REVIEWER IN PHILOSOPHY
Theroem. bigger problem. There are significant questions
THE NATURE OF PHILOSOPHY
Thomas Nagel – “Philosophy covers an immense
range of topics, but part of its concern has
always been with mortal life; how to understand
it and how to live it.”
Socrates – “The unexamined life is not worth
living.”
SOME COMMON MEANINGS OF PHILOSOPHY
 An English translation of the Greek word
“philosophia” which is a combination of
two words, namely “PHILO” which means
LOVE. And “SOPHIA” which means
WISDOM.
 Queen of the sciences.
 Describes as the umbrella discipline.
 Ideas, views, principles, perspectives, or
beliefs
 The activity of reasoning
 An academic course or degree
 “PILOSOPO”- The literal Filipino Translation
of the term “philosopher.” Is one who likes
to reason out or to engage in the activity
of reasoning.
 PHILOSOPHER is a lover of wisdom.
 The term “philosopher” was first used by
PYTHAGORAS – the ancient Greek thinker
more popularly known for his
mathematical formula, the Pythagorean
 SOPHIST literally means a “wise man” or
“one who knows”. A group of individual
who taught ORATORY – the act of public
speaking.
 PYTHAGORAS – “Man is the measure of all
things.”
WISE PERSON
- One who is aware of what he/she knows
and what he/she doesn’t know.
- Aware of his ignorance
- Holds belief that are not only true but
which he/she can justify.
- Knows a lot about things that are valuable
in life.
- Can put his/her knowledge into practical
uses.
PHILOSOPHY MEANS:
Ludwig Wittgenstein
“Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an
activity.”
CHAPTER 1: UNDERSTANDING REALITY IN A
BIGGER PICTURE LESSON 1: REVEALING THE
WHOLE
PHILOSOPICAL sort of difficult questions that do
not have definite answers like the ones we have
been describing are significant.
PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION- always contains a
prosed by human person and do not have
definite answer.
Universal- pertains to the whole
Particular- part of the whole
Martin Heidegger – a scientific question is always
confined to the particular whereas a
philosophical question “leads to the totality of
beings” and “inquiries into the whole”
ESSENCE OF HUMAN FREEDOM
Essence of Man
Essence of Freedom
Essence of God
Faculty of Reasons – best tool humans have in
their pursuit of truth and meaning.
Dialectics- an art of refutation that dates back to
the ancient Greeks.
Socrates- he engaged Athenians in the
marketplace with his series of questions.
Karl Marx- he is known for introducing the
concept of historical materialism.
Plato- the philosopher who warned us of
deceptions of this world.
Synthesis- result of thesis and antithesis.
Essence of the world- the problem of freedom
includes this concept aside from man and God.
Debate- rational activity that teaches us to
search for truth and hold on to beliefs we can
defend.
LESSON 2
“One thing I know is I nothing.” – Socrates
WONDER is beyond mere curiosity as curiosity is
usually directed to a single, fleeting, and
momentary object that captures our interest.
Plato claimed that “philosophy begins in
wonder.”
KNOWLEDGE philosophy may be understood as
an activity in pursuit of WISDOM- we attribute to
people who truly know.
WISDOM for Aristotle is of 2 kinds:
 THEORETICAL WISDOM- to know necessary
truths and their logical consequencces.
 PRACTICAL WISDOM- deals with
knowledge in the realm of action.
IGNORANCE- it is our ignorance that makes
philosophy possible. Arrogance or the belief that
one has figured out everything, however, will
impede our search for truth. Those in search for
truth are conscious of their own ignorance.
GENERAL TYPES
THEMATIC TYPES – Under this classification are
kinds of philosophy that are distinguished from
one another according to the topic of the issues
being addressed.
POSITIONAL TYPES - according to the solution that
is being proposed for a certain issue.
METHODOLOGICAL TYPES - according to method
used to resolve a certain issue.
REGIONAL TYPES - according to the
geographical location in which philosophizing
transpires or flourishes.
HISTORICAL TYPES- According to the historical
period in which philosophizing occured.
BRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY
LOGIC (REASONING) -distinguishing between
correct and incorrect forms of reasoning.
EPISTEMOLOGY (KNOWLEDGE) – determining the
kinds, sources, and conditions of knowledge.
METAPHYSICS (REALITY, EXISTENCE) – establishing
whether reality consists of physical objects only or
non-physical objects only or both.
ETHICS (MORALITY) – identifying the standards for
making moral judgements, clarifying the
meaning of moral judgements.
AESTHETICS (BEAUTY) - determining thee criteria
for judgements about beauty.
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY (THE STATE) –
legitimizing the existence of the state,
determining the limits of the state’s political
power, defining social and distributive justice.
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE (SCIENCE) –
distinguishing between scientific and
nonscientific statements, justifying the process of
induction.
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION (RELIGIOUS BELIEF) –
clarifying the meaning of religious statements,
proving the existence of God, reconciling the
occurrence of evil with God’s goodness and
power.
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE (MEANING OF
LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION) – determining the
meaning of proper names, definite descrioptions
and psychological statements.
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND (MIND OR
CONSCIOUSNESS)- establishing whether the mind
is physical or not, identifying the properties of the
mind, determining the possibility of artificial or
machine intelligence.
METHODOLOGICAL TYPES- also called as
Philosophical Movements, Approaches and
traditions. Examples are:
Marxism which uses methods of historical and
economic analysis.
Existentialism which uses method of existential
analysis or analysis that relates the question of
life’s meaning.
Feminism uses method of gender analysis or
analysis that considers the issue of gender
inequality.
REGIONAL TYPES- Geographical types of
philosophy are divided into two major types:
Western Philosophy and Eastern Philosophy.
Western Philosophy are Greek Philosophy,
German Philosophy, French, British, and
American philosophy.
Eastern Philosophy are Chinese Philosophy,
Indian, Japanese, and Filipino Philosophy.
HISTORICAL TYPES
Western Philosophy divided into four: Ancient
Philosophy (Pre-Socratics, Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle, and others), Medieval Philosophy ( St.
Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and others),
Modern Philosophy (Descartes, Locke, Nietzche),
Contemporary Philosophy (Wittgenstein,
Heidegger, Marx, and others).
Eastern Philosophy divided into four historical
periods of Indian philosophy: Vedic period
(Vedas & Upanishads), Epic period (Ramayana) ,
Sutra period (Buddhism, Jainism), Commentary
Period and Renaissance period (Ghandi).
PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT IN 3 VIEWS:
COSMOCENTRIC
THEOCENTRIC
ANTHROPOCENTRIC
COSMOCENTRIC - may be characterized as a
period that held the cosmocentric view. Ancient
philosophers wondered about the world (kosmos
in Greek). The question that concerned them
was the origin of the universe –the arche (Greek
for ‘starting point’).
THALES – water is the underlying principle of all
things.
ANAXIMENES – the fundamental principle must
be air.
PYTHAGORAS- number as the first principle.
ATOMISTS – they speculated that there must be
tiny, indivisible entities, invisible to the naked eye
that make up everything. They are called ATOMS.
THEOCENTRIC - In the medieval period during
which the Church sustained man’s intellect, the
world became secondary to God (theos in
Greek) and Christianity greatly influenced
philosophy.
AVICENNA- the first muslim philosopher.
ST. AUGUSTINE – “original sin”
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS- “summa theologica”
ANTHROPOCENTRIC- The modern period (1500-
1900) in philosophy is characterized by
subjectivity and individualism, hence centered
on man (Anthropos in Greek). The
anthropocentric view was a result of both of the
rise of modern science and the diminished
authority of the Church in the seventeenth
century.
BERTRAND RUSSELL - He explained that progress in
the scientific field made man realize the
practical utility of science as a technique rather
than of a doctrine that explained the nature of
the world.
Rationalism is committed to the view that
knowledge is acquired through reason
independent of sense experience.
RENE DESCARTES – “Clear and distinct ideas
cannot be doubted unlike the data of the
sense”. Such clear and distinct ideas are the
foundation of knowledge.
PLATO- Ideas alone are real whereas things are
illusory.
BENEDICT SPINOZA and GOTTFRIED WILHELM
LEIBNIZ- knowledge for all rationalists is based on
ideas.
Empiricism hold that all knowledge is ultimately
derived from sense experience.
JOHN LOCKE - claimed that the human mind at
birth is like a blank sheet of paper (tabula rasa)
that is later filled trough sense experience.
GEORGE BERKELEY
DAVID HUME
LESSON 3
MARK TWAIN
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the
majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
Socratic Method- The series of questioning and
answering that Socrates employed in engaging
in philosophical reflection came to be known as
the Socratic method.
Virtue is knowledge because to truly know what is
good necessarily leads to the actual doing of
what is good.
A person who truly understands what is good
chooses to do what is good.
“Pilosopo” as a Social Critic
Contrary to a lover of wisdom, “pilosopo” refers
to someone who reasons poorly.
LESSON 4
Fallacy- erroneous kind of reasoning.
Some Common Fallacies
Fallacies of ambiguity
Fallacies of relevance
Fallacies of presumption
FALLACY OF EQUIVOCATION
It is committed when several meanings of a word
or phrase become confused in the context of
one argument.
EQUIVOCATION- to commit this is to use two
different meanings of the word within an
argument.
ARGUMENTUM AD HOMINEM
Attacking a person instead of his/her argument.
FALLACY OF ARGUMENT FROM IGNORANCE
It is committed when it is argued that a
proposition is true simply on the basis that it has
not been proven false, or that it is false because
it has not been proven true.
FALLACY OF APPEAL TO INAPPROPRIATE
AUTHORITY
It is committed when one appeals to an authority
whose field of expertise does not include the
nature of the conclusion being established.
FALLACY OF APPEAL TO PITY
It is committed when one appeals to pity to
cause the acceptance of a conclusion.
FALLACY OF HASTY GENERALIZATION
It is committed when one makes a generalization
from a special or accidental case or simply from
insufficient number of cases. Converse accident
is a case of weak inductive reasoning.
Pilosopong Tasyo- He is similar to Socrates being
a social gadfly (annoys those who do not bother
to find truth). He expressed views that are deep
and consequently difficult to understand or to
take seriously. A character in Rizal’s novel who is
quite similar to Socrates.
 Both science and philosophy seek to
understand the world. The difference is
how they proceed to treat phenomenon.
 In science, observation through
experiments and calculations are the data
used to arrive at a conclusion.
 Philosophy on the other hand, uses
phenomenon or raw experience to form
the basis of truth. The phenomenon is
studied, not by isolating it from others, but
by examining the relations it has with other
phenomena.
EMPIRICISM- sensory experience
LESSON 5
A. ANCIENT ROOTS
KNOWLEDGE- KNOWLEDGE
DOXA- OPINION
EPISTEMOLOGY – This is thought is of great
importance to philosophy that a branch of
philosophy called epistemology is devoted
specifically to the problem of knowledge.
PLATO- “knowledge is certain whereas opinion is
not certain.”
ARISTOTLE – he developed the SYLLOGISM – (a
deductive argument of a certain form where a
conclusion is inferred from two premises) to
demonstrate the truth of a claim or conclusion.
TWO PREMISES SUPERIOR AND INFERIOR PREMISES.
B. MODERN LEGACY
RENE DESCARTES- is considered the Father of
Modern Philosophy for introducing the notion of
indubitability. The statements that are false,
doubtful, or uncertain, cannot be used as basis
for knowledge.
INDUBITABLE- too evident to be doubted-
unquestionable.
C. CONTEMPORARY PERIOD
Postmodernism - attack on the notion of an
objective reality.
To postmodernists, such reality is nothing but a
conceptual construct.
Jacques Derrida - Deconstruction theory- Limitless
interpretation
“what is true for you, may not be true for me.” –
no room for discussion.
LESSON 6
A. CORRESPONDENCE THEORY
The oldest method of truth is the correspondence
theory for it can be traced back to Plato and
Aristotle.
According to this theory, true propositions
(statements) are those that correspond with
reality.
All that is required for a claim to be true is to
correspond with an object or a fact. Otherwise,
the claim is false.
B. Linguistic Turn
(Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead)
Problems in epistemology, they thought, are
answerable through linguistic investigation.
Context principle – ‘It is only in the context of a
sentence that a word has meaning’ (Dummet
1993) We express several things through
sentences and that is what makes identifying
what is claimed in a statement quite tricky.
The sense is to be understood as meaning
(connotation or intention in logic).
Connotation - the abstract meaning or intension
of a term, which forms a principle determining
which objects or concepts it applies to.
Verification principle – Meaningful propositions
are only those that can be shown to be either
true or false
Language-games (Wittgenstein) – Aside from the
usual meanings we attach to words, there are
various ways we use them in language such as
figuratively or metaphorically.
To understand meaning, people must be playing
the same game so to speak.
PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM
Phenomenology claims that every consciousness
is consciousness of something and you will have
to get to many steps to get the essence of things.
You are thinking of something and you are
involved in it.
Objectivity means as much as possible, to
detach yourself from the things that you are
observing.
Phenomenology is a philosophical theory which FALSE- the internet has brought us purely positive
believes that the essence of every object can be experiences.
thought of, investigated, and understood, more
FALSE- information is not needed in philosophical
than the usual way of understanding it.
reflection.
Two cognitive attitudes that we usually employ:
FALSE- we can have a good life without
 Natural attitude – when we are philosophy.
comfortable with the things that we
already know.
 Transcendental attitude – when we try our
best to direct our consciousness to
investigate the essence of every
phenomenon.

Existential phenomenology therefore, is designed

to make us see what every existing thing means
to someone who experiences it by a thorough
reflection (as in phenomenology) and through
awareness of his experience of himself as an
existing being in the world of things
(existentialism).

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE – “Existence precedes

essence.”

TRUE- everything we experience in this world is a

phenomenon.

TRUE- when our claims do not correspond to

facts, they cannot still be true.

TRUE- compared to science, philosophy looks at

experience differently.