Philosophy: Critical Knowledge and Ethical Concepts
Philosophy: Origins and Nature
Philosophy is knowledge about human experience, seeking its ultimate basis. Originating in Greece with pre-Socratic philosophers like Pythagoras, it was Plato who defined it as “second-degree” knowledge, studying “first-degree” knowledge and working with ideas.
Philosophy is critical and rational, rejecting dogmatism. It is dialectical, reflecting on contradictions in everyday phenomena. Its method involves analysis and synthesis.
Contrasting Cultures and Knowledge
Barbarian
Read MoreEmpiricism: Locke, Berkeley, and Hume’s Theories of Knowledge
Empiricism in Modern Philosophy
John Locke (1632-1704)
Born in Bristol in 1632, Locke studied at Oxford. His major work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, posits that all our ideas come from experience.
- Simple Ideas: Immediate sensations (color, smell) from external experience (primary qualities like size and shape, secondary qualities like odor and color) or internal reflection (awareness of one’s actions).
- Complex Ideas: Formed by the mind combining simple ideas, including the concept of “substance”
Understanding Morality: Ethics, Values, and Actions
1) Are Morality and Ethics the Same?
Moral standards, values, and customs try to guide individual and collective conduct. There isn’t a single set of rules; morality varies by location. Ethics reflects on morality. Ethical reflection analyzes and operates on morality, modifying human “moral perception.” We can distinguish two moments: first, reflecting on behavioral standards and values allows us to understand their role in human lives.
2) What is Descriptive Ethics?
Descriptive ethics concerns
Read MoreAquinas’s Key Philosophical Concepts: A Concise Overview
Thomas Aquinas: Key Terminology
Abstraction
The capacity of understanding whereby the extracted form, the universality of individual things (concrete), is removed from the material. Through this process, concepts are derived from sensory experience.
Act
The relation of what is in power that makes it to be what it is. What is being made has already acquired its way. It opposes potency, along with the concept of power, to explain the move as the passage from potency to act. This pair of concepts is used
Read MoreReasoning, Logic, and Human Philosophy: An In-Depth Analysis
All and all: any all and some: some all and no: no no and some: some … no …
Reasoning is a mental process, such as imagining or remembering, which draws conclusions from existing data. Both the findings and data are expressed in statements, so reasoning extracts or infers certain statements (conclusions) from other statements.
Reasoning, therefore, is a conclusion; it is the process that occurs over several subsequent statements where one necessarily follows from the others.
Reasoning is a characteristic
Nietzsche’s Core Philosophical Concepts: Nihilism, Dionysian, Morality, and More
Read MoreNihilism: Nihilism is the denial of any belief. It is, in principle, a philosophical attitude to life that reveals the hopelessness of being devoid of meaning, without reference. It is the negation of all value to existence. For Nietzsche, initially, all cultures believe in an absolute reality and deny the values of life and earth. In that sense, European culture is decadent and nihilistic. Then there is nihilism as an attitude, which can be active or passive. Passive nihilism is what happens to