Philosophy – “love of wisdom” ; philia (love), sophia (wisdom)

Traditional Definition of Philosophy

“the science of all things by their first causes as known in the light of reason.”

the science
• What (content) + Why (purpose/reason) = Scientific Knowledge
• Deals with the causes of things (material or non-material)

Science – the proximate cause

Philosophy – the ultimate cause

★ Blaise Pascal - “The heart has its reasons which the mind can never understand.”

“phenomenology” - lived experience

Philosophy started when human beings started asking questions.

3 Philosophical Questions:
● Who am I?
➔ psychocentric/egocentric (questions about self)
➔ Indian philosophers: Patanjali, Mahavira, Siddharta Gautama (Buddha/ “Enlightened One”)

● What am I?
➔ anthropocentric (questions about man)
➔ intersubjectivity/ inter-relation
➔ “norm” - standards or rules
➔ Chinese philosophers: Kong Zi (Confucious), Sun Tzu (The Art of War), Meng Zi

● Where am I?
➔ Cosmocentric (questions about the universe/ world we live in)
➔ “meta” - beyond
➔ (Pre-Socratic) Greek philosophers: Thales, Anaximenes, Heraclitus
➔ eer(?) stuff - basic stuff to which the world is made of
★ Thales (water)
★ Anaximenes (air)
★ Heraclitus (fire - metaphor for the concept of change)
➔ “Change is the only thing that is permanent in this world”
➔ “We can never step on the same river twice”

2 Philosophical Traditions/Approaches:
● Analytic Philosophy
➔ more on analysis/ observable
➔ Mathematical/ Symbolic Logic
➔ Examples:
❖ Philosophy of Language
★ Ludwig Wittgenstein - “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”
❖ Philosophy of Science
 ● Continental Philosophy
➔ metaphysical (beyond physics/analysis)
➔ requires reflection
➔ Aristotelian Logic (syllogism)
➔ Examples:
❖ Does God exist?
❖ “What is the essence of life? To serve others and to do good.” - Aristotle
❖ “What is the beautiful, if not the impossible?” - Gustave Flaubert

★ Socrates - “An unexamined life is not worth living.”

Ethics - moral choice between right and wrong behavior

- deals with the good life, the life worth living and satisfying

Two Areas of Ethics:

• Right Action and Life’s Greatest Good
• Ethics is a study of right conduct and a good life.

★ George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - “The history of the world is none other than the progress of the
consciousness of freedom”

★ Jean-Paul Sartre - "L'enfer, c'est les autres" or "Hell is other people"

★ Avanti - “Choosing not to choose anything is ultimately a choice.”

Five Branches of Philosophy:

1. Epistemology (study of knowledge)
2. Metaphysics (study of the nature of reality)
3. Ethics (study of morality)
4. Aesthetics (study of values in art or beauty)
5. Logic (study of argument and reasoning)

Ethics and Morality

Ethics - Gr. ethos (character)
- individual character of a person(s)
- more on within the person

Morality - L. moralis (customs or manners)

- relationship between human beings
- more on the agreed action of the society (outside the human person)

Amoral and Nonmoral

Amoral = no moral sense, being indifferent to right and wrong
➔ trauma
➔ psychological sickness
➔ certain criminal types

Nonmoral = outside the realm of morality altogether

➔ inanimate objects (eg. chair being used to kill someone)
➔ areas of study (eg. science and history)

Scientific Approach to the Study of Morality

 ➔ most often used in social sciences
➔ empirical
➔ descriptive
➔ objective (make no value judgments)

Philosophical Approach to Ethics

❖ Normative Ethics
➔ deals with norms (standards) and prescriptions
➔ goes beyond observations and makes moral value judgments
➔ moral but not ethical

❖ Analytic Ethics
➔ analyzes ethical language and the rational foundations of ethical systems
➔ goes beyond the norms or rules of the society
➔ being an ethical person

Synthesis of Approaches
- the complete study of ethics demands a reasonable synthesis of ethical views
- requires the use of descriptive, normative, and metaethical approaches
- draw on data and results of experiments from the natural, physical and social sciences
- must examine their language, logic, and foundations
- should contribute something toward helping all human beings live with each other more meaningfully
and more ethically

Morality and its Applications

- there is a difference between ethics and aesthetics
- “good”, “bad”, “right”, “wrong” can be used in a nonmoral sense (in references to how someone or
something functions)
- manners (etiquette) differs from morality

Four Aspects of the Application of Morality

1. Religious Morality
➔ human beings in relationship to a supernatural being
➔ Religion - one of the basic moral normative for basic sources of morality
2. Morality and nature
➔ human beings in relationship to nature
➔ Environmental Ethics
➔ Law on Natural Resources
3. Individual Morality
➔ human beings in relationship to themselves
4. Social Morality
➔ human beings in relationship to other human beings
➔ most important category
➔ “we are not alone in this world”

Who is morally or ethically responsible?

- Present Time: only humans can be considered to be moral or immoral; only humans should be morally
responsible
- Recent Experiments: in the future, certain animals could be taught to be moral