GE8 (All) Flashcards
What is Philosophy?
“Philia” (Love) and “Sophia” (Wisdom) = Love of Wisdom
Philosophy is the pursuit to apply correct knowledge.
Four Branches of Philosphy
- Metaphysics
- Epistemology
- Logic
- Ethics
What are the two kinds of reflection according to Gabriel Marcel?
- Primary reflection
- Secondary Reflection
It is the analysis of the situation or the careful deliberation of circumstances or socio-cultural dynamics.
Critical-thinking
A type of thinking that does nto only deliberate on concrete social issues, but acts on them. hence, this is a type of thinking that also indulges in a battle for a socially just and humane society
Ethical Thinking
It denotes the theory of right action and the greater good. It undertakes a systematic study of the underlying principles of morality.
Ethics
it indicates the practice, that is, the rightness or wrongness of a human action. This is more prescriptive in nature as it tells us what we ought to do and not do.
Morality
Types of Ethics
- Normative Ethics
- Metaethics
- Applied Ethics
This study is prescriptive in nature as it seeks to set norms or standards that regulate right and wrong or good and bad conducts. It also seeks to develop guidelines or theories that tell us how we ought to behave accordingly in the society.
Normative Ethics
This study is descriptive as it questions the meanings of various ethical terms and functions of ethical utterances. This ethical branch also aims to understand the nature and dynamics of ethical principles while seeking to find the origins of moral facts.
Metaethics
This branch of ethics attempts to apply ethical and moral theories on actual instances and specific branches of study such as in business (Business ethics), biology and medicine (Bioethics), environmental ethics and social ethics.
Applied Ethics
These standards are the ones that are justified by reason and not by custom, religion, or by certain convictions of a group of people.
Moral Standards
These refers to rules which do not concern moral actions or judgments. It tells us what is preferable or not, but it does not tell us that valuing some goods are necessarily right or wrong.
Non-moral Standards
It is a situation where the individual is torn between two or more conflicting opinions or two or more conflicting moral requirements.
Moral Dilemma
Types of Moral Dilemmas
- Epistemic and Ontological Conflict
- Self-imposed and World-imposed Dilemma
- Single-agent and Multi-persons Dilemma
- General and role-related obligations
This refers to situation where the agent does not know what option is morally right.
Epistemic
The moral agent is forced to choose between two or more equally the same moral requirement and neither of which overrides the other.
Ontological
The agent makes two or more conflicting promises and neither of which can be disposed without conflicting with the other.
Self-imposed Dilemma
The agent is unfortunately victimized by a dilemma forcing her to act on two or more conflicting options. This if often enforced as coercive dilemma in the guise of choice.
World-imposed Dilemma
This dilemma involves two or more persons while the persons are compelled to act on two or more equally same moral options, but one cannot choose both.
Single-agent and Multi-persons Dilemma
This dilemma which is found in many other types of moral dilemmas, is where the moral agent is torn between the necessity to act on a particular duty-based decision or through a natural instinct to preserve one’s own existence.
General and Role-related Obligations
Minimum Requirement of a Moral Act
Freedom and Responsibility
What are the elements of culture?
History
Power dynamics
Religion
Who wrote Orientalism?
Edward Said
According to Pierre Bourdieu what are the thinking tools?(3)
- Habitus
- Field
- Capital
It is the subjective dispositions and schemes of perception which is present in all social agents; it is the generative principle of all practices.
Habitus
This is the social arena where a heterogenous population of social agents act; it is constituted of positions hierarchy, and its own rules.
Field
What are the four forms of capital?
- Economic capital - money and material assets
- cultural Capital - knowledge on the arts, aesthetic, and cultural preferences, language.
- Social Capital - affiliations and networks
- Symbolic Capital - things which stand for all other forms of capital; its efficacy depends on the recognition of social agents
This could also be regarded as assets which a social agent possesses or seeks to possess; the quantity and quality of capital possessed by a social agent determines his position in the social hierarchy.
Capital
Michel Foucault Two conceptions of power:
- Juridical power or negative power
- Productive power or positive power
A power that is possessed and consciously exercised by an individual or groups of individuals.
Juridical Power
The capacity to form and produce subjects not through repression but through a positive mechanism.
It creates and it induces pleasure in the process.
-governmentality = internalized through freedom
Productive Power
It seeks to resolve questions of human morality by defining concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime.
Ethics
What is Ethical Relativism?
This holds that ethical or moral values/beliefs are relative to the various individuals or societies that hold them.
there is no objective right and wrong
Two forms of Ethical Relativism
- Personal or Individual Ethical Relativism
- Social or Cultural Ethical Relativism
Ethical judgments and beliefs are the expressions of the moral outlook and attitudes of individual persons.
Personal or Individual Ethical Relativism
Three possible reasons that support Ethical Relativism
- Diversity of moral values
- Moral Uncertainty
- Situational Differences
What are the criticisms against ethical relativism
- Self-contradictory
- It goes against reality
- Removes the possibility of consensus
He is considered to be the most important virtue ethicist.
Aristotle
Plato: The three Souls
- Intellectual soul - virtue: wisdom - the most important virtue. Intellectual soul should rule over the other parts of the souls.
- Will-soul - virtue: courage - second most important virtue
- Desire-soul - virtue: moderation - third most important virtue
What are the key concepts of Aristotelian virtue ethics?
- Ergon (function)
- Eudaimonia (flourishing)
- Arete (Excellence or Virtue)
- Phronesis (practical or moral wisdom)
What are the three different kinds of souls? (Aristotle)
- Plant soul - capacity for nourishment and reproduction
- Animal soul - capacities of perception and self-motion
- Intellectual soul - the capacity to reason
Virute is a “golden mean” between what two extremes?
vice of excess and vice of deficiency
Two kinds of virtues (Aristotle)
- Intellectual virtues
- Moral virtues
Two kinds of intellectual virtues
- Theoretical intelligence
- Practical wisdom
Two kinds of good life
- the life devoted to study and thinking
- active life in society
