Branches of Philosophy| An excerpt taken from the book Introduction to Philosophy of Human Person by Christine Carmela R. Ramos, Ph.D.
A. Metaphysics
Metaphysics is only an extension of the fundamental and necessary drive in every human being to know what is real. What is reality, why does reality exists, and how does it exists are just some of the questions pursued by metaphysics. The question is how to account for this unreal thing in terms of what you can accept it as real. Thus, a very big part of metaphysician’s task is to explain that part of our experience, which we call unreal in terms of what we call real. This means the concept of thought, idea, existence, reality, being, and other abstract ideas of life are understood and analyzed using what is physically seen in the world and vice versa.
In our everyday attempts to understand the world in terms of appearance and reality, we try to make things comprehensible and sensible in the ordinary way of understanding the world by simplifying or reducing the mass of things we call appearance to a relatively fewer number of things we call reality.
The reality here is referred to in metaphysics as “true reality,” meaning, it is the fundamental source and basis of all reality in the world and existence. Metaphysics assumes that the reality we see is just a temporary cover of the true reality that exists beyond what our senses could perceive.
For instance, Thales, a Greek philosopher, everything is water. He claimed that everything we experience is water – which we call “reality”. Everything else is “appearance.” We then set out to try to explain everything else (appearance) In terms of water (reality). Clouds, for example, or blocks of ice do not look like water, but they can be explained in terms of water. If the water evaporates, it becomes a cloud, and When the water freezes, it becomes ice.
Thales believes that the principle beyond all existence and reality can be best explained by the analogy of water. In fact, water for Thales is the fundamental shift in the movement of all things in the universe.
Both the idealist and the materialist metaphysical theories are similarly based on unobservable entities: mind and matter. We can see things made of matter such as a book or a chair, but we cannot see the underlying matter itself. Although we can experience in our minds thoughts, ideas, desires, and fantasies, we cannot observe or experience the mind itself that is having these thoughts, ideas, and desires. It is this tendency to explain the observable in terms of the unobservable that has given, metaphysics a bad name to more down-to-earth philosophers.
Plato, Socrates’s most famous student, is a good example of a metaphysician who drew the sharpest possible contrast and division between reality and appearance. Nothing we experience in the physical world with our five senses is real, according to Plato. Reality is just the opposite. It means that reality is an indivisible but concrete true representation of all physical reality that the eye can see. It is unchanging, eternal, immaterial, and can be detected only by the intellect. Plato called these realities as ideas of forms. These are meanings that universal general terms refer to, and they are also those things we talk about when we discuss moral, mathematical, and scientific ideas.
B. Ethics
Is honor with deceit worth attaining? How do we distinguish good from evil or right from wrong? Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle asked those fundamental questions concerning happiness and the meaning of life; so did Du Bois when he confronted the struggles of African-Americans and advocated equal rights. The news about a man who set a casino on fire and those who committed suicide for allegedly losing millions in gambling delved into the complexity of our judgment, on how our actions affect others. While in I, Robot, a film about artificial intelligence, machines’ abilities in discerning good from bad were explored.
Ethics is the branch of philosophy that explores the nature of moral virtue and evaluates the morality and virtue of human actions. Ethicists are those people who study morality from the perspective of philosophy appeal to logical arguments to justify claims and positions involving morality. They use ethical theory in the analysis and deliberation of issues.
Whereas religion has often helped motivate individuals to obey the laws and moral code of their society, philosophy is not content with traditional or habitual ethics but adopts a critical perspective. It insists that obedience to moral law be given a rational foundation. In the thought of Socrates, we see the beginning of a transition from a traditional, religion-based morality to philosophical ethics. (Landsburg, 2009)
Ethics has five main Frameworks:
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Divine Command – What does God ordain us to do? In this framework, a strong sense of individualism does not exist, but rather, the collective is emphasized. The actions and moral reasoning of St. Teresa of Calcutta and St. Lorenzo Ruiz are exemplars of this theory.
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Consequentialism or utilitarianism – What has the most desirable consequences? Jeremy Bentham, stoics, and Epicureans are the authors of this ethical theory. In others, what is good for the greatest number of people is the best choice and the moral choice. For example, if killing a cow is the only way to save seven children from starvation, killing a cow is moral.
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Deontological Ethics – What is my moral duty to do. This means a person has a moral duty to do what is right regardless of what the person thinks or feels about that situation. For example, when a person sees Hitler drowning, he must save him because letting a person die without helping is wrong. The act of starving Hitler is a moral duty every human being has an obligation to do. Immanuel Kant is the author of this ethical theory that may also be known as duty ethics or Kantianism. His categorical imperative yielded unqualified absolutes. (Pojman, 2006)
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Virtue ethics – What kind of person I ought to be. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are some examples. This ethical theory ignores the consequences, duties, and social contracts. Instead, it focuses on the character development of individuals and their acquisition of good virtue ethics (Tavani, 2011)
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Relativism – What does my culture or society think I ought to do? The Divine command discusses how personal religious beliefs and spiritual attitudes are especially important personal commitments that are relevant to personal and professional lives (Martin & Schinzinger, 2005). Such religious and spiritual beliefs in good cultural appropriateness, openness, stewardship, harmony, justice, caring, and trustworthiness. For utilitarians, self-interest should enter into our calculations of the overall good. Duty ethics emphasizes our duties to ourselves. Virtues ethics links our personal good with participating in communities and social practices.
“When in Rome, do as the Romans do” is a view of ethical relativism that actions are morally right within a particular society when they are approved by law, custom, or other conventions of the society. Closely related to this is ethical relationalism which is about making judgments based on a context (i.e., culture); while ethical pluralism is a view that there is more than just one justifiable moral perspective (Martin & Schinzinger, 2005). Some versions of ethical pluralism affirm cultural diversity and respect differences among individual groups.
Nevertheless, international rights offer basic and universal standards which are the most commonly applied ethical theory in making cross-cultural moral judgments anytime and anywhere in the world. A human right is a moral entitlement that places an obligation on other people to treat one with dignity and respect International rights include the right to physical movement, the right to ownership of property, the right to freedom from torture, and the right to a fair trial.
Present-day ethical issues, including hacking, intellectual property disputes, financial scams, and cyber terrorism pose serious cybersecurity concerns. Due to the increasing use of technology to gather and store personal information, contemporary analysts view privacy as one’s ability to restrict access to and control the flow of one’s personal information. Privacy, as to who should have access to one’s personal information, became the focal point of moral responsibility, legal liability, and accountability. (Tavani, 2011).
C. Epistemology
Specifically, epistemology deals with the nature, sources, limitations, and validity of knowledge (Soccio,2007). Epistemological questions are basic to all other philosophical inquiries.
Epistemology explains: (1) how we know what we claim to know; (2) how we can find out what we wish to know; and (3) how we can differentiate truth from falsehood. Epistemology addresses varied problems: the reliability, extent, and kinds of knowledge; truth; language; and science and scientific knowledge. How do we acquire reliable knowledge? Human knowledge may be regarded as having two parts.
On one hand, he sees, hears, and touches; on the other hand, he organizes in his mind what he learns through the senses. Philosophers have given considerable attention to questions about the sources of knowledge. Some philosophers think that the particular things seen, heard, and touched are more important. They believe that general idea are formed from the examination of particular facts. This method is called induction, and philosophers who feel that knowledge is acquired in this way are called empiricists (e.g., John Locke). Empiricism is the view that knowledge can be attained only through sense experience. According to the empiricists, real knowledge is based on what our sight, hearing, smell, and other senses tell us is really out there, not what people make up in their heads. Knowledge for empiricists is based on facts and evidence that we can see and perceive in the world.
Other philosophers think it is more important to find a general law according to which particular facts can be understood or judged. This method is called deduction; its advocates are called rationalists (e.g., Rene Descartes). For instance, what distinguishes real knowledge from mere opinion, in the rationalists’ view, is that real knowledge is based on logic, laws, and methods that reason develops. The best example of real knowledge, the rationalist holds, is mathematics, a realm of knowledge that is obtained entirely by reason that we use to understand the universe (Soccio, 2007_. A newer school, pragmatism, has a third approach to these problems. Pragmatists, such as William James and John Dewey, believe that value is in use is the real test of truth and meaning, In other words, the meaning and truth of an idea are tested by its practical consequences.
D. Logic
The reasoning is the concern of the logician. This could be reasoning in science and medicine, in ethics and law, In politics and commerce, in sports and games, and in the mundane affairs of everyday living. Varied kinds of reasoning may be used, and all are of interest to the logician.
The term “logic” comes from the Greek word logike and was coined by Zeno the Stoic (c. 340-265 BC). Etymologically, it means a treatise on matters about human thought. It is important to underpin that logic does not provide us knowledge of the world directly, for logic is considered as a tool, and, therefore, does not contribute directly to the content of our thoughts. Logic is not interested in what we know regarding certain subjects. Its concern, rather, is the truth or the validity of our arguments regarding such objects.
Aristotle was the first philosopher to devise a logical method. He drew upon the emphasis on the “universal” in Socrates, negation in Parmenides and Plato, and the reduction to the absurd of Zeno of Elea. His philosophy is also based on claims about propositional structure and the body of argumentative techniques (e.g., legal reasoning and geometrical proof).
Aristotle understood truth to mean the agreement of knowledge with reality; truth exists when the mind’s mental representations, otherwise known as ideas, correspond with things in the objective world. Logical reasoning makes us certain that our conclusions are true, and this provides us with accepted scientific proofs of universally valid propositions or statements. Since the time of Aristotle, the study of lies or fallacies has been considered an integral part of logic.
Even before the tie of Aristotle down to the time of Turing, the study of logic has remained important. We are human beings possessed with reason. We use it when we make decisions or when we try to influence the decisions of others or when we are engaged in argumentation and debate. Indeed, a person who has studied logic is more likely to reason correctly than another, who has never thought about the general principles involved in reasoning.
E. Aesthetics.
When humanity has learned to make something useful to them, they begin to plan and dream about how to make it beautiful. What therefore is beauty? The establishment of criteria of beauty is the function of aesthetics.
Aesthetics is the science of the beautiful in various manifestations – including the sublime, comic, tragic, pathetic, and ugly. To experience aesthetics, therefore, means whatever experience has relevance to art, whether the experience is that of the creative artists or appreciation. As a branch of philosophy, students should consider the importance of aesthetics because of the following:
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It vitalized our knowledge. It makes our knowledge of the world alive and useful. We go through our days picking up a principle as fact, here and there, and too infrequently see how they are related. It is part of a play, a poem, or a story to give us new insight to help us see new relationships between the separated items in our memories.
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It helps us live more deeply and richly. A work of art— whether a book, a piece of music, painting or a television show – helps us rise from purely physical existence into the realm of intellect and the spirit. As a being of body and soul, a human being needs nourishment for his higher life as well as his lower. Art, therefore, is not something merely like craft or applied arts, but something of weight and significance to humankind. It is what Schopenhauer meant when he said, “you must treat a work of art as a great man. Stand before it and wait patiently until it deigns to speak.” (Scruton et al., 2001)
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It brings us in touch with our culture. Things about change so rapidly nowadays that we forget how much we owe to the past. We cannot shut ourselves off from the past any more than we can shut ourselves off geographically from the rest of the world. It is difficult that the great problems of human life have occurred over and over again for thousands of years. The answers of great minds in the past to these problems are part of our culture.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, a German philosopher, argued that our tastes and judgments regarding beauty work in connection with one’s own personal experience and culture. Gadamer believed that our culture consists of the values and beliefs of our time and our society. That is why a “dialogue” or conversation is important in interpreting works of art. (Ramiscal, 2012).
A conversation involves an exchange between conversational partners that seek agreement about some matter at issue; consequently, such an exchange is never completely under the control of either conversational partner but is rather determined by the matter at issue. Conversation and understanding involve agreeing. In this sense, all understanding is, according to Gadamer, interpretative, and insofar as all interpretation involves the exchange between the familiar and the alien, so all interpretation is translative.
This post is meant only to serve as reading material for those students who does not have access to physical books related to the subject Introduction to the Philosophy of Human Person due to the Pandemic. (c) Ramos, Christine Carmela. Introduction to the Philosophy of Human Person. Manila, Philippines: Rex Book Store, Inc., 2019.
