Review Notes 1

Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person

Contents
Competencies Covered 1

Key Points 1
Philosophy’s Goal 1
Constructing a Picture of Reality 2
Fields of Philosophy 3
Philosophy and Life’s Questions 3

Synthesis 4

Practice 5

Tips 7

Bibliography 8

Answer Key 9
 Review Notes 1
Introduction to the Philosophy of
the Human Person

Competencies Covered
In this note, we will discuss the important concepts about the
following competencies:

● Distinguish a holistic perspective from a partial point of

view; and
● Recognize human activities that emanated from deliberate
reflection.

Key Points
Philosophy’s Goal
● Philosophy comes from the Greek words philo (which means
love) and sophia (which means wisdom).
● Philosophy’s aim is to know about truth and reality by
asking questions and by using reason to answer those
questions.
● Philosophy teaches you to ask questions about things that
you think you already know and about things that you have
to know yet.
○ We hold a lot of beliefs about ourselves, others, and
the world that we often take as truths. We do not
question if these beliefs are true or not.
○ One of the tasks of philosophy is to help us ask the
right questions and help us arrive at truths about
ourselves, others, and the world through these
questions.

RN1. Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person 1

 Constructing a Picture of Reality
● One of the goals of philosophy is to arrive at a holistic, complete picture of reality
through reasoning. A holistic point of view allows us to know a situation based on a
thorough and logical understanding. Nothing exemplifies this idea of a complete
reality than Plato’s Allegory of the Cave:

The Allegory of the Cave tells the story of men chained inside a cave with no
knowledge of the outside world except for what they saw in the shadows
reflected on its walls. One day, one of them was freed and saw the outside world
for what it really was for the first time. He saw the world of pure forms. He
went back to tell his prisoners about what he saw, but they would not believe
him. They chose to believe that the only reality was the cave that they had
known for so long and the shadows within them.

● Plato’s allegory shows us that what we take to be true about the world might not be
true at all. Being imprisoned in the cave is akin to having a partial point of view, or
looking at a situation from a limited perspective. The allegory teaches us that there
might be a truer, more real version of the world than what we know it to be. How can
we arrive at this truer, more complete version of reality?
● In order to do this, you must learn how to think for yourself and arrive at the right
answers. One of the ways through which humans have grappled with reality is
through the use of reasoning. There are two kinds of reasoning.
○ The first, deductive reasoning arrives at conclusions from general to specific
statements. For example,
All mammals breastfeed their young.
Dogs breastfeed their young.
Therefore, dogs are mammals.
○ The second, inductive reasoning uses specific details to arrive at a general
conclusion. This is the common method used in science, where observations
are collected in order to make a conclusion. For example,
Dogs breastfeed their young.
Cats breastfeed their young.
Humans breastfeed their young.
Therefore, dogs, cats, and humans are mammals.

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 Fields of Philosophy
● There has been agreement as to the exact fields of philosophy, but Miller and Jensen
(2009) have outlined four: metaphysics, epistemology, value theory, and logic.
● Metaphysics is concerned with questions and theories about reality. It asks the
questions “What is real?” and “Is there more than one reality?”
● Epistemology is the study of the nature of knowledge. Its interest is in knowing what
it means to know. “What can we do to obtain knowledge?”, “Is this the right way to
obtain knowledge?”, “Does knowledge have a limit?”, “How can we be certain that
what we know is true?” are some of the questions asked in epistemology.
● Value theory deals with questions about value or philosophical inquiries on
evaluating the merit, “goodness” or “badness,” “rightness or wrongness” of things.
○ Subfields of value theory include ethics or the question of whether something
is right or wrong.
○ Aesthetics or evaluation of beauty and art is also a subfield of value theory.
● Lastly, logic is the field of philosophy that studies reasoning. Logic is a tool of
philosophy. As with all things in philosophy, even its tools must come under scrutiny,
and thus, logic is considered a field of philosophy on its own.

Philosophy and Life’s Questions

● A common misconception of philosophy is that it is too concerned with questions
that are too removed from reality. A common image of a philosopher is someone
whose head is way up in the clouds, someone who is too concerned with abstract
questions that he or she forgets to pay attention to things that are immediate and
real.
● In reality, a lot of the concrete questions that we grapple with every day are within
the province of philosophy. For instance, the questions of what we do with our time
and how we fill our days—questions that are as immediate and as real as the
activities that we do every day—are within the province of philosophy.

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 Synthesis
● Philosophy’s goal is to arrive at a holistic picture of reality through the proper use of
questions and reasoning.
● In philosophy, questions and how we ask and answer them are as important as the
answers themselves.
● There are different fields of philosophy—metaphysics, epistemology, value theory, and
logic.
● Philosophy’s questions are real and immediate and can be seen in various issues and
problems that we grapple with, as individuals existing both within society and the
natural world.

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 Practice
Shade the circle beside the correct answer for each question.

1. What does the Greek word sophia mean?

◯ intellect
◯ knowledge
◯ reason
◯ wisdom

2. What is the direction of statements in inductive reasoning?

◯ specific details to general conclusion
◯ general conclusion to specific details
◯ premises to conclusions
◯ conclusions to premises

3. In the Allegory of the Cave, what was the reaction of the fellow prisoners when the
free man came back to tell them of the world of pure forms?
◯ belief
◯ indignation
◯ disbelief
◯ anger

4. Which field of philosophy is concerned with the morality of stealing to save one’s life?
◯ metaphysics
◯ epistemology
◯ logic
◯ value theory

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 5. To what field of philosophy the question of the existence of an alternate reality is
most related?
◯ value theory
◯ metaphysics
◯ logic
◯ epistemology

6. Why is asking questions important in philosophy?

◯ so we can have a complete and true picture of reality
◯ so we will not be complacent about our knowledge
◯ so we will not take the things that we know for granted
◯ so we will not be blinded by reality

7. How do philosophers try to answer the questions of philosophy?

◯ by reason
◯ by wisdom
◯ by intellect
◯ by intuition

8. A researcher has begun to question whether the methods he used to answer his
research problem were appropriate. Under which branch of philosophy does his
question fall?
◯ metaphysics
◯ epistemology
◯ logic
◯ value theory

9. In what way is a philosopher and the free man in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave similar?
◯ Both think that everything they experience is a mere illusion.
◯ Both believe that there is an absolute reality beyond what they currently
experience.
◯ Both realize that there is a truer reality beyond what they currently
experience.
◯ Both think that everything they believe in life is a mere illusion.

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 10. What is the place of philosophy in day-to-day concerns?
◯ It can help us know which experiences belong to reality and which
experiences do not.
◯ It can help us know whether or not we are actually living our authentic
realities every day.
◯ It can make us reexamine the meaning and value of things that we do every
day.
◯ It can help us become more discerning of the truthfulness or reality of our
experiences.

How will you know that you have reached the same place of enlightenment as the free man
in the Allegory of the Cave?

Tips

● Seek to understand the meaning of the concepts, rather than memorizing them.
● Develop the habit of asking questions, not for its own sake, but for clarification.

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 Bibliography

Christian, James Lee. Philosophy: an Introduction to the Art of Wondering. Boston, MA:
Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012.

Miller, Ed L., and Jon Jensen. Questions That Matter: an Invitation to Philosophy. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 2009.

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 Answer Key

Answers to the Multiple-Choice Test

1. wisdom
2. specific details to general conclusion
3. disbelief
4. value theory
5. metaphysics
6. so we can have a complete and true picture of reality
7. by reason
8. epistemology
9. Both realize that there is a truer reality beyond what they currently experience.
10. It can make us reexamine the meaning and value of things that we do every day.

Possible Answer and Explanation to the HOTS Question

Knowing reality in its true form is a continuing journey. It might be possible that we will
never exactly know or realize that we have become finally enlightened. However, by
asking philosophical questions, one becomes more enlightened.

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