INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN PERSON

METHODS OF PHILOSOPHIZING

Truth is one of the significant lessons in philosophy. It has been a topic of discussion for many years.
Moreover, its value and influence on man’s life cannot be denied.

Philosophers generally believe that reason is the road to wisdom. However, they have different
interpretations of what reason consists of and some philosophers even challenge the pre-eminence of
reason in the pursuit of wisdom.

Here, we are going to explore some of the methods of philosophizing that philosophers employ. According
to Wilber (2006) Think of wisdom as the summit of the mountain with different paths to get there. We are
going to study the different paths to wisdom the philosophers offer.

1. The dialectic method

This method of philosophizing was conceived by the Greek philosopher Socrates, (born 470 BCE) one of
the great philosophers of the ancient world. Unfortunately, he did not leave any written words and
everything people knew about him came from the Dialogues written by his famous student, Plato.

Socrates’ aim was to achieve what he called the good life which is based on the proper care of one’s soul
(psyche in Greek). The soul, according to Socrates, can be properly taken care of if we make it as good as
possible (Stumpf 2008). Since by its very nature the soul’s activity is to know, the soul can only be good if
we employ it in the activity of having a clear awareness of the meaning of some words (Stumpf 2008).
When we have a clear awareness of what justice is, we harm our soul if we act contrary to what we know,
like harming others (which is the opposite of being just).

However, how can we achieve a clear understanding of words? We can achieve this by an act of
“disciplined conversation” (Stumpf 2008) which Socrates compared to an intellectual midwife. Socrates
called this method dialectic.

The method appears simple, but anyone subjected by Socrates to this method eventually felt its intense
rigor.

The method starts with eliciting the definition of a certain word from a person who appears to be familiar
(or “pretends” to be familiar) with its meaning. Socrates then points out the imperfections of the
understanding of the person through a series of questions. What Socrates desires is for the person to
realize his ignorance and contradictions, and thereby correct his own mistakes and arrive at a complete
knowledge of the true meaning of the word.

The method, however, does not sit well with the ruling elites of Athens (the city where Socrates lived).
They accused him of not worshiping the Greek gods and corrupting the youth. His defense (which was
dramatically recorded in Plato’s dialogue the Apology) was a model of “forceful argument” (Stumpf 2008)
but it fell on deaf ears. In the end, he was forced to drink poison. Socrates was the first philosopher to die
fighting for truth.

The Socratic Method was modernized and treated in a different way by George Wilhelm Hegel, a German
philosopher. Hegel was an idealist. He believed that the ideas of the human minds have access to what the
world is like. People are social beings and can be completely influenced by other people’s ideas. An
individual’s mind is influenced by means of a common language, customs of one’s society, and the cultural
institutions that one belongs to. Hegel refers this to “Spirit” as the collective consciousness of a society
which is responsible for honing one’s consciousness and ideas.

Hegel also believed that the Spirit is constantly changing and evolving. According to Hegel, the spirit
changes through dialectic. First, there is an idea about the world (much like a thesis), which has a natural
characteristic of having errors which give rise to the antithesis.
The thesis and antithesis can be eventually resolved by creating a synthesis which is a new idea comprised
of the essentials of both the thesis and the antithesis.
To Hegel, society and culture follow this design, and one could understand all human history without the
use of logic or empirical data simply by using logic (Klein, 2013).

2. The Pragmatic Method

Hundreds of years after the death of Socrates, a new philosophy emerged as inspired by the idea of
change initiated by the evolutionary thoughts of Hegel and Darwin in 19th century America. This
philosophy became known as pragmatism. It was started by Charles S. Pierce (1839-1914), popularized by
William James (1842-1910), and institutionalized in American culture by John Dewey (1859-1952).

According to the pragmatists, philosophy seems to offer a set of beliefs about human beings and their
relationship to the world. Pragmatists offer no such beliefs. Rather, they seek to make philosophy relevant
by solving real life problems. It is purely a philosophy of method and not of substance.

Pragmatism aims is to test the dogma of science, religion, and philosophy by determining their practical
results. The pragmatic test is: if I practice this belief, will it bring success or failure? Will I solve problems or
create problems? Successful experience is the verification process of truth for pragmatists (Stumpf 2008).

3. The Phenomenological Method

The phenomenological method was conceived by Edmund Husserl (born in 1859), one of the greatest
intellects of the 19th century. His ideas and method influenced the thoughts of some of the 20th century
philosophical giants: Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty among others.

What prompted Husserl to develop phenomenology? To answer this, we must look back at Husserl’s time
and place: 19th century Europe. At that time, science was on the ascendancy prompted by the great
discoveries of Galileo, Newton, and Darwin among others. Husserl himself was impressed by the
achievements of science. Unfortunately, according to Husserl, science brings a certain attitude which is
counterproductive to the human soul: the naturalistic attitude (or simply naturalism).

Naturalism in this context is the idea that everything can be explained in terms of matter or the physical.
Since man is not only physical (i.e. body) but also spiritual, this naturalistic attitude brings a distorted view
of man by banishing the spiritual from the world which includes the banishment of ideas, values, and
cultures (Husserl, 1965).
To counter the naturalistic tendency, Husserl returned to the idea of the thinking self which was given
preeminence by the 17th century French philosopher, Rene Descartes. More specifically, the layman’s term
given to the thinking self is “one’s immediate experience.”

Husserl’s main purpose was to build a philosophy free from any biases or preconceived ideas. One can only
do this if one returns to immediate experience. Husserl said that he was only looking to “things and facts
themselves, as these are given in actual experience and intuition” (quoted by Stumpf 2008). This
experience is not the objective world of science separate from us, but the world as it appears to us or
(borrowing the term of the 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant) the phenomenal world -
hence, the term phenomenology.

However, our beliefs about human beings and the world prevent us from clearly seeing this immediate
experience which he calls “pure subjectivity”. Thus, to know the truth, we must put aside one by one all
our limiting beliefs about the world which represents our biases. Husserl calls this process
phenomenological epoche (epoche is the Greek word for bracketing). Bracketing is not ignoring. It is an act
of stepping back at our biases and prejudices to make sure that they do not influence the way we think.
Only facts provided by immediate experience must influence us.

4. The Primary and Secondary reflections

Another influential intellectual movement which had its roots in the 19th century ideas of Søren
Kierkegaard (1813-1855) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was existentialism.

Kierkegaard’s ideas were in part a reaction against the overly ambitious system building the philosophy of
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). On the other hand, Nietzsche’s ideas were a reaction against
the religious and rational value system still prevalent in 19th century Europe (Stumpf 2008). While
Kierkegaard was religious and Nietzsche was atheistic (atheism is the denial of the supernatural), they both
grounded their philosophy on the personal choices of the individual which becomes one of the important
tenets of existentialism.

In the 20th century, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and his partner, Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)
popularized atheistic existentialism while Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) and Karl Jaspers (1883-1969)
promoted religious existentialism. Religious existentialists saw certain parallels between existential ideas
and religious themes like the fall of Adam and Eve which can be compared to the theme of inauthentic
existence in existentialist philosophy (Stumpf 2008).

After that brief overview on existentialism, let us focus our attention on one existentialist method identified
by Gabriel Marcel: the primary/secondary reflection.

For Marcel, reflection is not just a disinterested look at experience. It emerges when something valuable is
at stake. Marcel gave an example of a watch. Suppose you try to take a watch from your pocket. To your
surprise, the watch that you expect to be there is not there. A break from your ordinary routine happened.
From this break, reflection appears in the form of a question: Where is my watch? Then, a host of
questions, connected to the first one, followed: Where was the last time, I’ve seen my watch? Was there a
hole in my pocket? You try to retrace your steps from this moment back to the time when you last saw
your watch.

From this example, you will see that reflection arises when there is a disruption from your normal routine
and when something valuable is at stake.

Then, Marcel identified two levels of reflection: primary reflection and secondary reflection. Marcel applied
these two levels of reflection to the most fundamental question: Who am I?
Nowadays, we try to answer this question by filling in a form given by our school for example. The form
asked us to write our name, age, gender, address, name of parents, etc. To answer this, of course we must
think to distinguish who we are (the self) against other things (the non-self or objects). This is the primary
reflection.
Yet, we had an uneasy feeling that all the information we put on the form (although true) does not fully
capture who we really are (Marcel 1970). We view that our self is bigger and more expansive than what is
there on the form. Thus, we are not merely thinking but we are thinking about thinking and about the
process we perform in answering the form. This is the secondary reflection.
The result of secondary reflection is a more expansive view of the self until it embraces the world. Thus,
the separation of the self and the world brought about by primary reflection were united by secondary
reflection.

5. The Analytic Method

Another reaction to the Hegelian system building philosophy is the analytic approach initiated by
philosophers at Cambridge University (England): George Edward Moore (1873-1958), Bertrand Russell
(1872-1970) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). The task of analytic approach is not to create another
system of ideas to counter the Hegelian system but to clarify how philosophers used words through an
analysis of language (Stumpf 2008). As quoted by Stumpf, Wittgenstein said that ‘the object of philosophy
is the logical clarification of thought’ so that ‘the result of philosophy is not several philosophical
propositions, but to make propositions clear”. Analytic philosophers employed various methods of linguistic
analysis such as the principle of verification and logical analysis (Rudolf Carnap). What we are going to use
is the method of Wittgenstein.

We can divide Wittgenstein’s philosophy into the earlier Wittgenstein and the latter (or the new)
Wittgenstein. The earlier Wittgenstein followed the idea of his mentor and close friend Bertrand Russell
who viewed language in only one way: stating facts. Wittgenstein’s first book (the only one published
during his lifetime) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1919) reflected this idea.

However, he soon realized that words had multiple functions depending on the context to which they occur.
Wittgenstein used the analogy of “tools in a toolbox” (Wittgenstein 1968). If we look at the tools inside a
toolbox ‘there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screwdriver, a ruler, a glue pot, glue nails and screw. The
functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects’ (quoted by Stumpf 2008).

What Wittgenstein wants is to analyze language in the way actual people used it in ordinary situations and
not to construct an ideal language based on logic and mathematics like what Russell seems to be doing.

To analyze language, we must realize that it follows rules. If there are rules in every aspect of life, there
are certainly rules on how we put together and communicate words. Wittgenstein believed that these rules
are like the rules of games (Wittgenstein 1968)-language games. For example, the usage of words like
“demand”, “supply”, “money”, “price” in the context of economics differ from its usage in everyday life.
These are technical words, and they follow certain rules (i.e. the language game) within that discipline that
affects the way these words are used.

FACTS VERSUS OPINION: FOCUS ON INFORMATION LITERACY

Today's students, many of whom do most of their research online, can access a nearly limitless supply of
information -- much of it came from unknown sources. In fact, the very nature of the medium allows
anyone with an Internet provider and a small amount of skill to disseminate whatever information he or
she chooses. The result is a World Wide Web of overflowing information, on the other hand, it also
contains inadvertent ignorance and blatant biases.

IDENTIFYING THE FACTORS OF A QUALITY WEBSITE

Michigan State University reference librarian Terry Link suggests examining the following factors when
evaluating the quality of a Web site:
Authority: Who is the author and what are his or her qualifications? Who is the publisher and what is the
purpose of the site?
Verifiability: Are sources provided?
Timeliness: Is the information current? When was it posted and/or last updated?
Relevance: Does the material contain unsubstantiated generalizations?
Bias: Is the language emotional or inflammatory? Does the information represent a single opinion or a
range of opinions?
Likewise, when we critique sources, we must first understand the difference between fact and opinion.
 Orderliness: Is the page arranged in an order that makes sense? Are underlying identifiable? Is the
FACT OPINION
A fact is a statement that can be proven An opinion is a statement of belief which
true or false. may or may not be backed up by facts but
cannot be proven true or false.
Is objective Is subjective
Is discovered Is created
States reality Interprets reality
Can be verified Cannot be verified
information consistent?
Clarity: Is the information clearly stated? Does the author define important terms?
Validity: Do the facts presented support the conclusions?
contact information, such as an email or snail-mail address. Once students have located sources that
appear appropriate and credible, Harris advises students to subject the sites to the CARS checklist for
informational quality.

The four components of the CARS checklist are:

Credibility: What about this source makes it believable?
Accuracy: Is the information provided up-to-date, factual, detailed, exact, and comprehensive?
Reasonableness: Is the information fair, objective, moderate, and consistent?
Support: Can the information be corroborated?

HOW DO I KNOW?
Harris suggests that, when evaluating those four components, students examine the sites based on the
following:
Type -- determine whether the URL includes .gov (government), .edu or .ac (educational/academic), .com
(commercial), .org (nonprofit organization), or. ~ (personal page).
Publisher -- determine whether the organization, agency, school, business, or individual maintaining the
site is likely to have a particular agenda or bias.
Author -- determine the author's education, training, and background to find out whether he or she is a
trained expert, an experienced enthusiast, or an uninformed observer.
Structure -- determine whether the format is clear, logical, and easily navigable.
Language -- determine whether the text contains emotional, inflammatory, profane, or confusing
language. Count the number of spelling, grammatical, and typographical errors. Too many mistakes can
indicate carelessness and suggest informational errors as well.
Dates -- determine when the information was published and/or updated. If possible, check the publication
dates of supporting data.
Graphics -- determine whether images and animations take up a disproportionate amount of space in
relation to their informational value. Decide whether the graphics convey information, add interest, provide
interactivity, or simply distract.
Links -- determine whether the site's bibliography and/or links contain both supportive and contradictory
information.

What should we consider when looking at arguments or opinions?

Arguments often take the form of statements that are either claims of facts or are phrased in such a way
that they seem reasonable. However, several arguments may be based on faulty reasoning. These kinds of
arguments are called Fallacies. Some of these fallacies may be intentional, as the person making the claim
is desperate to convince you to accept his or her arguments.

FALLACIES
You have just learned that it is not enough to acquire knowledge, but you should analyze if that knowledge
you have acquired is truthful or not. Philosophizing involves the gift of speech and the gift of intelligence
that enable us to reason out and detect the falsity or truthfulness of a statement. When one reasons out,
he/she expresses his opinion and
an argument is not an emotional
philosophical method in knowing
which includes the premises and
(Cornejo & Ebia, 2017).
when others disagree, then argument begins. In philosophical parlance,
reptilian word war or a territorial show of force between persons but a
the truth of a certain phenomenon or reality. It is a set of statements
conclusion (the latter is the one that claims the truth of the premises)

However, there are arguments that are erroneous or based on faulty reasoning called Fallacies (Abella,
2016). Unconsciously, we are culprits of this in our daily interaction with people including our families and
friends. Even TV commercials intentionally employ some faulty reasoning to convince their target market to
purchase their products. Lawyers outwit each other by employing some fallacies to defend their clients. I
am sure you are familiar with the famous “Flip Top Battles” group in today’s digital world. Shall we say a
modern dialectical approach which appeals not only to the mind but also to our aesthetic sense? They
entertain audience and it is awesome how they display their wit to outsmart each other in a poetic manner.
It becomes an art and aesthetically superb, but if you go beyond entertainment and analyze their
statements there are a lot of faulty reasoning going on. Below are some of the Fallacies which we believe
you need to be aware of. Abella, Roberto D. in his book “Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human
Person” laid down some of these fallacies:

Fallacies Short Description Examples

1.Argumentum ad Hominem Hominem came from Latin “How can we believe him
“Attacking the Person” word “homo” which means when he talks about social
man. This fallacy literally distancing, he is a lawyer
means hitting the person who is a liar.”
below the belt instead of
focusing on the issue at
hand.
2. Argumentum ad Baculum Baculum is a Latin word “TV Patrol is the best news
(Appeal to Force) which means scepter or program on TV. If you don’t
stick. A scepter is a symbol believe me, I won’t let you
of authority. Normally it is watch the TV.
the Pope who carries it in
his hands. This is committed
when a person uses threat
or force to advance an
argument.
3. Argumentum ad Misercordiam came from the “Forgive me officer, there
Misercordiam Latin word Misericordia are lot of boarders in this
(Appeal to Pity) which means pity or apartment including myself.
compassion. A person uses Only the owner was issued
emotion such as pity to a quarantine pass. We don’t
convince someone have food; we can’t give our
ATM to the owner. That’s
why I went out. So, I did
not violate the Bayanihan
Act Heal as One.”
4. Argumentum ad Populum Populum is the Latin word “I’m sure you want to have
“Appeal to people”/ for people. Most of TV an i phone. Almost 80% of
Bandwagon fallacy commercials are guilty of your schoolmates are using
this argument which exploit it.”
people’s vanity, desires, etc.
5. Argumentum ad Tradition Traditio means tradition. All of us in the family, from
“Appeal to Tradition” Advancing an idea since it our ancestors up to now,
has been practicing for a are devout Catholics, so it is
long time. only right that you will be
baptized as a Catholic.
6. Argumentum and Ignorantiam is a Latin word According to Zecharia
Ignorantiam
“Appeal to Ignorance”
7. Petitio Principii
(Begging the Question)
for ignorance. Whatever has Sitchin, the author of the
been proven false must be book “Cosmic Code, “Adam
true and vice versa was the first test tube baby.
Since nobody proves
otherwise, therefore it is
true.”
According to Merriam “God exists because the
Webster’s dictionary: Bible says so. The Bible is
inspired. Therefore, we
it is a fallacy in which a know that God Exists.”
conclusion is taken for
granted in the premises.
Also called- “circular
argument.”

8. Hasty Generalization This fallacy is committed Our neighbor who is a

9. Cause and Effect
10. Fallacy of Composition
11. Fallacy of Division
12. Fallacy of Equivocation
when one reaches a
generalization based on
insufficient evidence
Assuming that the effect is
related to a cause because
both events occur one after
the other.
Infers that something is true
of a part, is true of a whole
Infers that something is true
of the whole, must also be
true on its parts
Using the same term in a “Humans walk by their legs.
different situation with The
different meanings.
police officer was convicted
of being a drug dealer,
therefore, all police officers
are drug dealers.
“My teacher didn’t collect
the homework two weeks in
a row when my friend was
absent. Therefore, my
friend being absent is the
reason why my teacher
doesn’t collect the
homework.”
“You are a doctor;
therefore, you came from a
family of doctors.”
“Your family is smart;
therefore, you are smart.”
table has legs.
Therefore, the table walks
by its legs.”
 ACTIVITY 1
Instruction: Discuss the merits of the opinions given. Which among these is most acceptable? How will
these opinions guide your views and actions as citizens of the Philippines? Write your answer in a whole
sheet of paper.
 ACTIVITY 2
Instruction: Look for a partner. Answer the statements in a half sheet of paper.

A. What makes a person a critical thinker? Who are Bill Gates and Steve Jobs? What do you think are
their positive attitudes that made them successful? What characteristics of a critical thinker do you
think you possess, or you have?
B. There was a robbery in which a lot of goods were stolen. The robber(s) left in a truck. It is known
that: (1) nobody else could have been involved other than A, B, and C. (2) C never commits a crime
without A’s participation. (3) B does not know how to drive. So, is A innocent or guilty?
C. If someone in the group disagrees with your ideas, are you open to new ideas not necessarily in
agreement with yours? Why?

ACTIVITY 3
This is group work. The president will facilitate the groupings. This activity will be placed in a folder.

Instruction: Conduct an interview and highlight the question: How do you define freedom? You can choose
to interview classmates, students and/or people outside the school. Document the interview by taking
pictures or video of the entire proceeding. Cite philosophical insights regarding the interview. The