Divisions of Philosophy

Abstract: Philosophy, philosophy inquiry, and the main branches of philosophy are characterized.

What is Philosophy?
1. The derivation of the word "philosophy" from the Greek is suggested by the following words and word-fragments.
  - philo—love of, affinity for, liking of
  - philander—to engage in love affairs frivolously
  - philanthropy—love of mankind in general
  - philately—postage stamps hobby
  - phile—(as in "anglophile") one having a love for
  - philology—having a liking for words
  - sophos—wisdom
  - sophist—lit. one who loves knowledge
  - sophomore—wise and moros—foolish; i.e. one who thinks he knows many things
  - sophisticated—one who is knowledgeable
2. A suggested definition for our beginning study is as follows. Philosophy is the systematic inquiry into the principles and presuppositions of any field of study.
  1. From a pyschological point of view, philosophy is an attitude, an approach, or a calling to answer or to ask, or even to comment upon certain peculiar problems (i.e., specifically the kinds of problems usually relegated to the main branches discussed below in Section II).
  2. There is, perhaps, no one single sense of the word "philosophy." Eventually most writers abandon the attempt to define adequately philosophy and, instead, turn to the kinds of things philosophers do.
  3. What is involved in the study of philosophy involves is described by the London Times in an article dealing with the 20th World Congress of Philosophy: "The great virtue of philosophy is that it teaches not what to think, but how to think. It is the study of meaning, of the principles underlying conduct, thought and knowledge. The skills it hones are the ability to analyse, to question orthodoxies and to express things clearly. However arcane some philosophical texts may be … the ability to formulate questions and follow arguments is the essence of education."
The Main Branches of Philosophy are divided as to the nature of the questions asked in each area. The integrity of these divisions cannot be rigidly maintained, for one area overlaps into the others.
1. Axiology: the study of value; the investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. More often than not, the term " value theory" is used instead of "axiology" in contemporary discussions even though the former term is used with respect to economic value.
  1. We can briefly elaborate as follows.
    1. Nature of value: is value a fulfillment of desire, a pleasure, a preference, a behavioral disposition, or simply a human interest of some kind?
    2. Criteria of value: de gustibus non (est) disputandum or do objective standards apply?
    3. Status of value: how are values related to (scientific) facts? What ultimate worth, if any, do human values have?
  2. Axiology is usually divided into two main parts.
    1. Ethics: the study of values in human behavior or the study of moral problems: e.g., (1) the rightness and wrongness of actions, (2) the kinds of things which are good or desirable, and (3) whether actions are blameworthy or praiseworthy.
      1. Consider this example analyzed by J. O. Urmson in his well-known essay, "Saints and Heroes":
        
        "We may imagine a squad of soldiers to be practicing the throwing of live hand grenades; a grenade slips from the hand of one of them and rolls on the ground near the squad; one of them sacrifices his life by throwing himself on the grenade and protecting his comrades with his own body. It is quite unreasonable to suppose that such a man must be impelled by the sort of emotion that he might be impelled by if his best friend were in the squad."
      2. Did the soldier who threw himself on the grenade do the right thing? If he did not cover the grenade, probably several soldiers would be killed. His action undoubtedly saved lives; certainly, an action which saves lives is a morally correct action. One might even be inclined to conclude that saving lives is a duty. But if this were so, wouldn't each of the soldiers have the moral obligation or duty to save his comrades?
    2. Æsthetics: the study of value in the arts or the inquiry into feelings, judgments, or standards of beauty and related concepts. Philosophy of art is concerned with judgments of sense, taste, and emotion.
      1. E.g., Is art an intellectual or representational activity? What would the realistic representations in pop art represent? Does art represent sensible objects or ideal objects?
      2. Is artistic value objective? Is it merely coincidental that many forms in architecture and painting seem to illustrate mathematical principles? Are there standards of taste?
      3. Is there a clear distinction between art and reality?
2. Epistemology: the study of knowledge. In particular, epistemology is the study of the nature, scope, and limits of human knowledge.
  1. Epistemology investigates the origin, structure, methods, and integrity of knowledge.
  2. Consider the degree of truth of the statement, "The earth is round." Does its truth depend upon the context in which the statement is uttered? For example, this statement can be successively more accurately translated as …
    - "The earth is spherical"
    - "The earth is an oblate spheroid" (i.e., flattened at the poles).
    - But what about the Himalayas and the Marianias Trench? Even if we surveyed exactly the shape of the earth, our process of surveying would alter the surface by the footprints left, albeit marginally.
    - (Note here as well the implications for skepticism and relativism: simply because we cannot describe the exact shape of the earth, the conclusion does not logically follow that the earth does not have a shape.)
  3. Furthermore, consider two well-known problems in epistemology:
    1. Russell's Five-Minute-World Hypothesis: Suppose the earth were created five minutes ago, complete with memory images, history books, records, etc., how could we ever know of it? As Russell wrote in The Analysis of Mind, "There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago."
    2. Suppose everything in the universe (including spatial relations) were to expand uniformly a thousand times larger. How could we ever know it? A moment's thought reveals that the mass of objects increases by the cube whereas the distance among them increases linearly. Hence, if such an expansion were possible, changes in the measurement of gravity and the speed of light would be evident, if, indeed, life would be possible.
    3. Russell's Five-Minute-World Hypothesis is a philosophical problem; the universe's expanding is a scientific problem since the latter problem can, in fact, be answered by principles of elementary physics.
3. Ontology or Metaphysics: the study of what is really real. Metaphysics deals with the so-called first principles of the natural order and "the ultimate generalizations available to the human intellect." Specifically, ontology seeks to establish the relationships between the categories of the types of existent things.
  1. What kinds of things exist? Do only particular things exist or do general things also exist? How is existence possible? Questions as to identity and change of objects—are you the same person you were yesterday?
  2. How do ideas exist if they have no size, shape, or color. (My idea of the Empire State Building is quite as "small" or as "large" as my idea of a book. I.e., An idea is not extended in space.) What is space? What is time?
  3. E.g., the truths of mathematics: in what manner do geometric figures exist? Are points, lines, or planes real or not? Of what are they made?
  4. What is spirit? or soul? or matter? spac? Are they made up of the same sort of "stuff"?
  5. When, if ever, are events necessary? Under what conditions are they possible?
Further characteristics of philosophy and examples of philosophical problems are discussed in the next tutorial.

The Divisions and Definition of Philosophy

Nature of Philosophy

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Divisions of Philosophy