Topic #1: Introduction to Philosophy Flashcards
Philosophy is derived from what two greek words?
Philia (Love) and Sophia (Wisdom) = Love of Wisdom
It is the pursuit to apply correct knowledge
Philosophy
The four branches of Philosophy
- Metaphysics
- Epistemology
- Logic
- Ethics
it is the branch of Philosophy that deals with concepts and questions regarding the notion of God, soul and even freedom
Metaphysics
This philosophical study ventures into the understanding of the nature and dynamics of knowledge.
This also attempts to know how knowledge is acquired and if it could be acquired and to what extent is knowledge possible.
Epistemology
This branch of philosophy attempts to distinguish sound or good reasoning from unsound or bad reasoning
Logic
This branch of Philosophy questions how human persons ought to act, and search for a definition of a right conduct and the good life.
Ethics
Two Kinds of Reflection
Primary Reflection
Secondary Reflection
It is a kind of reflection characterized by that calculates, analyzes, or recounts past events. It is also fragmented and compartmentalized thinking. It is also called Instrumental Thinking.
Primary Reflection
This kind of reflection integrates fragmented and compartmentalized experience into a coherent whole and is genuine or unselfish thinking.
Secondary Reflection
What do you call the ability of the mind to construct and evaluate arguments?
Critical Thinking (Primary Reflection)
Two skills needed in doing philosophy
Philosophical Reflection
Construction and evaluation of argument
Why is Philosophical Reflection important in doing Philosophy?
It enables us to look deeper into our experiences and see the bigger picture of reality
Why is Construction and Evaluation of Arguments important in doing Philosophy?
It allows us to express our ideas in a systematic and logical way and allows us to examine the ideas of other people
How can we determine the wrongness of a human action?
If an act does not conform to moral standards.
- If it affects the well-being of the other.
- If one’s practice of freedom violates the other person’s freedom.
How can we determine the rightness of a human action?
- If it conforms to moral standards and ethical principles that we have learned and acquired along the way implicitly or explicitly?
- If we experience happiness?
- If the act generates ultimate goodness for the majority?
- If it is pragmatic to the individual?
Why do we need to be ethical or moral?
We are individuals among other individuals. (Esse est co-esse)
- We as social beings are political beings, hence, involved in the “becoming” of our world.
We are, therefore, involved in the development or otherwise, downfall of our social life.
- Now, in attempting to define or redefine our moral existence, we are confronting the necessity to examine our own faculties and our moral judgments.
It is the analysis of the situation or the careful deliberation of circumstances or socio-cultural dynamics
Critical Thinking
It is the type of thinking that does not only deliberate on concrete social issues, but acts on them. Hence, this is also indulges in a battle for a socially just and humane society
Ethical Thinking
For the Greeks, what is Telos of human act?
It is the acquisition or the attainment of the good life through virtue and pursuit of happiness
For the Hebrews, what is ethics?
It is the ideals of the righteousness before God and the love of God and neighbors. Hence, the end off all human act is to align one’s self towards the will of God.
Differences between Ethics and Morality
Ethics denotes the theory of right action and the greater good and undertakes a systematic study of the underlying principles of morality.
Morality indicates the practice, that is, the rightness or wrongness of a human action and is more prescriptive in nature as it tells us what we ought to do and not do.
It is the science of Morals
Ethics
It is the practice of Ethics
Morality
Types of Ethics
Normative Ethics
Metaethics
Applied Ethics
This type of ethics 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
Normative Ethics
This type of ethics 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
It is about the rules of conduct with which individuals seek counsel
Morality
It is about how a person tunes in with morality
Ethics
Morality in the Descriptive Sense
Morality refers to codes of conduct put forward by a society or a group, or accepted by an individual for her own behavior.
Morality in the Normative Sense
Morality refers to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons.
Implications of Descriptive Ehtics
If morality is understood in the descriptive sense, then it follows that there can be no universal morality as there are various societies, religions, and groups of people which, in one way or another, adhere to specific rule of conduct that govern them.
It implies that relevant rules of conduct only apply to individuals within the group and excludes others who do not belong them.
Implications of Normative Ethics
It presupposes that there is or there can be a universal moral principle.
It presupposes a moral agent, one who possesses certain conditions, such as freedom and rationality, which makes her choice truly hers.
Now, ethics studies and understands morality in the normative sense this is because:
It tries to establish universal moral principle
It posits that the person is a moral agent
These are the ones that are justified through 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
What does a Moral Dilemma consist of?
- An agent
- An obligation to act on each of the two or more options; yet,
- The agent cannot do both or more options
A type of moral dilemma wherein the agent does not know what option is morally right
Epistemic Conflict
A type of moral dilemma wherein the moral agent is forced to choose between two or more equally the same moral requirement and neither of which overrides the other.
Ontological Conflict
In this type of Dilemma, the agent makes two or more conflicting promises and neither of which can be disposed without conflicting with the other.
Self-Imposed Dilemma
In this type of dilemma the agent is unfortunately victimized by a dilemma forcing her to act on two or more conflicting options. This is 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
