Chapter 1 lesson 3
- 1. Encoded by: Lester Anthony A. Gaoiran
- 2. 1. What is your idea about critical and analytical thinking? How can you apply the lesson on analytic philosophy in your everyday life? 2. Are there beliefs that you may have questioned as you go through with your life? Have you examined your evidence for believing in them? Do you find them worth holding on to amidst this scrutiny? 3. Use speculation in thinking about the nature of the universe or any wild or ‘out of this world’ idea. Do you think that this could be part of speculative philosophy? 4. Cite situations or examples in your everyday life where you have used holism as your perspective in looking at the world and your experiences in it. Do you think it is useful in gaining a different perspective? Explain your answer.
- 3. • C.D Broad, in his article entitled The Main Tasks of Philosophy, differentiated two main approaches in doing philosophy: Critical or analytic and speculative or metaphysical philosophy
- 4. Two fundamental tasks of Analytic philosophy according to Broad: 1. The analysis and definition of our fundamental concepts 2. The clear and resolute criticism of our beliefs
- 5. What came first? The chicken or the
- 6. There are many beliefs which are often based on our prejudices. A very good example would be our bias against Muslims. Because of terrorist acts of a small group of bandits like Abu Sayyaf, many Christians, especially those who are not exposed to Islamic traditions and live in cities predominated by Christians, would carry their prejudice against all muslims and regard them as terrorists and troublemakers.
- 7. • Tries to find an underlying explanation or general principle that could explain reality in its entirety. • As Broad put it, ”speculative philosophy aims to reach some general conclusions as to the nature of the universe; and as to our position and prospects in it. It is an attempt to think synoptically of all the facts – the results might be trivial but the process will remind us of the extreme complexity of the world. • The attempt of the pre-Socratic philosophers to explain reality is an example of this process. Abstraction – the process of extracting a unifying explanation from the multiplicity of things around philosophers
- 8. • In an article by Willy Ostreng entitled “Reductionism versus Holism – Contrasting Approaches”, he singled out the distinction between holism and reductionism in doing philosophy.
- 9. • A reductionist approach of doing philosophy refers to understanding complex ideas by reducing them to their parts or individual constituents. It holds the notion of a classical Newtonian assumption that a complex system is nothing but just a sum of its parts that everything in it can be reduced to individual properties • Rene Descartes first introduced the concept of Reductionism during 17th century in Part V of his treatise called Discourse on the Method • In science, reductionist philosophy and methods are considered the basis for many areas of modern science such as physics, chemistry and biology
- 10. • He likened the world to a machine with pieces working like a clockwork mechanism • He argued that the machine can only be understood if an individual would take its pieces apart and study its individual components before putting it back together to understand the bigger picture
- 11. • Works on the assumption that all properties in a given system cannot be broken down by its component parts alone, but rather the system as a whole entity decides how the individual parts behave. • Holism is the idea that something can be more than the sum of its parts: more specifically to the concept of reality • The word holism came from the greek word holos which means “all”,”whole” or “total”.
- 12. • Holism was summed up by Aristotle in Metaphysics in which he stated that, “The whole is more than the sum of its parts.” • The term holism was introduced into the language by South african Jan Smuts Atomism – contends that everything can be broken down into smaller parts
- 13. • The fundamental assumption underpinning the holistic perspective is that the properties of the parts contribute to the understanding of the whole. However, the properties of the parts can only be fully understood through the dynamics of the whole. • The primary focus of holism is the relationship between the parts or its interconnectedness and interactions. • Holism in philosophy refers to any kind of doctrine that gives priority to the whole over its parts.
- 14. There are two types of Holism: 1. Epistomological Holism what you get when you apply to language the theory of holism Also called confirmation holism This type of holism claims a scientific theory cannot be tested individually , since testing a single theory would always depend on other established theories and hypotheses. Theory-laden approach(dependent on theory) Notion that evidence alone is insufficient to assert which kind of philosophy is correct
- 15. There are two types of Holism: 2. Semantic Holism The idea behind semantic holism is that every word has meaning only in relation to other words, sentences, or the language in which it is used. It is a doctrine in the Philosophy of Language which suggests that a certain part of language, a term or a complete sentence, can only be understood through its relations to a larger segment of language or possibly the entire language.
- 16. • Although Epistomological Holism and Semantic Holism are closely related, Epistomological Holism gained more acceptance among philosophers compared to Semantic Holism • The birth of Moderate Holism or Semantic Molecularism served as middle ground for contrasting views of philosophers in semantic holism. • Moderate Holism – refers to the belief that the meanings of words depend on some subset of the language and not the entire language
- 17. 1. ___ wrote the article entitled Philosophy: Critical and Speculative, w/c singled out two main approaches in doing philosophy 2. What are the two main tasks of analytic philosophy? 3. who introduced the concept of Reductionism during 17th century? 4. Who introduced the term holism? 5. ____ philosophy aims to reach some general conclusions as to the nature of the universe and as to our position and prospects in it. 6. ___ philosophy works on the assumption that all properties in a given system cannot be broken down by its component parts alone, but rather the system as a whole entity decides how the individual parts behave. 7. ___ type of holism claims a scientific theory cannot be tested individually since testing a single theory would always depend on other established theories and hypotheses. 8. The word holism came from Grk word ___ w/c means all. 9. A ____ approach of doing philosophy refers to understanding complex ideas by reducing them to their parts or individual constituents. 10. The attempt of the pre-socratic philosophers to explain reality by abstracting a unifying principle or substance is an example of the ___ approach.
Editor's Notes
- #18: CD Broad The analysis and definition of our fundamental concepts The clear and resolute criticism of our beliefs 3. Knowledge 4. Life 5. speculative 6. holistic 7. epistomological 8. holos 9. reductionist 10. speculative