Philosophical Inquiry

The Nature of Philosophy

Meaning of Life

Philosophy of Religion

Philosophical Ethics

Epistemology

Æsthetics

The Nature of Philosophy

What is Philosophy?

• The derivation of "philosophy" from the Greek roots is suggested by the following definitions.
  • philo—love of, affinity for, liking of
  • philander—to engage in love affairs frivolously
  • philanthropy—love of mankind in general
  • philately—to collect postage stamps
  • 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
• Definitions
  • Philosophy is the systematic inquiry into the principles and presuppositions of any filed of study.
  • 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., those problems usually in the main branches discussed below).
  • A form of study - what philosophers do—i.e., study the practice of philosophy.

The Main Branches of Philosophy

• divided as to the nature of the questions asked in each area.
• Axiology: the study of value; the investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status.
  • Nature of value: is value a fulfillment of desire, a pleasure, a preference, or simply an interest?
  • Criteria of value: de gustibus non (est) disputandum or do standards apply?
  • Status of value: how are values related to (scientific) facts? What ultimate worth, if any, do human values have?
  • Axiology is sub-divided into two main parts.
    • 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) blameworthy and praiseworthy actions.
    • Aesthetics: the study of value in the arts or the inquiry into feelings, judgments, or standards of beauty and related concepts.
• Epistemology: the study of knowledge. In particular, epistemology is the study of the nature, scope, and limits of human knowledge.
  • Epistemology investigates the origin, structure, methods, and integrity of knowledge.
    • Consider the truth of the statement, "The earth is round." This statement can be successively 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, albeit marginally.
    • As further examples, consider two well-known problems in epistemology.
      • 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?
      • Suppose everything in the universe (including space) were to expand uniformly a thousand times larger. How could we ever know it?
      • Russell's Five-Minute-World Hypothesis is a philosophical problem; the universe's expanding is a scientific problem since can be answered by elementary physics.
• 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.
  • What kinds of things exist? How is existence possible?
  • How do ideas exist if they have no size, shape, or color. (My idea of the Empire State Building is quite as small as my idea of a book.)
  • E.g. the truths of mathematics: in what manner do geometric figures exist?
  • What is spirit? or soul? or matter? or space? Are they made of the same sorts of things?

Characteristics of Philosophy

• A systematic inquiry into the principles and presuppositions of any endeavour.
  • Some restaurants have printed on the back of the customer's bill their philosophy of restaurant management.
  • Recently, philosophy of sport and medical ethics have generated much interest.
• A Line of Questioning beginning with Why.
  • philosophy questions often are a series of "why-questions," whereas science is often said to ask "how-questions."
  • E.g., asking "Why did you come to class today?" is the beginning of a series of why-questions which ultimately lead to the answer of the principles or presuppositions by which you lead your life.
• The "Philosophical" Approach to Problems
  • Seven characteristics of a philosophical problem based on Avrum Stroll and Richard H. Popkin's Introduction to Philosophy
    • 1. a reflection about and the things nothing in it - If I take a book off my hand, what's left on my hand? Nothing? What is that? Does everything exist "in" nothing?
    • 2. a conceptual rather than a practical activity - According to gravitation theory, as the ballerina on a NY stage moves, my balance is affected.
    • 3. the use of reason and argumentation to establish a point - Does a tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear make a sound?
    • 4. explanation of the puzzling features of things - Does a mirror reverse up and down ? Does it reverse left and right?
    • 5. digging beyond the obvious - What is a fact? Is this book a fact? Is it a big or little fact? Is it a brown fact?
    • 6. the search for principles which underlie phenomena - Is a geranium one or many flowers?
    • 7. theory building from these principles - Is nature discrete or continuous? E.g., Zeno's paradoxes of motion.
• An attitude, an approach, a calling to answer or to ask or to comment upon certain peculiar kinds of questions.
  • Attitude—a curiosity about questions such as the following:
    • In his Nobel Prize speech, Richard Feynman explained that from the perspective of quantum electrodynamics, if an electron is seen as going forward in time, a positron is the same particle moving backwards in time. Is time-reversal really possible?
    • Is a positron possible? Consider the paradoxical result. Suppose a "positron gun" would fire a particle going backward in time—it could "trigger" an off-switch to turn off the gun before it could be fired.
  • Approach—to devise a methodology to answer such puzzles. Very often, all that is needed is the old maxim, "When there is a difficulty, make a distinction."
    • E.g., for the problem of the sound of a tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear, all we need do is to distinguish two different senses of "sound."
    • If by "sound" is meant a "phenomenological perception by a subject," then no sound ("hearing") would occur. If by "sound" is meant "a longitudinal wave in matter," then a sound did occur.
• Calling— if a person has had experiences of curiosity, discovery, and invention at an early age, these experiences could leave an imprint on mind and character to last a lifetime.