| I. What is Philosophy? |
|
A. The derivation of the word is from the Greek
roots: |
|
|
1. philo—love of, affinity for, liking of |
|
|
|
As in the words ...
philander—to engage in love affairs frivolously
philanthropy—love mankind in general
philately—to collect postage stamps
-phile—one having a love for, e.g. anglophile
philology—having a liking for words |
|
|
2. sophia—wisdom |
|
|
|
As in the words ...
sophist—one who loves knowledge
sophomore—one who thinks he knows everything
sophisticated—one who is knowledgeable |
|
B. A suggested definition: philosophy is
the systematic inquiry into the principles and presupposition of any field of inquiry. |
|
|
1. Psychologically, philosophy is an attitude, an
approach, or a calling to answer, or to ask, or even to comment upon certain peculiar
problems (i.e., problems such as those usually in the main branches of philosophy discussed below). |
|
|
2. Eventually we must despair of an abstract
definition and turn to what philosophers do—i.e., the practice of philosophy |
| II. 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. |
|
A. Axiology:
the study of value; the investigation of its nature, criteria and metaphysical status. |
|
|
1. Characterization of some features of the definition: |
|
|
|
a. Nature of value: is value a fulfillment of desire, pleasure,
a preference, or simply some kind of human interest? |
|
|
|
b. Criteria of value: is there no
accounting for taste (de gustibus non (est) disputandum)
or can rules and standards of values be set? |
|
|
|
c. Status of value: how are values related to scientific facts?
What ultimate worth do human values have, if any? Is value dependent
upon the presence of human beings? |
|
|
2. Axiology is sub-divided into ... |
|
|
|
a. Ethics:
the study of values in human behavior; the study of moral problems which
seeks to discover how one ought to act, not how one does in
fact act or how one thinks one should act. |
|
|
|
b. Aesthetics:
the study of value in the arts--the study of the beauty, sublimity, and principles of taste, harmony, order, and pattern. |
|
B. Epistemology:
the study of knowledge, in particular, the study of the nature, scope and limits of human
knowledge. |
|
|
1. The investigation of the origin, structure,
methods, and validity of knowledge. |
|
|
2. As an example of orders of knowledge,
consider the statement, "The earth is
round." This can be successively translated depending upon context as
... |
|
|
|
The earth is spherical.
The earth is an oblate spheroid (i.e., it's flattened at the poles).
But what of the mountains, oceans, and so forth? |
|
|
|
Even if we surveyed exactly the shape, the process of surveying would
itself measurably change the shape of the earth—e.g., footprints
and indentations formed by our measuring instruments. In
practice, can the exact shape ever be
actually known? (No, but even though we can probably never know
the exact shape of the earth at any given moment, we do know
the earth has an exact shape.) |
|
|
3. Consider two well-known epistemological
problems: the first not solvable, the second solvable. |
|
|
|
a. Russell's Five Minute World Hypothesis: Suppose the
earth were created five minutes ago, complete with memory images, history books,
geological records, etc. That is, at the moment of creation, the
universe would have all the evidence that it was billions of years old
already "packed in." How could it
ever be known that the creation of the universe did not
occur five minutes ago? |
|
|
|
b. Suppose everything in the universe were to expand
uniformly so that everything was one hundred times larger. How would we ever know it? |
|
C. Ontology
or Metaphysics:
the study of what is "really" real. Metaphysics deals with the so-called first principles of
the natural order or the ultimate generalizations available to the human intellect. |
|
|
1. What kinds of things exist? How do they exist? |
|
|
|
a. E.g., ideas have no size, shape, color, etc. My idea of the
Empire State Building is quite as small as my idea of a book. Do ideas
exist in the same manner that physical objects exit? |
|
|
|
b. E.g., consider the truths of mathematics: How do geometric
figures exist? Does a point (Euclid's "that which has no
parts") exist apart from the idea of it? |
|
|
|
c. What is spirit made of? Or Soul? Or Matter? Or Space?
Or a vacuum? |
| III. To which of these branches of philosophy do you think
logic belongs? |
|
A. Logic:
the study of the methods and principles used in distinguishing correct from incorrect
reasoning. |
|
B. Our knowledge is interrelated by logic. It
forms the fabric of the sciences by ensuring the consistency of the
statements that compose them. |
|
C. Hence, logic is usually considered
a subdivision of epistemology, although, of course, logic is used in
all areas of philosophy. |
