LOGIC AND CRITICAL THINKING CHAPTER 1

Literal definition of philosophy is “love of wisdom”

• ancient Greek thinker Pythagoras was the first to use the word “philosopher” to call a person who clearly shows a marked curiosity in the things he experiences
• Not all wisdoms are philosophy
• The wisdom that philosophers seek is not the wisdom of the expertise or technical skills of professionals
• According to Socrates, wisdom consists of a critical habit and eternal vigilance about all things and a reverence for truth, whatever its form, and wherever its place
• Based on the Socratic understanding of wisdom, philosophy, as a pursuit of wisdom, is
  • the development of critical habits
  • the continuous search for truth
  • the questioning of the apparent
• To interrogate the obvious means to deal creatively with the phenomenal world, to go beyond the common understanding, and to speculate about things that other people accept with no doubt
• questioning/criticism is not the final end of philosophy, though
  • raising the right question is often taken not only as the beginning and direction of philosophy but also as its essence
• The philosophical enterprise, as Vincent Barry stated, is “an active imaginative process of formulating proper questions and resolving them by rigorous, persistent analysis”
• Philosophy has
  • Constructive side: 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
  • Critical side: 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
• The product of philosophizing is philosophy as a product. However, what makes someone a great philosopher is not the produced philosophy, but his/her outstanding ability to philosophize

Lesson 2: Basic Features of Philosophy

Note: 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
  • BUT having a philosophy is not sufficient for doing philosophy

• • A genuine philosophical attitude is
    • searching and critical
    • open-minded and tolerant
    • willing to look at all sides of an issue without prejudice
  • To philosophize is not merely to read and know philosophy
  • To philosophize also means to generalize
    • Philosophers take a second look at the material presented by common sense
    • accumulation of knowledge does not by itself lead to understanding, because it does not necessarily teach the mind to make a critical evaluation of facts that entail consistent and coherent judgment
  • Philosophers, theologians, scientists, and others disagree, because
    • they view things from different points of view and with different assumptions
    • they live in a changing universe
      • Some people are responsive and sensitive to change; others cling to tradition and the status quo
    • they deal with an area of human experience in which the evidence is not complete
  • Despite these disagreements, however, philosophers continue to probe, examine, and evaluate the material with the hope of presenting consistent principles by which we can live

• 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
  • Although there are difficulties and dangers in setting forth any worldview, there also are dangers in confining attention to fragments of human experience
  • Philosophy attempts to bring the results of human inquiry into some meaningful interpretation that provides knowledge and insight for our lives

• Philosophy is the logical analysis of language and the clarification of the meaning of words and concepts
  • all philosophers have used methods of analysis and have sought to clarify the meaning of terms and the use of language
  • Some philosophers see this as the main task of philosophy, and a few claims this is the only legitimate function of philosophy
    • consider philosophy a specialized field serving the sciences and aiding in the clarification of language
    • This outlook has gain support during the twentieth century
  • Not all linguistic analysts, however, define knowledge so narrowly
    • many of them think that we can have knowledge of ethical principles and the like, although this knowledge is also experientially derived
  • 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

• 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
  • The following some questions are all philosophical or have philosophical importance
    • What is “truth?” and What is the distinction between right and wrong?
    • fundamental life issues: What is life and why am I here? Why is there anything at all?
    • Is there really a fundamental distinction between right and wrong, or is it just a matter of one’s own opinions? What is beauty?
    • Where does knowledge come from, and can we have any assurances that anything is true?
    • Is there a possibility of a life after death?
  • 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, process philosophy
  • Philosophy also means the various theories or systems of thought developed by the great philosophers
    • Without these people and their thoughts, philosophy would not have the rich content it has today
    • we are constantly influenced by ideas that have come down to us in the traditions of society

Lesson 3: Metaphysics and Epistemology

Literally, it refers “those things after the physics”

• studies the ultimate nature of reality or existence
• deal with issues of
  • reality, God, freedom, soul/immortality, the mind-body problem, form and substance relationship, cause and effect relationship, and other related issues
  • some of the questions that Metaphysics primarily deals with:
    • What is reality?
    • What is the ultimately real?
    • Can reality be grasped by the senses, or it is transcendent?
    • What is mind, and what is its relation to the body?
    • Is there a cause-and-effect relationship between reality and appearance?
    • Does God exist, and if so, can we prove it?
    • What is time?
    • What is the meaning of life?

It is evident that the question of reality is not as simplistic as it appears

Metaphysical questions are the most basic to ask because they provide the foundation upon which all subsequent inquiry is based

• Metaphysicians seek an irreducible foundation of reality or “first principles” from which absolute knowledge or truth can be induced and deduced
• Historically: Aristotle’s writings on “first philosophy” came after his treatise on physics, therefore, Aristotle’s editor, Andronicus of Rhodes, named them metaphysics

• Metaphysical questions may be divided into four subsets or aspects

• • Cosmological Aspect
    • study of theories about the origin, nature, and development of the universe as an orderly system
    • Question like: How did the universe originate and develop? Did it come about by accident or design?

• • Theological Aspect
    • Theology is that part of religious theory that deals with conceptions of and about God
    • Question like: Is there a God? If so, is there one or more than one? What are the attributes of God?

• • Anthropological Aspect
    • Anthropology deals with the study of human beings
    • Question like: What is the relation between mind and body?  What is humanity’s moral status

• • Ontological Aspect
    • the study of the nature of existence, or what it means for anything to exist
    • Question like: Is basic reality found in matter or physical energy (the world we can sense)? Is it fixed and stable?

• • has been of prime importance in the field of religion
  • Believers hold that this form of knowledge has the distinct advantage of Being an omniscient source of information that is not available through other epistemological methods
  • disadvantage of revealed knowledge is that
    • It must be accepted by faith and cannot be proved or disproved empirically

• Authority (it is not a philosophical position)
  • knowledge is accepted as true because it comes from experts or has been sanctified over time as tradition
  • it has both advantage and disadvantage
    • Civilization would certainly stagnate if people refused to accept any statement unless they personally verified it through direct, first hand experience
    • if authoritative knowledge is built upon a foundation of incorrect assumptions, then such knowledge will surely be distorted

Note

• one source of information alone might not be capable of supplying people with all knowledge
• It might be important to see the various sources as complementary rather than antagonistic
• most people choose one source as being more basic than, or preferable to: use it as a benchmark for testing other sources
• in the contemporary world, knowledge obtained empirically is generally seen as the most basic and reliable type

Lesson 4: Axiology and Logic

Axiology: philosophical study of value (the worth of something)

• Axiology asks the philosophical questions of values that deal with notions of what a person or a society regards as good or preferable, such as:
  • What is a value?
  • How do we justify our values?
  • What kinds of values exist?

Axiology deals with three areas

Ethics

• also known as Moral Philosophy
• the philosophical study of moral principles, values, codes, and rules, which may be used as standards for determining what kind of human conduct/action is said to be good or bad, right or wrong
• raises various questions including:
  • What is good/bad?
  • What is right/wrong?
  • Is it the Right Principle or the Good End that makes human action/conduct moral?
  • What is the ultimate foundation of moral principles?
  • Why we honour and obey moral rules?

• Ethics can be grouped into three broad categories

• • Normative Ethics
    • study and determine precisely the moral rules, principles, standards and goals by which *human beings might evaluate and judge the moral values of their conducts, actions and decisions
    • Examples of normative ethical studies: Consequentialism or Teleological Ethics, Deontological Ethics, and Virtue Ethics are the major

• • Meta-ethics
    • deals with investigation of the meaning of ethical terms, including a critical study of how ethical statements can be verified
    • concerned with the meanings of such ethical terms as good or bad and right or wrong
    • Examples of meta ethical studies: Moral Prescriptivism, Moral Nihilism, and Ethical Relativism Moral Intuitionism, Moral Emotivism

• • Applied Ethics
    • a normative ethics that attempts to explain, justify, apply moral rules, principles, standards, and positions to specific moral problems, such as capital punishment, euthanasia, abortion

Aesthetics

Social/Political Philosophy