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 Thinker, bronze cast by Alexis Rudier, Laeken Cemetery, Brussels, Belgium

The term philosophy comes from the ancient Greek word "Φιλοσοφία" (philo-sophia), which means "love of wisdom". The word is notoriously difficult to define, 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

What is a question?

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 choose books passively?

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? What is the nature of those things? Do some things exist independently of our perception of them? What is the nature of space and time? What is the nature of thought and thinking? What is it to be a person? Is there a god? No gods? Many gods?
• 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

Einstein's prediction (1907): Light bends in a gravitational field

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. Some different kinds of assertion are: answers, aphorisms, axiomatic expressions, and descriptions of a thing.

Illustration

While assertion is our fundamental expression of a claim of the form "Someone believes that something is a certain way", illustration is our fundamental expression of a claim of the form "Someone sees how something is a certain way". Some different kinds of illustration are: allegories, analogies, demonstrations, thought experiments, and diagrams (such as Euler diagrams or Venn diagrams).

Assumption

One thing philosophers do is assume assertions to be 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 example of learning:

1. Johnny has learned the meaning of the word "two" from some illustrations.
2. Johnny has learned the meaning of the word "four" from some other illustrations.
3. Johnny has learned the meaning of the word "plus" from some other illustrations.
4. Johnny has learned the meaning of the word "equals" from some other illustrations.

---

Therefore, Johnny is entitled to say "two plus two equals four".

When a person is entitled to say a sentence and he does say it, his assertion is true. When a person is not entitled to say a sentence he is not in a position to assert the connection between the meanings of his words, and his assertion is false.

A more general way to say this is that an assertion of mine is true only when I have correctly learned the meanings of the words I use, and an assertion of mine is false only when I have incorrectly learned the meanings of the words I use.

Argument

We may not always be able to say what the actions are that illustrate meanings of our words, but we can see ways in which the meanings are different, and important ways in which the meanings are connected. Philosophers take advantage of these differences and connections by making arguments.

Definition

Hmm...how to order these...

Mistakes in philosophy

Goals of philosophy

What is the point?

Changes in people

Changes in language

Changes in the world

Goals of philosophy: this is where we talk about what philosophers are trying to achieve. One thing might be the TRUTH (whatever the hell that is). Another might be clear thought. Another might be increases in clarity of thought. Another might be a more just, fair, and productive society. Another might be (though I hope it isn't) grand philosophical treatises of monumental porportions. (The other half of the Analytic/Continental debate might go here.)

History of philosophy

The School of Athens fresco, by Raphael

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.