 very real world example and you you put it in to all the places where the abstractions occur in the sentence and then you reread the sentence and you say oh that's what it means and then of course at the end you take those concrete examples back out and reread the abstraction again so let's do that okay so the original quote is on the top and i'm just going to read that the movement of something stop there something what well let's just pick a thing like anything so i've picked a rock like a stone or whatever and on the
• 11:30 - 12:00 bottom i just replace the word something with a rock so it reads the movement of a rock okay so we keep going with the original sentence on the top the movement of something let's say a rock depends on the kind of impulse it well what's it it's the rock right okay so we replace it with the rock again on the bottom and we keep going on the top the movement of something depends on the kind of impulse it the rock gets from what sets it in motion what sets it in
• 12:00 - 12:30 motion so there's something that sets the rock in motion like there's something that moves the rock so what's it going to be well let's just say it's a hand like a human hand pushes the rock okay that's the concrete example that we're replacing here so now we just replace with what sets it in motion with a hand that pushes the rock okay and then it says or again on the nature and shape of this ladder things surface this ladder thing the latter thing is
• 12:30 - 13:00 the second thing ladder means the second thing so first we had the rock then we had the hand the hand is the second thing so the latter thing is the hand so now we've got that whole sentence on the bottom i'm going to read this whole sentence on the bottom work through it with me the movement of a rock depends on the kind of impulse the rock gets from a hand that pushes it so like the way that the hand pushes the rock like whether it comes from the top or from the side or whatever that
• 13:00 - 13:30 determines how the rock is going to move okay that's like actually a really simple idea when we fill in the concrete examples and then let's let's finish the quote with the concrete example still filled in or again on the nature and shape of the hand's surface right so like the way that the rock moves depends not just on the kind of impulse that it's getting from the hand like what angle it's coming from and how hard the hand is hitting it but also unlike the nature and shape of the hand right
• 13:30 - 14:00 so like if my hand is like this then it'll then the rock will move differently than if my hand is like this or whatever okay that's actually a really really simple idea that princess elizabeth is saying there she's just making it in a very abstract way she's not making the point about rocks and hands she's making that point about all objects so then once we've figured out what this sentence means as applied to rocks and hands or whatever these examples that we made up and we and we put into the to the abstract
• 14:00 - 14:30 example we we take them out again we reread the sentence in its full abstract form and it reads just like before the movement of something depends on the kind of impulse it gets right from what sets it in motion now we understand what that means or again on the nature and shape of this latter things surface piece of advice number five try to disprove what you're reading to explain this here's a passage from tommy shelby
• 14:30 - 15:00 shelby is a very well-known still-living professor at harvard here's something that he says the oppressed within a seriously unjust society can be fairly criticized when they fail to fulfill their basic moral duties to others including their duty to contribute to reforming their society what shelby is saying is that being oppressed is not like a complete get out of morality free card
• 15:00 - 15:30 you still have moral obligations and other people can still criticize you for not fulfilling your moral obligations and shelby has some argument for this or whatever but we're not going to focus on that right now the point is when you come across a claim like this you should try temporarily for the sake of understanding the fullness of the text you should try to argue against it yourself in your mind when you're reading it how would you argue against the claim that people who've been oppressed
• 15:30 - 16:00 continue to have their moral obligations well maybe you'd come up with an example where someone is victimized or oppressed or something is bad bad happens to them and then their some duty of theirs goes away they no longer have some duty or obligation that they previously had and then you could say well the normal kind of moral duties that people have in society aren't different from the kind of duty
• 16:00 - 16:30 that this person lost when something bad happened to them that's just a sort of very broad very generic outline of how one could argue against this claim that shall be made the only point is that when you're reading a philosophical text you should try to do this along the way you've made it this far now you get the sixth most important most powerful most efficient piece of advice for how to read text in a college level philosophy class
• 16:30 - 17:00 and that piece of advice is read it more than once when i say this at the beginning of the semester in all of the courses that i teach most of the students just kind of don't believe me they think look i read the thing if i didn't understand it the first time i'm not going to understand it the second time and i know this sounds kind of crazy but that's just wrong if you read the text again you will get more out of it you will notice things that you didn't notice
• 17:00 - 17:30 before it really and truly does work of course there are some diminishing returns like the 10th time that you read some paragraph you don't learn nearly as much from it as you learned the second time but philosophical texts are hard and so when i teach regular full courses i do this sort of activity in the classroom where i have the students read a passage and then they take a little quiz on it and then i make them read it again and i don't explain anything to them in between the first
• 17:30 - 18:00 time they read it and the second time they read it and then i give them another harder quiz or whatever and the result of this exercise is that at least some of them come to believe me that like oh yeah if i just read it again i just will understand more because this is a video that i'm posting on the internet you're just gonna have to believe me i like can't make you go through that exercise right now just trust me when i tell you this really works
• 18:00 - 18:30 [Music] do