 Kind of got myself a little lost. I Don't really know how I got here And I don't know where here is. There's lots of trees all around me and the view is kind of obscured. I Think I came from that way I'm no survivalist so I Well, I'm a little stuck Yeah, the trees are even obscuring the Sun so even if I could tell which direction the Sun is I'm not sure I could tell from that which way to go I've lost the path Well, I bet this happens more than a little bit when you're reading all of a sudden you find your place in A page or a paragraph and you don't know how you got there Right now I'm sitting amongst a bunch of trees and I I can't see the whole picture Same thing happens when you're reading you read a bunch of sentences and you can't see the whole picture You can't see The forest for the trees. How the heck am I gonna get out of here? like this one you can get lost or at least I can and It's same thing can happen with a book if you don't have a path. You don't know where you're going with what you're reading Now the purpose of a book is that path the purpose will help guide your reading to ask the questions To ask the right questions while you're skimming and trying to figure out what you're supposed to do Now the purpose of a book basically is What is the impact that the author is trying to have on you? Why is the author? writing Every book has a purpose You know cookbook is trying to teach you a set of skills to Create dishes to eat, right? A novel or pretty much any fiction is probably trying to evoke a certain set of emotions Hopefully culminating in entertainment And which emotions are going to be involved depends upon the book depends upon the novel History at the very least is trying to provide you with a series of events and history is trying to do more than that It's also trying to provide you with an explanation for why those events happened So when you're reading history you try to figure out what are the events? What is the explanation that the author is trying to provide? That's the why Every book has a purpose in fact every human endeavor has a purpose Every human act has a purpose and most of the time that purpose involves you if you don't know what that purpose is well quite frankly They may just have the impact on you that they hope whether you want that impact or not So while you're reading Be aware of what the impact is that this author is trying to have on you and through skimming We can find that purpose really really quickly So the purpose of a book roughly is what is the author trying to do? What kind of impact is the author trying to have on you now? There are different purposes for different kinds of books you know something in fiction is trying to you know It's trying to entertain ultimately with Math you know the purpose is trying to describe and explain and even prove something about the relationship between quantities The physical sciences are interested in questions like you know what are the causal relationships between material objects these are These are going to be the purposes of those books is usually going to be some pretty specific application of those and philosophy We try to ask questions about There's certain kinds of concepts specifically, you know very very abstract ones But you can divide these into four main groupings you have Metaphysics which roughly asks questions about what is real? What exists what doesn't exist? You have epistemology and epistemology is roughly questions about knowledge. What is knowledge and how do we know do we know? then you have ethics and ethics asks the question of how you are to live your life and Finally we have logic and logic asks the question of how do I reach? conclusions and usually you're more importantly how do I reach conclusions that are true now it's it's pretty much impossible To have any kind of philosophical investigation that doesn't involve all four of these leads to some degree So for instance, you know if you're asking a question in ethics, you're trying to ask the question How am I to live my life and suppose? You know it has to deal with you know engaging with other people You got to know well, what is a person? If you have if you're trying to figure out what rights do I have as a person you have to ask So what is it? What is a person? Well, that's a question of metaphysics very quickly that Very quickly that moves to questions about knowing what a person is and how do I know what a person is? How do I you know? What's my evidence and how do I reach that conclusion and then all of that? Is going to involve logic all of that's going to deal with how do I reach conclusions that are true because you know Especially with ethics the stakes are high If you Don't understand what a person is but you think only think you do if you have a false belief What a perfect person is you can very quickly do a serious harm to? Things that are not persons, but you think they're things that excuse me things that are persons, but you think they aren't persons so philosophy is going to deal with these kinds of questions those kinds of purposes and Like I said, it's pretty much impossible to deal with any one field without at least involving the other three Remember when I said every human endeavor has a purpose well the zoo is a human endeavor it has a purpose So the question is what are the organizers the makers of the zoo trying to do? So I want you to think about this for a second Pause the video and go ahead and write it down. Well, what do you think? but they came up with something like the purpose of a zoo is to educate people about Animals their variety their differences their natures their climate And also how to preserve animals, then you probably have something like the purpose of the zoo Now for this purpose there are many subjects in the zoo There are lions tigers bears Monkeys gorillas reptiles their birds There are a huge variety of animals here and these are the subjects of the zoo and These subjects they help the zoo achieve this purpose, right? They are Helping to fulfill the goal of the zoo Now you can't have a zoo without showing different animals So in fact the part is divided into these subjects Well zoo has many subjects Like that one And these subjects help achieve the purpose well books have subjects too or topics or concepts or definitions That help achieve the purpose So in our philosophy class, we're going to call these terms Terms are the important concepts and definitions used to achieve the purpose and usually that purpose is going to be some kind of question Now You might be wondering how are you supposed to find the terms? Well, I can't think of a single purpose that doesn't include at least one term In fact the purposes are going to contain the most important terms Here at the zoo there are lots of signs That tell you the subjects of the zoo remember every human endeavor has a purpose the terms are what help the People achieve their purpose So here we have the subjects of the zoo one of these subjects is bears So we have a sign telling us that bears here books work a lot of the same way Section titles chapter titles all of these contain the subjects of the book So for instance if you are reading a chapter on some of the ancient Greek philosophers And you see a subheading or subtitle with Thales Then you know that Thales is one of the ancient Greek philosophers and you want to write that down as a term Even though as a person he's still a subject. So you'll want to write that down as as a term If you're reading a Book and the section title is all universals all numbers are universals You're going to want to write down numbers and universals to figure out what do what does the author mean by those? So a really great place at least you used to be a really great place to find a Real complete listing of all the section titles and all the headings was the table of contents So a good really good practice is before you read a chapter or a whole book Is sit down and write down the terms that you find in the section? So the most important terms are going to be in the purpose of the book or they should be in the purpose of the book You could also find terms in section titles and the title of the book itself And then sometimes the terms are just going to be within the text within the text Trying to find these terms within the text is a bit of an art It's going to take a lot of practice. It's going to take experience To do this you have to read With the purpose in mind. This is what's called active reading. You can't rely on the text just to simply Imprint knowledge on your brain. You have to learn how to find it So if you keep in mind the purpose of the book And with this purpose in mind you're trying to find those concepts and definitions That help the author achieve the purpose of the book Then you've got a long way to finding the terms And later videos we're going to see how further skills in reading build on purpose and terms