User:KSchutte/Philosophy
This is a draft of some sections of the article Philosophy. This draft is in user space, so please don't change it.
The term philosophy comes from the ancient Greek word "Φιλοσοφία" (philo-sophia), which means "love of wisdom". It is notoriously difficult to give an uncontroversial definition of the word "philosophy", but some flippant attempts to define it are "the study of everything", "how things are", "thinking about thought", and "good teaching". Ultimately, what the word "philosophy" means isn't nearly so important as what philosophy is.
Domain of philosophy
Philosophy generally concerns itself with what are sometimes called "the big questions". For example:
- What is the meaning of life?
- What is the right thing to do? Can we know what is the right thing to do?
- Do we have souls? Will our souls survive the deaths of our bodies?
- What really exists? Are things really the way they seem to be?
- Why is there something rather than nothing at all?
- How do minds interact with reality? Do our words name the things that they seem to name?
The inquiry of philosophy covers all or most of the sensible questions. Some philosophers might even claim that the nonsensible questions (or some of them) are a part of philosophy, since some of the questions that seem sensible now might turn out not to be sensible once we understand them better. An example of a clearly nonsensible question is:
- Do shapeless round squares torture planets kindly?
The question is clearly nonsensible because it clearly has no good answer. The normal response to a nonsensible question isn't going to be an answer to the question. Instead, one responds to a nonsensible question with a request for clarification such as "what do you mean by that?". Some of the questions in philosophy might turn out to be nonsensible (i.e., might turn out to have no good answer), but none of them are clearly nonsensible.
There is a standard categorization of philosophical questions (and the answers that philosophers give to them) into five major areas. These areas are not rigidly defined, the classification isn't entirely uncontroversial, and some of the questions might appropriately fall under more than one of these areas. The areas (and a sample of their questions) are:
- Logic: What is truth? How and why do we identify a statement as true or false? How do we reason? What is an argument? How do we come to conclusions? Is evidence or reason more likely to lead to true beliefs? What is a definition?
- Metaphysics: What is reality and what really exists? Do some things exist independently of our perception of them? What is the nature of space and time? What is the nature of consciousness, thought and thinking? What is it to be a person? Is there a god? No gods? Many gods? Do we have free will or are our actions determined by something over which we have no control? Which things have life, mind, or agency, and which things don't?
- Epistemology: Is knowledge possible? How do we know what we know? How do we take what we seem to know and use it to figure out what is unknown? Are there many kinds of knowledge or just one? What are the criteria we must meet in order to know something? What is a belief? What is a thought? What is an idea? How can we tell which beliefs, thoughts, and ideas are the good ones?
- Ethics: Which actions are right and which are wrong? Are values absolute or relative? How should we live? How are the words "right" and "wrong" to be used? Is there a single ultimate rule, guideline, value, or goal for living or are there many? Do the moral rules ever conflict with each other? What sort of thing is a moral value? What are the most important decisions in human life?
- Aesthetics: What is it to be beautiful? How do beautiful things differ from non-beautiful things? What is art? Are aesthetic judgments factual or are they just preferences? Can a forgery be as beautiful as an original? What is the difference between the comic and the tragic?
Philosophy, at its most basic level, aims to explore the potential answers to these questions. There are a pair of related approaches to answering questions that should be mentioned: science and religion.
- Philosophy and science: Philosophy and science share a long tradition. The word "scientist" wasn't coined until 1833, and before that time scientists were known by the term "natural philosophers". Today, philosophers disagree over the status of the split. Some philosophers today believe that philosophy still includes all of the sciences. On this view, the natural sciences would just be one part of philosophy. Other philosophers believe that questions that are answerable by the scientific method aren't a part of philosophy. Most of the people who have this view also believe that philosophers answer questions through the use of only reason and logic. Whichever of these views is correct, it is clear that there is a strong connection between science and philosophy, regardless of how we choose to use our names for these disciplines.
- Philosophy and religion: The interaction between philosophy and religion hasn't always been as civil. Indeed, some philosophers have even been killed for claims that seemed heretical. Nevertheless, the history between these two subjects has involved a substantial amount of cooperation and dialogue. Both religion and philosophy are exploring how to think clearly and communicate effectively when talking about the ultimate cause of everything, the right way to live a life, and ways the world could have been. Many of our most important discoveries in logic were originally made by religious philosophers in their analyses of the essential properties of God and the necessary consequences of God's omnipotence and omniscience. Today, the primary focus of most philosophers isn't God, but there are still many philosophers who do strive to make their claims compatible with a divine reality.
Methods of philosophy
Philosophers have developed a huge number of ways to answer the important questions. A few of these methods (the basic tools) are widely regarded as helping us to achieve our philosophical goals, and their merit is rarely disputed. Some of our other methods (the complicated tools) are more difficult to use well, and it is controversial how much merit each of these possesses.
Basic tools
Assertion
The most basic tool in philosophy is the assertion or claim. This is just a way of expressing that something is a certain way, usually by uttering an indicative sentence of a natural language. Some different kinds of assertion are: answers, aphorisms, axiomatic expressions, and descriptions of a thing. We identify assertions by statements of the form "Someone believes that something is a certain way".
Illustration
An illustration is just a way of showing how things are, usually by some pedagogical action. Some different kinds of illustration are: allegories, analogies, demonstrations, dialogues, paradigmatic examples, thought experiments, proofs, and diagrams (such as Euler diagrams and Venn diagrams). We identify illustrations by statements of the form "Someone sees how something is a certain way". This wikipedia article is an illustration of how philosophy is done.
Assumption
One thing philosophers do is assume some sentences are true. The assumption is that the meanings of different words are related in an important way. Let's try to make this clear with an illustration of learning:
- You have learned the meaning of the word "two" from some illustrations.
- You have learned the meaning of the word "four" from some illustrations.
- You have learned the meaning of the word "plus" from some illustrations.
- You have learned the meaning of the word "equals" from some illustrations.
- Therefore, you are entitled to say "two plus two equals four".
When a person is entitled to say a sentence and he does say it, the sentence is true and he has rightly asserted something by saying it. When a person is not entitled to say a sentence, he is not entitled to assert a connection between the meanings of the words he utters; he doesn't know what assertion he is expressing by his sentence, and his sentence might be false.
A sentence you utter asserts what you want it to assert only when you have learned the appropriate meanings of the words you utter. Assumption, then, is the idea that the meanings of the words you utter aren't up to you, but instead are dependent upon the community of speakers of a language.
Argumentation
We see ways in which the meanings of our words are similar, and important ways in which the meanings are dissimilar. Philosophers take advantage of these similarities and dissimilarities by making arguments. An argument is an assertion that the truth of a sentence or sentences illustrates how some other sentence is true.
We've seen an example of an argument in the Assumption section of this article. There we were using the argument, but now we are going to talk about it. This is called the use-mention distinction, and one must always keep track of it when doing philosophy.
When giving that argument, the authors of this article asserted (used) the first four lines of the argument. The way in which they made those assertions was by uttering the sentences written on this page (which we are now mentioning). These lines are called the premises. By assumption, those sentences are true. The final line of the argument contains another sentence--one which was uttered as an assertion in the argument above--that is called the conclusion. We can see that there is no way for the premises to be true and at the same time the conclusion be false, so the argument has illustrated the truth of the conclusion.
Complicated tools
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Definition and stipulation
Deduction and proof
Supposition and reductio ad absurdum
The scientific method: Induction, abduction, and explanation
The method of doubt and skeptical inquiry
Analysis
For example, philosophers have spent a substantial amount of time and effort trying to describe the difference between each (or some) of the following: a priori claims, adequate definitions, analytic propositions, apparent propositions, atomic facts, axiomatic expressions, certain facts, clear and distinct ideas, credible claims, indefeasible beliefs, indubitable propositions, innate ideas, justified beliefs, necessary truths, obvious facts, provable sentences, self-evident truths, tautological sentences, transparent thoughts, undeniable claims, universally believed statements, and so on.
Transcendental arguments
Criticism and dialectic
Phenomenological and hermeneutical analysis
Probability analysis
Construction and deconstruction
Mistakes in philosophy
Failure to communicate
Missing the point
Begging the question/Circular reasoning
Counterexamples
Logical fallacies
Paradoxes
Goals of philosophy
Changes in people
- Becoming more informed
- Becoming a clearer thinker
Changes in language
- Providing standards for communication
- Giving an explanation for the logic in our natural language
Changes in the world
- Acquiring the truth
- Developing good theories
- justice and fairness
History of philosophy
There is no shortage of philosophical views in the literature, and the authors of this article have tried very hard to avoid mentioning any philosophers by name in order to avoid giving preference to one over any of the others. However, there are some major trends in the history of philosophy and each of these trends is defined by some similarity within a group of philosophers with respect to the domain, method, or goal they had in mind. What follows is a list of major historical trends along with a brief comment about the domain, method, or goal by which each trend is characterized.
Trends defined largely by domain
- Logical positivism - The domain of philosophy is testable claims.
- Rationalism - The domain of philosophy excludes testable claims.
Trends defined largely by method
- Confucianism - The method of philosophy is to reflect on the writings of the sages.
- Deconstructionism - The method of philosophy is deconstruction.
- Empiricism - The method of philosophy is the scientific method.
- Hermeneutics - The method of philosophy is hermeneutical analysis.
- Phenomenology - The method of philosophy is phenomenological analysis.
- Skepticism - The method of philosophy is skeptical inquiry.
- Structuralism - The method of philosophy is construction.
- Transcendental idealism - The method of philosophy is to make transcendental arguments.
Trends defined largely by goal
- Christian philosophy - The goal of philosophy is to understand man's relation to God.
- Critical Theory - The goal of philosophy is societal change.
- Epicureanism - The goal of philosophy is acquiring the greatest pleasure.
- Existentialism - The goal of philosophy is self-determination.
- Logicism - One goal of philosophy is to explain the logical status of mathematics.
- Stoicism - The goal of philosophy is to be an objective, levelheaded thinker.