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WHAT
PHILOSOPHY IS What is philosophy?
■ Philosophy is all of rational inquiry except for science.
■ We can get a better understanding of philosophy by considering what sorts of things other than scientific issues humans might inquire into. Philosophical issues are as diverse and far ranging as those we find in the sciences, but a great many of them fall into one of three big topic areas, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. 01
■ Metaphysical issues are concerned with the nature of reality. Traditional
metaphysical issues include the existence of God and the nature of human free will ■ A better way to understand metaphysics as it is currently practiced is as aiming at better understanding how various claim about the reality logically hang together or conflict. Metaphysicians analyze metaphysical puzzles and problems with the goal of better understanding how things could or could not be. 02
■ Epistemology is concerned with the nature of knowledge and justified belief.
■ The view that we can’t have knowledge is called skepticism. An extreme form of skepticism denies that we can have any knowledge whatsoever. But we might grant that we can have knowledge about some things and remain skeptics concerning other issues. ■ Epistemology is also concerned with what it is for a belief to be rationally justified. Even if we can’t have certain knowledge of anything (or much), questions about what we ought to believe remain relevant. 03
■ Ethics is concerned with what we ought to do, how
we ought to live, and how we ought to organize our communities. Philosophy is a branch of human inquiry and as such it aims at knowledge and understanding. We might expect that the value of philosophy lies in the value of the ends that it seeks, the knowledge and understanding it reveals Philosophy often provides Philosophy often clearly an reveals why antidote to prejudice not by some initially attractive settling big questions, but answers to big by revealing just how hard philosophical questions are it is to settle deeply problematic, those questions. It can lead us to question our comfortably complacent conventional opinions The primary value of philosophy according to Russell is that it loosens the grip of uncritically held opinion and opens the mind to a liberating range of new possibilities to explore. Philosophy, like all other studies, aims primarily at knowledge. The knowledge it aims at is the kind of knowledge which gives unity and system to the body of the sciences, and the kind which results from a critical examination of the grounds of our convictions, prejudices, and beliefs. THANK YOU