Midterms Flashcards
Greek words where Philosophy is derived tell
philo “to love”
sophia “wisdom”
the love of wisdom
science that by natural light of reason studies the first causes or highest principles of all things
Philosophy
use natural capacity to think/ human reason (unaided reason)
Natural Light of Reason
It is an organized body of knowledge.
It is systematic.
It follows certain steps or employs certain procedures.
Science
It makes philosophy distinct from other sciences because it is not one dimensional or partial.
A philosopher does not limit himself to a particular object of inquiry.
Philosophy is multidimensional or holistic.
Study of All Things
First Cause or Highest Principle
Principle of Identity
Principle of Non-Contradiction
Principle of Excluded Middle
Principle of Sufficient Reason
– whatever is, is; whatever is not is not. Everything is its own being, and not being is not being.
Principle of Identity
– it is impossible for a thing to be and not to be at the same time.
Principle of Non-Contradiction
– a thing is either is or is not; between being and not-being, there is no middle ground possible.
Principle of Excluded Middle
– nothing exists without sufficient reason for its being and existence.
Principle of Sufficient Reason
Branches of Philosophy
Metaphysics Ethics Epistemology Logic Aesthetics
It is an extension of a fundamental and necessary drive in every human being to know what is real.
Metaphysics
It’s task is to explain that part of our experience which we call unreal in terms of what we call real.
metaphysician
We try to make things comprehensible by simplifying or reducing the mass of things we call appearance to a relatively fewer number of things we call reality.
Metaphysics
He claims that everything we experience is water (“reality”) and everything else is “appearance.”
We try to explain everything else (appearance) in terms of water (reality).
Thales
Their theories are based on unobservable entities: mind and matter.
They explain the observable in terms of the unobservable.
Idealist and Materialist
Nothing we experience in the physical world with our five senses is real.
Reality is unchanging, eternal, immaterial, and can be detected only by the intellect.
Plato calls these realities as ideas of forms.
Plato
It explores the nature of moral virtue and evaluates human actions.
Ethics
It is a study of the nature of moral judgments.
Ethics
attempts to provide an account of our fundamental ethical ideas.
Philosophical ethics
It insists that obedience to moral law be given a rational foundation.
Ethics
To be happy is to live a virtuous life.
Virtue is an awakening of the seeds of good deeds that lay dormant in the mind and heart of a person which can be achieved through self-knowledge.
True knowledge = Wisdom = Virtue
Courage as virtue is also knowledge.
Socrates
An African-American who wanted equal rights for the blacks.
His philosophy uses the same process as Hegel’s dialectic (Thesis > Antithesis > Synthesis).
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
It deals with nature, sources, limitations, and validity of knowledge.
Epistemology
