PHIL 201
THE BRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY TRANSCRIPT
S1:
Hello, and welcome to another presentation in Philosophy 201: Philosophy and Contemporary
Ideas. In this presentation, I want to introduce you to three major branches of philosophy, and
talk about each branch a little bit separately, and then I’ll finish off by talking about some
miscellaneous branches of philosophy that are kind of an overlap of those three branches.
S2:
The first major branch of philosophy is the branch of metaphysics. The word metaphysics means,
‘above or beyond physics.’ It investigates questions of reality and existence. But as the word
implies, it’s not just simply the existence that we see or the things that we experience with our
senses, but what’s beyond those. What’s beyond this real world that we see here? Why does it
work the way that it works? Why is it here? How did it get here? Those are some metaphysical
areas that we deal with here. We can break metaphysics into four sub-categories here.
The first sub-category is cosmological metaphysics, and this deals specifically with the origin
and purpose of reality. Why does anything exist at all? That’s often been called the first
philosophical question. Why does anything exist? Where did reality come from? How did it
develop the way that it was? What is its purpose—why is it here? Those are all cosmological
questions.
A second area of metaphysics is theological metaphysics, and this deals with the reality of
something beyond the natural reality that we experience: the existence of some sort of
supernatural. Here it deals with questions, Does God exist? Is there only one God? What is the
nature of God—what is he like? How does he relate to reality? Now often times in philosophy
courses you’ll study this under the area of philosophy of religion, but they are actually
metaphysical questions because they are dealing with the ‘existence’ of a supernatural.
A third major area of metaphysics is anthropological metaphysics, and this has to do with the
reality of human beings. What does it really mean to be a human being? This deals with the
relationship of man to reality. What is man made up of? Are we just a body? Do we have another
part of us, an immaterial part of us called a soul or a spirit, a mind maybe? And if we do, how
does that mind relate to that body? We’re going to see, when we study metaphysics, that this is
going to be a very important area. Is man born moral, or does he develop morality? Is he
basically free, or is he in some way or another determined? Those are major areas of
anthropology that are metaphysical questions. And we’ll spend quite a bit of time looking at that
when we get in to metaphysics.
Finally, the fourth area of metaphysics is what’s called ontological metaphysics, and in many
ways this is the most abstract and esoteric metaphysics of all. It deals with the nature of being or
existence itself. What does it really mean to exist? The question, is reality ultimately one thing,
or is reality actually many things that don’t relate together? Is it basically material, immaterial, or
both? Is it fixed and stable, or is it constantly changing? Those are ontological questions that deal
with the whole nature of what does it mean for something to exist. It’s the most abstract area of
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PHIL 201
metaphysics. We won’t get too deeply into ontology, but we’ll certainly comment on all of these
areas when we study metaphysics.
S3:
The second major area of philosophy is the area of epistemology, and epistemology deals with
knowledge and truth claims. There are a number of questions that are raised in epistemology. For
example:
Can we know anything at all? There is a whole school of thought that says we can’t know
anything, called skepticism. We’ll look at that, and we’ll talk a little bit about skepticism in our
section on epistemology.
How do we know? How does knowledge occur? How do we arrive at the things that we know?
Is it possible to have certainty about anything, or is everything just open to debates and we don’t
have any certain knowledge at all?
Can we trust our senses, are they really reliable? How do you know that what your eyes see is in
fact really there? Could you get apart from your mind to check it out? Well, it doesn’t seem you
can. Well then how do we know that our senses are really reliable to us or not?
Can we know anything apart from our senses? Is it possible to have knowledge about reality that
we don’t arrive at through sense experience? That’s called rationalism, and we’ll look at this
debate between rationalism and what’s called empiricism which says all knowledge comes from
our senses, and talk a little bit about that.
How is knowledge justified? When we say we ‘know’ something, what kind of evidence do I
need to have in order to prove that? Do I need to have strong evidence, and if so, how much? Is it
possible to say that I know something without any evidence at all? How is knowledge justified?
And of course, a very important question: What do we mean when we say that something is
truth? What exactly is truth? What does that mean?
Those are all epistemological questions and we’ll deal with those in the section on epistemology
when we cover that.
S4:
The third major branch of philosophy is axiology. Axiology has to do with what we consider is
of ‘value,’ or what we consider to be ‘good.’ Now we can use this word, good, in two senses.
First of all, we can use it in the ethical sense, and that’s a very common way we talk about
something. We talk about something being good or bad in the sense of being right or wrong. Ok,
that was the right thing to do, or the wrong thing to do; it resulted in something good or it
resulted in something bad. And we mean that in a very ethical sense. There’s a lot of questions
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that come up of course in the area of ethics. Probably no other area of philosophy have you
already probably done some work and thinking about than you have in ethical thinking. Is there a
right and a wrong? Is there really always a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things,
or is everything just relative? If there is a right, how do we determine what makes something to
be right? Do the consequences have a part to play in it? Or is it something else? Is there some
sort of principle involved in that? We’ll spend quite a bit of time talking about this ethics section
when we come down further in the course.
However, right and wrong, and good and bad, are used in other terms besides ethical ways.
Another way we use the words good and bad is when we think of aesthetics. Now aesthetics has
to do with art. Now I want to make sure you understand that art just doesn’t mean something
that’s kind of hanging in a museum. Art is a short term for artifact: anything that’s humanly
created. We thing in terms of beauty, or things that are beautiful to behold, and things that are not
beautiful, things we might call ugly for example. Well, how do we determine art and what makes
something to be that? Is it all just merely your opinion—what you think is good is good, and
what I think is bad is bad, or whatever might be like that? Is it purely just opinion or is there an
objective standard out there that we can appeal to? What about the meaning behind art? When we
see a painting, what is the meaning that we are supposed to have? Is there one meaning, that the
author or painter meant to convey to us, or are there many different meanings for us? That’s the
idea of aesthetics. Now, to be honest with you, in this course we’re not going to deal any with
this particular issue. It’s an interesting issue, but that’s kind of beyond our course here. But it’s
certainly another way we think of value. So value studies, axiological studies, forms our third
major branch of philosophy.
S5:
Along with these three major branches of philosophy, there are also some small, miscellaneous
branches that kind of is an overlap of one or two of these together in philosophical studies.
One of these, for example, is social and political philosophy. Really this has to do with ethics for
society. It has to do with examining what is the best form of government or society to have. This
examines issues such as authority, justice, the treatment of other people, rights, different forms of
society, different forms of government. Which is the best form? Is democracy really the best
form? Or is some other form better? Is it better to have a monarchy? Is it better to have a
dictatorship? Social and political philosophy deals with those kinds of questions.
A second area, a miscellaneous branch, is philosophy of religion. Now you might think, well
wait a second, isn’t theological metaphysics the same thing as philosophy of religion? While
theological metaphysics deals with the existence of God, philosophy of religion deals more with
how does man relate to God? It deals with such questions as religious language: what does that
language mean and how can it be used? Religious experiences: how should we evaluate spiritual
or mystical experiences that people have? The relationship between faith and reason; the problem
of evil and suffering and how do we face that with the existence of God here. So philosophy of
religion is broader than just simply theological metaphysics.
A third area is the history of philosophy. The history of philosophy simply traces the history of
western thought and how men have reflected about philosophical issues down through history.
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We generally divide it into four major periods. We have ancient philosophy, medieval
philosophy, what’s called modern philosophy, and then contemporary philosophy (the philosophy
of our time).
Not to be confused with the history of philosophy, is the philosophy of history. Philosophy of
history investigates, how do we actually determine what is historical? What is it that makes
something to be a significant historical fact? What is its meaning? Why do we use some sources
for history but not others? For example, when you study history in school, you often will appeal
to many ancient documents as historical, but you may not appeal to other ones, like the Bible.
So, a fact in the Bible, like Noah’s flood, often isn’t studied in history courses because it’s
considered more a matter of faith. Well what is it that makes a document to be a historical source,
and why are some documents chosen and not others? Well that has to do with your philosophy of
history. So very much philosophy plays a part in doing that.
There’s also philosophy of science. Related of course to metaphysics and epistemology, this
investigates exactly what science is. What makes something to be science? How is it to be done?
What form of science should we study? Should we take a realistic view or an anti-realistic view?
There are all sorts of questions about how science should be done, and they’re studied under the
area of philosophy of science.
And of course, eventually, you can have “philosophy of” anything. Whenever you ask those
basic questions about the basic presuppositions behind a discipline (how it is the way it is, why it
is the way it is), you’re looking for definitions behind it, you’re critically examining it, trying to
clarify its concepts and find out if they’re true – you’re doing a “philosophy of” that discipline.
One of the wondrous things about philosophy, one of the things that makes it such an interesting
area, such an interesting field to study, is that everything bottoms out here. No matter whatever
field you go in to, eventually you’ve got to get down to the fundamental questions of why, and
what that field consists of, and clarifying those questions; and when you do that, you’re doing
philosophy. That’s one of the things I love about philosophy: it’s that everything eventually
comes down to philosophical questions.
Well those are some of the branches of philosophy, some of the ways we divide it. What we’re
going to do later on in our course is we’re going to look at each of these branches, these major
branches, in detail, and talk a little about them.
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