Divie Anne P.

Barde
BSME 2B
15/09/2023
TTh 8:30 AM – 10:00 AM

(1) Give the real definition of philosophy.

Philosophy traces back to ancient Greece, around 500 years before the common era.
This was the time of great intellectual movement around the world, with Buddhism and
Jainism blooming in Asia and philosophical thought in Greece. Before, there were two
ways to explain the events of the world: one was mythos, which is storytelling, where
bards such as Homer try to understand the world through stories, and the other was the
more scientific approach of Philos. There are four studies unique to philosophy:
metaphysics, epistemology, logic, and ethics.

Philosophy in Greek is the "love of wisdom,", but originally it was the "academic
study of anything." As time grew, the singular trunk branched off into other fields of
study such as art, mathematics, social sciences [psychology], etc., basically representing a
bridge that connects and holds diverse studies together, as philosophy is understood more
as a way of thinking about questions. It is honored today as the highest degree one can
reach in many fields, with the title PhD, or Doctorate of Philosophy.

(2) In your own words explain the four important elements of the real definition of
philosophy. (Limit your discussion for each of the four elements in two
sentences only)

 Metaphysics is the study of reality, where basically what is called real yet cannot be
seen and man-made perception is greatly questioned, such as time, God, numbers, and
space. But above all, it questions the reality and existence of everything.
 Epistemology, the study of knowledge, questions our own knowledge: what is
knowledge? What makes a thought a thought? Is knowledge acquired, innate, or both?
It even questions the knowledge we as humans acquire to be trustworthy.
 Logic, the study of correct reasoning, can be seen as a more scientific branch from the
rest, where it questions the logic of a person, where it comes from, how it works, does
it even work, is it the best logic there is in the universe, and how do you prove the
logical and model proof correct?
 Ethics is the study of morality that is a branch of value theory where the morality of a
human being is questioned, whether an action is good or bad, what makes it good and
what makes it bad, what is the line between good and bad, what justifies a moral
belief, and where does it come from?
 (3) In your own words explain the distinction between the human act and act of
man. (Limit your discussion in five sentences)

The human act, where the word human is first, means that the human is the one in charge;
the mind of the human is active on such matters and has thought through what their will
actions will be and how they will come out to the world, if they’ll be morally good or bad.
While the act of man, where the first word is act, is not something that can be controlled by
the human by their own thought, these are usually bodily functions such as our organs
naturally working to keep us alive.
(4) In your own words explain the three postulates of ethics. (Limit your
discussion in 5 sentences)

The immortality of the soul gives the idea of the soul passing on through another life
without the physical body, basically having a second life in a predetermined fate that is
judged from the actions taken when a human was still alive. In connection with this is the
existence of God, where God is the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent existence that is the
model for the greatest good, the highest peak of what a morally good person is, and
essentially the driving force or moral necessity for a human to be good and do good. And
lastly, the freedom of the soul stimulates the good in a person without any ground rules on
how to be good other than the action coming from the utmost free will of a person to obey
such ground rules, the morally good actions of a human being.