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This Note Is Brought to You by Fabreads.Org Go to Fabreads.Org/Oau-Notes for More Notes WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? ETYMOLOGY OF PHILOSOPHY Philosophy etymological comes from two Greek words “PHILEU” and “SOPHIA” which means “LOVE” and “WISDOM” respectively. • It is categorically termed “LOVE FOR WISDOM”. If philosophy means Love for Wisdom then philosophers are “LOVERS OF WISDOM” Philosophy as love for wisdom doesn’t mean that philosophy is wisdom or philosophers are custodians of wisdom. All it says is that philosophy is that philosophy is a discipline that urges us to be in constant search for wisdom. We should be able to distinguish wisdom from collection of mere opinions, dogmas opinions, articles of faith or unquestioned positions or views i.e. all received opinions must be examined in the process of searching for wisdom. Philosophy is a critical discipline that urges us to question all received opinions by criticizing examine in order to get to the object of love, which is wisdom. Critical here means being able to subject all opinions to critical observation in order to have access to the alternative that is supported by the superior arguments. For this reason of criticality, philosophy was seen as a “GADFLY” (The nauseating sound mosquitoes, housefly and other insects of the likes make) a discipline that constantly keeps us on our toes in a way such that we are not susceptible or don’t fall easily into accepting unquestioned & indefensible positions. This means we must always make attempt to penetrate through distinct opinion or perspective. Philosophy is like sciences, they are both (philosophy and sciences) interested in carrying out systematic research in to the nature of things. PHILOSOPHER BERTRAND RUSSELL According to Bertrand Russell, philosophy is a no man’s land between science and theology. Philosophy unlike sciences isn’t based on empirical experimentation but critical analysis. Philosophy like theology because, they are both concerned with issues beyond empirical observations. However, philosophy unlike theology isn’t dogmatic but critical in nature. PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA Philosophy to him is a violent discipline because it is so critical of all things to the extent of being critical to itself. P/S - PHILOSOPHY HAS NO DEFINITE DEFINITION 1 | P a g e This note is brought to you by fabreads.org Go to fabreads.org/oau-notes for more notes CONCEPTIONS OF PHILOSOPHY PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICAL ARGUMENTATION AND EXAMINATION OF IDEAS It urges an enquirer to start from the position of ignorance. i.e. he subjects ideas without bias to critical argumentation in order to distinguish the acceptable one from the unacceptable. He wouldn’t conclusively give you an answer but due to critical argumentation, the acceptable one is put forth e.g. Philosopher Socrates “AS PHILOSOPHERS, WE MUST ALWAYS START FROM THE POSITION OF IGNORANCE AND MAKE AN ATTEMPT IN THE UNIVERSE TO HAVE FULL KNOWLEDGE OF IT” by Socrates. - For Plato through Socrates; A wise man is not a man who knows all things but a man who knows little about all things - For Socrates; A Philosopher must be a moral example and should acquire as much knowledge as possible and be bold to defend your belief until a superior belief is presented. Socrates was a great philosopher that the Greek oracle at Delphi considered him to be the wisest of men because he always claims to be ignorant and always subject the views of wisemen then with questions till he gets them to a level of “aporea” i.e. a level where they are no longer sure of their knowledge. He became the enemy of the state(government) because of his questions. He was arrested, his friends came to lobby the warder but there also he subjected his friends to questions on why it’s morally right to disobey the state and escape. - For him, the society is our parent and it will be wrong to disobey it. Later on, he was fed with hemlock poison which led to his death. - For him, a philosopher must make use of acquired knowledge to better the society - For Socrates, an unexamined life is not worth living. i.e. know thyself. PHILOSOPHY AS CONTEMPLATION A philosopher must acquire much knowledge about the world and must use the knowledge to better the society. Philosophy here urges us to know that no position is absolute, every position must be held tentatively until a superior position is presented. All philosophical questions and answers are open ended meaning no view, idea or position is final (further meaning, no absolutism). Philosophy urges us to be a universal citizen. i.e. there must be nothing like biases and prejudices to influence your quest for knowledge or your view of the world (one must be objective). 2 | P a g e This note is brought to you by fabreads.org Go to fabreads.org/oau-notes for more notes METAPHYSICS This is one of the core branches of philosophy. Like philosophy itself, attempts to define METAPHYSICS is not a straight forward exercise as such various philosophers present various definitions of this branch of philosophy however, for the sake of simplicity, the approach proposed by John Carroll and Med Markosian. They both identified three approaches to define METAPHYSICS. These are: • The Etymological Approach • The Big Picture Approach • The Example Approach The Etymological Approach: This defines METAPHYSICS by tracing the origin of the term METAPHYSICS itself. After the death of Aristotle there was an attempt to compile and publish some of his writings. The first set of his writings that was compiled was titled physika meaning physics. Shortly after the publication of physics, another set of his work was ready for publication, this set contains writings of fundamental issues such as existence, identity, causation, space and time, actuality, potentiality etc. The editor named these set of writings ta-meta-ta-physika meaning the works after physics. Thus, issues contained in these set of writings became the primary subject matter of the branch of philosophy known as METAPHYSICS. Unfortunately, this definition does not give a satisfactory account of METAPHYSICS as a branch of philosophy (NB this is the problem of the definition). A definition of such an important branch of philosophy ought to be open to present an idea of the issues that constitute it subject matter. The Big Picture Approach: This defines METAPHYSICS as a branch of philosophy that concern itself with fundamental questions about the nature of reality. The problem with this approach is that it does not help to clearly distinguish between METAPHYSICS and other disciplines. In other words, the big picture approach presents a definition that is too wide failing to distinguish between METAPHYSICS and other disciplines such as physics, chemistry, ethics, biology, epistemology e.t.c. The Example Approach: This tries to address the deficiencies of the other approaches by simply listing some of the issues that form a primary subject matter of METAPHYSICS. Following this approach, we can define METAPHYSICS as a branch of philosophy that is concerned with addressing issues such as: • Ontology (the study of being or what exists) • Change and causation (What is responsible for change in the universe) • Freedom and determinism • The nature of material object etc. These suggests that to understand METAPHYSICS is to understand the various issues that form the subject matter of this branch of philosophy. Our aim in this class is to identify and briefly examine some of this issues that form the subject matter of METAPHYSICS. 3 | P a g e This note is brought to you by fabreads.org Go to fabreads.org/oau-notes for more notes ONTOLOGY This is a sub-branch of METAPHYSICS involved in the study of things that exists like many scientific disciplines. This branch of METAPHYSICS tries to study reality with a plead to determine things that constitute reality. However, unlike scientific disciplines which concentrate on studying specific domains of reality. Ontology raises more fundamental questions about the kinds of things that can generally be taken to exists. Some the questions which ontology tries address includes the following: • Do minds exists • Are there material object • Do non-existent objects like fictional entities exists • Does God exist • Are there abstract objects in reality? • Do possible worlds exists • Does events exist • Does properties exist etc. To aid our understanding of the subject of ontology, let us briefly examine the problem about the existence of fictional entities. Fictional Entities are the kind of objects that are introduced as characters in literary words, these characters are not intended to represent specific objects in the world examples include William Shakespeare's Hamlet, D.O Fagunwa’s Akaradoogun. The ordinary or common-sense position on the existence of fictional entities is that they do not exist. The problem of this position is that it is unable to explain how we can talk meaningfully about fictional entities or predicate properties about them this challenge facing the common-sense position has brought the attention of philosophers who have proposed various theories to address the problem of the existence of fictional entities. POSITION OF THE EXISTENCE OF FICTIONAL ENTITIES Traditionally, there are two major positions on the existence of fictional entities. These positions are fictional realism and fictional anti-realism. Fictional Antirealism is proposed by philosophers like Richard Mark Sainsbury and Gregary Currie. This position supports the view of common sense I.e fictional entities don’t exist. Fictional anti-realist argues that propositions about fictional entities are meaningful even when these entities don’t exist as the subject of the propositions. In other words, fictional entities don’t need to exist in other for proposition about them to be meaningful. This is because, such propositions are merely about what is described in some stories not about what is true in reality.
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