CHAPTER II - PHILOSOPHY & LOGIC

THE MAIN BRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY

What You Must Know in this Chapter:

·         Philosophy as it were, is the oldest of all human disciplines.

·         Philosophy can be classified into four main branchesand they include: METAPHYSICS, EPISTEMOLOGY, AXIOLOGY AND LOGIC.

·         Logic is the science of correct reasoning and it doesn’t bother itself with how people think or reason but how they ought to reason/think.

·         Logic is equally the study of the methods and principles used to distinguish CORRECT from INCORRECT reasoning.

NOTE: An argument is a group of inter-related propositions such that some provide evidence for the other. Those that provide evidence for the others are known as premises while the ones for which evidence is provided is called the conclusion. Also, the process of drawing conclusions from premisesis known as INFERENCE.

·         Propositions are the building blocks of any argument and a proposition may be true or false. A proposition is divided into two parts, namely ‘the subject term’ and ‘the predicate term’. We will shed more light on this later on. Let’s move on, shall we?

·         Logic is classified into DEDUCTION and INDUCTION. Deduction claims that its conclusion is supported by its premises entirely. In Deduction, if the conclusion is correctly inferred from the premises then the argument is VALID and vice versa. Induction is the process by which knowledge of generalizations or predictions is obtained from observational data.

·         AXIOLOGYis also known as ‘the philosophy of VALUE’, from two Greek words – Axio [value] and Logos [study/discourse]. Axiology is divided into – AESTHETICS and ETHICS.

·         AESTHETICS is the study of ideal form or beauty, little wonder it is often called ‘the philosophy of ART’. It also studies ‘natural beauty’.

·         ETHICS is that branch of Axiology that is concerned with ‘how people ought to behave’. It is equally concerned with values however, these values are streamlined to matters of good and bad, right and wrong, duty and obligation, virtue and vice etc. As such, we can define ethics as the study of the fundamental norms of human conduct. Ethics is derived from the Greek word Ethos which means ‘custom’.

·         It was Socrates who defined ETHICS as the knowledge of GOOD and EVIL, the knowledge of the WISDOM OF LIFE.

NOTE: Another name for ETHICS is MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

·         ETHICScan be classified into – Normative Ethics, Meta-ethics and Descriptive Ethics. Normative Ethics focuses on how people ought to behave. In the normative ethics lies two schools of thought – The Consequentialist Ethics and The Non-consequentialist Ethics. The Consequentialist believe that the end justifies the meansi.e. the morality or otherwise of an action depends on the result it produces. On the other hand, the non-consequentialists believe that the morality or otherwise of an action does not depend on the result it produces; but, on the action itself.

·         Philosophers in the Consequentialist movement include – Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. WHILE philosophers in the non-consequentialist movement include – Immanuel Kant, David Ross, Emil Brunner and Robert Mortimer.

·         META-ETHICS on the other hand, is simply the study of ‘concept’and ‘statement’ used in normative ethics. It concerns itself with the analysis of the concepts or terms and propositions used in ethical discourse in order to determine their meaning. It is further broken down into – Cognitive meta-ethicsand Non-cognitive meta-ethics.

·         To the Cognitivist, ethical propositions are meaningfuland they can be true or false. Philosophers on this ship include: David Hume, Thomas Hobbes, Ralph Barton Perry, George Edward Moore, H. A. Pritchard and W. D. Ross.

·         To the Non-cognitivist, ethical statements do not express propositions. They are meaninglessand they cannot be true or false. Philosophers here include: C. L. Stevenson, A. J. Ayer and R. M. Hare.

·         Cognitivism is further divided into ‘ethical naturalism’and ‘anti – naturalism’. WHILE non-cognitivism is divided into – ‘Emotivism’ and ‘Prescriptivism’.

·         DESCRIPTIVE ETHICSstudies the actual moral beliefs or rules that guide conduct in a society. It is concerned with ‘how people live’ and ‘how they conduct their lives’. We can define it also as the branch of ethics that studies the moral codes of different societies or cultures.

·         EPISTEMOLOGY is the study of the theory of knowledge, the origin, the nature and the limits of knowledge. Epistemology tells us ‘what knowledge is and what it is not’.

·         To the philosopher, there are three [3] kinds of knowledge: The Propositional, The Practical and The Objective. Practical knowledge can also be called ‘skill knowledge’ and it is knowledge based on one’s ability to do something. Objective knowledge may also be called ‘knowledge by acquaintance’ because it is the knowledge of persons, places and things.

·         The Conditions of Knowledge include: Truth, Belief,and Justification. This is simple. It means that for someone to claim they know something, that thing must first be ‘true’, they must believe it is true and they must be able to provide evidential proofs that it is true. Does this make sense? Of course! Let’s go on.

·         One of the major epistemological problems of philosophy is that of SKEPTICISM. You must know that it was PROTHAGORAS who claimed that ‘MAN IS THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS’.

·         Under the possibility of knowledge, we have the rationalistand the empiricist school of thought respectively. The rationalist believe that knowledge is innate and it can be acquired via recollection, intuition and deduction. Philosopher in this school include: PLATO, RENE DESCARTES, BENEDICT SPINOZA and GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ.

·         To the Empiricist, knowledge is SENSE – BASED. This means that objective and reliable knowledge are derived from the senses. This school of thought holds that ‘the human mind at birth is a TABULA RAZA [i.e. a clean slate or blackboard].’ Philosophers who supported this school include: JOHN LOCKE, GEORGE BERKELEY and DAVID HUME.

·         Other sources of knowledge apart from those aforementioned include: Introspection, Memory, Intuition, Authority, Revelation.

·         Lastly, let’s look at metaphysics. Now, METAPHYSICS is regarded as the oldest branch of philosophy. It is derived from two Greek words – meta [after] and physica [physics]. Standardly, metaphysics can be defined, according to WILL DURANT as ‘the study of the ULTIMATE REALITY of all things; of the real and final nature of matter (ontology)’.

·         Metaphysics comprises: The Idealist Metaphysicsand The Materialist Metaphysics. The Idealist places idea/spirit over matter in its perception of reality. It holds that everything we see is ultimately spiritual or immaterial. We have two types of idealism here – subjective idealism and objective idealism. The former holds that ‘physical objects’ are products of the mind and can’t exist outside the mind. Philosophers here include: George Berkeley and Immanuel Kant. The objective idealism on the other hand supports that ‘the physical universe’ is a ‘self-projection’of a spiritual reality. On this ship we have philosophers like: Plato, Hegel, Fichte, Thomas Hill Green and Herbert Bradley.

·         The Materialist Metaphysics is a system of philosophy which places matter over spirit or ideas in its perception of reality. To the materialist, only matter exists. To the materialist as well, whatever exists is matter or can be reduced to matter. In other words, matter is the ultimate reality. Philosophers who supported this school of thought include: Thales, Democritus, Leucippus and Epicurus.