The Nature of Philosophy

(www.philosophy.lander.edu)
The derivation of the word "philosophy" from the Greek is suggested by the following words and word-fragments.
philo—love of, affinity for, liking of
philander—to engage in love affairs frivolously
philanthropy—love of mankind in general
philately—postage stamps hobby
phile—(as in "anglophile") one having a love for
philology—having a liking for words
sophos—wisdom
sophist—lit. one who loves knowledge
sophomore—wise and moros—foolish; i.e. one who thinks he knows many things
sophisticated—one who is knowledgeable
A suggested definition for our beginning study is as follows. Philosophy is the systematic inquiry into the principles and presuppositions of any field of study. From a pyschological point of view, philosophy is an attitude, an approach, or a calling to answer or to ask, or even to comment upon certain peculiar problems (i.e., specifically the kinds of problems usually relegated to the main branches discussed below in Section II). There is, perhaps, no one single sense of the word "philosophy." Eventually most writers abandon the attempt to define adequately philosophy and, instead, turn to the kinds of things philosophers do.
What is involved in the study of philosophy involves is described by the London Times in an article dealing with the 20th World Congress of Philosophy: "The great virtue of philosophy is that it teaches not what to think, but how to think. It is the study of meaning, of the principles underlying conduct, thought and knowledge. The skills it hones are the ability to analyse, to question orthodoxies and to express things clearly. However arcane some philosophical texts may be … the ability to formulate questions and follow arguments is the essence of education."
The Main Branches of Philosophy are divided as to the nature of the questions asked in each area. The integrity of these divisions cannot be rigidly maintained, for one area overlaps into the others.
I. Axiology - the study of value; the investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. More often than not, the term " value theory" is used instead of "axiology" in contemporary discussions even though the former term is used with respect to economic value. We can briefly elaborate as follows.
· Nature of value: is value a fulfillment of desire, a pleasure, a preference, a behavioral disposition, or simply a human interest of some kind?
· Criteria of value: de gustibus non (est) disputandum or do objective standards apply?
· Status of value: how are values related to (scientific) facts? What ultimate worth, if any, do human values have?

Axiology is usually divided into two main parts.

1. Ethics: the study of values in human behavior or the study of moral problems: e.g., (1) the rightness and wrongness of actions, (2) the kinds of things which are good or desirable, and (3) whether actions are blameworthy or praiseworthy. Consider this example analyzed by J. O. Urmson in his well-known essay, "Saints and Heroes":
"We may imagine a squad of soldiers to be practicing the throwing of live hand grenades; a grenade slips from the hand of one of them and rolls on the ground near the squad; one of them sacrifices his life by throwing himself on the grenade and protecting his comrades with his own body. It is quite unreasonable to suppose that such a man must be impelled by the sort of emotion that he might be impelled by if his best friend were in the squad."

Did the soldier who threw himself on the grenade do the right thing? If he did not cover the grenade, probably several soldiers would be killed. His action undoubtedly saved lives; certainly, an action which saves lives is a morally correct action. One might even be inclined to conclude that saving lives is a duty. But if this were so, wouldn't each of the soldiers have the moral obligation or duty to save his comrades?

2. Æsthetics: the study of value in the arts or the inquiry into feelings, judgments, or standards of beauty and related concepts. Philosophy of art is concerned with judgments of sense, taste, and emotion.
· E.g., Is art an intellectual or representational activity? What would the realistic representations in pop art represent? Does art represent sensible objects or ideal objects?
· Is artistic value objective? Is it merely coincidental that many forms in architecture and painting seem to illustrate mathematical principles? Are there standards of taste?
· Is there a clear distinction between art and reality?
II. Epistemology: the study of knowledge. In particular, epistemology is the study of the nature, scope, and limits of human knowledge. Epistemology investigates the origin, structure, methods, and integrity of knowledge. Consider the degree of truth of the statement, "The earth is round." Does its truth depend upon the context in which the statement is uttered? For example, this statement can be successively more accurately translated as …
· "The earth is spherical"
· "The earth is an oblate spheroid" (i.e., flattened at the poles).

But what about the Himalayas and the Marianias Trench? Even if we surveyed exactly the shape of the earth, our process of surveying would alter the surface by the footprints left, albeit marginally. (Note here as well the implications for skepticism and relativism: simply because we cannot describe the exact shape of the earth, the conclusion does not logically follow that the earth does not have a shape.)

Furthermore, consider two well-known problems in epistemology: Russell's Five-Minute-World Hypothesis: Suppose the earth were created five minutes ago, complete with memory images, history books, records, etc., how could we ever know of it? As Russell wrote in The Analysis of Mind, "There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago."

Suppose everything in the universe (including spatial relations) were to expand uniformly a thousand times larger. How could we ever know it? A moment's thought reveals that the mass of objects increases by the cube whereas the distance among them increases linearly. Hence, if such an expansion were possible, changes in the measurement of gravity and the speed of light would be evident, if, indeed, life would be possible. Russell's Five-Minute-World Hypothesis is a philosophical problem; the universe's expanding is a scientific problem since the latter problem can, in fact, be answered by principles of elementary physics.
III. Ontology or Metaphysics: the study of what is really real. Metaphysics deals with the so-called first principles of the natural order and "the ultimate generalizations available to the human intellect." Specifically, ontology seeks to establish the relationships between the categories of the types of existent things. What kinds of things exist? Do only particular things exist or do general things also exist? How is existence possible? Questions as to identity and change of objects—are you the same person you were yesterday? How do ideas exist if they have no size, shape, or color. (My idea of the Empire State Building is quite as "small" or as "large" as my idea of a book. I.e., An idea is not extended in space.) What is space? What is time? E.g., the truths of mathematics: in what manner do geometric figures exist? Are points, lines, or planes real or not? Of what are they made? What is spirit? or soul? or matter? spac? Are they made up of the same sort of "stuff"? When, if ever, are events necessary? Under what conditions are they possible?


Further Reading:
The Nature of Philosophical Inquiry. A chapter from Reading for Philosophical Inquiry, an online etext on this site, summarizing the main divisions of philosophy as well as illustating some introductory philosophical problems.
Omphalos (theology). Wikipedia entry for several variations of the omphalos hypothesis—the philosophical problem of accounting for present state of the universe by puported evidence drawn from the past.
Philosophy. Useful encyclopedia entry from the authoritative 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica outlining the branches of philosophy (despite a few scanning errors).
What is Philosophy Anyway? Summary article from M. Russo and G. Fair's Molloy College site discussing the definition and main branches of philosophy.
“Philosophy … has no other subject matter than the nature of the real world, as that world lies around us in everyday life, and lies open to observers on every side. But if this is so, it may be asked what function can remain for philosophy when every portion of the field is already lotted out and enclosed by specialists? Philosophy claims to be the science of the whole; but, if we get the knowledge of the parts from the different sciences, what is there left for philosophy to tell us? To this it is sufficient to answer generally that the synthesis of the parts is something more than that detailed knowledge of the parts in separation which is gained by the man of science. It is with the ultimate synthesis that philosophy concerns itself; it has to show that the subject-matter which we are all dealing with in detail really is a whole, consisting of articulated members.” - Philosophy, Encylopedia Britannica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911) Vol. 21.
Characteristics of a Philosophical Problem
In general, philosophy questions often are a series of "why-questions," whereas science is often said to ask "how-questions." E.g., asking "Why did you come to class today?" is the beginning of a series of why-questions which ultimately lead to the answer of the principles or presuppositions by which you lead your life.I.e., Answer: "To pass the course."Question: "Why do you want to pass the course?"Answer: "To graduate from college."Question: "Why do you want to graduate?"Answer: "To get a good job."Question: "Why do you want a good job?"Answer: "To make lots of money."Question: "Why do you want to make money?"Answer: "To be happy."Hence, one comes to class in order to increase the chances for happiness.
Avrum Stroll and Richard H. Popkin, in their highly readable book, Introduction to Philosophy, isolate seven characteristics of a philosophical problem. These characteristics serve as a good introduction to mark some of the perplexing kinds of problems which can arise in philosophy.

Philosophical Thought-Experiments from Metaphysics and Epistemology
Characteristics
Typical Examples
1. A reflection about the world and the things in it.
If I take a book off my hand, what's left on my hand? If I take away the air, then what's left? If I take away the space? Does everything exist in nothing?
2. A conceptual rather than a practical activity.
According to Newton's gravitation theory, as the ballerina on a New York stage moves, my balance is affected.
3. The use of reason and argumentation to establish a point.
Does a tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear it, make a sound? To solve, we distinguish two senses of "sound": (1) hearing—a phenomenological perception and (2) vibration—a longitudinal wave in matter.
4. An explanation of the puzzling features of things.
Does a mirror reverse left and right? If I move my right hand, the image's left hand moves. But why then doesn't the mirror reverse up and down? Why aren't the feet in the mirror image at the top of the mirror?
5. Digging beyond the obvious.
What is a fact? In science, facts are collected. Is a book a fact? Is it a big or little fact? Is it a brown fact? If facts don't have size, shape, and color, then in what manner do they exist in the world?
6. The search for principles which underlie phenomena.
Is a geranium one flower or is it a combination of many small flowers bunched together? If I turn on a computer, am I doing one action or am I doing many different actions?
7. Theory building from these principles.
Is nature discrete or continuous? E.g., Zeno's paradoxes of motion. If you are to leave the classroom today, isn't it true that you will have to walk at least half-way to the door? And then when you get half-way, you will have to at least walk another half? How many "halves" are there? How will you ever get out?
In practice, philosophy is an attitude, an approach, or even a calling to answer, to ask, or to comment upon certain peculiar kinds of questions. As we saw previously, the problems are often relegated to the subdivisions of philosophy: Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Axiology (Ethics and Æsthetics).


Attitude—a curiosity arising from questions such as the following: Under the assumption that time is a dimension just like any other, the case of the problem of the surprise examination can arise: Suppose students obtain the promise from their teacher that a surprise quiz scheduled be given next week will not be given, if the students demonstrate how they can know, in advance, the day the teacher will give the exam. Thus, the students can argue as follows: Assuming the class meets only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the students know the surprise exam cannot be given on Friday because everyone would know Thursday night that the following day is the only period left in which to give the exam. One would think that the teacher could give the exam Wednesday, but since Friday has been eliminated as a possibility, on Tuesday night, the students would know that the only period left in the week would be Wednesday (since Friday has already been eliminated; hence, the exam could not be given Wednesday either. Monday, then, is the only possible period left to offer the exam. But, of course, the teacher could not give the exam Monday because the students would expect the exam that day. Consequently, the teacher cannot give a surprise examination next week.
In his Nobel Prize Lecture, Richard Feynman explained that from the perspective of quantum electrodynamics, if an electron is seen as going forward in time, a positron is the same particle moving backwards in time. Is time- reversal really possible? Is a positron, or even the earlier tachyon, discussed above, associated with backward causation a possible event? Consider this paradoxical result. Suppose a "positron gun" or a "tachyon gun" would fire a particle going backward in time—it could "trigger" an off-switch to turn off the gun before it could be fired. This example is, of course, a thought-experiment. As Feynman noted in his Lectures on Physics, "Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.

Approach—to devise a methodology to answer such puzzles. Very often, all that is needed is to invoke old maxim, "When there is a difficulty, make a distinction." E.g., for the problem of the sound of a tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear, all we need do is distinguish two different senses of "sound." If by "sound" is meant a "phenomenological perception by a subject," then no sound ("hearing") would occur. If by "sound" is meant "a longitudinal wave in matter," then a sound is discoverable.

Calling— if a person has had experiences of curiosity, discovery, and invention at an early age, these experiences could leave an imprint on mind and character to last a lifetime.
Further Reading:
Backward Causation. Jan Fey's entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy examines several paradoxes based on the notion where an effect temporally, but not causally, precedes its cause.
Paradox. An extensive reference list of paradoxes is summarized by topic in mathematics, logic, practice, philosophy, psychology, physics and economics with links to more extensive discussion. Unexpected Hanging Paradox. Eric W. Weisstein provides another version of the Surprise Examination Paradox with a list of further references.