LESSON 3 APPROACHES IN DOING PHILOSOPHY

• This lesson will provide an overview of the process of doing philosophy in a critical
and analytical way. In other words, the essential question that should be brought to
mind is: How does one philosophize or do philosophy systematically? In order to
answer this question, there are TWO SUBTOPICS included
• 1. SPECULATIVE AND ANALYTIC APPROACH
• 2. HOLISTIC AND REDUCTIONIST APPROACH
• -Its is necessary to appreciate the lessons that one could apply from these
approaches in order to develop a healthy attitude towards dealing with big or small
problem
GUIDE QUESTIONS
1. What is your idea about critical and analytical thinking? How can you
apply the lesson on analytic philosophy in your everyday life?
2. Are there beliefs that you may have questioned as you go through with
your life? Have you examined the evidence for believing in them? Do you
find them worth holding on to amidst this scrutiny?
3. Use speculation in thinking about the nature of the universe or any wild
or ‘out of this world’ idea. Do you think that this could be part of
speculative philosophy?
4. Cite situations or examples in your everyday life where you have used
holism as your perspective in looking at the world and your experiences in
it. Do you think it is useful in gaining a different perspective?
ANALYTIC AND
SPECULATIVE
PHILOSOPHY
C.D. Broad , in his article entitled The
Main Tasks of Philosophy, differentiated
two main approaches in doing
philosophy: Critical or analytical
philosophy and speculative or
methaphysical philosophy.
 ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
• Critical or Analytic philosophy, according to Broad, has two
fundamental task: First, the analysis and definition of our
fundamental concepts and second, the clear and resolute
criticism of our beliefs. How do we get about these two?
 (FIRST TASK) ANALYSIS AND
DEFINITION OF OUR
FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS
• In our everyday lives, we go about our daily routine without being aware of the nuances in meaning of
the use of concepts that we use. Often, we take for granted that we understood what is being said.

-For example, perhaps you heard of the perennial problem about the chicken and the egg: “ Which came
first: the chicken or is it the egg?” How do we go about systematically analyzing this problem? Let us now
apply analytic philosophy. Initially, there seems to be a very big and profound problem underlying this
question. We could give two answers that are both right:
First, because the chicken is needed before you could hatch its egg, and
Second, you need to have an egg before it can grow as a full grown of chicken
-How do we use analytical philosophy in order to resolve this problem stated?
We need to recognize that this is not a disagreement in fact. Our disagreement
is not base on how facts actually stand.
(SECOND TASK) CLEAR AND RESOLUTE
CRITICISM OF OUR BELIEFS
• The second task of analytic philosophy, according to Broad, is to examine the and
criticize our beliefs and assumptions in our everyday life. These assumptions, very
often, involve our beliefs and preconceived notions about many thins around us. There
are many beliefs which are often base on our prejudices. A very succinct example
would be our bias against Muslims. Because of terrorist acts of a small group of bandits
like the Abu Sayyaf, many Christians, would carry their prejudice against all Muslims
and regard them as terrorists and troublemakers. But we know that a majority of our
Muslim brothers are peace-loving citizens. They are against war and terroristic acts
done by this groups of Muslim. What important to note here is that bias has been with
you since you were growing up as a child. At this point, you need the guidance of
Philosophy, to free yourself from your prejudice against our Muslim broyhers.
• This calls for a reiteration of the worth of philosophy in our everyday live. Philosophy
gives us a venue and an excuse for criticizing and examining our concepts and beliefs in
order to gain a boarder perspective in life.
SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY
• In contrast, speculative or methaphysical philosophy tries to find an
underlying explanation or general principle that could explain
reality in its entirety. As Broad would put it, “speculative
philosophy aims to reach some general conclusions as to the nature
of the universe; and as to our position and prospects in it. It is
attempt to thinks synoptically to all the facts. Thus, following this
context, the attempt of the pre-Socratic philosophers to explain
reality is an example of this process of speculative approach. No
matter how crude their methods were, what is important is the
attempt to abstract and extract a unifying explanation in order to
give a coherent explanation of the nature of reality.
REDUCTION & HOLISTIC PHILOSOPHY
• In an article by Willy Ostreng entitled Reductionism versus Holism ---
Contrasting Approaches, he singled out the distinction between holism and
reductionism in doing philosophy. The two contrasting approaches are
difference according to Ostreng. Reductionism focuses on the properties of
its parts while holism leans on the relationship between them.
• REDUCTION PHILOSOPHY approach of doing philosophy refers to
understanding complex ideas by reducing them to their parts of individual
constituents.
• HOLISTIC PHILOSOPHY works on the assumption that all
properties in a given system cannot be broken down by its component
parts alone, but rather the system as a whole entity decides how the
individual parts behave.
• HOLISM is the idea that something can be more than the sum of its parts:
more specifically it usually refers to the concept of reality.
- The word holism came from the Greek word HOLOS which means “all”
 TWO MAIN PARTS OF HOLISM
1. EPISTEMOLOGICAL HOLISM- this type of holism claims a scientific
theory cannot be tested individually, since testing a single theory would
always depend on other established theories and hypotheses.
Example
- Scientific Research is the theory-laden (dependent on theory) approach
and another is the notion that evidence alone is insufficient to assert
which kind of theory is correct.
2. SEMANTIC HOLISM- is that every word has meaning only in relation to
other words, sentences, or the language in which it is used.

Epistemological Holism and Semantic Holism are closely related,

Epistemological Holism gained more acceptance among philosophers
compared to Semantic Holism