Methods of

Philosophizing

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Philosophizing
speculate or theorize about
fundamental or serious issues,
especially in a tedious or
pompous way.
PHENOMENOLOGY
On Consciousness
Phenomenology (Edmund Husserl)
• Focuses on inspection and description of
phenomena or appearances, defined as any
object of conscious experience, that is, that
which we are conscious of (Johnston 2006).
• In Husserl's logical investigations, he argued
against psychologism; the thesis that truth is
dependent on the peculiarities of the human
mind, and that philosophy is reducible to
psychology. This effort was dedicated to develop
a method for finding and guaranteeing truth -
that method is phenomenology.
•In Husserl's logical investigations, he argued
against psychologism; the thesis that truth is
dependent on the peculiarities of the human
mind, and that philosophy is reducible to
psychology. This effort was dedicated to
develop a method for finding and
guaranteeing truth - that method is
phenomenology.
• It is scientific study of essential structures of
consciousness.
• Its entails a method or a series of continuously revised
methods - for taking up peculiarly a phenomenological
standpoint, bracketing out everything that is not
essential, thereby understanding the basic rules of
constitutive processes through which consciousness
does its work of knowing the world.
• Consciousness is intentional. Every act of
consciousness is directed at some object or another,
maybe a material object or and ideal object.
Phenomenological Reductions
Eliminates certain aspects of our experiences from
consideration to achieve a phenomenological
standpoint.
1. Epoche or Suspension - described in Ideas: General
Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. In which
phenomenologist brackets all questions of truth or
reality, and simply describes the contents of each
consciousness. (Husserl's ideas were borrowed from
early Skeptics and Descartes).
Phenomenological Reductions
2. Eliminates the merely empirical contents of
consciousness and focuses instead on the essential
features, the meanings of consciousness. Thus,
Husserl defends a notion of intuition that differs
from and is more specialized than the ordinary
notion of experience.
EXISTENTIALISM
On Freedom
Existentialism
• Concerned with finding self and the meaning of life through
free will, choice, and personal responsibility. The belief is
that people are searching to find out who and what they are
throughout life as they make choices based on their
experiences, beliefs, and outlook.
• The search for truth might be based on one's attitude or
outlook.
• Attitudes or outlooks are supported by diverse doctrines
centered on certain common themes
Themes include:
•the human condition or relation of individual to the world;
•the human response to that condition;
•being, especially the difference between being of a person
(which is existence) and the being of other kinds of things;
•human freedom;
•the significance (and unavoidability) of choice and decision in
the absence of uncertainty and;
•the concreteness and subjectivity of life as lived against
abstractions and false objectifications.
Existentialism
•Existentialism is often thought anti-religious; nevertheless,
there has been a strong current of Christian existentialism,
beginning with the 19th century Danish philosopher Soren
Kierkegaard.
- the authentic self was the primarily chosen self, as opposed to
the public herd identity. Nietzsche took this view of opposition
as genuine individual versus public herd identity. Both of them
influence Heidegger whose conception of ownness came to
dominate contemporary existentialist thought.
 Jean-Paul Sartre
• Employed phenomenological methods to arrive
at or support their specific variations on
existential themes.
• He emphasized the importance of free
individual choice, regardless of the power of
the other people to influence or coerce our
desires, beliefs or decisions.
• Consciousness (being-for-itself) is such that it
is always free to choose and free to negate the
given features of the world.
• One is never free of one's situation, but one is
always free to negate that situation and try to
change it(Sarte). To be human, to be conscious,
is to be free to imagine, free to choose and be
responsible for one's life.(Solomon & Higgins,
2010).
POST MODERN
Post Modern
•Post modernism is not a philosophy. It is at
best a holding pattern. It rightly talks about
world philosophy, the philosophy of many
culture, but is not a philosophy.
•Richard Rorty, notable by his work on the
theme of pragmatism.
ANALYTIC TRADITION
Analytic Tradition
• Philosophers of this tradition believe that language
cannot objectively describe the truth.
For Ludwig Wittgenstein, an analytic philosopher,
language is socially conditioned. We understand the
world society in terms of language games - that is our
linguistic, social constructs. Truth as we perceive it' is
socially constructed.
• Conviction that to some specific degree, philosophical
problems, puzzles, and errors are rooted in language and
can be solved or avoided by a sound understanding of
language and careful attention to its workings.
• Pioneered by Bertrand Russel, G. E. Moore,
Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin.
LOGIC AND CRITICAL
THINKING
Tools in Rezoning
Logic and Critical Thinking
Critical Thinking - distinguishing facts and opinions or personal
meanings. It helps us to uncover bias and prejudice to open new ideas
not necessarily in previous thought.
Types of reasoning:
1.Inductive Reasoning - Based from observations in order to make
generalizations. Often applied in prediction, forecasting and behavior.
2.Deductive Reasoning - draws conclusion from one broad judgement
or definition and one more specific assertion, often an inference.
Example:
All philosophers are wise (Major premise)
Confucius is a philosopher (Minor premise)
Therefore, Confucius is wise (Conclusion)
Fallacies
Fallacy
•a defect in the argument other than its having false premises.
•To detect fallacies, It is required to examine the argument's
content.
Informal Fallacies
Assessing the legitimacy of arguments embedded in ordinary
language
Example:
Diagnosing whether a living human being has any broken
bones
 Common Fallacies
> Appeal to Force (Argumentum ad baculum)
In the appeal to force, someone in a position of power
threatens to bring down unfortunate consequences upon
anyone who dares to disagree with a proffered proposition.
> Appeal to Pity (Argumentum ad misericordiam)
Turning this on its head, an appeal to pity tries to win
acceptance by pointing out the unfortunate consequences that
will otherwise fall upon the speaker and others, for whom we
would then feel sorry.
> Appeal to Emotion (Argumentum ad populum)
In a more general fashion, the appeal to emotion relies upon
emotively charged language to arouse strong feelings that may
lead an audience to accept its conclusion
> Appeal to Ignorance (argumentum ad ignoratiam)
An appeal to ignorance proposes that we accept
the truth of a proposition unless an opponent can
prove otherwise
> Irrelevant Conclusion (Ignoratio elenchi)
Finally, the fallacy of the irrelevant conclusion
tries to establish the truth of a proposition by
offering an argument that actually provides
support for an entirely different conclusion.
> Hasty Generalization
Product of using inductive reasoning which is not
applicable for all.
> Equivocation
This a logical chain of reasoning of a term or a
word for several times, but giving a different
meaning to the same word for each time.
> Composition
This infers that something is true of the whole
from the fact that it is true of some part of the
whole.
>Division
One reasons logically that something true of a
thing must also be true of all or some of its parts.
> Against the person (Argumentum ad hominem)
This fallacy attempts to link the validity of a premise to a
belief or characteristic of the person advocating the
premise.
> Appeal to people (Argumentum ad populum)
An argument that exploits the people's vanities, desire for
esteem and anchoring on popularity.
>False cause (post hoc)
Since that event followed this one, that event must have
been caused by this one. This fallacy is also referred to as
coincidental correlation, or correlation not causation.
>Begging the question (petitio principii)
This is a type of fallacy in which the preposition to be
proven is assumed implicitly o explicitly in the premise.