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Learning Objectives. By the end of this section, you will be able to: Identify sages (early philosophers) across historical traditions. Explain the connection between ancient philosophy and the origin of the sciences. Describe philosophy as a discipline that makes coherent sense of a whole. Summarize the broad and diverse origins of philosophy.
- 5.4 Types of Inferences
When you have completed your work on the three arguments,...
- 3.1 Indigenous Philosophy
It was not until 1945, when Belgian missionary Placide...
- 7.4 Skepticism
By the end of this section, you will be able to: Define...
- 7.3 Justification
You may not know whether the green orb is due to something...
- Summary
1.4 An Overview of Contemporary Philosophy. Contemporary...
- References
Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on...
- 8.5 Aesthetics
Figure 8.7 Michaelangelo was heavily inspired by Greek and...
- Review Questions
What is the principal epistemological tool found in the...
- 5.4 Types of Inferences
Philosophy is a way of thinking about certain subjects such as ethics, thought, existence, time, meaning and value. That 'way of thinking' involves 4 Rs: responsiveness, reflection, reason and re-evaluation. The aim is to deepen understanding.
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its own methods and assumptions.
- What Does Philosophy Mean?
- How Is Philosophy done?
- How Can We Think Clearly About Thinking?
- So, Philosophy Just Rests on ‘Arguments’?
- The 4 CORE Branches of Philosophy
- Who Does Philosophy?
- Continue Learning
The word ‘philosophy’ literally means ‘love of wisdom’, and this etymology is apt, for as a subject philosophy generally refers to the study of deep, fundamental questions (like those we opened with) relating to core aspects of the human condition. These questions typically revolve around the nature of existence, knowledge, consciousness, ethics, s...
Considering such difficult, fuzzy subject matter, we might wonder how philosophers get anything done. How does philosophy make progress? How do philosophers decide what’s accurate and inaccurate? Well, it essentially comes down to thinking hard about thinking, and separating out the sound thinking from the erroneous thinking. As the philosopher Tho...
In order to separate good thinking from bad thinking, philosophy essentially runs on what philosophers call ‘arguments’, i.e. chains of reasoning that support certain conclusions. There are a whole host of ways in which arguments can be presented and structured. They can be informal, like persuading a friend to go to a certain restaurant, or a poli...
Compared to the grand instruments of modern science, the humble arguments of philosophers may not seem a very impressive toolkit. But, when you think about it, it is upon such deployments of reason that all human knowledge is built. The ability to formulate and respond to rational arguments is — arguably — among humanity’s most powerful intellectua...
While philosophical inquiry can be (and has been) applied to virtually any subject, one traditional picture organizes philosophy into four core branches. These are the branches of epistemology (the study of knowledge), metaphysics (the study of reality), value theory (the study of ethics and values), and logic(the study of correct reasoning). The p...
As we’ve seen, the concerns of philosophy are both deep and wide-ranging. There may be some areas that interest you, there may be others you find a little dry* (*cough, logic, cough). Either way, philosophers have been studying the difficult questions mentioned above for thousands of years. The ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristo...
If you’re interested in learning more about philosophy, check out our follow-up piece, Why Is Philosophy Important Today, and How Can It Improve Your Life?, as well as our bite-size Life’s Big Questions course, which distills the great philosophers’ answers to some of life’s most difficult and enduring questions: Why does anything exist? Is percept...
Philosophy is the systematic and critical study of fundamental questions that arise both in everyday life and through the practice of other disciplines. Some of these questions concern the nature of reality : Is there an external world?
Oct 10, 2020 · If you’ve ever wondered whether God exists, whether life has purpose, whether beauty is in the eye of the beholder, what makes actions right or wrong, or whether a law is fair or just, then you’ve thought about philosophy.
Philosophy is the rational, abstract, and methodical consideration of reality as a whole or of basic dimensions of human existence and experience.
