CHAPTER ONE-INTRODUCING PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning
matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, law, justice, validity,
mind, and language. Logic is often treated simultaneously as a field of study
and as an instrument.
Lesson 1: Meaning and Nature of Philosophy
We can define it as a love of wisdom. Philosophy does not have a specific
subject matter to primarily deal with. Philosophy deals primarily with issues.
The best way to learn and understand philosophy is to philosophize. Not all
wisdom is philosophy. The wisdom that philosophers seek is not the wisdom
of the expertise or technical skills of professionals.
Socrates said that philosophy is the development of critical habits, the
continuous search for truth, and the questioning of the apparent.
Philosophy has a constructive side, for it attempts to formulate rationally
defensible answers to certain fundamental questions concerning the nature
of reality, the nature of value, and the nature of knowledge and truth.
Its critical side is manifested when it deals with giving a rational critic,
analysis, clarification, and evaluation of answers given to basic metaphysical,
epistemological, and axiological questions.
Philosophy is an activity. It is not something that can be easily mastered or
learned in schools. A philosopher is a great philosopher, not because he
mastered philosophy, but because he did it.
Lesson 2: Basic Features of Philosophy
Philosophy has its own salient features that distinguish it from other
academic disciplines, be it natural, social and humanistic disciplines.
1. Philosophy is a set of views or beliefs about life and the universe,
which are often held uncritical.
We refer to this meaning as the informal sense of philosophy or
―having a philosophy.
Usually when a person says ―my philosophy is, he or she is
referring to an informal personal attitude to whatever topic is being
discussed.
2. Philosophy is a process of reflecting on and criticizing our most deeply
held conceptions and beliefs.
This is the formal sense of ―doing philosophy.
These two senses of philosophy, having and doing, cannot be
treated entirely independent of each other, if we did not have a
philosophy in the formal, personal sense, then we could not do a
philosophy in the critical, reflective sense.
A genuine philosophical attitude is searching and critical.
To philosophize also means to generalize.
Philosophers disagree because
i. they view things from different points of view and with
different assumptions
ii. they live in a changing universe
iii. they deal with an area of human experience in which the
evidence is not complete.
3. Philosophy is a rational attempt to look at the world as a whole.
Philosophy seeks to combine the conclusions of the various
sciences and human experience into some kind of consistent
worldview.
Philosophy‘s task is to give a view of the whole, a life and a
worldview, and to integrate the knowledge of the sciences with
that of other disciplines to achieve a consistent whole.
4. Philosophy is the logical analysis of language and the clarification of
the meaning of words and concepts.
Some philosophers see this as the main task of philosophy, and a
few claim this is the only legitimate function of philosophy.
From this narrower point of view, the aim of philosophy is to
expose confusion and nonsense and to clarify the meaning and
use of terms in science and everyday affairs.
Nearly all philosophers have used methods of analysis and have
sought to clarify the meaning of terms and the use of language.
5. Philosophy is a group of perennial problems that interest people and
for which philosophers always have sought answers.
Philosophy presses its inquiry into the deepest problems of
human existence.
There are questions of fact and questions of philosophy.
The attempt to seek answers or solutions to them has given rise
to theories and systems of thought, such as idealism, realism,
pragmatism, analytic philosophy, existentialism,
phenomenology, and process philosophy.
Lesson 3: Metaphysics and Epistemology
Metaphysics
Studies the ultimate nature of reality or existence. The term metaphysics is
derived from the Greek words “meta” means (beyond, upon or after) and
physika, means (physics). Literally, it refers those things after the physics.
1. Cosmological Aspect
Cosmology consists in the study of theories about the origin,
nature, and development of the universe as an orderly system.
2. Theological Aspect
Theology is that part of religious theory that deals with
conceptions of and about God.
3. Anthropological Aspect
Anthropology deals with the study of human beings and asks
questions
4. Ontological Aspect
Is the study of the nature of existence, or what it means for
anything to exist.
Epistemology
Epistemology seeks answers to a number of fundamental issues.
One is whether reality can even be known.
Skepticism in its narrow sense is the position claiming that people
cannot acquire reliable knowledge and that any search for truth is in vain.
That thought was well expressed by Gorgias, the Greek Sophist who
asserted that nothing exists, and that if it did, we could not know it.
A full-blown skepticism would make intelligent action impossible. A
term closely related to skepticism is agnosticism (a smoothened-down
skepticism).
A second issue foundational to epistemology is whether all truth is relative,
or whether some truths are absolute.
Knowledge can be found by empiricism (knowledge obtained through the
senses), rationalism (power of thought and the mind‘s contributions to
knowledge), intuition (direct apprehension of knowledge that is not derived
from conscious reasoning or immediate sense perception), revelation
(transcendent supernatural reality that breaks into the natural order), and
authority (accepted as true because it comes from experts or has been
sanctified over time as tradition).