Philosophy.docx

1、PhilosophyPhilosophyPhilosophyis the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected withreality,existence,knowledge,values,reason,mind, andlanguage.12Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its rel

2、iance onrational argument.3In more casual speech, by extension, philosophy can refer to the most basic beliefs, concepts, and attitudes of an individual or group.4The word philosophy comes from theAncient Greek (philosophia), which literally means love of wisdom.567The introduction of the terms phil

3、osopher and philosophy has been ascribed to the Greek thinkerPythagoras.8Areas of inquiryPhilosophy is divided into many sub-fields. These include epistemology, logic, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics.910Some of the major areas of study are considered individually below.EpistemologyMain article:E

4、pistemologyEpistemology is concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge,11such as the relationships betweentruth,belief, andtheories of justification.Skepticismis the position which questions the possibility of completely justifying any truth. Theregress argument, a fundamental problem in episte

5、mology, occurs when, in order to completely prove any statement, its justification itself needs to be supported by another justification. This chain can do three possible options, all of which are unsatisfactory according to theMnchhausen trilemma. One option isinfinitism, where this chain of justif

6、ication can go on forever. Another option isfoundationalism, where the chain of justifications eventually relies onbasic beliefsoraxiomsthat are left unproven. The last option, such as incoherentism, is making the chaincircularso that a statement is included in its own chain of justification.Rationa

7、lismis the emphasis on reasoning as a source of knowledge.Empiricismis the emphasis on observational evidence via sensory experience over other evidence as the source of knowledge. Rationalism claims that every possible object of knowledge can be deduced from coherent premises without observation. E

8、mpiricism claims that at least some knowledge is only a matter of observation. For this, Empiricism often cites the concept oftabula rasa, where individuals are not born withmental contentand that knowledge builds from experience or perception.Epistemological solipsismis the idea that the existence

9、of the world outside the mind is an unresolvable question.Parmenides(fl. 500 BC) argued that it is impossible to doubt that thinking actually occurs. But thinking must have an object, therefore somethingbeyondthinking really exists. Parmenides deduced that what really exists must have certain proper

10、tiesfor example, that it cannot come into existence or cease to exist, that it is a coherent whole, that it remains the same eternally (in fact, exists altogether outside time). This is known as thethird man argument.Plato(427347 BC) combined rationalism with a form ofrealism. The philosophers work

11、is to consider being, and the essence (ousia) of things. But the characteristic of essences is that they are universal. The nature of a man, a triangle, a tree, applies to all men, all triangles, all trees. Plato argued that these essences are mind-independent forms, that humans (but particularly ph

12、ilosophers) can come to know by reason, and by ignoring the distractions of sense-perception.Modern rationalism begins withDescartes. Reflection on the nature of perceptual experience, as well as scientific discoveries in physiology and optics, led Descartes (and alsoLocke) to the view that we are d

13、irectly aware of ideas, rather than objects. This view gave rise to three questions:1. Is an idea a true copy of the real thing that it represents? Sensation is not a direct interaction between bodily objects and our sense, but is a physiological process involving representation (for example, an ima

14、ge on the retina). Locke thought that a secondary quality such as a sensation of green could in no way resemble the arrangement of particles in matter that go to produce this sensation, although he thought that primary qualities such as shape, size, number, were really in objects.2. How can physical

15、 objects such as chairs and tables, or even physiological processes in the brain, give rise to mental items such as ideas? This is part of what became known as themind-body problem.3. If all the contents of awareness are ideas, how can we know that anything exists apart from ideas?Descartes tried to

16、 address the last problem by reason. He began, echoing Parmenides, with a principle that he thought could not coherently be denied: Ithink, therefore Iam(often given in his original Latin:Cogito ergo sum). From this principle, Descartes went on to construct a complete system of knowledge (which invo

17、lves proving theexistence of God, using, among other means, a version of theontological argument).12His view that reason alone could yield substantial truths about reality strongly influenced those philosophers usually considered modern rationalists (such asBaruch Spinoza,Gottfried Leibniz, andChris

18、tian Wolff), while provoking criticism from other philosophers who have retrospectively come to be grouped together as empiricists.LogicMain article:LogicLogic is the study of the principles of correctreasoning.Argumentsuse either deductive reasoning or inductive reasoning.Deductive reasoningis when

19、, given certain statements (calledpremises), other statements (called conclusions) areunavoidably implied.Rules of inferencesfrom premises include the most popular method,modus ponens, where given “A” and “If A then B”, then “B” must be concluded. A common convention for a deductive argument is thes

20、yllogism. An argument is termedvalidif its conclusion does indeed follow from its premises, whether the premises are true or not, while an argument issoundif its conclusion follows from premises that are true.Propositional logicuses premises that arepropositions, which aredeclarationsthat are either

21、 true or false, whilepredicate logicuses more complex premises calledformulaethat containvariables. These can be assigned values or can bequantifiedas to when they apply with theuniversal quantifier(always apply) or theexistential quantifier(applies at least once).Inductive reasoningmakes conclusion

22、s or generalizations based onprobabilistic reasoning. For example, if “90% of humans are right-handed” and “Joe is human” then “Joe is probably right-handed”. Fields in logic includemathematical logic(formal symbolic logic) andphilosophical logic.MetaphysicsMain article:MetaphysicsMetaphysics is the

23、 study of the most general features ofreality, such asexistence,time, the relationship betweenmindandbody,objectsand theirproperties, wholes and their parts, events, processes, andcausation. Traditional branches of metaphysics includecosmology, the study of theworldin its entirety, andontology, the

24、study ofbeing.Within metaphysics itself there are a wide range of differing philosophicaltheories.Idealism, for example, is the belief that reality is mentally constructed or otherwise immaterial whilerealismholds that reality, or at least some part of it, exists independently of the mind.Subjective

25、 idealismdescribes objects as no more than collections or bundles of sense data in the perceiver. The 18th century philosopherGeorge Berkeleycontended that existence is fundamentally tied to perception with the phraseEsse est aut percipi aut percipereor To be is to be perceived or to perceive.13In a

26、ddition to the aforementioned views, however, there is also an ontologicaldichotomywithin metaphysics between the concepts of particulars and universals as well.Particularsare those objects that are said to exist in space and time, as opposed toabstract objects, such as numbers.Universalsare propert

27、ies held by multiple particulars, such as redness or a gender. The type ofexistence, if any, of universals and abstract objects is an issue of seriousdebatewithin metaphysical philosophy.Realismis the philosophical position that universals do in fact exist, whilenominalismis the negation, or denial

28、of universals, abstract objects, or both.14Conceptualismholds that universals exist, but only within the minds perception.15The question of whether or notexistenceis apredicatehas been discussed since the Early Modern period.Essenceis the set of attributes that make an object what it fundamentally i

29、s and without which it loses itsidentity. Essence is contrasted withaccident: a property that the substance hascontingently, without which the substance can still retain its identity.Moral and political philosophyMain articles:EthicsandPolitical philosophyEthics, or moral philosophy, is concerned pr

30、imarily with the question of the best way to live, and secondarily, concerning the question of whether this question can be answered. The main branches of ethics aremeta-ethics,normative ethics, andapplied ethics. Meta-ethics concerns the nature of ethical thought, such as the origins of the words g

31、ood and bad, and origins of other comparative words of various ethical systems, whether there are absolute ethical truths, and how such truths could be known. Normative ethics are more concerned with the questions of how one ought to act, and what the right course of action is. This is where most et

32、hical theories are generated. Lastly, applied ethics go beyond theory and step into real world ethical practice, such as questions of whether or not abortion is correct. Ethics is also associated with the idea ofmorality, and the two are often interchangeable.One debate that has commanded the attention of ethicists in the modern era has been betweenconsequentialism(actions are to be morally evaluated solely by theirconsequ