Lesson I (Ethics): Introduction to Philosophy: An Invitation

     This chapter focuses on the etymological and historical meaning of Philosophy and
will introduce students to the early beginnings of Philosophy including some famous
Philosophers and some of their note-worthy ideas. At the same time, learners will be
introduced to the different branches of Philosophy with their corresponding descriptions
and how as a discipline each of them progressed throughout history.
 

An Invitation to Philosophy
Questioning the Fundamentals We Normally Take For Granted

     
     The story of philosophy began in wonder.  From the shores of the scattered Greek isles to the
great masses of lands in the orient, philosophy made its presence felt first among people who
tried to figure out an entirely novel and non-traditional channel in understanding particularly the
origin and the underlying principle of everything that is.  This burning desire for a different
approach to understanding things was further fanned by an indifferent and unenlightened crowd
who willingly and blindly accept things as they appear or were presented to them and not so
much as they really are.  
 
     Then Socrates, the first installment of the triumvirate of great thinkers of the ancients, put
some practical significance to philosophy by trying to investigate on the affairs of men.  Bringing
philosophy ‘down from the heavens’, he shifted the focus of the study from the external world
around to man’s inner life.  This he did by shaking the Athenians off their whims and caprices
sometimes in a disturbingly ‘gadfly-like’ manner.  For preaching about what many years after his
time turned out to be the truth, Socrates was persecuted.
 
     From where his master left off Plato picked up and wasted no time in doing so.  He
established the fame and significance of philosophy writing voluminously about ideas, which
bore influences that reverberated into the modern world from politics to religion.  Considered by
many as the greatest philosopher of all time, all other systems of thought that came after him
were considered as mere footnotes to his philosophies.
 
     Aristotle laid down the foundation of all the other systems of knowledge through the craft that
is philosophy consequently earning it the reputation of being ‘the mother of all sciences.’  The
scientific dimension of philosophy was unveiled and proved a pivotal influence in succeeding
ideas.  Furthermore, he made valuable contributions to the natural sciences, ethics, and politics
and of course much more in philosophy.
 
     During the Middle Ages, philosophy found a very unlikely ally in theology or a staunch
nemesis.  The church controlled politics and thought during the mediaeval and churchmen
monopolized knowledge and wisdom thereby pushing them in the frontlines in rational thinking.
Doctors and Scholars of the church like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine of Hippo
embarked on the task of reconciling faith and reason and came out with rationally remarkable
conclusions.  However, not everybody is convinced.
   
    The modern period saw the reasserting of philosophy as an entity independent from the
influence of the church.  From a theo-centric approach, lovers of wisdom had their sights trained
on the individual ‘consciousness’, in other words, man.  Descartes inaugurated this revolution
with his rationalist school of thought and most future philosophies progressed along that line of
influence either as an expansion of Descartes’ thought system or a reaction against it.  His
famous ‘Cogito Ergo Sum’ remain among the most often quoted phrases in the history of ideas.
 
     The contemporary period was a time of confusion and turbulence defined by revolutions
unprecedented in the annals of history either political or economic.  Various schools of thought
in philosophy emerged from the revolutionary theories of Marx, which at one point in our history
served as a bible to almost half of the world’s populations to the existentialist philosophies of
Nietzsche which continue to be adhered to in droves by individuals disgruntled with tradition and
religion.
 
     While thinkers continue to come and pass away their ideas remain well entrenched and deeply
embedded in the modern civilizations or in the lack of it and in the day to day affairs of
individuals.  Admittedly, science has made strides by the gallops and bounds elevating humanity
to greater heights.  But philosophy remained stuck in a quagmire of the same questions that have
been asked since the time of the pyramids or earlier.  That is because these same queries continue
to matter very much today.  
      Questions like “What is the ideal government?” or “What does it mean to be happy?” and
maybe perhaps “Where did we really come from?” are the very kind of questions that continue to
have just as much a bearing today as they did in the past.
 
    But these same questions, their being fundamental notwithstanding, are likewise the same
questions that many of us still forget or chose not to ask ourselves about.  Socrates warns that a
life worthy of living is that which is reflected upon, examined, otherwise we would just end up
as the 21st century counterparts of those that came before us who once believed or were made
into accepting the position that the earth was flat.
 
 

Meaning of Philosophy
 

     Philosophy is derived from two Greek words philosand sophiawhich means respectively as

love and wisdom.  Etymologically hence philosophy is the love or pursuit of wisdom, which
include the search of fundamental principles and aspects regarding our existence and experience.
Philosophers therefore are striving towards the basic understanding of whatever it is that exists,
including ourselves.  In addition, they are trying to do this without making it a question of
religious faith, or appealing to the say-so of an authority.  Many great philosophers have
religious beliefs but as good philosophers, they do not support their philosophical arguments
with appeals to religion.  A philosophical argument is one that carries its own credentials with it,
in the form of reasons: it asks you for your rational assent, not faith or obedience.  Philosophy
tries to see how far reason alone will take us.
 

 
    Since philosophers have an unwavering faith in the powers of reason, many of them believe
that being logical (read: makes sense) is a pre-requisite for something to exist or to be real.  The
modern philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel argued that “The real is the rational and the
rational is the real.”  Because of this premise, many philosophers dispute that God is not real
because his existence is not rationally sound.  However, many great philosophers advanced the
argument that either Logic can prove the existence of the divine or that not all things that exist
have to be logically explainable.  The consensus among philosophers now is that the existence of
God cannot be proved.  This is not, of course, to say that he does not exist, but only that his
existence is not something that can be rationally demonstrated.
 
      Many other definitions about philosophy were offered but for the purpose of uniformity, let
us be content with what is considered as among the more universally accepted definition of the
subject: A systematic study that investigates the ultimate causes of things known by the light of
human reason alone.  One noteworthy contemporary thinker defined Philosophy as the ‘no
man’s land’between science and religion.  Needless to say there is perennial friction between the
generalizations of science and the revelations of faith.  Philosophy is sometimes antagonistic to
both and sometimes blends perfectly well with both systems.  The Aristotelian tradition may
serve as an appropriate mouthpiece to the former and the latter could find a worthy spokesperson
in Plato.
 
     Philosophy is sometimes in the receiving end of accusations that it is an undertaking
especially reserved for those contemplating on cloud nine or ivory towers like the hermits of old.
But basically philosophy is about reflections on real-life experiences of man and the
understanding of the world around him.  As such its themes are all-encompassing and unlimited
covering topics from politics to science to morality to love to the existence (or non-existence) of
God to sports to economics, to psychology and even to magic and mysticism.  The list goes
on ad infinitum.
 
 
   

Philosophers
 What Others Say They Are
 
Here is a collection of some famous quotes about philosophy and philosophers.  There may be
some measure of truth to some of these passages while some of these quotes are mere results of a
myopic (read: short-sighted, narrow) understanding of the subject and its zealous followers.
 
 

1. Philosophers are like blind men in a dark room looking for a black cat.

2. Philosophers are like adults who persist on asking childish questions.

3. Philosophers don’t believe on things that they can see because they are too busy thinking about
things that they cannot see.

4. Philosophy is a route of many roads that comes from nothing and leads to nowhere.

 
 5. It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth
in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

6. All philosophy begins in doubt and wonder.

Thinkers ‘outside of the box’

 
Thinking outside the box (sometimes erroneously called “thinking out of the box” or "thinking
outside the square") is to think differently, unconventionally or from a new perspective. This
phrase often refers to novel or creative thinking.
 
This is sometimes called a process of lateral thought. The catchphrase, or cliché, has become
widely used in business environments, especially by  management consultants and executive
coaches, and has spawned a number of advertising slogans. To think outside the box is to look
further and to try not thinking of the obvious things, but to try thinking beyond them.
 
Philosophers are thinkers outside of the box because they can see things others cannot see or
things that others refuse to see.  When during the ancient times the Greeks would lose a war, the
people would attribute the debacle to the workings and machinations of the gods.  When a ship
capsized in the course of her journey, it must have been because Poseidon (the Greek god of the
seven seas) was displeased or offended and consequently allowed or willed the tragedy to befall
the unfortunate sailors.
 
Philosophers see it in another light. A war is lost because the soldiers are ill-equipped with
weapons and resources or because the military leaders are inept or corrupt. A ship capsized
because the material it was made of was not durable enough to withstand powerful storms or
because the sailors are not experienced sea-farers.
 
But it is a tragedy to know that because they spoke about the truth and preached against
superstition, philosophers were persecuted and judged differently.  The most important example
of this was the life of Socrates and the discrimination he experienced simply because he
questioned the very existence of the established gods of ancient Greece (the Olympian family of
gods and goddesses).
 

  Philosophical Quotes
The unexamined life is not worth living.
—Socrates
Happiness is something final and complete in itself, as being the aim and end of all practical
activities whatever … Happiness then we define as the active exercise of the mind in conformity
with perfect goodness or virtue.
—Aristotle
 
Now laws are said to be just both from the end (when, namely, they are ordained to the common
good), from their author (… when the law does not exceed the power of the lawgiver), and from
their form (when, namely, burdens are laid on the subjects according to an equality of
proportion).
—Saint Thoman Aquinas
 
There is a great difference between mind and body, inasmuch as body is by nature always
divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible.
—René Descartes
 
Love is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause, and hatred pain accompanied by
the idea of an external cause.
—Spinoza
 
The effect is totally different from the cause, and consequently can never be discovered in it.
—David Hume
 
The very notion of what is called Matter or corporeal substance invloves a contradiction.
—George Berkeley
 
The understanding does not derive its laws (a priori) from, but prescribes them to, nature.
—Immanuel Kant
 
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized
community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.
—John Stuart Mill
 
There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere.
—William James
 
Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
 
Fact is richer than diction.
—J. L. Austin
 
Existence precedes essence.
—Jean-Paul Sartre
 

 Mythology  vs Philosophy
 
Mythology provides supernatural explanations for the universe and creation.
"The basic theme of mythology is that the visible world is supported and sustained by an
invisible world." - Joseph Campbell
 
The early Greek, Pre-Socratic philosophers attempted to explain the world around them in more
natural terms. For example, instead of anthropomorphic creator gods, Anaxagoras  thought the
guiding principle of the universe was nous 'mind'.

Such an explanation doesn't sound much like what we think of as philosophy, but the Pre-
Socratics were early philosophers, sometimes indistinguishable from natural scientists. Later
philosophers turned to other topics, like ethics and how to live. Even at the end of the Roman
Republic, it would be fair to characterize ancient philosophy as "ethics and physics" ["Roman
Women," by Gillian Clark; Greece & Rome, (Oct., 1981)].

Periods of Greek Philosophy:

The Greeks dominated philosophy for about a millennium. Jonathan Barnes, in Early Greek
Philosophy, divides the millennium into three parts:
 

1. The Pre-Socratics.
2. The period known for its schools, the Academy, Lyceum, Epicureans, Stoics and Skeptics.
3. The period of syncretism begins approximately 100 B.C. and ends in A.D. 529 when the
Byzantine Roman Emperor Justinian  forbade the teaching of pagan philosophy.
Pre-Socratic Philosophy:

The first period begins with Thales’ prediction of a solar eclipse in 585 B.C. and ends in 400
B.C. Philosophers of this period are called Pre-Socratic, somewhat misleadingly,
since Socrates was a contemporary. Others argue that the term "philosophy" inaccurately limits
the sphere of interest of the so-called Pre-Socratic philosophers.
 
Students of nature, the Pre-Socratics are credited with inventing philosophy, but they didn't work
in a vacuum. For instance, knowledge of the eclipse -- if not apocryphal -- may have come from
contact with Babylonian astronomers.
 
 The early philosophers shared with their predecessors, the mythographers, an interest in the
cosmos. Parmenides was a philosopher from Elea who lived in the sixth century. He says that
nothing comes into being because then it would have come form nothing. Everything that is must
always have been.
  
 Here are some major differences in the outlook of the mythographers:
 Myths are stories about persons.
Pre-Socratics looked for principles or other natural explanations.
 Myths allow a multiplicity of explanations.
Pre-Socratics were looking for the single principle behind the cosmos.
 Myths are conservative, slow to change.
To read what they wrote, you might think the aim of the Pre-Socratics was to knock down earlier
theory.
 Myths are self-justifying.
 Myths are morally ambivalent.

-From "The Attributes of Mythic/Mythopoeic Thought"

Philosophers sought a rational order observable in the natural phenomena, where mythographers
relied on the supernatural.

Pre-Socratics Denied a Distinction Between Natural & Supernatural:

When Thales said "all things are full of gods," he wasn't so much singing the swansong of
mythographers or rationalizing myth as breaking new ground by, in Michael Grant's words, "...
implicitly denying that any distinction between natural and supernatural could be legitimately
envisaged." The most significant contributions of the Pre-Socratics were their rational, scientific
approach and belief in a naturally ordered world.
Philosophy vs. Science:

With the philosopher Aristotle, who valued evidence and observation, the distinction between
philosophy and empirical science began to appear. Following the death of Alexander the Great,
kings who controlled parts of his empire began to subsidize scholars who worked in areas like
medicine that would do them some good, while the philosophical schools of the Stoics, Cynics,
and Epicureans were not interested in empirical science. Michael Grant attributes the separation
of science and philosophy to Strato of Lampsacus (successor of Aristotle's successor), who
shifted the focus of the Lyceum from logic to experiment.
 
 

Science vs Philosophy
1.Philosophy and science are two studies and domains. Philosophy came first and became the
basis for science, formerly known as natural philosophy. Both studies have many branches or
fields of study and make use reasoning, questioning, and analysis. The main difference is in the
way they work and treat knowledge.

2.Another common element between the two studies is that they both try to explain situations
and find answers. Philosophy does this by using logical argumentation, while science utilizes
empirical data. Philosophy’s explanations are grounded in arguments of principles, while science
tries to explain based on experiment results, observable facts and objective evidence.

3.Science is used for instances that require empirical validation, while philosophy is used for
situations where measurements and observations cannot be applied. Science also takes answers
and proves them as objectively right or wrong.

4.Subjective and objective questions are involved in philosophy, while only some objective
questions can be related in science. Aside from finding answers, philosophy also involves
generating questions. Meanwhile, science is only concerned with the latter.

5.Philosophy creates knowledge through thinking; science does the same by observing.
 

Pre-Socratics May Have Been Rational Without Being Right:

As Barnes points out, just because the Pre-Socratics were rational, and presented supportive
arguments, doesn't mean they were right. They couldn't possibly all be right, anyway, since much
of their writing consists in pointing out inconsistencies of their predecessors' paradigms.

The History of Philosophy

Philosophy (Etymological Definition)
The word philosophy is derived from Greek words – Pholos and Sophia. Philos means love and
Sophia means wisdom. • Thus philosophy means love of wisdom.
Western Philosophy - by which we usually mean everything apart from the Eastern
Philosophy of  China, India, Japan, Persia etc - really began in Ancient Greece in about
the 6th Century B.C. Thales of Miletus is usually considered the first proper philosopher,
although he was just as concerned with natural philosophy (what we now call science)
as with philosophy as we know it.
Thales and most of the other Pre-Socratic philosophers limited themselves in the main to
Metaphysics (inquiry into the nature of existence, being and the world). They were
Materialists (they believed that all things are composed of material and nothing else) and
were mainly concerned with trying to establish the single underlying substance the
world is made up of (a kind of Monism), without resorting to supernatural or
mythological explanations. For instance, Thales thought the whole universe was
composed of different forms of water; Anaximenes concluded it was made of air;
Heraclitus thought it was fire; and Anaximander some unexplainable substance usually
translated as "the infinite" or "the boundless".
Another issue the Pre-Socratics wrestled with was the so-called problem of change, how
things appear to change from one form to another. At the extremes, Heraclitus believed
in an on-going process of perpetual change, a constant interplay of opposites;
Parmenides, on the other hand, using a complicated deductive argument, denied that
there was any such thing as change at all, and argued that everything that exists is
permanent, indestructible and unchanging. This might sound like an unlikely
proposition, but Parmenides' challenge was well-argued and was important in
encouraging other philosophers to come up with convincing counter-arguments. Zeno of
Elea was a student of Parmenides, and is best known for his famous paradoxes of
motion (the best known of which is that of the Achilles and the Hare), which helped to
lay the foundations for the study of Logic. However, Zeno's underlying intention was
really to show, like Parmenides before him, that all belief in plurality and change is
mistaken, and in particular that motion is nothing but an illusion.
Although these ideas might seem to us rather simplistic and unconvincing today, we
should bear in mind that, at this time, there was really no scientific knowledge
whatsoever, and even the commonest of phenomena (e.g. lightning, water freezing to
ice, etc) would have appeared miraculous. Their attempts were therefore important first
steps in the development of philosophical thought. They also set the stage for two other
important Pre-Socratic philosophers: Empedocles, who combined their ideas into the
theory of the four classical elements (earth, air, fire and water), which became the
standard dogma for much of the next two thousand years; and Democritus, who
developed the extremely influential idea of Atomism (that all of reality is actually
composed of tiny, indivisible and indestructible building blocks known as atoms, which
form different combinations and shapes within the surrounding void).
Another early and very influential Greek philosopher was Pythagoras, who led a
rather bizarre religious sect and essentially believed that all of reality was governed
by numbers, and that its essence could be encountered through the study
of mathematics.

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Classical Philosophy

 
Philosophy really took off, though, with Socrates and Plato in the 5th - 4th
Century B.C. (often referred to as the Classical or Socratic period of philosophy). Unlike
most of the Pre-Socratic philosophers before him, Socrates was more concerned with
how people should behave, and so was perhaps the first major philosopher of Ethics. He
developed a system of critical reasoning in order to work out how to live properly and
to tell the difference between right and wrong. His system, sometimes referred to as
the Socratic Method, was to break problems down into a series of questions, the answers
to which would gradually distill a solution. Although he was careful to claim not to have
all the answers himself, his constant questioning made him many enemies among the
authorities of Athens who eventually had him put to death.
Socrates himself never wrote anything down, and what we know of his views comes
from the "Dialogues" of his student Plato, perhaps the best known, most widely
studied and most influential philosopher of all time. In his
writings, Plato blended Ethics, Metaphysics, Political Philosophy and Epistemology (the
theory of knowledge and how we can acquire it) into
an interconnected and systematic philosophy. He provided the first real opposition to
the Materialism of the Pre-Socratics, and he developed doctrines such as Platonic
Realism, Essentialism and Idealism, including his important and famous theory of
Forms and universals (he believed that the world we perceive around us is composed of
mere representations or instances of the pure ideal Forms, which had their own
existence elsewhere, an idea known as Platonic Realism). Plato believed that virtue was
a kind of knowledge (the knowledge of good and evil) that we need in order to reach
the ultimate good, which is the aim of all human desires and actions (a theory known
as Eudaimonism). Plato's Political Philosophy was developed mainly in his
famous "Republic", where he describes an ideal (though rather grim and anti-democratic)
society composed of Workers and Warriors, ruled over by wise Philosopher Kings.
The third in the main trio of classical philosophers was Plato's student Aristotle. He
created an even more comprehensive system of philosophy than Plato,
encompassing Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics, Metaphysics, Logic and science, and his work
influenced almost all later philosophical thinking, particularly those of
the Medieval period. Aristotle's system of deductive Logic, with its emphasis on
the syllogism (where a conclusion, or synthesis, is inferred from two other premises,
the thesis and antithesis), remained the dominant form of Logic until the 19th Century.
Unlike Plato, Aristotle held that Form and Matter were inseparable, and cannot exist
apart from each other. Although he too believed in a kind
of Eudaimonism, Aristotle realized that Ethics is a complex concept and that we cannot
 always control our own moral environment. He thought that happiness could best be
achieved by living a balanced life and avoiding excess by pursuing a golden mean in
everything (similar to his formula for political stability through steering a middle
course between tyranny and democracy).
 

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Other Ancient Philosophical Schools
In the philosophical cauldron of Ancient Greece, though (as well as
the Hellenistic and Roman civilizations which followed it over the next few centuries),
several other schools or movements also held sway, in addition
to Platonism and Aristotelianism:
 Sophism (the best known proponents being Protagoras and Gorgias), which held
generally relativistic views on knowledge (i.e. that there is no absolute truth and two points of
view can be acceptable at the same time) and generally skeptical views on truth and morality
(although, over time, Sophism came to denote a class of itinerant intellectuals who taught
courses in rhetoric and "excellence" or "virtue" for money).
 Cynicism, which rejected all conventional desires for health, wealth, power and fame,
and advocated a life free from all possessions and property as the way to achieving Virtue (a life
best exemplified by its most famous proponent, Diogenes).
 Skepticism (also known as Pyrrhonism after the movement's founder, Pyrrho), which
held that, because we can never know the true innner substance of things, only how
they appear to us (and therefore we can never know which opinions are right or wrong), we
should suspend judgment on everything as the only way of achieving inner peace.
 Epicureanism (named for its founder Epicurus), whose main goal was to
attain happiness and tranquility through leading a simple, moderate life, the cultivation
of friendships and the limiting of desires (quite contrary to the common perception of the word
"epicurean").
 Hedonism, which held that pleasure is the most important pursuit of mankind, and that
we should always act so as to maximize our own pleasure.
 Stoicism (developed by Zeno of Citium, and later espoused by Epictetus and Marcus
Aurelius), which taught self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive
emotions in order to develop clear judgment and inner calm and the ultimate goal of freedom
from suffering.
 Neo-Platonism (developed out of Plato's work, largely by Plotinus), which was a
largely religious philosophy which became a strong influence on early Christianity (especially
on St. Augustine), and taught the existence of an ineffable and transcendent One, from which the
rest of the universe "emanates" as a sequence of lesser beings.

Medieval Philosophy Back to Top

After about the 4th or 5th Century A.D., Europe entered the so-called Dark Ages, during
which little or no new thought was developed. By the 11th Century, though, there was
a renewed flowering of thought, both in Christian Europe and
in Muslim and Jewish Middle East. Most of the philosophers of this time were mainly
concerned with proving the existence of God and with reconciling Christianity/Islam
with the classical philosophy of Greece (particularly Aristotelianism). This period also
saw the establishment of the first universities, which was an important factor in the
subsequent development of philosophy.
Among the great Islamic philosophers of the Medieval period were Avicenna (11th
century, Persian) and Averröes (12th century, Spanish/Arabic). Avicenna tried to
reconcile the rational philosophy of Aristotelianism and Neo-Platonism with Islamic
theology, and also developed his own system of Logic, known as Avicennian Logic. He
also introduced the concept of the "tabula rasa" (the idea that humans are born with no
innate or built-in mental content), which strongly influenced later Empiricists like John
Locke. Averröes's translations and commentaries on Aristotle (whose works had been
largely lost by this time) had a profound impact on the Scholastic movement in Europe,
and he claimed that Avicenna's interpretations were a distortion of
genuine Aristotelianism. The Jewish philosopher Maimonides also attempted the same
reconciliation of Aristotle with the Hebrew scriptures around the same time.

 The Medieval Christian philosophers were all part of a movement

called Scholasticism which tried to
combine Logic, Metaphysics, Epistemology and semantics (the theory of meaning) into
one discipline, and to reconcile the philosophy of the ancient classical
philosophers (particularly Aristotle) with Christian theology. The Scholastic method was
to thoroughly and critically read the works of renowned scholars, note down any
disagreements and points of contention, and then resolve them by the use of
formal Logic and analysis of language. Scholasticism in general is often criticized for
spending too much time discussing infinitesimal and pedantic details (like how many
angels could dance on the tip of a needle, etc).
St. Anselm (best known as the originator of the Ontological Argument for the existence
of God by abstract reasoning alone) is often regarded as the first of the Scholastics,
and St. Thomas Aquinas (known for his five rational proofs for the existence of God, and
his definition of the cardinal virtues and the theological virtues) is generally considered
the greatest, and certainly had the greatest influence on the theology of the Catholic
Church. Other important Scholastics included Peter Abelard, Albertus Magnus, John
Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. Each contributed slight variations to the same
general beliefs - Abelard introduced the doctrine of limbo for unbaptized
babies; Scotus rejected the distinction between essence and existence that Aquinas had
insisted on; Ockham introduced the important methodological principle known
as Ockham's Razor, that one should not multiply arguments beyond the necessary; etc.
Roger Bacon was something of an exception, and actually criticized the
prevailing Scholastic system, based as it was on tradition and scriptural authority. He is
sometimes credited as one of the earliest European advocates of Empiricism (the theory
that the origin of all knowledge is sense experience) and of the modern scientific
method.
The revival of classical civilization and learning in the 15th and 16th Century known as
the Renaissance brought the Medieval period to a close. It was marked by a
movement away from religion and medieval Scholasticism and towards Humanism (the
belief that humans can solve their own problems through reliance on reason and
the scientific method) and a new sense of critical inquiry.
Among the major philosophical figures of
the Renaissance were: Erasmus (who attacked many of the traditions of the Catholic
Church and popular superstitions, and became the intellectual father of the
European Reformation); Machiavelli (whose cynical and devious Political
Philosophy has become notorious); Thomas More (the Christian Humanist whose
book "Utopia" influenced generations of politicians and planners and even the early
development of Socialist ideas); and Francis Bacon (whose empiricist belief that truth
requires evidence from the real world, and whose application of inductive reasoning -
generalizations based on individual instances - were both influential in the development
of modern scientific methodology).

Early Modern Philosophy Back to Top

The Age of Reason of the 17th Century and the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th

Century (very roughly speaking), along with the advances in science, the growth
of religious tolerance and the rise of liberalism which went with them, mark the real
beginnings of modern philosophy. In large part, the period can be seen as an ongoing
battle between two opposing doctrines, Rationalism (the belief that all knowledge arises
from intellectual and deductive reason, rather than from the senses) and Empiricism (the
belief that the origin of all knowledge is sense experience).
This revolution in philosophical thought was sparked by the French philosopher and
mathematician René Descartes, the first figure in the loose movement known
as Rationalism, and much of subsequent Western philosophy can be seen as
a response to his ideas. His method (known as methodological skepticism, although its
aim was actually to dispel Skepticism and arrive at certain knowledge), was to shuck off
everything about which there could be even a suspicion of doubt (including
the unreliable senses, even his own body which could be merely an illusion) to arrive at
the single indubitable principle that he possessed consciousness and was able to think ("I
think, therefore I am"). He then argued (rather unsatisfactorily, some would say) that our
perception of the world around us must be created for us by God. He saw the human
body as a kind of machine that follows the mechanical laws of physics, while
the mind (or consciousness) was a quite separate entity, not subject to the laws of
physics, which is only able to influence the body and deal with the outside world by a
kind of mysterious two-way interaction. This idea, known as Dualism (or, more
specifically, Cartesian Dualism), set the agenda for philosophical discussion of
the "mind-body problem" for centuries after. Despite Descartes' innovation and
boldness, he was a product of his times and never abandoned the traditional idea of
a God, which he saw as the one true substance from which everything else was made.
The second great figure of Rationalism was the Dutchman Baruch Spinoza, although his
conception of the world was quite different from that of Descartes. He built up a
strikingly original self-contained metaphysical system in which he
rejected Descartes' Dualism in favor of a kind of Monism where mind and body were
just two different aspects of a single underlying substance which might be
called Nature (and which he also equated with a God of infinitely many attributes,
effectively a kind of Pantheism). Spinoza was a thoroughgoing Determinist who
believed that absolutely everything (even human behavior) occurs through the operation
of necessity, leaving absolutely no room for free will and spontaneity. He also took
the Moral Relativist position that nothing can be in itself either good or bad, except to
the extent that it is subjectively perceived to be so by the individual (and, anyway, in an
ordered deterministic world, the very concepts of Good and Evil can have little or no
absolute meaning).
The third great Rationalist was the German Gottfried Leibniz. In order to overcome what
he saw as drawbacks and inconsistencies in the theories of Descartes and Spinoza, he
devised a rather eccentric metaphysical theory of monads operating according to a pre-
established divine harmony. According to Leibniz's theory, the real world is actually
composed of eternal, non-material and mutually-independent elements he
called monads, and the material world that we see and touch is actually
just phenomena (appearances or by-products of the underlying real world). The
apparent harmony prevailing among monads arises because of the will of God (the
supreme monad) who arranges everything in the world in
a deterministic manner. Leibniz also saw this as overcoming the problematic interaction
between mind and matter arising in Descartes' system, and he declared that this must be
the best possible world, simply because it was created and determined by a perfect God.
He is also considered perhaps the most important logician between Aristotle and the
mid-19th Century developments in modern formal Logic.
Another important 17th Century French Rationalist (although perhaps of the second
order) was Nicolas Malebranche, who was a follower of Descartes in that he believed
that humans attain knowledge through ideas or immaterial representations in the mind.
However, Malebranche argued (more or less following St. Augustine) that all ideas
actually exist only in God, and that God was the only active power. Thus, he believed
that what appears to be "interaction" between body and mind is actually caused by God,
but in such a way that similar movements in the body will "occasion" similar ideas in the
mind, an idea he called Occasionalism.
In opposition to the continental European Rationalism movement was the equally loose
movement of British Empiricism, which was also represented by three main proponents.
The first of the British Empiricists was John Locke. He argued that all of our ideas,
whether simple or complex, are ultimately derived from experience, so that
the knowledge of which we are capable is therefore severely limited both in
its scope and in its certainty (a kind of modified Skepticism), especially given that the
real inner natures of things derive from what he called their primary qualities which we
 can never experience and so never know. Locke, like Avicenna before him, believed that
the mind was a tabula rasa (or blank slate) and that people are born without innate
ideas, although he did believe that humans have absolute natural rights which are
inherent in the nature of Ethics. Along with Hobbes and Rousseau, he was one of
the originators of Contractarianism (or Social Contract Theory), which formed the
theoretical underpinning for democracy, republicanism, Liberalism and Libertarianism,
and his political views influenced both the American and French Revolutions.
The next of the British Empiricists chronologically was Bishop George Berkeley,
although his Empiricism was of a much more radical kind, mixed with a twist
of Idealism. Using dense but cogent arguments, he developed the rather counter-
intuitive system known as Immaterialism (or sometimes as Subjective Idealism), which
held that underlying reality consists exclusively of minds and their ideas, and that
individuals can only directly know these ideas or perceptions (although not the objects
themselves) through experience. Thus, according to Berkeley's theory, an object only
really exists if someone is there to see or sense it ("to be is to be perceived"), although, he
added, the infinite mind of God perceives everything all the time, and so in this respect
the objects continue to exist.
The third, and perhaps greatest, of the British Empiricists was David Hume. He believed
strongly that human experience is as close are we are ever going to get to the truth, and
that experience and observation must be the foundations of any logical
argument. Hume argued that, although we may form beliefs and make inductive
inferences about things outside our experience (by means of instinct, imagination and
custom), they cannot be conclusively established by reason and we should not make any
claims to certain knowledge about them (a hard-line attitude verging on
complete Skepticism). Although he never openly declared himself an atheist, he found
the idea of a God effectively nonsensical, given that there is no way of arriving at the
idea through sensory data. He attacked many of the basic assumptions of religion, and
gave many of the classic criticisms of some of the arguments for the existence of
God (particularly the teleological argument). In his Political Philosophy, Hume stressed
the importance of moderation, and his work contains elements of
both Conservatism and Liberalism.
Among the "non-aligned" philosophers of the period (many of whom were most active
in the area of Political Philosophy) were the following:
 Thomas Hobbes, who described in his famous book "Leviathan" how the natural state of
mankind was brute-like and poor, and how the modern state was a kind of "social
contract" (Contractarianism) whereby individuals deliberately give up their natural rights for the
sake of protection by the state (accepting, according to Hobbes, any abuses of power as the price
of peace, which some have seen as a justification for authoritarianism and even Totalitarianism);
 Blaise Pascal, a confirmed Fideist (the view that religious belief depends wholly
on faith or revelation, rather than reason, intellect or natural theology) who opposed
both Rationalism and Empiricism as being insufficient for determining major truths;
 Voltaire, an indefatigable fighter for social reform throughout his life, but
wholly cynical of most philosophies of the day, from Leibniz's optimism to Pascal's pessimism,
and from Catholic dogma to French political institutions;
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose discussion of inequality and whose theory of the popular
will and society as a social contract entered into for the mutual benefit of all (Contractarianism)
strongly influenced the French Revolution and the subsequent development
of Liberal, Conservative and even Socialist theory;
 Adam Smith, widely cited as the father of modern economics, whose metaphor of
the "invisible hand" of the free market (the apparent benefits to society of people behaving in
their own interests) and whose book "The Wealth of Nations" had a huge influence on the
development of modern Capitalism, Liberalism and Individualism; and
 Edmund Burke, considered one of the founding fathers of
modern Conservatism and Liberalism, although he also produced perhaps the first serious
defense of Anarchism.
Towards the end of the Age of Enlightenment, the German philosopher Immanuel
Kant caused another paradigm shift as important as that of Descartes 150 years earlier,
and in many ways this marks the shift to Modern philosophy. He sought to move
philosophy beyond the debate between Rationalism and Empiricism, and he attempted
to combine those two apparently contradictory doctrines into one overarching system. A
whole movement (Kantianism) developed in the wake of his work, and most of the
subsequent history of philosophy can be seen as responses, in one way or another, to his
ideas.
Kant showed that Empiricism and Rationalism could be combined and that statements
were possible that were both synthetic (a posteriori knowledge from experience alone, as
in Empiricism) but also a priori (from reason alone, as in Rationalism). Thus, without the
senses we could not become aware of any object, but without understanding and reason
we could not form any conception of it. However, our senses can only tell us about
the appearance of a thing (phenomenon) and not the "thing-in-itself" (noumenon),
which Kant believed was essentially unknowable, although we have certain
innate predispositions as to what exists (Transcendental Idealism). Kant's major
contribution to Ethics was the theory of the Categorical Imperative, that we should act
only in such a way that we would want our actions to become a universal law,
applicable to everyone in a similar situation (Moral Universalism) and that we should
treat other individuals as ends in themselves, not as mere means (Moral Absolutism),
even if that means sacrificing the greater good. Kant believed that any attempts to prove
God's existence are just a waste of time, because our concepts only work properly in
the empirical world (which God is above and beyond), although he also argued that it
was not irrational to believe in something that clearly cannot be proven either
way (Fideism).

19th Century Philosophy Back to Top

In the Modern period, Kantianism gave rise to the German Idealists, each of whom had

their own interpretations of Kant's ideas. Johann Fichte, for example,
rejected Kant's separation of "things in themselves" and things "as they appear to us"
(which he saw as an invitation to Skepticism), although he did accept that consciousness
of the self depends on the existence of something that is not part of the self (his famous "I
/ not-I" distinction). Fichte's later Political Philosophy also contributed to the rise of
German Nationalism. Friedrich Schelling developed a unique form of Idealism known
as Aesthetic Idealism (in which he argued that only art was able to harmonize and
sublimate the contradictions between subjectivity and objectivity, freedom and
necessity, etc), and also tried to establish a connection or synthesis between his
conceptions of nature and spirit.
Arthur Schopenhauer is also usually considered part of the German
Idealism and Romanticism movements, although his philosophy was very singular. He
was a thorough-going pessimist who believed that the "will-to-life" (the drive to survive
and to reproduce) was the underlying driving force of the world, and that the pursuit of
happiness, love and intellectual satisfaction was very much secondary and
essentially futile. He saw art (and other artistic, moral and ascetic forms of awareness) as
the only way to overcome the fundamentally frustration-filled and painful human
condition.
The greatest and most influential of the German Idealists, though, was Georg Hegel.
Although his works have a reputation for abstractness and difficulty, Hegel is often
considered the summit of early 19th Century German thought, and his influence was
profound. He extended Aristotle's process of dialectic (resolving a thesis and its
opposing antithesis into a synthesis) to apply to the real world - including the whole
of history - in an on-going process of conflict resolution towards what he called
the Absolute Idea. However, he stressed that what is really changing in this process is
the underlying "Geist" (mind, spirit, soul), and he saw each person's individual
consciousness as being part of an Absolute Mind (sometimes referred to as Absolute
Idealism).
Karl Marx was strongly influenced by Hegel's dialectical method and his analysis
of history. His Marxist theory (including the concepts of historical materialism, class
struggle, the labor theory of value, the bourgeoisie, etc), which he developed with his
friend Friedrich Engels as a reaction against the rampant Capitalism of 19th Century
Europe, provided the intellectual base for later radical and
revolutionary Socialism and Communism.
A very different kind of philosophy grew up in 19th Century England, out of the British
Empiricist tradition of the previous century. The Utilitarianism movement
was founded by the radical social reformer Jeremy Bentham and popularized by his
even more radical protegé John Stuart Mill. The doctrine of Utilitarianism is a type
of Consequentialism (an approach to Ethics that stresses an action's outcome
or consequence), which holds that the right action is that which would cause "the
greatest happiness of the greatest number". Mill refined the theory to stress
the quality not just the quantity of happiness, and intellectual and moral pleasures over
more physical forms. He counseled that coercion in society is only justifiable either to
defend ourselves, or to defend others from harm (the "harm principle").
19th Century America developed its own philosophical traditions. Ralph Waldo
Emerson established the Transcendentalism movement in the middle of the century,
rooted in the transcendental philosophy of Kant, German Idealism and Romanticism,
and a desire to ground religion in the inner spiritual or mental essence of humanity,
rather than in sensuous experience. Emerson's student Henry David Thoreau further
developed these ideas, stressing intuition, self-examination, Individualism and the
exploration of the beauty of nature. Thoreau's advocacy of civil disobedience influenced
generations of social reformers.
The other main American movement of the late 19th Century was Pragmatism, which
was initiated by C. S. Peirce and developed and popularized by William James and John
Dewey. The theory of Pragmatism is based on Peirce's pragmatic maxim, that
the meaning of any concept is really just the same as its operational or practical
consequences (essentially, that something is true only insofar as it works in
practice). Peirce also introduced the idea of Fallibilism (that all truths and "facts" are
necessarily provisional, that they can never be certain but only probable).
James, in addition to his psychological work, extended Pragmatism, both as
a method for analyzing philosophic problems but also as a theory of truth, as well as
developing his own versions of Fideism (that beliefs are arrived at by an individual
process that lies beyond reason and evidence) and Voluntarism (that the will is superior
to the intellect and to emotion) among others. Dewey's interpretation of Pragmatism is
better known as Instrumentalism, the methodological view that concepts and theories
are merely useful instruments, best measured by how effective they are in explaining
and predicting phenomena, and not by whether they are true or false (which he claimed
was impossible). Dewey's contribution to Philosophy of Education and to modern
progressive education (particularly what he called "learning-by-doing") was also
significant.
But European philosophy was not limited to the German Idealists. The French
sociologist and philosopher Auguste Comte founded the
influential Positivism movement around the belief that the only authentic
knowledge was scientific knowledge, based on actual sense experience and strict
application of the scientific method. Comte saw this as the final phase in the evolution of
humanity, and even constructed a non-theistic, pseudo-mystical "positive
religion" around the idea.
The Dane Søren Kierkegaard pursued his own lonely trail of thought. He too was a kind
of Fideist and an extremely religious man (despite his attacks on the Danish state
church). But his analysis of the way in which human freedom tends to lead
to "angst" (dread), the call of the infinite, and eventually to despair, was highly
influential on later Existentialists like Heidegger and Sartre.
The German Nietzsche was another atypical, original and controversial philosopher,
also considered an important forerunner of Existentialism. He challenged the
foundations of Christianity and traditional morality (famously asserting that "God is
dead"), leading to charges of Atheism, Moral Skepticism, Relativism and Nihilism. He
developed original notions of the "will to power" as mankind's main motivating
principle, of the "Übermensch" ("superman") as the goal of humanity, and of "eternal
return" as a means of evaluating one's life, all of which have all generated
much debate and argument among scholars.

20th Century Philosophy Back to Top

20th Century philosophy has been dominated to a great extent by the rivalry between

two very general philosophical traditions, Analytic Philosophy (the largely, although not
exclusively, anglophone mindset that philosophy should apply logical techniques and
be consistent with modern science) and Continental Philosophy (really just a catch-
all label for everything else, mainly based in mainland Europe, and which, in very
general terms, rejects Scientism and tends towards Historicism).
An important precursor of the Analytic Philosophy tradition was
the Logicism developed during the late 19th Century by Gottlob Frege. Logicism sought
to show that some, or even all, of mathematics was reducible to Logic, and Frege's work
revolutionized modern mathematical Logic. In the early 20th Century, the
British logicians Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead continued to champion
his ideas (even after Russell had pointed out a paradox exposing
an inconsistency in Frege's work, which caused him, Frege, to abandon his own
theory). Russell and Whitehead's monumental and ground-breaking book, "Principia
Mathematica" was a particularly important milestone. Their work, in turn, though, fell
prey to Kurt Gödel's infamous Incompleteness Theorems of 1931, which mathematically
proved the inherent limitations of all but the most trivial formal systems.
Both Russell and Whitehead went on to develop other philosophies. Russell's work was
mainly in the area of Philosophy of Language, including his theory of Logical
Atomism and his contributions to Ordinary Language
Philosophy. Whitehead developed a metaphysical approach known as Process
Philosophy, which posited ever-changing subjective forms to complement Plato's eternal
forms. Their Logicism, though, along with Comte's Positivism, was a great influence on
the development of the important 20th Century movement of Logical Positivism.
The Logical Positivists campaigned for a systematic reduction of all human knowledge
down to logical and scientific foundations, and claimed that a statement can
be meaningful only if it is either purely formal (essentially, mathematics and logic) or
capable of empirical verification. The school grew from the discussions of the so-
called "Vienna Circle" in the early 20th Century (including Mauritz Schlick, Otto
Neurath, Hans Hahn and Rudolf Carnap). In the 1930s, A. J. Ayer was largely
responsible for the spread of Logical Positivism to Britain, even as its influence was
already waning in Europe.
The "Tractatus" of the young Ludwig Wittgenstein, published in 1921, was a text of great
importance for Logical Positivism. Indeed, Wittgenstein has come to be considered one
of the 20th Century's most important philosophers, if not the most important. A central
part of the philosophy of the "Tractatus" was the picture theory of meaning, which
asserted that thoughts, as expressed in language, "picture" the facts of the world, and
that the structure of language is also determined by the structure of reality.
However, Wittgenstein abandoned his early work, convinced that the publication of
the "Tractatus" had solved all the problems of all philosophy. He later re-considered and
struck off in a completely new direction. His later work, which saw the meaning of a
word as just its use in the language, and looked at language as a kind of game in which
the different parts function and have meaning, was instrumental in the development
of Ordinary Language Philosophy.
Ordinary Language Philosophy shifted the emphasis from the ideal or formal
language of Logical Positivism to everyday language and its actual use, and it saw
traditional philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings caused by the sloppy
use of words in a language. Some have seen Ordinary Language Philosophy as
a complete break with, or reaction against, Analytic Philosophy, while others have seen
it as just an extension or another stage of it. Either way, it became a dominant
philosophic school between the 1930s and 1970s, under the guidance of philosophers
such as W. V. O. Quine, Gilbert Ryle, Donald Davidson, etc.
Quine's work stressed the difficulty of providing a sound empirical basis where
language, convention, meaning, etc, are concerned, and also broadened the principle
of Semantic Holism to the extreme position that a sentence (or even an individual word)
has meaning only in the context of a whole language. Ryle is perhaps best known for his
dismissal of Descartes' body-mind Dualism as the "ghost in the machine", but he also
developed the theory of Philosophical Behaviourism (the view that descriptions
of human behavior need never refer to anything but the physical operations of human
bodies) which became the standard view among Ordinary Language philosophers for
several decades.
Another important philosopher in the Analytic Philosophy of the early 20th century
was G. E. Moore, a contemporary of Russell at Cambridge University (then the
most important center of philosophy in the world). His 1903 "Principia Ethica" has
become one of the standard texts of modern Ethics and Meta-Ethics, and inspired the
movement away from Ethical Naturalism (the belief that there exist moral properties,
which we can know empirically, and that can be reduced to entirely non-ethical or
natural properties, such as needs, wants or pleasures) and towards Ethical Non-
Naturalism (the belief that there are no such moral properties). He pointed out that the
term "good", for instance, is in fact indefinable because it lacks natural properties in the
way that the terms "blue", "smooth", etc, have them. He also defended what he
called "common sense" Realism (as opposed to Idealism or Skepticism) on the grounds
that common sense claims about our knowledge of the world are just as plausible as
those other metaphysical premises.
On the Continental Philosophy side, an important figure in the early 20th Century was
the German Edmund Husserl, who founded the influential movement
of Phenomenology. He developed the idea, parts of which date back to Descartes and
even Plato, that what we call reality really consists of objects and events ("phenomena")
as they are perceived or understood in the human consciousness, and not of
anything independent of human consciousness (which may or may not exist). Thus, we
can "bracket" (or, effectively, ignore) sensory data, and deal only with the "intentional
content" (the mind's built-in mental description of external reality), which allows us
to perceive aspects of the real world outside.
It was another German, Martin Heidegger (once a student of Husserl), who was mainly
responsible for the decline of Phenomenology. In his groundbreaking "Being and
Time" of 1927, Heidegger gave concrete examples of how Husserl's view (of man as
a subject confronted by, and reacting to, objects) broke down in certain (quite common)
circumstances, and how the existence of objects only has any
real significance and meaning within a whole social
context (what Heidegger called "being in the world"). He further argued
that existence was inextricably linked with time, and that being is really just an ongoing
process of becoming (contrary to the Aristotelian idea of a fixed essence). This line of
thinking led him to speculate that we can only avoid what he called "inauthentic" lives
(and the anxiety which inevitably goes with such lives) by accepting how things are in
the real world, and responding to situations in an individualistic way (for which he is
considered by many a founder of Existentialism). In his later work, Heidegger went so
far as to assert that we have essentially come to the end of philosophy, having tried out
and discarded all the possible permutations of philosophical thought (a kind
of Nihilism).
The main figurehead of the Existentialism movement was Jean-Paul Sartre (along with
his French contemporaries Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau-
Ponty). A confirmed Atheist and a committed Marxist and Communist for most of his
life, Sartre adapted and extended the work
of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger, and concluded that "existence is
prior to essence" (in the sense that we are thrust into an unfeeling, godless
universe against our will, and that we must then establish meaning for our lives by what
we do and how we act). He believed that we always have choices (and
therefore freedom) and that, while this freedom is empowering, it also brings with
it moral responsibility and an existential dread (or "angst"). According to Sartre,
genuine human dignity can only be achieved by our active acceptance of this angst and
despair.
In the second half of the 20th Century, three main schools (in addition to Existentialism)
dominated Continental Philosophy. Structuralism is the broad belief that all human
activity and its products (even perception and thought itself) are constructed and not
natural, and that everything has meaning only through the language system in which
we operate. Post-Structuralism is a reaction to Structuralism, which stresses the culture
and society of the reader over that of the author). Post-Modernism is an even less well-
defined field, marked by a kind of "pick'n'mix" openness to a variety of different
meanings and authorities from unexpected places, as well as a willingness
to borrow unashamedly from previous movements or traditions.
The radical and iconoclastic French philosopher Michel Foucault, has been associated
with all of these movements (although he himself always rejected such labels). Much of
his work is language-based and, among other things, he has looked at how certain
underlying conditions of truth have constituted what was acceptable at different times in
history, and how the body and sexuality are cultural constructs rather than natural
phenomena. Although sometimes criticized for his lax standards of
scholarship, Foucault's ideas are nevertheless frequently cited in a wide variety
of different disciplines.
Mention should also be made of Deconstructionism (often called just Deconstruction), a
theory of literary criticism that questions traditional assumptions about certainty,
identity and truth, and looks for the underlying assumptions (both unspoken and
implicit), as well as the ideas and frameworks, that form the basis for thought and belief.
The method was developed by the Frenchman Jacques Derrida (who is also credited as a
major figure in Post-Structuralism). His work is highly cerebral and self-
consciously "difficult", and he has been repeatedly accused of pseudo-
philosophy and sophistry.

No Man's Land Between Science and Religion

 

Science vs Philosophy
1.Philosophy and science are two studies and domains. Philosophy came first and became the
basis for science, formerly known as natural philosophy. Both studies have many branches or
fields of study and make use reasoning, questioning, and analysis. The main difference is in the
way they work and treat knowledge.

2.Another common element between the two studies is that they both try to explain situations
and find answers. Philosophy does this by using logical argumentation, while science utilizes
empirical data. Philosophy’s explanations are grounded in arguments of principles, while science
tries to explain based on experiment results, observable facts, and objective evidence.

3.Science is used for instances that require empirical validation, while philosophy is used for
situations where measurements and observations cannot be applied. Science also takes answers
and proves them as objectively right or wrong.

4.Subjective and objective questions are involved in philosophy, while only some objective
questions can be related in science. Aside from finding answers, philosophy also involves
generating questions. Meanwhile, science is only concerned with the latter.

5.Philosophy creates knowledge through thinking; science does the same by observing.
 Pre-Socratics May Have Been Rational Without Being Right:
As Barnes points out, just because the Pre-Socratics were rational, and presented supportive
arguments, doesn't mean they were right. They couldn't possibly all be right, anyway, since much
of their writing consists in pointing out inconsistencies of their predecessors' paradigms.
 
 
Introduction to Branches of Philosophy
 

 
Philosophy is quite unlike any other field. It is unique both in its methods and in the nature and
breadth of its subject matter. Philosophy pursues questions in every dimension of human life, and
its techniques apply to problems in any field of study or endeavor. No brief definition expresses
the richness and variety of philosophy. It may be described in many ways. It is a reasoned pursuit
of fundamental truths, a quest for understanding, a study of principles of conduct. It seeks to
establish standards of evidence, to provide rational methods of resolving conflicts, and to create
techniques for evaluating ideas and arguments. Philosophy develops the capacity to see the world
from the perspective of other individuals and other cultures; it enhances one's ability to perceive
the relationships among the various fields of study; and it deepens one's sense of the meaning
and variety of human experience.
 
 This short description of philosophy could be greatly expanded, but let us instead illustrate some
of the points. As the systematic study of ideas and issues, philosophy may examine concepts and
views drawn from science, art, religion, politics, or any other realm. Philosophical appraisal of
ideas and issues takes many forms, but philosophical studies often focus on the meaning of an
idea and on its basis, coherence, and relations to other ideas. Consider, for instance, democracy.
What is it? What justifies it as a system of government? Can a democracy allow the people to
vote away their own rights? And how is it related to political liberty? Consider human
knowledge. What is its nature and extent? Must we always have evidence in order to know?
What can we know about the thoughts and feelings of others, or about the future? What kind of
knowledge, if any, is fundamental? Similar kinds of questions arise concerning art, morality,
religion, science, and each of the major areas of human activity. Philosophy explores all of them.
It views them both microscopically and from the wide perspective of the larger concerns of
human existence.
 
   
      Traditional Subfields of Philosophy
 
The broadest subfields of philosophy are most commonly taken to be logic, ethics, metaphysics,
epistemology and the history of philosophy. Here is a brief sketch of each.
Logic is concerned to provide sound methods for distinguishing good from bad reasoning. It
helps us assess how well our premises support our conclusions, to see what we are committed to
accepting when we take a view, and to avoid adopting beliefs for which we lack adequate
reasons. Logic also helps us to find arguments where we might otherwise simply see a set of
loosely related statements, to discover assumptions we did not know we were making, and to
formulate the minimum claims we must establish if we are to prove (or inductively support) our
point. 
Ethics takes up the meanings of our moral concepts—such as right action, obligation and justice
—and formulates principles to guide moral decisions, whether in private or public life. What are
our moral obligations to others? How can moral disagreements be rationally settled? What rights
must a just society accord its citizens? What constitutes a valid excuse for wrong-doing?
Metaphysics seeks basic criteria for determining what sorts of things are real. Are there mental,
physical, and abstract things (such as numbers), for instance, or is there just the physical and the
spiritual, or merely matter and energy? Are persons highly complex physical systems, or do they
have properties not reducible to anything physical?
Epistemology concerns the nature and scope of knowledge. What does it mean to know (the
truth), and what is the nature of truth? What sorts of things can be known, and can we be
justified in our beliefs about what goes beyond the evidence of our senses, such as the inner lives
of others or events of the distant past? Is there knowledge beyond the reach of science? What are
the limits of self-knowledge?
The History of Philosophy studies both major philosophers and entire periods in the
development of philosophy such as the Ancient, Medieval, Modern, Nineteenth Century, and
Twentieth Century periods. It seeks to understand great figures, their influence on others, and
their importance for contemporary issues. The history of philosophy in a single nation is often
separately studied, as in the case of American Philosophy. So are major movements within a
nation, such as British Empiricism and German Idealism, as well as international movements
with a substantial history, such as existentialism and phenomenology. The history of philosophy
not only provides insight into the other subfields of philosophy; it also reveals many of the
foundations of Western Civilization. 
Aesthetics also spelled esthetics, the philosophical study of beauty and taste. It is closely related
to the philosophy of art, which is concerned with the nature of art and the concepts in terms of
which individual works of art are interpreted and evaluated.

What is Ethics?

Previous

What is Ethics: Types of Ethics and Ethical Theories

What is Ethics?
 
At its simplest, ethics is a system of moral principles. They affect how
people make decisions and lead their lives.
Ethics is concerned with what is good for individuals and society and is also
described as moral philosophy.
 The term is derived from the Greek word ethos which can mean custom,
habit, character or disposition.
Ethics covers the following dilemmas:
 how to live a good life
 our rights and responsibilities
 the language of right and wrong
 moral decisions - what is good and bad?
Our concepts of ethics have been derived from religions, philosophies and
cultures. They infuse debates on topics like abortion, human rights and
professional conduct.
 

Approaches to ethics
 
Philosophers nowadays tend to divide ethical theories into three areas:
metaethics, normative ethics, descriptive ethics and applied ethics.
 Meta-ethics deals with the nature of moral judgement. It looks at the
origins and meaning of ethical principles.
 Normative ethics is concerned with the content of moral judgements
and the criteria for what is right or wrong.
     Applied ethics looks at controversial topics like war, animal rights
and capital punishment
     Descriptive ethics is a form of empirical research into the attitudes of
individuals or groups of people. ... Those working on descriptive ethics aim
to uncover people's beliefs about such things as values, which actions are
right and wrong, and which characteristics of moral agents are virtuous.
Ethics differs from morals and morality in that ethics denotes the theory of
right action and the greater good, while morals indicate their practice.
Ethics is not limited to specific acts and defined moral codes, but
encompasses the whole of moral ideals and behaviors, a person's
philosophy of life.
It asks questions like "How should people act?" (Normative or Prescriptive
Ethics), "What do people think is right?" (Descriptive Ethics), "How do we
take moral knowledge and put it into practice?" (Applied Ethics), and "What
does 'right' even mean?" (Meta-Ethics).
 
Ethics and other fields
 

Ethics and Law 

Ethics provides us with guides on what is the right thing to do in all aspects
of life, while the law generally provides more specific rules so that societies
and their institutions can be maintained. Ethics engages our thinking and
also our feelings, including those of disgust and guilt.

The law does not tell us what to do in relation to many of the dilemmas and
decisions we have to make in life. While we think obeying the law is an
important basis for role models in our life, we consider other traits such as
benevolence and empathy as more important in characterizing someone as
a good person.

Doing what you have the right to do – as in doing something that is not
illegal – is not always identical to doing what is right. 

Ethics and Psychology

“Ethics inquires how we ought to will not how we actually do will.
Psychology on the other hand, deals only with the process of volition as it
actually occurs without reference to the lightness or wrongness, or to the
ultimate conditions which make lightness and wrongness possible.”
 

Ethics and Etiquette

Ethics and Etiquette are two concepts that govern the behavior of human
beings. However, there is a distinct difference between ethics and
etiquette. Ethics refer to a set of moral principles that relates to the
difference between good and bad. Etiquette is a customary code which
indicates the proper and polite way to behave in society. The main
difference between ethics and etiquette is that ethics relate to principles or
conscience whereas etiquette is related to behavior.
 
Environmental Ethics
Environmental ethics is the part of environmental philosophy which
considers the ethical relationship between human beings and the natural
environment. It exerts influence on a large range of disciplines
including law, sociology, theology, economics, ecology and geography.
Some of the main topics are global warming, pollution, and issues are
closely tied to those of poverty, sustainability, and economic and
social justice. Furthermore, since environmental problems often affect
beyond the boundaries of nation-states, the issues are tied to the fields of
international relations and global governance.
 
Medical Ethics and Bioethics
Medical ethics deals with study of moral values and judgments as they
apply to medicine. As a scholarly discipline, medical ethics encompasses
its practical application in clinical settings as well as work on its
history, philosophy, theology, and sociology. Medical ethics shares many
principles with other branches of healthcare ethics, such as nursing ethics.
Medical ethics tends to be understood narrowly as an applied professional
ethics, whereas bioethics appears to have worked more expansive
concerns, touching upon the philosophy of science and the critique
of biotechnology and life science. Still, the two fields often overlap and the
distinction is more a matter of style than professional consensus. Some
topics include abortion, cloning, euthanasia, eugenics, and others.
 
 
What use is Ethics?
 
If ethical theories are to be useful in practice, they need to affect the way
human beings behave.
Some philosophers think that ethics does do this. They argue that if a
person realizes that it would be morally good to do something then it would
be irrational for that person not to do it.
But human beings often behave irrationally - they follow their 'gut instinct'
even when their head suggests a different course of action.
However, ethics does provide good tools for thinking about moral issues.
 
Ethics can provide a moral map
Most moral issues get us pretty worked up - think of abortion and
euthanasia for starters. Because these are such emotional issues we often
let our hearts do the arguing while our brains just go with the flow.
 
But there's another way of tackling these issues, and that's where
philosophers can come in - they offer us ethical rules and principles that
enable us to take a cooler view of moral problems.
So ethics provides us with a moral map, a framework that we can use to
find our way through difficult issues.
 
Ethics can pinpoint a disagreement
Using the framework of ethics, two people who are arguing a moral issue
can often find that what they disagree about is just one particular part of the
issue, and that they broadly agree on everything else.
That can take a lot of heat out of the argument, and sometimes even hint at
a way for them to resolve their problem.
But sometimes ethics doesn't provide people with the sort of help that they
really want.
 
Ethics doesn't give right answers
Ethics doesn't always show the right answer to moral problems.
Indeed more and more people think that for many ethical issues there isn't
a single right answer - just a set of principles that can be applied to
particular cases to give those involved some clear choices.
Some philosophers go further and say that all ethics can do is eliminate
confusion and clarify the issues. After that it's up to each individual to come
to their own conclusions.
  
Ethics can give several answers
Many people want there to be a single right answer to ethical questions.
They find moral ambiguity hard to live with because they genuinely want to
do the 'right' thing, and even if they can't work out what that right thing is,
they like the idea that 'somewhere' there is one right answer.
But often there isn't one right answer - there may be several right answers,
or just some least bad answers - and the individual must choose between
them.
For others moral ambiguity is difficult because it forces them to take
responsibility for their own choices and actions, rather than falling back on
convenient rules and customs.
 
 
Four ethical 'isms'
When a person says "murder is bad" what are they doing?
That's the sort of question that only a philosopher would ask, but it's
actually a very useful way of getting a clear idea of what's going on when
people talk about moral issues.
The different 'isms' regard the person uttering the statement as doing
different things.
We can show some of the different things I might be doing when I say
'murder is bad' by rewriting that statement to show what I really mean:
 I might be making a statement about an ethical fact
o "It is wrong to murder"
o This is moral realism
 I might be making a statement about my own feelings
o "I disapprove of murder"
o This is subjectivism
 I might be expressing my feelings
o "Down with murder"This is emotivism
 I might be giving an instruction or a prohibition
o "Don't murder people"
o This is prescriptivism
 
Are there universal moral rules?
One of the big questions in moral philosophy is whether or not there are
unchanging moral rules that apply in all cultures and at all times.
 
Moral Absolutism
Some people think there are such universal rules that apply to everyone.
This sort of thinking is called moral absolutism.
 
Moral absolutism argues that there are some moral rules that are always
true, that these rules can be discovered and that these rules apply to
everyone.
Immoral acts - acts that break these moral rules - are wrong in themselves,
regardless of the circumstances or the consequences of those acts.
Absolutism takes a universal view of humanity - there is one set of rules for
everyone - which enables the drafting of universal rules - such as the
Declaration of Human Rights.
Religious views of ethics tend to be absolutist.
 
Moral Subjectivism
Subjectivism teaches that moral judgments are nothing more than
statements of a person's feelings or attitudes, and that ethical statements
do not contain factual truths about goodness or badness.
In more detail: subjectivists say that moral statements are statements
about the feelings, attitudes and emotions that that particular person or
group has about a particular issue.
If a person says something is good or bad they are telling us about the
positive or negative feelings that they have about that something.
So if someone says 'murder is wrong' they are telling us that they
disapprove of murder.
These statements are true if the person does hold the appropriate attitude
or have the appropriate feelings. They are false if the person doesn't.
 
Emotivism
Emotivism is the view that moral claims are no more than expressions of
approval or disapproval.
This sounds like subjectivism, but in emotivism a moral statement
doesn't provide information about the speaker's feelings about the topic
but expresses those feelings.
 
When an emotivist says "murder is wrong" it's like saying "down with
murder" or "murder, yecch!" or just saying "murder" while pulling a horrified
face, or making a thumbs-down gesture at the same time as saying
"murder is wrong".
So when someone makes a moral judgement they show their feelings
about something. Some theorists also suggest that in expressing a feeling
the person gives an instruction to others about how to act towards the
subject matter.
 
Moral Relativism
Moral relativists say that if you look at different cultures or different periods
in history you'll find that they have different moral rules.
Therefore it makes sense to say that "good" refers to the things that a
particular group of people approve of.
Moral relativists think that that's just fine, and dispute the idea that there are
some objective and discoverable 'super-rules' that all cultures ought to
obey. They believe that relativism respects the diversity of human societies
and responds to the different circumstances surrounding human acts.
Why people disagree with moral relativism:
 Many of us feel that moral rules have more to them than the general
agreement of a group of people - that morality is more than a super-
charged form of etiquette
 Many of us think we can be good without conforming to all the rules
of society
 Moral relativism has a problem with arguing against the majority view:
if most people in a society agree with particular rules, that's the end of the
matter. Many of the improvements in the world have come about because
people opposed the prevailing ethical view - moral relativists are forced to
regard such people as behaving "badly"
 Any choice of social grouping as the foundation of ethics is bound to
be arbitrary
 Moral relativism doesn't provide any way to deal with moral
differences between societies
 
 
Where does ethics come from?
Philosophers have several answers to this question:
 God and religion
 Human conscience and intuition
 a rational moral cost-benefit analysis of actions and their effects
 the example of good human beings
 a desire for the best for people in each unique situation
 political power
 
God-based ethics - supernaturalism
Supernaturalism makes ethics inseparable from religion. It teaches that the
only source of moral rules is God.
So, something is good because God says it is, and the way to lead a good
life is to do what God wants.
 
Divine Command Theory
 
The Divine command theory (hereafter: DCT) is a theory of ethics. It states
that the difference between right and wrong is simply that the former is that
which has been commanded by God (or the gods), while the latter is that
which has been prohibited by God.
 
Plato’s Euthypro Problem
 
The DCT was challenged by Plato in his dialogue, Euthyphro[?]. In this
dialogue, Socrates asks essentially this question:
 
Is an act good because God commands it, or does he command it because
it is good?
 
The question is such that either answer seems to lead to the rejection of
the DCT. Firstly, if an act is good solely because God commands it, then
that would mean that if murder, rape or theft were divinely commanded,
they would be good. This seems to be absurd, although on some occasions
it has indeed been seriously proposed.
 
This may provoke a reply to the effect that God would never command
such things, because God would never command what was wrong.
However, this argument cannot be made if the DCT is to be maintained -
under the DCT, if God commanded something, it would not be wrong.
 
Secondly, if God commands an act because it is good, this again
undermines the DCT, as it means that the act was good independently of
God's commanding it, and therefore being commanded by God is not the
only reason the act is good. Rather, whatever reason God had for
commanding it is the ultimate reason that it is good.
 
This line of attack on the DCT is well-enough known that it is referred to as
the Euthyphro dilemma. Plato is generally believed to have refuted the DCT
outright. However, it should be noted that certain other theories that link
morality to God are more subtle and are not straightforwardly refuted in this
manner.
 
 

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