Metaphysics, Epistemology and Value Theory: A Concise Overview

from Greek φιλοσοφία, philosophia,
literally “love of wisdom”
is the study of general and

fundamental problems concerning
matters such as
existence, knowledge, values,
reason, mind, and language
Philosophical methods include
questioning, critical discussion, rational
argument and systematic presentation.
Classic philosophical questions include: Is it

possible to know anything and to prove it?[
What is most real?
However, philosophers might also pose more

practical and concrete questions such as: Is
there a best way to live? Is it better to
be just or unjust (if one can get away with
it)?Do humans have free will?
Historically, "philosophy" encompassed any body of
knowledge.[14] From the time of Ancient Greek
philosopher Aristotle to the 19th century,
"natural philosophy“ encompassed
astronomy, medicine and physics
For example, Newton's 1687 Mathematical

Principles of Natural Philosophy later became
classified as a book of physics. In the 19th
century, the growth of modern research
universities led academic philosophy and other
disciplines to professionalize and specialize.
In the modern era, some
investigations that were
traditionally part of philosophy
became separate academic
disciplines,
including psychology, sociology
, linguistics and economics.
Other investigations closely related to art,
science, politics, or other pursuits remained
part of philosophy.
For example,
Is beauty objective or subjective?
Are there many scientific methods or just one?
Is political utopia a hopeful dream or hopeless
fantasy?
Major sub-fields of academic philosophy include :
metaphysics ("concerned with the

fundamental nature of reality and being")
epistemology (about the "nature and grounds

of knowledge [and]...its limits and validity),
ethics, aesthetics, political

philosophy, logic, philosophy of science
and the history of Western philosophy.
Since the 20th century
professional philosophers contribute to
society primarily as professors, researchers
and writers. However, many of those who
study philosophy in undergraduate or
graduate programs contribute in the fields of
law, journalism, politics, religion, science,
business and various art and entertainment
activities
Philosophy was traditionally divided into three major branches:
Natural ("physics") was the study of the

philosophy physical world (physis, lit: nature);
Moral ("ethics") was the study of goodness,

right and wrong, beauty, justice and
philosophy
virtue (ethos, lit: custom);
("logos") was the study

Metaphysical of existence,causation, God, logic,
philosophy forms and other abstract objects
("meta-physika" lit: "what comes
after physics")
This division is not obsolete but has changed.
cosmology
astronomy
physics
Natural
philosophy
has split into the
various natural
sciences,
chemistry biology
Ethics
Aesthetics
value theory
Moral political
philosophy
philosophy
has birthed the social
sciences
Metaphysical
philosophy
has birthed formal sciences such as
philosophy
logic Mathematics
of science
Epistemology cosmology
Metaphysics
Epistemology
Value theory
Logic, science and mathematics

existence
M
e Time
t Objects
a
p Metaphysics And their properties
is the study of the most

h general features of reality, wholes and their parts
such as
y
Events
s
i processes and causation
c
and the relationship between mind and body
s
M
e
t Metaphysics
a includes
p
h
y
s COSMOLOGY ONTOLOGY,
i -the study of
the world in its -the study
c of being.
entirety
s
A major point of debate revolves between:
M
e
• which holds that there
t are entities that exist
a realism independently of their
p mental perception
h
y
s • which holds that
reality is mentally
i
c
idealism constructed or
otherwise immaterial
s
Metaphysics deals with the topic of identity.
M
• is the set of attributes that make an
e Essence object what it fundamentally is and
without which it loses its identity
t
• is a property that the object has,
a accident without which the object can still retain
p its identity.
h Particulars
• are objects that are said to exist
in space and time
y
s
abstract objects • such as numbers
i
c • which are properties held by multiple
universals particulars, such as redness or a gender.
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Epistemologists
i
s also ask:
t
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o Is
Are any
l What knowledge beliefs
o is truth? justified justified
g true belief?
?
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E Putative knowledge includes
p
i
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t
propositional know-how acquaintance
knowledge
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(knowledge
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that something
o or something).
is the case), something)
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E • is the emphasis on reasoning as a
p source of knowledge.
• It is associated with a priori knowledge,
i which is independent of experience,
s Rationalism such as math and logical deduction
t
e
m
o • is the emphasis on observational
evidence via sensory experience as
l the source of knowledge.
o Empiricism
g
y
Among the numerous topics within metaphysics
and epistemology, broadly construed are:
Philosophy Philosophy of Philosophy of

mind religion Philosophy
of language of human
• explores the • explores
• explores nature of the questions that nature -
the nature, mind and its arise in analyzes the
the origins relationship to connection with Metaphilosophy
the body. It is religions, unique -explores the
and the use typified by including the characteristi aims of
of language disputes soul, the afterlife,
between dualism God, religious cs of human philosophy, its
and materialism. experience, beings, such boundaries and
In recent years analysis of its methods.
this branch has religious as
become related vocabulary and rationality,
to cognitive texts and the politics and
science relationship
of religion and culture
science.
V
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A major point of debate revolves around
u
e
t utilitarianism
• where actions • where actions are
h are judged by • such as to
judged by how
they adhere to
the potential principles,
e results of the maximize irrespective of
act, happiness, negative ends.
o
consequentialism, deontology
r
y
V
a
l It addresses the nature
u is the "critical of art, beauty and taste,
enjoyment, emotional
e reflection on art, values, perception and with
culture and nature the creation and
appreciation of beauty
t
h Aesthetics
e
o It is more precisely defined as the It divides into art
study of sensory or sensori-
theory, literary
r emotional values, sometimes
called judgments of theory, film
y sentiment and taste theory and music theory
V
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t
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o
r
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V
Other branches of value theory:
a
Philosophy of law(often called jurisprudence) explores
l the varying theories explaining the nature and
u interpretation of laws.
e Philosophy of education analyzes the

definition and content of education, as well as
the goals and challenges of educators.
t
h Feminist philosophy explores questions surrounding
gender, sexuality and the body including the nature
e of feminism itself as a social and philosophical
movement.
o
r Philosophy of sport analyzes sports, games and other forms
of play as sociological and uniquely human activities.
y
V Richard Feynman argued
Many academic
a that the philosophy of a
disciplines generated topic is irrelevant to its
l philosophical inquiry. primary study, saying that
The relationship "philosophy of science is
u
between "X" and the as useful to scientists
e "philosophy of X" is as ornithology is to birds."
debated.
Logic, science and
t mathematics
h
e Curtis White, by The topics of philosophy
contrast, argued that of science are numbers,
o philosophical tools symbols and the formal
methods of reasoning as
r are essential to employed in the social
y humanities, sciences sciences and natural
and social sciences. [ sciences.
V
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V
a
l Deductive reasoning is when, given certain premises,
conclusions are unavoidably implied.
u
Rules of inference are used to infer conclusions such
e as, modus ponens, where given “A” and “If A then B”,
then “Bmust be concluded.”
Because sound reasoning is an essential element of
all sciences, social sciences and humanities
t disciplines, logic became a formal science.
Sub-fields include mathematical logic, philosophical logic, Modal
h logic, computational logic and non-classical logics
e A major issue in the philosophy of mathematics revolves around

whether mathematical entities are objective and discovered, called
mathematical realism, or invented, called mathematical antirealism.
o
r
y
Modern
Philosophy
M
o
d
e a branch It is not a specific
r of philosophy doctrine or school
(and thus should
n that not be confused
originated with Modernism),
P in Western although there
are certain
h Europe in the assumptions
i 17th century, common to much
l and is now of it, which helps
to distinguish it
o common from earlier
s worldwide philosophy
o
p
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M
o
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The 17th and How much if any of How one
n
early 20th the Renaissance sho decides these
uld be included is a
P centuries matter for dispute;
questions will
h roughly mark likewise modernity determine
i the beginning may or may not the scope of
l have ended in the
and the end twentieth century one's use of
o
of modern and been replaced "modern
s by postmodernity.
o
philosophy. philosophy."
p
h
y
He knows what he is
thinking about, even if
M it is not true, and he . From this basis he builds
his knowledge back up
knows that he is there
o
d
Rationalism thinking about it.
again. He finds that some of
the ideas he has could not
have originated from him
alone, but only from God; he
e He finds that he can doubt proves that God exists.
nearly everything: the
r Modern philosophy reality of physical
n traditionally begins objects, God, his memories,
history, science, even
with René Descartes and mathematics, but he cannot
his dictum "I think, doubt that he is, in fact,
P therefore I am" doubting
. He then demonstrates that
God would not allow him
h to be systematically
deceived about everything;
In the early seventeenth
i century the bulk of He tries to set aside as much
in essence, he vindicates
ordinary methods of
l philosophy was dominated as he possibly can of all his science and reasoning, as
fallible but not false.
beliefs, to determine what if
o by Scholasticism, written by anything he knows for certain.
theologians and drawing
s upon Plato, Aristotle, and
o early Church writings. In short, he proposed to begin
p philosophy from scratch. In his
h Descartes argued that many most important
predominant Scholastic work, Meditations on First
y metaphysical doctrines were Philosophy, he attempts just
meaningless or false. this, over six brief essays.
René Descartes
Baruch Spinoza
Gottfried Leibniz
French philosopher
all Philosophy is like a tree, of which Metaphysics is the
M , mathematician,
root, Physics the trunk, and all the other sciences the
and scientist
o branches that grow out of this trunk, which are reduced
d to three principals, namely, Medicine, Mechanics, and
Ethics.
e
Dubbed the father of
r modern western
n philosophy By the science of Morals, I understand
the highest and most perfect which,
presupposing an entire knowledge of the
P other sciences, is the last degree of
h wisdom.
i
l best known philosophical statement is "Cogito ergo sum"
(French: Je pense, donc je suis; I think, therefore I am)
o
s ethics was a science, the highest and most perfect of
o them.
p Like the rest of the sciences, ethics had its roots in
h metaphysics.[45] In this way he argues for the existence of God,
investigates the place of man in nature, formulates the theory
y
René Descartes of mind-body dualism, and defends free will.
argued that God exists and is abstract and impersonal. born Benedito de
M Spinoza's view of God is what Charles Espinosa
o Hartshorne describes as Classical Pantheism
d Dutch philosopher
″the infant believes that it is by free will that it of Sephardi/Portuguese
e seeks the breast; the angry boy believes that by origin
r free will he wishes vengeance; the timid man
n thinks it is with free will he seeks flight; the
drunkard believes that by a free command of his considered one of the
mind he speaks the things which when sober he great rationalists of 17th-
P wishes he had left unsaid. … All believe that they century philosophy
h speak by a free command of the mind, whilst, in
i truth, they have no power to restrain the impulse
l which they have to speak.″
o
morality and ethical judgement like choice is predicated
s on an illusion.
o
p ″Blame″ and ″Praise″ are non existent human ideals only
h fathomable in the mind because we are so acclimatized to
human consciousness interlinking with our experience that
y
we have a false ideal of choice predicated upon this.
Baruch Spinoza
developed differential and integral
wrote works on
calculus independently of Isaac
M philosophy, politics, law, ethics, theology, hi
Newton
story, and philology
o
d made major contributions
German polymath and philosophe
to physics and technology, and anticipated
e r who occupies a prominent place
notions that surfaced much later
r in the history of mathematics and
in philosophy, probability
n the history of philosophy
theory, biology, medicine, geology, psychology,
linguistics, and computer science
P French: Godefroi Guillaume his philosophy also looks back to
the scholastic tradition, in which conclusions are
h Leibnitz
produced by applying reason to first principles or
i prior definitions rather than to empirical evidence.
l
o anticipated modern logic and analytic philosophy
s
along with René Descartesand Baruch Spinoza, was one of the
o
three great 17th-century advocates of rationalism.
p
h In philosophy, Leibniz is most noted for his optimism, i.e. his
conclusion that our Universe is, in a restricted sense, the best
y
possible one that God could have created, an idea that was often
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz lampooned by others such as Voltaire.
M
o
Empiricism
d Empiricism asserts that
e Empiricism is a theory of knowledge comes (only or
knowledge which opposes other primarily) via
r theories of knowledge, such as sensory experience as opposed
n rationalism, idealism and
historicism.
to rationalism, which asserts
that knowledge comes (also)
from pure thinking.
P
h Both empiricism and While historicism also
acknowledges the role of
i rationalism are experience, it differs from
individualist theories of empiricism by assuming that
l knowledge, whereas sensory data cannot be understood
o historicism is a social without considering the historical
and cultural circumstances in which
s epistemology. observations are made.
o
Empiricism should not be mixed up Today empiricism should therefore be
p with empirical research because understood as one among competing
different epistemologies should be ideals of getting knowledge or how to
h considered competing views on do studies. As such empiricism is first
y how best to do studies, and there and foremost characterized by the
is near consensus among ideal to let observational data "speak
researchers that studies should be for themselves", while the competing
empirical views are opposed to this ideal
M
o
Empiricism
d
The term empiricism It should also be constructed in a way
e should thus not just be which makes it possible to
r understood in relation to distinguish empiricism among other
how this term has been epistemological positions in
n used in the history of contemporary science and
philosophy scholarship.
P
h In other words: Empiricism as a Empiricism is one of
concept has to be constructed along several competing views
i with other concepts, which together
that predominate in the
l make it possible to make important
study of human
discriminations between different
o ideals underlying contemporary knowledge, known as
s science. epistemology
o
p Empiricism emphasizes the role
of experience and evidence, especially sensory
h perception, in the formation of ideas, over the
y notion of innate ideas or tradition[2] in contrast
to, for example, rationalism which relies upon
reason and can incorporate innate knowledge.
M
o
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n
P
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o
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p
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advocated governmental separation of powers and following the tradition of
believed that revolution is not only a right but an Sir Francis Bacon, he is
M obligation in some circumstances. equally important to social
In a natural state all people were equal and contract theory
o
independent, and everyone had a natural right to defend
d his "Life, health, Liberty, or Possessions". Considered one of the first
e of the British empiricists
believed that human nature allowed people to be selfish.
r most influential
believed that human nature is characterised by reason
n and tolerance. of Enlightenment thinker
s and commonly known
Locke's political theory was founded on social as the "Father
P contract theory. of Liberalism
h he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and
English philosopher and
i that knowledge is instead determined only by
physician
l experience derived from sense perception
o postulated that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate or tabula
rasa
s
first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness.
o
p Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern
h conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the
work of later philosophers such as Hume, Rousseau, and Kant
y
His work greatly affected the development
of epistemology and political philosophy John Locke
This theory denies the existence Berkeley defends this thesis with a deductive proof stemming from
of material substance and instead the laws of nature. First, he establishes that because God is
contends that familiar objects like perfectly good, the end to which he commands humans must also
M tables and chairs are only ideas in be good, and that end must not benefit just one person, but the
the minds of perceivers, and as a result entire human race. Because these commands—or ‘laws—if
o cannot exist without being perceived practiced, would lead to the general fitness of humankind, it
d Irish philosopher whose primary
follows that they can be discovered by the right reason—for
example, the law to never resist supreme power can be derived
e achievement was the from reason because this law is “the only thing that stands
between us and total disorder”.Thus, these laws can be called the
r advancement of a theory he
laws of nature, because they are derived from God—the creator of
called "immaterialism" (later
n referred to as "subjective nature himself. “These laws of nature include duties never to resist
the supreme power, lie under oath…or do evil so that good may
idealism" by others) come of it.”
P known as Bishop
make exceptions to this sweeping moral statement,
stating that we need not observe precepts of “usurpers
h Berkeley (Bishop of Cloyne)
or even madmen”[ and that people can obey different
i supreme authorities if there are more than one claims to
l the highest authority
o In A Discourse on Passive Obedience, Berkeley defends the
s thesis that people have “a moral duty to observe the negative
precepts (prohibitions) of the law, including the duty not to
o resist the execution of punishment
p The tract A Discource on Passive Obedience (1712) is
h "Berkeley's main contribution to moral and political
y philosophy.
also known for his critique of abstraction, an important
premise in his argument for immaterialism.
George Berkeley
"the mind itself, far from being an independent power, is simply 'a bundle of perceptions'
without unity or cohesive quality."
The self is nothing but a bundle of experiences linked by the best known today for his
relations of causation and resemblance; or, more accurately, that highly influential system
M the empirically warranted idea of the self is just the idea of such a of radical
o bundle. philosophical empiricism
d , skepticism,
not arguing for a bundle theory, which is a form of reductionism,
e but rather for an eliminative view of the self. That is, rather than and naturalism.
r reducing the self to a bundle of perceptions, Hume is rejecting the
n idea of the self altogether. On this interpretation, Hume is Scottish philosopher,
proposing a "no-self theory" and thus has much in common historian, economist,
P with Buddhist thought. and essayist,
h
i “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions and can (born David Home)
l never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”[87]
o
s "moral decisions are grounded in moral sentiment." It is not knowing that
o governs ethical actions, but feelings.[89] Arguing that reason cannot be
p behind morality, he wrote:
h Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason itself is
y utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are
not conclusions of our reason
"a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the

will" David Hume
what duties citizens owe to
a legitimate government, if
M any, and when it may be
Politics
o legitimately overthrown—if Liberty
ever.
d
e
r what
the law Justice
n
is Political
philosophy
P
is the study
h what form it of such
i should take and Property
topics as
l why
o
s what rights and
o freedoms it rights
p should protect
and why
h the enforcement of
a legal Law
y code by authority
Political philosophers
M
the natural
the right of the
o
equality of all
individual;
d
men
e
r Hobbes also developed
the artificial character
Thomas some of the
of the political order
n (which led to the later
Hobbes of fundamentals of
distinction
European liberal
Malmesbury thought:
between civil
P society and the state);
h
the view that all
i one of the founders of legitimate political
l English modern political power must be
philosophy and "representative" and
o philosopher political science based on the consent
s of the people;
o
and a liberal
p best known today His 1651
book Leviathan established interpretation of law
h for his work social contracttheory, the which leaves people
on political foundation of most later free to do whatever the
y Western political law does not explicitly
philosophy philosophy forbid
he maintained that we are Locke's theory of mind is often
M born without innate ideas, cited as the origin of modern
and that knowledge is conceptions of identity and
o instead determined only by the self, figuring prominently in
experience derived the work of later philosophers
d from sense perception
such as Hume, Rousseau,
and Kant
e
r John Locke advocated
first to define the governmental separation of
n self through a powers and believed that
English philosopher a revolution is not only
continuity a right but an obligation in
P nd physician of consciousness. some circumstances.
h
i most influential
postulated that, at
of Enlightenment thi believed that human
l nkers and commonly
birth, the mind was a nature allowed people
o blank slate or tabula to be selfish.
known as the "Father
rasa
s of Liberalism
o
p Locke's political
In a natural state all people
were equal and
h Considered one of theory was founded independent, and everyone
the first of the on social had a natural right to
y British empiricists contract theory. defend his "Life, health,
Liberty, or Possessions".
M
o
d
e
r
n
P
h
i
l
o
s
o
p
h
y
The first man
M who, having
fenced in a
o piece of land,
d by joining together into said 'This is
civil society through mine'
e the social contract and “Beware of
abandoning their claims listening to
r of natural right, this
individuals can both
n preserve themselves and impostor”
remain free.
P
h "...Nothing is so gentle Jean-Jacques
i as man in his primitive
state, when placed by Rousseau you are undone if
you once forget
l nature at an equal
distance from the
that the fruits of
the earth belong
o stupidity of brutes and
the
to us all, and the
earth itself to
s fatal enlightenment of
civil man".
nobody.
o
p "uncorrupted looked to a
h morals" hypothetical St
prevail in the ate of Nature as
y "state of a normative
nature" guide.
M
o
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n
P
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o
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o
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M
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P
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o
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o
p
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"the most influential
M English-speaking a proponent
philosopher of the of utilitarianism,
o nineteenth century."
d
e
r contributed widely
to social contributed significantly
n John Stuart theory, political to the theory of
Mill theory and political the scientific method
economy
P
h
i first Member of
l English most influential Parliament to
o thinkers in the
philosopher history of liberalism call for women's
s suffrage
o
p
believed that
h
political and civil "equality of taxation"
y meant "equality of
economist servant. sacrifice
M
o
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r
n
P
h
i
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o
s
o
p
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y
is counted among the
M British historian, founders of Ricardian
o economist, school and was the
d
e political theorist, father of John Stuart
r Mill, the philosopher
n
and philosopher. of liberalism
James Mill
P
h (born James
i Milne)
l
o
s
His influential History of
He divided Indian
o British India contains a
history into three parts:
p complete denunciation
Hindu, Muslim and
h and rejection of Indian
y British.
culture and civilisation.
M
o
d
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n
P
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o
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o
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M
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n
P
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o
p
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M • German philosopher who
Immanuel is considered the central
o figure of modern
Kant
d philosophy
e • that the human mind
r creates the structure of
human experience,
n • that reason is the source
of morality,
P Kant • that aesthetics arises from a
h argued faculty of
disinterested judgment,
i • that space and time are
l forms of our sensibility,
o • and that the world as it
s is "in-itself" is unknowable
o
p beliefs continue • metaphysics,
to have a major
• epistemology,
h influence on
contemporary • ethics,
y philosophy,
• political theory,
especially the
fields of • and aesthetics
•"everything that
M is possible
Idea of
o
freedom through
d
e freedom"
r
n
• (i) to be free,
• (ii) to be understood
P Categories
as free and
h of freedom
• (iii) to be morally
i evaluated.
l
o • Kant states that beauty is not a property
of an artwork or natural phenomenon,
s but is instead a consciousness of the
o pleasure that attends the 'free play' of the
In the chapter imagination and the understanding. Even
p "Analytic of the though it appears that we are using
h Beautiful" of reason to decide what is beautiful, the
the Critique of judgment is not a cognitive
y Judgment judgment,"and is consequently not
logical, but aesthetical"
became a
German founding figure
M philosopher, of the
o philosophical
movement
d known
e as German
idealism
r
n
Johann
P has a
Gottlieb appreciate Fichte as
an important
h reputation as Fichte philosopher in his
one of the
i fathers
own right due to his
original insights into
l of German
the nature of self-
nationalism
o consciousness or self
-awareness
s
o Fichte was also the originator
of thesis–antithesis–
p motivated by
synthesis (Thesis–
the problem
h of subjectivity
Antithesis–
Synthesis),[4] an idea that
y and conscious is often erroneously
ness attributed to Hegel
Standard histories of
German philosophy make him the
M philosopher midpoint in the
development of German
o idealism
d
e is to exhibit the ideal
r as springing from the
Friedrich real.
n
Wilhelm
Joseph
P The change which
Schelling
experience brings before us
h leads to the conception of
i Naturphilosophie duality, the polar opposition light, with its
l through which nature subordinate
expresses itself. processes
o (magnetism,
electricity, and
s chemical action);
The dynamical series
o of stages in nature
p are matter, as the
equilibrium of the
h fundamental
organism, with its
component phases
y expansive and of reproduction,
contractive forces; irritability and
sensibility.
M
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Arthur Schopenhauer
M • German philosopher
• best known for his 1818 work The World as Will and
o Representation
d • developed an atheistic metaphysical and ethical system that
has been described as an exemplary manifestation
e of philosophical pessimism, rejecting the
r contemporaneous post-Kantian philosophies of German
idealism
n
first thinkers in Western philosophy to share and affirm
significant tenets of Eastern philosophy
P
• Einstein paraphrased his views as follows: "Man can
h
indeed do what he wants, but he cannot will what he
i wants."
l • Fichtean principle of idealism: "The world is for a subject."
o
human desiring, "willing," and craving cause suffering or pain. A
s temporary way to escape this pain is through aesthetic
o contemplation (a method comparable to Zapffe's "Sublimation").
p • "Schopenhauer thought that music was the only art that did not
merely copy ideas, but actually embodied the will itself."
h • personal experience of an extremely great suffering that leads to
y loss of the will to live; or
• knowledge of the essential nature of life in the world through
observation of the suffering of other people.
defending the view of
M opposed
self and morality as
o individualism essentially social
d
e
r Francis founded on the need
addressed the central to cultivate our ideal
n Herbert question of "Why "good self" in
Bradley should I be moral?" opposition to our
P "bad self".
h
acknowledged that
i leading member of society could not be
l British the philosophical the source of our
idealist philosopher movement known moral life, of our
o as British idealism, quest to realise our
s ideal self.
o
made the best of this
p rejected admission in
important work
h was Appearance and
the utilitarian and em suggesting[7] that the
y piricist trends in ideal self can be
Reality
English philosophy realised through
following religion
M
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Existential philosophers
M
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M
o
d
e
r He was against literary critics who Two of his influential ideas are
Danish philosopher, theologian,
n poet, social critic and religious defined idealist intellectuals and "subjectivity",and the notion
author who is widely philosophers of his time. popularly referred to as "leap of
• key ideas include the concept of faith"
considered to be the
P first existentialist philosopher "Truth as Subjectivity", the knight • The leap of faith is his conception
of faith, the recollection and of how an individual would believe
h • Much of his philosophical repetition dichotomy, angst, in God or how a person would act
work deals with the issues of the infinite qualitative in love. Faith is not a decision
i how one lives as a "single distinction, faith as a passion, and based on evidence that, say,
l individual" the three stages on life's way certain beliefs about God are true
or a certain person is worthy of
• Kierkegaard has been called a
o • giving priority to concrete philosopher, a theologian, the love. No such evidence could ever
human reality over abstract Father of Existentialism, be enough to completely justify
s thinking and highlighting the both atheistic and theistic variatio the kind of total commitment
importance of personal involved in true religious faith or
o choice and commitment
ns, a literary critic,a social
theorist, a humorist, a romantic love. Faith involves
p psychologist,and a poet making that commitment anyway.
Kierkegaard thought that to have
h faith is at the same time to have
doubt.
y
M
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y
His work has Sartre's primary Sartre maintained
idea is that people, that the concepts
also influenced
M as humans, are of authenticity
"condemned to be
o and individuality
free".
have to be earned
d but not learned.
French sociology, Sartre said that
e philosopher, human beings
r playwright, have no essence We need to
novelist, before their experience
n political critical existence "death
because there is consciousness"
activist,
P
biographer, theory ,
no Creator. so as to wake up
ourselves as to
and literary what is really
h critic.
post- "existence important;
precedes
i colonial essence".
the
l theory,
one of the key "We are left authentic in
o figures in the our lives
philosophy alone,
s of existentialism and literary without which is life
o and phenomenol studies, excuse." experience,
ogy, and one of
p the leading not
figures in 20th- "We can act knowledge.
h century French and continues to without being
determined by
y philosophy and
Marxism
influence these
disciplines. our past which is
always separated
from us."
M
o
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r
n French writer, asserted that
women are as
P intellectual, existentialist capable of choice
h philosopher, political as men, and thus
i activist, feminist and social can choose to
l elevate
o theorist. themselves
s she did not consider believed moving beyond the
o herself a philosopher, that existence
'immanence' to which they
were previously resigned
p she had a significant precedes essence; and reaching
h influence on 'transcendence', a position
both feminist hence one is not in which one takes
y born a woman, responsibility for oneself and
existentialism and fem the world, where one
inist theory. but becomes one. chooses one's freedom.
M points out that as we point, the individual
o question reality, we
confront borders that
faces a choice: sink into
despair and
d an empirical (or
scientific) method
resignation, or take
a leap of faith toward
e simply cannot
transcend.
what Jaspers
calls Transcendence.
r had a strong individuals confront
n influence on their own limitless
freedom, which Jaspers
modern theology, calls Existenz, and can
psychiatry, and finally experience
philosophy
P authentic existence
h
i
l Transcendence (paired
o German-
with the term The
Encompassing in later
s Swiss psychiatrist works) is, for Jaspers,
o
and philosopher Karl that which exists
beyond the world of
time and space
p Theodor
h Jaspers
y
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M
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M
o
Phenomenology
d
e
r
n
P It is a broad philosophical
the study of the movement founded in
h
structure of the early years of the
i 20th century by Edmund
l
experience. Husserl,
o
s
o spread to France,
p expanded upon by a
the United States, and
circle of his followers at
h the universities
elsewhere, often in
y contexts far removed
of Göttingen and Munich
from Husserl's early
in Germany.
work.
M
o
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e
Phenomenological philosophers
r
n
P
h
i
l Edmund Martin Maurice Max
o Husserl Heidegger Merleau-
s Ponty
Scheler
o
p
h
y
M
o
thought profoundly
d Edmund Gustav re-defined influenced the landscape
of twentieth-century
e Albrecht phenomenology as philosophy, and he remains
a transcendental-
r Husserl idealist philosophy
a notable figure in
contemporary philosophy
n and beyond.
P German philosopher
Arguing studied mathematics
under Karl
that transcendental con
h who established the
sciousness sets the
Weierstrass and Leo
school Königsberger, and
i of phenomenology
limits of all possible philosophy under Franz
knowledge Brentano and Carl Stumpf
l
o
taught philosophy as
s he elaborated critiques develop a systematic a Privatdozent at Halle from
of historicism and foundational science 1887, then as professor, first
o of psychologism in logicbas based on the so- at Göttingen from 1901, then
at Freiburg from 1916 until he
p ed on analyses
of intentionality
called phenomenologic retired in 1928, after which he
al reduction remained highly productive.
h
y
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n
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y
M
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r
French phenome He was the only major The articulation of the Consciousness, the world, and the
n nological philoso phenomenologist of the primacy of embodiment human body as a perceiving thing are
pher first half of the twentieth led him away from intricately intertwined and mutually
• The century to engage phenomenology "engaged."
P constitution of extensively with the towards what he was to • The phenomenal thing is not the
sciences and especially call “indirect ontology”
h meaning in
human with descriptive or the ontology of “the
unchanging object of the natural
sciences, but a correlate of our body
i experience was psychology flesh of the world” (la
chair du monde), seen
and its sensory-motor functions.
his main • emphasized the body as • "inexhaustible" (the hallmark of any
l interest and he the primary site of in his last incomplete
perception according to Merleau-
wrote on knowing the world, a work, The Visible and
o perception, art, corrective to the long Invisible, and his last Ponty). Things are that upon which
our body has a "grip" (prise), while
published essay, “Eye
s and politics. philosophical tradition of
and Mind”. the grip itself is a function of our
• expressed his placing consciousness as connaturality with the world's things.
o philosophical the source of knowledge, • developed the The world and the sense of self are
insights in and maintained that the concept of the body- emergent phenomena in an ongoing
p writings on art, body and that which it subject as an "becoming."
h literature, perceived could not be
disentangled from each
alternative to
the Cartesian "cogito."
• Each object is a "mirror of all others."
linguistics, and
y politics. other
M
o "an attitude of
d spiritual
e seeing...something
developed further which otherwise
r the philosophical remains hidden...." phenomenology "is
method of the founder of
n phenomenology, Edmund
given only in the
Husserl, and was called seeing and
by José Ortega y experiencing act
P Gasset "the first man of the
philosophical paradise."
itself."
h
i
l theory of values.
o German philosopher k Max • Values are given a
nown for his work
s in phenomenology, et Ferdinand priori, and are
"feelable"
o hics, and philosophical
p
anthropology. Scheler phenomena.
h
y
Values and their Further essential Goodness, however, is
corresponding disvalues interconnections apply not simply "attached" to
And with respect to
are ranked according to with respect to a value's an act of willing, but
M their essential (disvalue's) existence or
values of good and evil:
originates ultimately
interconnections as non-existence: within the disposition
o follows: (Gesinnung) or "basic
moral tenor" of the
d The existence of a
Good is the value
that is attached to acting person.
positive value is Accordingly:
e Values of the holy
vs. disvalues of the
itself a positive
the realization of a
positive value in the
value.
r unholy sphere of willing.
The criterion of
'good' consists in
n The existence of a Evil is the value the agreement of a
negative value that is attached to value intended, in
Values of the spirit the realization,
(disvalue) is itself a the realization of a
(truth, beauty, vs. with the value
negative value. negative value in
P disvalues of their
opposites)
the sphere of preferred, or in its
willing. disagreement with
h The non-existence
the value rejected.
i Values of life and of a positive value

is itself a negative
Good is the value
the noble vs. that is attached to The criterion of
l disvalues of the value. the realization of a 'evil' consists in the
vulgar higher value in the disagreement of a
o sphere of willing. value intended, in
The non-existence the realization,
s of a negative value Evil is the value with the value
is itself a positive that is attached to preferred, or in its
o Values of pleasure
vs. disvalues of pain value the realization of a agreement with
lower value [at the the value rejected
p expense of a higher
one] in the sphere
h of willing.
Values of utility vs.
y disvalues of the
useless.
M
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M
Pragmatist philosophers
o
d
e
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n
P
h
i Charles William John Richard
l
o Sanders James Dewey Rorty
s Peirce
o
p
h
y
M
o He saw logic as the and which foreshadowed
d Charles formal branch

the debate among logical
positivists and proponents
e Sanders of semiotics, of of philosophy of
language that dominated
which he is a
r Peirce founder,
20th century Western
philosophy
n
American philosopher, lo made major contributions to he defined the concept
P gician, mathematician, logic, but logic for him of abductive reasoning, as
and scientist who is encompassed much of that well as rigorously
h sometimes known as which is now formulated mathematical
called epistemology and phil induction and deductive
i "the father
osophy of science reasoning.
of pragmatism".
l
o Today he is appreciated innovator in As early as 1886 he saw
s largely for his contributions
to logic, mathematics,
mathematics, statistics,
philosophy, research
that logical operations could
be carried out by electrical
o philosophy, scientific methodology, and various switching circuits; the same
methodology, and semiotics, sciences, Peirce considered idea was used decades later
p and for his founding himself, first and foremost, to produce digital
of pragmatism. a logician. computers
h
y
M
o he is considered to be also cited as one of
d William one of the major figures
associated with the
the founders
James of functional
e philosophical school
known as pragmatism, psychology
r
n
American others have
labelled him the also developed the
philosopher
P and psychologist who "Father of
philosophical
h perspective known
was also trained as American as radical empiricism.
i a physician psychology".
l
one of the leading thinkers
o first educator to of the late nineteenth "Anything short of
s offer a psychology century and is believed by God is not rational,
many to be one of the most
o course in the influential philosophers the anything more than
United States United States has ever God is not possible"
p produced
h
y
John
M Dewey
o
d
e
r "Democracy and the one, American philosopher, psychologist,
n ultimate, ethical ideal of and educational reformerwhose
humanity are to my mind ideas have been influential in
synonymous." education and social reform
P
h
i
l
known best for his publications
o primary figures associated with
about education, he also wrote
the philosophy
s about many other topics,
of pragmatism and is considered
including epistemology, metap
one of the founders
o hysics, aesthetics, art, logic, soc
of functional psychology.
ial theory, and ethics.
p
h A well-known public intellectual,
y he was also a major voice
of progressive
education and liberalism
Richard McKay
M
constitutes the crucial concept of a Rorty
o "postphilosophical" culture determined to
abandon representationalist accounts of
d traditional epistemology, incorporating
e American pragmatist naturalism that
considers the natural sciences as an
American
r advance towards liberalism. philosopher.
n
Rorty tied this brand of philosophy
P to the notion of "social hope"; he
saw the idea of knowledge
h believed that without the
as a "mirror of nature" as
representationalist accounts, and
i without metaphors between the pervasive throughout the
l mind and the world, human society history of western
would behave more peacefully. philosophy
o
s Abandoning representationalist accoun
o ts of knowledge and language, Rorty Rorty advocated for a novel form of American
believed, would lead to a state of mind pragmatism, sometimes called neopragmatism,
p he referred to as "ironism," in which in which scientific and philosophical methods
h people become completely aware of form merely a set of contingent "vocabularies"
the contingency of their placement in which people abandon or adopt over time
y history and of their philosophical according to social conventions and usefulness.
vocabulary
M
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n
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o
s
o
p
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y
M Analytic philosophers
o
d
e
Rudolf Carnap
r
n Gottlob Frege
P
h
i
George Edward Moore
l
o Bertrand Russell
s
o
p Moritz Schlick
h
y
Ludwig Wittgenstein
M
o
He is considered
d "one of the giants
e among twentieth-
r He was a major century The purpose of logical
member of philosophers." syntax is to provide a
n system of concepts, a
the Vienna
language, by the help
Circle and of which the results of
P an advocate of logic logical analysis will be
h al positivism. exactly formulable.
i
l
o German- Philosophy is to be replaced
by the logic of science – that is
s
born philosopher who
was active in Europe Rudolf to say, by the logical analysis
of the concepts and sentences
o before 1935 and in the of the sciences, for the logic
p
United States Carnap of science is nothing other
than the logical syntax of the
thereafter. language of science.
h
y
M
o
d
e
r . His contributions to
German philosopher, logicia invented axiomatic predi
n n, and mathematician. cate logic, in large part the philosophy of
language include:
Considered a major figure in thanks to his invention
• Function–argument analysis
P mathematics, he is of quantified variables, of the proposition;
responsible for the which eventually became
h development of modern
• Distinction between concept
ubiquitous and object (Begriff und
i logic and making Gegenstand);
in mathematics and
l contributions to
logic, and which solved • Principle of compositionality;
the foundations of
o mathematics. He is also the problem of multiple • Context principle;
• Distinction between
s understood by many to be generality. the sense and reference (Sinn
o the father of analytic • founders of analytic und Bedeutung) of names and
philosophy, where he other expressions, sometimes
p concentrated on the
philosophy said to involve a mediated
h philosophy of language and reference theory.
y mathematics.
M
o
d one of the founders of English
the analytic tradition
e in philosophy philosopher.
r
n
he led the turn away
P from idealism in George
h
British philosophy,
and became well
Edward "G.
i known for his E." Moore
advocacy of common
l sense concepts,
o
s Moore's argument for
the indefinability of
o his contributions Moore asserted that philosophical "good" (and thus for
to ethics, epistemology, arguments can suffer from a the fallaciousness of
p and metaphysics, and
confusion between the use of a term the "naturalistic
in a particular argument and the fallacy") is often
h "his exceptional definition of that term (in all called the open-
personality and moral arguments). He named this
y confusion the naturalistic fallacy.
question argument
character."
M
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell,
o
d British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic,
e political activist and Nobel laureate.
r
n
considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that
he had "never been any of these things, in any profound sense".
P
h
Russell led the British "revolt against idealism".He is considered one of the
i founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege,
l colleague G. E. Moore, and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein
o
s He is widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians
o
p mostly was a prominent anti-war activist; he championed anti-imperialism
h
y he advocated preventive nuclear war, before the opportunity provided by the
atomic monopoly is gone, and "welcomed with enthusiasm" world government
M
o
d
e
r
n
P
h
i
l
o
s
o
p
h
y
Thomas Bernhard, more
"the most perfect example I I won't say 'See you critically, wrote of this
M have ever known of genius tomorrow' because that period in Wittgenstein's life:
as traditionally conceived; would be like predicting the "the multi-millionaire as a
o passionate, profound, future, and I'm pretty sure I village schoolmaster is
can't do that.—
d intense, and dominating”
Wittgenstein, 1949
surely a piece of perversity."
e
r "I am not interested in
erecting a building, but in
n [...] presenting to myself the
foundations of all possible
Austrian-British philosopher buildings."— Wittgenstein
P who worked primarily
in logic, the philosophy of
h mathematics,
the philosophy of mind, and
i the philosophy of language
Death is not an event in
life: we do not live to
l experience death. If we
o take eternity to mean
not infinite temporal
s duration but
o Ludwig Josef timelessness, then
Johann eternal life belongs to
p Wittgenstein those who live in the
h present. Our life has no
end in the way in which
y our visual field has no
limits.--Wittgenstein,
Tractatus, 6.431
M
o
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n
P
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i
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o
s
o
p
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y
Ancient Greek philosophy
Ancient Greek
philosophy Cynicism
Pre-Socratic Pluralism and

Eleatic philosophy atomism
philosophy
Classical Greek
Milesian school Heraclitus philosophy
Xenophanes Pythagoreanism Hellenistic

Neoplatonism
philosophy
Many philosophers today
concede that Greek philosophy Some claim that
Ancient Greek has influenced much
Greek
of Western culture since its
philosophy inception philosophy, in
turn,was influenced by the older
wisdom literature and
arose in the 6th mythological cosmogonies of
century BCE and the ancient Near East. Martin
continued throughout Alfred North
Litchfield West gives qualified
the Hellenistic Whitehead once noted:
assent to this view, stating,
"The safest
period and the period "contact with
characterization general of
in which Ancient the European philosophica
oriental cosmology and theolo
Greece was part of gy helped to liberate the early
l tradition is that it
the Roman Empire. Greek
consists of a series of
philosophers' imagination
footnotes to Plato
it certainly gave
It dealt with a them many
wide variety of suggestive ideas.
subjects, Clear, unbroken lines
including political of influence lead
philosophy, ethics from ancient
, metaphysics, on
But they taught
Greek and Hellenistic themselves to
tology, logic, biol philosophers to Early
ogy, rhetoric, Islamic philosophy,
reason. Philosophy
and aesthetics the as we understand
European Renaissanc it is a Greek
e and the Age of creation."
Enlightenment.
Pre-Socratic
philosophy
considered They were
philosophically
The pre-
distinguished
useful because what Socratics were
came to be known as
from "non-
primarily philosophers"
the "Athenian
school" (composed concerned insofar as they
of Socrates, Plato, with cosmolog rejected
and Aristotle) mythological
signaled a profound
y, ontology an
shift in the subject d mathematics explanations in
matter and methods favor of reasoned
of philosophy discourse
Pre-Socratic philosophy
Democritus
Dēmókritos, meaning "chosen of the people"; c. 460 – c.
370 BC)
was an influential Ancient Greek pre-Socratic
philosopher today for his
primarily remembered
formulation of an atomic theory of
the universe
The theory of Democritus held that everything is composed
of "atoms", which are physically, but not geometrically,
indivisible; that between atoms, there lies empty space; that
atoms are indestructible, and have always been and always
will be in motion; that there is an infinite number of atoms
and of kinds of atoms, which differ in shape and size. Of the
mass of atoms, Democritus said, "The more any
indivisible exceeds, the heavier it is". But his exact
Democritus QUOTES
Protagoras
a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and is
numbered as one of the sophists by Plato. In his
dialogue, Protagoras, Plato credits him with
having invented the role of the professional
sophist.
He also is believed to have created a major controversy during
ancient times through his statement that, "Man is the measure
of all things", interpreted by Plato to mean that there is no
absolute truth, but that which individuals deem to be the truth
: "Man is the measure of all things: of the things that
are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they
are not."
". The truth, according to Protagoras, is relative, and differs according to
each individual.”
Prodicus of Ceos
was a Greek philosopher, and part of
the first generation of Sophists.
He came to Athens as ambassador from Ceos,

and became known as a speaker and a teacher.
Prodicus was part of the first generation of Sophists
"He was a Sophist in the full sense of a professional freelance
educator."
Prodicus required that the speech should be neither long nor short, but of
the proper measure, and it is only as associated with other sophists that he
is charged with endeavouring to make the weaker cause appear strong by
means of his rhetoric (thereby inspiring, e.g., Milton's description of Belial).
"His theory was that primitive man was so impressed with the gifts nature
provided him for the furtherance of his life that he believed them to be the
discovery of gods or themselves to embody the godhead. This theory was
not only remarkable for its rationalism but for its discernment of a close
connection between religion and agriculture."
Gorgias
a Greek sophist, Italiote, pre-Socratic
philosopher and rhetorician who was a native of Leontini in Sicily.
"Like other Sophists he was an itinerant, practicing in various cities and
giving public exhibitions of his skill at the great pan-Hellenic centers of
Olympia and Delphi, and charged fees for his instruction and
performances. A special feature of his displays was to invite
miscellaneous questions from the audience and give impromptu replies."
He has been called "Gorgias the Nihilist" although the degree
to which this epithet adequately describes his philosophy is
controversial
Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that
nothing can be known or communicated. It is associated with
pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence.
Gorgias
the work developed a skeptical argument, which has been
extracted from the sources and translated as below:
•Nothing exists;
•Even if something exists, nothing can be known
about it; and
•Even if something can be known about it, knowledge
about it can't be communicated to others.
•Even if it can be communicated, it cannot

be understood.
Pericles
a prominent and influential Greek statesman,
orator and general of Athens during
the Golden Age—specifically the time
between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.
“For men can endure to hear

others praised only so long as
they can severally persuade
themselves of their own ability to
equal the actions recounted:
when this point is passed, envy
comes in and with it incredulity.”
Pericles
Sir Richard C. Jebb concludes that "unique as an
Athenian statesman, Pericles must have been in
two respects unique also as an Athenian orator; first,
because he occupied such a position of personal
ascendancy as no man before or after him attained;
secondly, because his thoughts and his moral force
won him such renown for eloquence as no one else
ever got from Athenians"
Ancient Greek writers call Pericles
"Olympian" and extol his talents;
referring to him "thundering and
lightening and exciting Greece" and
carrying the weapons of Zeus when
orating
Marcus Tullius Cicero
a Roman philosopher, politician, lawyer, orator,
political theorist, consul,
and constitutionalist.
He came from a
wealthy municipal family of
the Roman equestrian order, and
is considered one of Rome's
greatest orators and prose stylists
Milesian school
Thales of Miletus ,
regarded by Aristotle as the first

philosopher, held that all things arise
from water. It is not because he gave
a cosmogony that John Burnet calls him
the "first man of science," but because
he gave a naturalistic explanation of
the cosmos and supported it with
reasons.
Milesian school
Thales of Miletus ,
According to tradition, Thales was able to

predict an eclipse and taught the Egyptians how
to measure the height of the pyramids
Thales inspired the Milesian school of

philosophy and was followed by Anaximander
Milesian school
Anaximander
who argued that the substratum or arche

could not be water or any of the classical
elements but was instead something
"unlimited" or "indefinite" (in Greek,
the apeiron ).
Milesian school
Anaximander
He began from the observation that the
world seems to consist of opposites
(e.g., hot and cold), yet a thing can
become its opposite (e.g., a hot thing
Therefore, they cannot trulycold).
be opposites but
rather must both be manifestations of some
underlying unity that is neither. This underlying
unity (substratum, arche) could not be any of
the classical elements, since they were one
For example, water
extremeis wet,
or another.
the opposite of dry,
while fire is dry, the opposite of wet
Milesian school
Anaximenes
in turn held that
the arche was air,
although John Burnet
argues that by this he
meant that it was a
transparent mist,
the aether.
Milesian school
Despite their varied answers, the
Milesian school was searching for a
natural substance that would remain
unchanged despite appearing in
different forms, and thus represents
one of the first scientific attempts to
answer the question that would lead to
the development of modern atomic
theory; "the Milesians," says Burnet,
"asked for the φύσις of all things."
Xenophanes
Xenophanes was born in Ionia, where the
Milesian school was at its most powerful, and
may have picked up some of the Milesians'
cosmological theories as a result
What is known is that he argued that each of
the phenomena had a natural rather than
divine explanation in a manner reminiscent of
Anaximander's theories
and that there was only one god, the world as a
whole,
and that he ridiculed the anthropomorphism of the
Greek religion by claiming that cattle would claim that
the gods looked like cattle, horses like horses, and
lions like lions,
just as the Ethiopians claimed that the gods were
snubnosed and black and the Thracians claimed
they were pale and red-haired
Xenophanes
Burnet says that Xenophanes was not, however, a
scientific man, with many of his "naturalistic"
explanations having no further support than that they
render the Homeric gods superfluous or foolish.
He has been claimed as an influence on Eleatic
philosophy, although that is disputed, and a
precursor to Epicurus, a representative of a total
break between science and religion.
Pythagoreanism
Pythagoras
lived at roughly the same time that Xenophanes did and, in
contrast to the latter, the school that he founded sought to
reconcile religious belief and reason.
Little is known about his life with any reliability,
however, and no writings of his survive, so it is
possible that he was simply a mystic whose
successors introduced rationalism into
Pythagoreanism,
that he was simply a rationalist whose successors
are responsible for the mysticism in
Pythagoreanism, or that he was actually the author
of the doctrine; there is no way to know for certain
Pythagoreanism
Pythagoras
Pythagoras is said to have been a disciple of Anaximander
and to have imbibed the cosmological concerns of the Ionians,
including the idea that the cosmos is constructed of spheres,
the importance of the infinite, and that air or aether is
the arche of everything
Pythagoreanism also incorporated ascetic ideals,

emphasizing purgation, metempsychosis, and
consequently a respect for all animal life; much
was made of the correspondence between
mathematics and the cosmos in a musical
harmony
Heraclitus
Heraclitus must have lived after Xenophanes and
Pythagoras, as he condemns them along with Homer as
proving that much learning cannot teach a man to think;
since Parmenides refers to him in the past tense, this
would place him in the 5th century BCE
Contrary to the Milesian school, who would have one
stable element at the root of all, Heraclitus taught that
"everything flows" or "everything is in flux," the
closest element to this flux being fire; he also extended
the teaching that seeming opposites in fact are
manifestations of a common substrate to good and evil
itself
Eleatic philosophy
Parmenides of Elea
cast his philosophy against those who held "it is and is
not the same, and all things travel in opposite
directions,"—presumably referring to Heraclitus and
Whereas the those whoof
doctrines followed him school, in
the Milesian
suggesting that the substratum could appear in a
variety of different guises, implied that everything that
exists that
Parmenides argued is corpuscular,
the first principle of being
was One, indivisible, and unchanging.
Eleatic philosophy
Parmenides of Elea
Being, he argued, by definition implies
eternality, while only that which is can be
thought; a thing which is, moreover, cannot be
more or less, and so the rarefaction and
condensation of the Milesians is impossible
regarding Being; lastly, as movement requires
that something exist apart from the thing
moving (viz. the space into which it moves), the
One or Being cannot move, since this would
Eleatic philosophy
Parmenides of Elea
While this doctrine is at odds with
ordinary sensory experience, where things
do indeed change and move, the Eleatic
school followed Parmenides in denying
that sense phenomena revealed the world
as it actually was; instead, the only thing
with Being was thought, or the question of
whether something exists or not is one of
Eleatic philosophy
Parmenides of Elea
In support of this, Parmenides' pupil Zeno of
Elea attempted to prove that the concept
of motion was absurd and as such motion did
not exist. He also attacked the subsequent
development of pluralism, arguing that it was
incompatible with Being.His arguments are
known as Zeno's paradoxes.
Pluralism and atomism
The power of Parmenides' logic was such that some
subsequent philosophers abandoned the monism of the
Milesians, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and Parmenides,
where one thing was the arche, and adopted pluralism,
such as Empedocles and Anaxagoras.
There were, they said, multiple elements which were not
reducible to one another and these were set in motion by
love and strife (as in Empedocles) or by Mind (as in
Anaxagoras)
Agreeing with Parmenides that there is no coming
into being or passing away, genesis or decay, they
said that things appear to come into being and pass
away because the elements out of which they are
composed assemble or disassemble while
themselves being unchanging.
Pluralism and atomism
Leucippus also proposed an
ontological pluralism with a
cosmogony based on two main
elements: the vacuum and atoms
These, by means of their inherent movement, are
crossing the void and creating the real material
bodies. His theories were not well known by the
time of Plato, however, and they were ultimately
incorporated into the work of his
student, Democritus
Sophistry
Sophistry arose from the juxtaposition
of physis (nature) and nomos (law).
John Burnet posits its origin in the scientific progress of the previous
centuries which suggested that Being was radically different from
what was experienced by the senses and, if comprehensible at all,
was not comprehensible in terms of order;
the world in which men lived, on the other hand, was
one of law and order, albeit of humankind's own
making
At the same time, nature was constant, while what
was by law differed from one place to another and
could be changed.
Sophistry
The first man to call himself a sophist, according
to Plato, was Protagoras, whom he presents as
teaching that all virtue is conventional
It was Protagoras who claimed that "man is the
measure of all things, of the things that are, that they
are, and of the things that are not, that they are not,"
which Plato interprets as a radical perspectivism,
where some things seem to be one way for one
person (and so actually are that way) and another
way for another person (and so actually are that way
as well); the conclusion being that one cannot look to
nature for guidance regarding how to live one's life
Socrates
Classical Greek philosophy
Socrates
Socrates
was a classical Greek (Athenian) philosopher credited
as one of the founders of Western philosophy.
He is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the
accounts of classical writers, especially the writings
of his students Plato and Xenophon and the plays of
his contemporary Aristophanes.
Plato's dialogues are among the most comprehensive
accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity,
though it is unclear the degree to which Socrates
himself is "hidden behind his 'best disciple', Plato".
Socrates
Through his portrayal in Plato's dialogues, Socrates has become
renowned for his contribution to the field of ethics, and it is this Platonic
Socrates who lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and
the Socratic method, or elenchus.
The latter remains a commonly used tool in a wide range of discussions,

and is a type of pedagogy in which a series of questions is asked not
only to draw individual answers, but also to encourage fundamental
insight into the issue at hand.
Plato's Socrates also made important and lasting contributions to the field
of epistemology, and his ideologies and approach have proven a strong
foundation for much Western philosophy that has followed.
Socrates

Socratic
paradoxes
Many of the beliefs traditionally attributed to the
historical Socrates have been characterized as
"paradoxical" because they seem to conflict with
common sense. The following are among the so-called
Socratic paradoxes:
•No one desires evil.
•No one errs or does wrong willingly or knowingly.
•Virtue—all virtue—is knowledge.
•Virtue is sufficient for happiness.
The term, "Socratic paradox" can also refer to a self-
referential paradox, originating in Socrates' utterance, "what I do not
know I do not think I know", often paraphrased as "I know that I know
nothing."
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Plato
philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder
of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of
higher learning in the Western world. He is widely
considered the most pivotal figure in the
development of philosophy, especially
the Western
Plato's entire œuvre tradition
is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400
years. figure for Western science,
In addition to being a foundational
philosophy, and mathematics, Plato has also often been cited as one of
the founders of Western religion and spirituality.
Plato was the innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic
forms in philosophy, which originate with him.
Plato
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes Plato as "...one of the
most dazzling writers in the Western literary tradition and one of the most
penetrating, wide-ranging, and influential authors in the history of
philosophy. ... He was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word
“philosopher” should be applied. But he was so self-conscious about how
philosophy should be conceived, and what its scope and ambitions
properly are, and he so transformed the intellectual currents with which he
grappled, that the subject of philosophy, as it is often conceived—a
rigorous and systematic examination of ethical, political, metaphysical,
and epistemological issues, armed with a distinctive method—can be called
his invention. Few other authors in the history of Western philosophy
approximate him in depth and range: perhaps only Aristotle (who studied
with him), Aquinas and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same
rank.
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Aristotle
a Greek philosopher and scientist born in the city
of Stagira, Chalkidice, on the northern periphery of Classical
Like his teacher Plato, Greece.
Aristotle's philosophy aims at
the universal.
Aristotle's ontology, however, finds the universal in particular things, which
he calls the essence of things, while in Plato's ontology, the universal exists
apart from particular things, and is related to them as
epistemology is basedtheir prototype
on the study ofor exemplar.
particular phenomena and rises to the
knowledge of essences, while for Plato epistemology begins with knowledge
of universal Forms (or ideas) and descends to knowledge of particular
For Aristotle, "form" imitations
still refers of
to these
the unconditional basis
of phenomena but is "instantiated" in a particular substance
Aristotle's method is both inductive and deductive, while Plato's is
essentially deductive from a priori principles
Aristotle
In Aristotle's terminology, "natural philosophy" is
a branch of philosophy examining the phenomena of the
natural world, and includes fields that would be regarded
today as physics, biology and other natural sciences.
Aristotle makes philosophy coextensive with reasoning, which he
also would describe as "science"
For Aristotle, "all science (dianoia) is either practical, poetical or
theoretical" (Metaphysics 1025b25). By practical science, he means
ethics and politics; by poetical science, he means the study of
poetry and the other fine arts; by theoretical science, he means
physics, mathematics and metaphysics.
Aristotle
If logic (or "analytics") is regarded as a study
preliminary to philosophy, the divisions of
Aristotelian philosophy would consist of:
(1) Logic;
(2) Theoretical Philosophy, including
Metaphysics, Physics and Mathematics;
(3) Practical Philosophy
and (4) Poetical Philosophy.
Aristotle
Aristotle's metaphysics contains
observations on the nature of numbers but he
made no original contributions to
mathematics.
Aristotle proposed a fifth element, aether, in addition to the four
proposed earlier by Empedocles
•Earth, which is cold and dry; this corresponds to the modern idea of a solid.
•Water, which is cold and wet; this corresponds to the modern idea of a liquid.
•Air, which is hot and wet; this corresponds to the modern idea of a gas.
•Fire, which is hot and dry; this corresponds to the modern ideas of plasma and
heat.
•Aether, which is the divine substance that makes up the heavenly spheres and
heavenly bodies (stars and planets).

Aristotle
Aristotle suggested that the reason for anything coming about
can be attributed to four different types of simultaneously
active causal factors
1. Material cause---- describes the

material out of which something is composed.
Thus the material cause of a table is wood, and
the material cause of a car is rubber and steel.
It is not about action. It does not mean one
domino knocks over another domino.
Aristotle
2. The formal cause---- is its form, i.e., the arrangement of that
matter. It tells us what a thing is, that any thing is determined by the
definition, form, pattern, essence, whole, synthesis or archetype. It embraces
the account of causes in terms of fundamental principles or general laws, as
the whole (i.e., macrostructure) is the cause of its parts, a relationship known
as the whole-part causation. Plainly put, the formal cause is the idea existing
in the first place as exemplar in the mind of the sculptor, and in the second
place as intrinsic, determining cause, embodied in the matter. Formal cause
could only refer to the essential quality of causation. A simple example of the
formal cause is the mental image or idea that allows an artist, architect, or
engineer to create his drawings.

Aristotle
3. The efficient cause- --- is "the primary source", or that from

which the change under consideration proceeds. It identifies 'what makes of
what is made and what causes change of what is changed' and so suggests
all sorts of agents, nonliving or living, acting as the sources of change or
movement or rest. Representing the current understanding of causality as the
relation of cause and effect, this covers the modern definitions of "cause" as
either the agent or agency or particular events or states of affairs. So, take
the two dominoes, this time of equal weighting, the first is knocked over
causing the second also to fall over.
Aristotle
4. The final cause----- is its purpose, or that for
the sake of which a thing exists or is done,
including both purposeful and instrumental actions
and activities. The final cause or teleos is the
purpose or function that something is supposed to
serve. This covers modern ideas of motivating
causes, such as volition, need, desire, ethics, or
spiritual beliefs.
Aristotle
metaphysics as "the
knowledge of immaterial being," or
of "being in the highest degree
of abstraction." He refers to
metaphysics as "first philosophy",
as well as "the theologic science."
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Hellenistic philosophy
The most notable schools of Hellenistic philosophy were:
•Neoplatonism: Plotinus(Egyptian), Ammonius
Saccas, Porphyry (Syrian), Zethos (Arab), Iamblichus (Syrian), Proclus
•Academic Skepticism: Arcesilaus, Carneades, Cicero (Roman)

•Pyrrhonian Skepticism: Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus
•Cynicism: Antisthenes, Diogenes of Sinope, Crates of Thebes (taught Zeno
of Citium, founder of Stoicism)
•Stoicism: Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Crates of Mallus (brought

Stoicism to Rome c. 170
BCE), Panaetius, Posidonius, Seneca (Roman), Epictetus (Greek/Roman), Marcus
Aurelius (Roman)
•Epicureanism: Epicurus (Greek) and Lucretius(Roman)

•Eclecticism: Cicero (Roman)
During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, many different
schools of thought developed in the Hellenistic
world and then the Greco-Roman world.
There
were Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Syrians and Arabs w
ho contributed to the development of Hellenistic
Elements of Persian philosophy and Indian
philosophy.
philosophy also had an influence.
The spread of Christianity throughout the
Roman world, followed by the spread of Islam,
ushered in the end of Hellenistic philosophy
and the beginnings of Medieval philosophy,
which was dominated by the
three Abrahamic traditions: Jewish
philosophy, Christian philosophy, and early
Islamic philosophy.
Transmission of Greek philosophy under Isla
During the Middle Ages, Greek ideas were largely forgotten in Western
Europe (where, between the fall of Rome and the East-West
Schism, literacy in Greek had declined sharply). Not long after the first
major expansion of Islam, however, the Abbasid caliphs authorized
the gathering of Greek manuscripts and hired translators to increase
their prestige. Islamic philosophers such as Al-Kindi (Alkindus), Al-
Farabi (Alpharabius), Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes)
reinterpreted these works, and during the High Middle Ages Greek
philosophy re-entered the West through translations from Arabic to
Latin. The re-introduction of these philosophies, accompanied by the
new Arabic commentaries, had a great influence on Medieval
philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas.
Neoplatonism
is a modern term used to designate a tradition
of philosophy that arose in the 3rd century AD and
persisted until shortly after the closing of the Platonic
Academy in Athens in AD 529 by Justinian I.
Neoplatonists were heavily influenced by Plato, but also
by the Platonic tradition that thrived during the six
centuries which separated the first of the Neoplatonists
It refers to the dynamic
fromphilosophical
Plato. tradition that
Neoplatonism was over the course of its history: to the
work of Plotinus, who is traditionally identified as the
founder of Neoplatonism, and to the many thinkers
after him, who developed, responded to and criticized
his ideas.
Plotinus
a major Greek-
speaking philosopher of the ancient
world
In his philosophy there are
three principles:
the One,
the Intellect,
and the Soul
(UK spelling scepticism; from Greek σκέψις skepsis,

"inquiry") is both a philosophical school of thought
and a method that crosses disciplines and cultures.
It is generally agreed that knowledge requires justification. It

is not enough to have a true belief: one must also have good
reasons for that belief. Skeptics claim that it is not possible
to have an adequate justification.
Skepticism is not a single position but covers a range of different

positions. In the ancient world there were two main skeptical traditions.
took the dogmatic position that knowledge was not possible;
refused to take a dogmatic position on any issue—including skepticism.
ends in the paradoxical claim that one cannot know anything—including

that one cannot know about knowing anything.
Skepticism can also be classified according to its

method. In the Western tradition there are two basic
approaches to skepticism.
,
named somewhat misleadingly after René Descartes who was not a
skeptic but used some traditional skeptical arguments in
his Meditations to help establish his rationalist approach to
knowledge, attempts to show that any proposed knowledge claim can
be doubted.
focuses on the process of justification rather than the possibility of

doubt.
Philosophical skepticism is distinguished

from methodological skepticism in that
philosophical skepticism is an approach that
questions the possibility of certainty in
knowledge, whereas methodological skepticism is
an approach that subjects all knowledge claims to
scrutiny with the goal of sorting out true from
false claims.
Skepticism can be classified according to its scope.
involves being skeptical about particular areas of knowledge, e.g. moral

skepticism, skepticism about the external world, or skepticism about other
minds,
whereas
is skeptical about the possibility of any knowledge at all.
was a school of skepticism founded

by Aenesidemus in the 1st century BCE and
recorded by Sextus Empiricus in the late 2nd
century or early 3rd century CE. It was named
after Pyrrho, a philosopher who lived from c. 360 to
c. 270 BCE, although the relationship between the
philosophy of the school and that of the historical
figure is unclear. A revival of the use of the term
occurred during the 17th century.
a modern, fundamental perspective of the scientific
method, as put forth by Karl Popper and Charles
Sanders Peirce, that all knowledge is, at best, an
approximation, and that any scientist must always
stipulate this in his or her research and findings. It
is, in effect, a modernized extension of
Pyrrhonism. Indeed, historic Pyrrhonists are
sometimes described by modern authors as
fallibilists. Modern fallibilists also are sometimes
described as pyrrhonists.
Pyrrho
a Greek philosopher of Classical Antiquity, was a student of
Eastern philosophy and is credited as being the first
Greek skeptic philosopher and the inspiration for the school known
as Pyrrhonism, founded by Aenesidemus in the 1st century BC.
Pyrrho is renowned for creating the first formal approach to
skepticism in Western Philosophy: Pyrrhonism.

Pyrrho summarized his philosophy as follows: "Whoever wants to be happy
(eudaimonia ) must consider these three questions: First, how

are pragmata (ethical matters, affairs, topics) by nature? Secondly, what attitude should we
adopt towards them? Thirdly, what will be the outcome for those who have this attitude?"
Pyrrho's answer is that "As for pragmata they are all adiaphora (undifferentiated
by a logical differentia), astathmēta (unstable, unbalanced, not measurable),
and anepikrita (unjudged, unfixed, undecidable). Therefore, neither our sense-perceptions
nor our doxai (views, theories, beliefs) tell us the truth or lie; so we certainly should not rely
on them. Rather, we should be adoxastous(without views), aklineis (uninclined toward this
side or that), and akradantous (unwavering in our refusal to choose), saying about
every single one that it no more is than it is not or it both is and is not or it neither is nor is
not.
Pyrrho
Adiaphora, astathmēta, and anepikrita
are strikingly similar to the
Buddhist Three marks of
existence, suggesting that Pyrrho's
teaching is based on what he learned in
India, which is what Diogenes Laertius
reported.
The main principle of Pyrrho's thought is expressed by the
word acatalepsia, which connotes the ability to withhold
assent from doctrines regarding the truth of things in their
own nature; against every statement its contradiction may be
advanced with equal justification.
Sextus Empiricus
was a physician and philosopher, and
has been variously reported to have
lived in Alexandria, Rome, or Athens.
His philosophical work is the most
complete surviving account of ancient
Greek and Roman skepticism.
Pyrrhonism is more a mental attitude or therapy than a
theory. It involves setting things in opposition and owing
to the equipollence of the objects and reasons, one
suspends judgement.
"We oppose either appearances to appearances
or objects of thought to objects of thought
or alternando."
Sextus Empiricus
The ten modes of Pyrrhonism
These ten modes or tropes were originally listed
by Aenesidemus.
•"The same impressions are not produced by the same objects owing to the
differences in animals."
•The same impressions are not produced by the same objects owing to the
•The same impressions

differences among human
are not produced by thebeings.
same objects owing to the
differences
•Owing to the "circumstances, among the
conditions senses.
or dispositions," the same objects
appear different. The same temperature, as established by instrument, feels very
different after an extended period of cold winter weather (it feels warm) than after
mild weather in the autumn (it feels cold). Time appears slow when young and fast
as aging proceeds. Honey tastes sweet to most but bitter to someone with
jaundice. A person with influenza will feel cold and shiver even though she is hot
with a fever.
.
•"Based on positions, distances, and locations; for owing to each of these the
same objects appear different." The same tower appears rectangular at close
distance and round from far away. The moon looks like a perfect sphere to the
human eye, yet cratered from the view of a telescope
Sextus Empiricus
The ten modes of Pyrrhonism
These ten modes or tropes were originally listed
by Aenesidemus.
•“We deduce that since no object strikes us entirely by itself, but along with something else,
it may perhaps be possible to say what the mixture compounded out of the external object
and the thing perceived with it is like, but we would not be able to say what the external
object is like by itself."
•"Based, as we said, on the quantity and constitution of the underlying objects, meaning
generally by "constitution" the manner of composition." So, for example, goat horn appears
black when intact and appears white when ground up. Snow appears white when frozen and
translucent as a liquid.
•"Since all things appear relative, we will suspend judgement about what things exist
absolutely and really existent.Do things which exist "differentially" as opposed to those
things that have a distinct existence of their own, differ from relative things or not? If they
do not differ, then they too are relative; but if they differ, then, since everything which differs
is relative to something..., things which exist absolutely are relative."
•"Based on constancy or rarity of occurrence." The sun is more amazing than a
comet, but because we see and feel the warmth of the sun daily and the comet
rarely, the latter commands our attention.[
•"There is a Tenth Mode, which is mainly concerned with Ethics, being based on
rules of conduct, habits, laws, legendary beliefs, and dogmatic conceptions."
Sextus Empiricus
Superordinate to these ten modes stand three other modes:
•I: that based on the subject who judges (modes 1, 2, 3 &

4).
•II: that based on the object judged (modes 7 & 10).
•III: that based on both subject who judges and object

judged (modes 5, 6, 8 & 9)
Superordinate to these three modes is the mode of

relation. [25]
Cynicism (philosophy)
a school of Ancient Greek philosophy as practiced by the
Cynics (Greek: Κυνικοί, Latin: Cynici). For the Cynics,
the purpose of life was to live in virtue, in agreement
with nature. As reasoning creatures, people could gain
happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way
which was natural for themselves, rejecting all
conventional desires for wealth, power, sex and fame.
Instead, they were to lead a simple life free from all
possessions
Cynicism is one of the most striking of all
the Hellenistic philosophies. It offered people the
possibility of happiness and freedom from
suffering in an age of uncertainty.
Although there was never an official Cynic doctrine, the fundamental
principles of Cynicism can be summarised as follows
•The goal of life is eudaimonia and mental clarity or lucidity (ἁτυφια) - freedom
from smoke (τύφος) which signified ignorance, mindlessness, folly, and conceit.
•Eudaimonia is achieved by living in accord with Nature as understood by
human reason.
•Arrogance (τύφος) is caused by false judgments of value, which cause
negative emotions, unnatural desires, and a vicious character.
•Eudaimonia, or human flourishing, depends on self-sufficiency
(αὐτάρκεια), equanimity, arete, love of humanity, parrhesia and indifference to
the vicissitudes of life (ἁδιαφορία).

•One progresses towards flourishing and clarity through ascetic practices (ἄσκησις)
which help one become free from influences – such as wealth, fame, and power –
that have no value in Nature. Examples include Diogenes' practice of living in a tub
and walking barefoot in winter.
•A Cynic practices shamelessness or impudence (Αναιδεια) and defaces the nomos of
society; the laws, customs, and social conventions which people take for granted.
Antisthenes
was a Greek philosopher and a pupil of Socrates.
Antisthenes first learned rhetoric under Gorgias before
becoming an ardent disciple of Socrates. He adopted and
developed the ethical side of Socrates' teachings,
advocating an ascetic life lived in accordance with virtue.
Later writers regarded him as the founder of Cynic
philosophy.
"He would prove that virtue can be taught; and that nobility belongs to none
other than the virtuous. And he held virtue to be sufficient in itself to ensure
happiness, since it needed nothing else except the strength of a Socrates.
And he maintained that virtue is an affair of deeds and does not need a store
of words or learning; that the wise man is self-sufficing, for all the goods of
others are his; that ill repute is a good thing and much the same as pain; that
the wise man will be guided in his public acts not by the established laws but
by the law of virtue; that he will also marry in order to have children from
union with the handsomest women; furthermore that he will not disdain to
love, for only the wise man knows who are worthy to be loved"
Antisthenes
he imbibed the fundamental ethical precept
that virtue, not pleasure, is the end of existence.
Everything that the wise person does, Antisthenes
said, conforms to perfect virtue, and pleasure is not
only unnecessary, but a positive evil. He is reported
to have held pain and even ill-repute
(Greek: ἀδοξία) to be blessings, and said that "I'd
The supreme good he placed rather be lived
in a life mad than feel pleasure".
according to virtue, – virtue
consisting in action, which when obtained is never lost, and exempts
the wise person from error.It is closely connected with reason, but to
enable it to develop itself in action, and to be sufficient for happiness, it
requires the aid of Socratic strength (Greek: Σωκρατικὴ ἱσχύς
Diogenes of Sinope
a Greek philosopher and one of the founders
of Cynic philosophy. Also known as Diogenes the
Cynic (Ancient Greek: Διογένης ὁ Κυνικός, Diogenēs ho
Kunikos), he was born in Sinope (modern-day
Sinop, Turkey), an Ionian colony on the Black Sea, in 412 or
404 BC and died at Corinth in 323 BC.
Diogenes is considered one of the founders
Diogenes maintainedof Cynicism
that all the artificial growths of society were
incompatible with happiness and that morality implies a return to
the simplicity of nature.
"Humans have complicated every simple gift of the
gods."
Crates of Thebes
was a Cynic philosopher. Crates gave away his money to live a life
of poverty on the streets of Athens. He married Hipparchia of
Maroneia who lived in the same manner that he did. Respected by
the people of Athens, he is remembered for being the teacher
of Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism. Various fragments of
Crates' teachings survive, including his description of the ideal
Cynic state.
"What will be in it for me after I become a philosopher?" "You will be

able," he said, "to open your wallet easily and with your hand scoop
out and dispense lavishly instead of, as you do now, squirming and
hesitating and trembling like those with paralyzed hands. Rather, if
the wallet is full, that is how you will view it; and if you see that it is
empty, you will not be distressed. And once you have elected to use
the money, you will easily be able to do so; and if you have none,
you will not yearn for it, but you will live satisfied with what you
have, not desiring what you do not have nor displeased with
whatever comes your way."
rnf
the present period in the history of Western
philosophy beginning at the end of the 19th century with
the professionalization of the discipline and the rise
of analytic and continental philosophy
The phrase "contemporary philosophy" is a piece of technical
terminology in philosophy that refers to a specific period in the history of
Western philosophy. However, the phrase is often confused with modern
philosophy (which refers to an earlier period in Western
philosophy), postmodern philosophy (which refers to continental
philosophers' criticisms of modern philosophy), and with a non-technical
use of the phrase referring to any recent philosophic work.

The term ‘contemporary philosophy’ refers to the
current era of philosophy, generally dealing with
philosophers from the late nineteenth century through
to the twenty-first.
The nineteenth century also began to see a division in the approach to

philosophy being taken in different areas of western philosophy. In the
United Kingdom and North America, a focus on logic, language and the
natural sciences was becoming predominent in philosophy, and this
tradition was labeled analytic philosophy. Those who did not find
themselves in this analytic trend were mostly based in Europe, and the
idea of continental philosophy was born. The names are already
considered obsolte, in some senses, but many philosophers still observe
a difference between the logical and scientific approach of analytic
philosophy and the existentialism, phenomenology and other
approaches of continental philosophy.
Karl Ludwig Thomas Hilary Frank Peter
Contemporary
Jaspers (1883– Wittgenstein ( Kuhn (1922– Putnam (1926 Jackson (1943 Singer (1946—
philosophers
1969) 1889–1951) 1996) —) —) )
Leo Franz Gabriel John Edmund Saul David

Tolstoy (1828– Kafka (1883– Marcel (1889– Rawls (1921– Gettier (1927 Kripke (1940— Chalmers (196
1910) 1924) 1973) 2002) —) ) 6— )
Charles
Henry M. Martin Albert Jürgen Alvin
Sanders
Sheffer (1882– Heidegger (188 Camus (1913– Habermas (192 Goldman (193
Peirce (1839–
1964) 9–1976) 1960) 9– ) 8– )
1914)
Friedrich Bertrand Rudolf W. V. O. Harry Robert

Nietzsche (184 Russell (1872– Carnap (1891– Quine (1908– Frankfurt (192 Nozick (1938–
4–1900) 1970) 1970) 2000) 9— ) 2002)
Gottlob Alfred North Gilbert Simone de Jaakko Thomas

Frege (1848– Whitehead (18 Ryle (1900– Beauvoir (1908 Hintikka (1929 Nagel (1937—
1925) 61–1947) 1976) –1986) —) )
Alexius Henri Alfred Kurt Jacques John

Meinong (185 Bergson (1859 Tarski (1901– Gödel (1906– Derrida (1930– Searle (1932—
3–1920) –1941) 1983) 1978) 2004) )
Giuseppe Edmund Karl Jean-Paul Alvin

Carl
Peano (1858– Husserl (1859– Popper (1902– Sartre (1905– Plantinga (193
Ginet (1932— )
1932) 1938) 1994) 1980) 2– )
was a Russian novelist, essayist and
playwright, most famous for his
works War and Peace and Anna
Karenina.
Tolstoy was a Christian and a strong believer in literal interpretations of Jesus'

teachings. His interpretations, however, focused on an internal devotion to God, and a
personal struggle for perfection, rather than a following of the Church or a quest for
guidance elsewhere.
Tolstoy strongly believed in nonviolence, and promoted nonviolent resistance to political

opression.
Tolstoy also contributed to disccusions of aesthetics. Tolstoy believed that the purpose of art
was to convey the emotions felt by the artist. Artistic expressions that fail to inspire similar
feelings in their audience fails to truly be a work of art.
was an American logician, mathematician and
scientist. British philosopher Bertrand
Russell said that Peirce was “certainly the
greatest American thinker ever”.
Along with William James, Peirce is considered a father

of pragmatism. However, this view actually comes from a
misinterpretation of Peirce’s early writings. As Bertrand
Russell puts it, the current conception of pragmatism “stems
not from Peirce, but from what William James thought Peirce
was saying”. Peirce later clarified his position and gave it the
label of ‘pragmaticism’ to try and separate his own position
from James’ interpretation.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
(1844–1900)
was a philosopher and philogist from Germany. He
wrote mainly critical works that attacked the prevailing
religious, cultural and philosophical views of his time.

Nietzsche’s work has contributed greatly to the
development of existentialism and so-
called continental philosophy.
Gottlob Frege (1848–1925)
was a German mathematician, philosopher and
logician who contributed greatly to the development
of symbolic logic and the launch of analytic
philosophy.
Logic
Frege's contributions to logic, which began with his 1879
work Begriffsschrift, brought the first major advancement in
logic since Aristotle. Frege described a new system of first-order
predicate logic that introduced quantification functions and
variables for the first time in a symbolic logic.
Frege, who began as a mathematician, wanted to show the
logical roots of mathematics. His system replaced Aristotelean
syllogistic logic with a wider range of capabilities that allowed
the expression of mathematical truths, as well as the
symbolization of informal linguistic reason.
Alexius Meinong (1853–1920)
An Austrian philosopher, is best known for
his theory of objects, a detailled ontology that
expresses the organization of objects, both
those in and apart from existence.
Meinong’s theory considers anything to be

an object (Gegenstand) if it can be
considered and examined by the mind.
Therefore, Meinong counts as objects not
only physical things, but also abstract
objects, such as numbers, and even things
that are impossible, such as round squares.

Alexius Meinong (1853–1920)
In general, Meinong divides objects into three

categories:
•Existent objects (Existenz), which

are actual objects in the physical, temporal
world
•Subsistent objects (Bestand), such
as numbers, which are objects that have non-
temporal, unextended being
•Being-given (Gegebenheit) or absistent

objects, which are objects without being, such as a
round square
Giuseppe Peano
(1858–1932)
was an Italian mathematician and logician.

Peano's Formulario
Mathematico
was an encyclopedia of mathematical formulae and
theorems expressed in a symbolic language. Many
of the symbols that Peano used in the Formulario
are still in use today.
In 1903, Peano announced that he had

developed an auxiliary language, Latino sine
flexione, which was a version of Latin with
heavily simplified grammar. Peano wrote
some of his works in Latino sine flexione
afterwords.
Giuseppe Peano
(1858–1932)
The Peano axioms,

a set of axioms for natural numbers
that Peano published, is named for
him. Peano's descriptions of
mathematics maintained a separation
of mathematical and logical
symbolization, and made use of the
symbolization developed by Gottlob
Frege.
Edmund Husserl (1859–1938)
was a German philosopher and professor who

founded the school of phenomenonology.
Husserl was born in what is now the Czech Republic. He

earned a Ph.D. in mathematics before attending lectures by
Franz Brentano, which lured him into philosophy.
Husserl was a teacher of Martin Heidegger, who

also served as Husserl's assistant. Heidegger's
main work, Being and Time was originally
dedicated to Husserl, although this dedication
was removed in 1941 out of fear that the Nazi
party would ban it. The relationship between the
two worsened after Heidegger began to support
the Nazi party.
Henri Bergson
(1859–1941)
was a French
Bergson expressed philosopher.
the importance of experience and
intuition in thought and the search for truth, as
companions no lesser than rational means of inquiry. He
sought a union between the notions of free will and
causality, rejecting the rigidity of scientific views on the
matter, insisting that free will provokes a creative
novelty that is not predetermined.
Henri Bergson
(1859–1941)
Duration
In order to articulate his view, Bergson presents a concept
of Duration, a theory of time, free will and consciousness. He
criticizes Immanuel Kant for the view that free will must exist
outside of time and space in order to be possible. Instead,
Bergson says that Kant treats time improperly. For Bergson,
time is not an extended, ordered progression, but a fluid,
dynamic medium that can be traversed by the will.
Because of the mobility of the Duration, it is not capable of being
fully understood by the rigid concepts of space — such as reason
and related inquiry. Instead, intuition plays a key role in the
understanding that cannot be accomplished merely by reasoning
from experiential data.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)
was an English mathematician, logician

and philosopher, perhaps best known as
co-author of Principia
Mathematica with Bertrand Russell, and
for his own Process and Reality.
Process and Reality

In Process and Reality, Whitehead describes his metaphysical
system, which he calls “philosophy of organism”. Whitehead
says that the fundamental components of reality are occasions
of experience. All things are a series of experiences, and those
experiences form out of reactions that depend on previous
experiences. However, these experiences are not
deterministic. Instead, process philosophy states that free will
is the inherent process of the universe, with experiences
dictating what is, rather than the other way around.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)
Process and Reality

Whitehead's metaphysics can be compared to that of Spinoza, who claims
that God is the single substance of which all things are made. However, for
Whitehead, God consists of all experiences, as well as all potential
experiences. Rather than being an omnipotent, all-powerful being, God's role
in Whitehead's philosophy is to provide possibilities for the universe, which
are then either accepted into experience or denied existence. God is still
omnipresent, as God experiences all of the things that come into being, or
“becoming” as process philosophers often say.
Whitehead's stance in metaphysics is somewhat surprising for a

prominent logician. However, as he was well-versed in physics,
Whitehead developed his version of process philosophy in part as
a reaction to the rapidly changing landscape of physics.
Witnessing the challenge to Newtonian physics brought by Albert
Einstein's relativity, as well as the bizzare new theories of
quantum mechanics, Whitehead's speculation that reality may
itself bend to experience may be seen, in part, as a reaction to the
alarming developments in the scientific world.
Bertrand Arthur William Russell
(1872–1970)
was a British philosopher and logician

of the twentieth century. He is
considered one of the founders
of analytic philosophy.
As a social philosopher, Russell is best known for being

a strong pacificst, offering criticism of various
governments from World War I to the Vietnam War.
Logic
Bertrand Russell was considered one of the top logicians of
the twentieth century. In addition to his own work, he is
largely responsible for bringing attention to the works
of Gottlob Frege, which largely reshaped the systems of logic,
and their notation, in use today. Russell also famously
highlighted a flaw in the set theory developed by Frege, in
which he discovered a contradiction known as Russell's
Paradox.
Henry M. Sheffer
(1882–1964)
was an American logician, perhaps best known for

the Sheffer stroke, a logical operator named in his
honour.
Sheffer was born in Ukraine and came to the United States as a

child. He studied philosophy at Harvard University, and spent
most of his career as a professor there.
Sheffer stroke
In 1913, Sheffer showed that an alternative denial, otherwise known as a nand
operation can be used to define every other truth-functional logical operator.
The symbol for the alternative denial ( | or ↑) is known as the Sheffer stroke after Henry
M. Sheffer.
Sheffer also demonstrated that an joint denial could be used for the same purpose,
though Charles Sanders Peirce had also made the same discoveries in 1880, but his
work was not published until 1933. The symbol for the joint denial ( ↓ ) is called the
Peirce arrow.
Franz Kafka
(1883–1924)
Novelist ,came from a middle-class Jewish

family in Prague. He lived with his parents for
most of his life, despite his hyper-sensitivity
to noise.
Kafka's works are known for

his blunt style and absurd
situations, particularly in
The Metamorphosis.
Karl Jaspers
(1883–1969)
was a German psychiatrist and

philosopher.
Jaspers' philosophy centered around what he called the "encompassing". This
transcendent reality, as he described, transcended that which we could percieve
naturally, and contained within it human existence. Jaspers, like Kierkegaard,
recognized the missing logic of his religious conclusion, but explained that his
"leap of faith" was a choice—which is, of course, an expression of his right.
.,
Jaspers also valued the scientific process, and felt that it was a
necessary stage in coming to understand the encompassing. He saw
understading the freedom of the individual in the concrete world—
and the obvious limits to that freedom—as the most important part of
existence, which led him to be classified as an existentialist (a
classifcation he rejected due to its apparent limitations). Jasper's
limits included mortality, conscience, conflict and chance.
Jaspers was also friends with Martin Heidegger,

although they became distant due to differences of
philosophy, as well as Heidegger's involvement with the
Nazi party.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1889–1951)
was a highly influential philosopher (or, as

some may say, an anti-philosopher) in the areas
of mathematics, language and mind.
His first major work, Tractatus Logico-

Philosophicus, was his only work published
during his lifetime. His other lectures and
essays all appeared after his death in 1951.
Wittgenstein is also famous for having largely revised

his philosophy later in his life. In his
later Philosophical Investigations, he reverses many
of the opinions that he had in the Tractatus. Thus,
when discussing Wittgenstein’s positions,
philosophers usually refer to either early Wittgenstein
or late Wittgenstein.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1889–1951)
Late Wittgenstein believed that philosophical problems

did not represent real problems, but problems of
language. The major questions that philosophers have
pondered over for hundreds of years were caused by
confusion in language. By examining the sources of
confusion, Wittenstein suggests that the problems
themselves disappear, without the need of a solution
within the framework of language.
As for the assignment of meaning to words, Wittgenstein

points out that the relationship between uses of some words is
analogous to the relationship of family resemblance.
Wittgenstein famously says in Philosophical Investigations that his

efforts in philosophy are to show “the fly the way out of the fly bottle”
— to help philosophy escape the traps of language in which it is
currently caught.
Gabriel Marcel
(1889–1973)
was a french philosopher and

christian existentialist. He dubbed
himself as a "concrete philosopher",
stressing becoming more involved in
one's existence rather than forming
abstract ideas. Marcel viewed
philosophy as an inner reflection
rather than the formation of a
doctrine.
was a German philosopher and student
Martin Heidegger of Edmund Husserl. Heidegger made
(1889–1976) contributions
to phenomenonology and existentialism.
Being and Time

Heidegger spent most of his career dealing with the concept of being, and his most
famous work, Being and Time, is an exploration of the nature of being. Being,
Heidegger thought, has been neglected since the birth of Western philosophy. The
ancient Greek philosophers began a tradition, according to Heidegger, by describing
being only by objects that are beings, rather than attempting to understand the nature
of being — that is, what it means to be
Heidegger explains that being, unlike other

verbs which are, in language, treated equally,
is something entirely different. He describes
being as a phenomenological construct, highly
dependant on human understanding, saying
famously, "Only as phenomenology, is
ontology possible."
Martin Heidegger Being and Time
(1889–1976)
Whereas more traditional accounts of being, and of
existence, describe objects with properties as
independant from conciousness, Heidegger argues that
our understanding of being is fundamental to it.
A major part of Heidegger's account of being is Dasein. The

German word Dasein means "existence", but in Heidegger's
use it more specifically refers to the understanding of beings
that understand being. Heidegger rejects the objects and
subjects of previous philosophers, such as Kant and Descartes,
and describes Dasein as being-in-the-world, (In-der-Welt-
sein). Heidegger explains that previous philosophers have
mistakenly viewed the concious thinker as a subject on its own.
Instead, he says, people (or thinkers, or Dasein) are always in
the world, interacting with it, influenced by their mood and
generally concerned about being, whether actively or "dimly".
Martin Heidegger
(1889–1976)
Heidegger and the Nazi Party

Heidegger's contributions were largely disregarded in the years during and after
World War II due to his activity in the German Nazi party from 1933 to 1945.
While his political actions may not be honorable or respected today, many of his
philiophical works are valuable contributions when seperated from the man
himeself. (Heidegger's support of the Nazi party even seems to contradict some of
his existentialist views). Heidegger objected to being labeled as an existentialist
because the title put him in the same category as Albert Camus and Heidegger's
former student Jean-Paul Sartre, whom he did not want to be associated with due
to their French political standings. Although Being and Time is dedicated to him,
Heidegger eventually rejected the phenomenology developed by Husserl, mostly
due to his Jewish lineage. Heidegger gave a series of lectures on Friedrich
Nietzsche, although many saw this as a perversion of Nietzsche's work used to
support Nazi doctrine.
Still, many of the concepts were shared between all of these

writers. Heidegger particularly believed in freedom of choice, and
the responsibility for one's actions that naturally followed. Even
under pressure, man is still capable of choice, he explains, and
outside influence cannot be blamed for the actions of an
individual.
Rudolf Carnap
(1891–1970)
was a German philosopher, best known for his

views of logical positivism.
Logical positivism is generally the

epistemological view that knowledge is gained
through empiricism along with logical
(including mathematical) deduction. Carnap
rejects metaphysics, believing that it is to be
replaced by proper scientific inquiry, armed
with logical deductions from observation
alone. Carnap originally claimed that
metaphysics was a meaningless pursuit, but
later refined his view to state that it was
lacking in cognitive content, and thus provides
no meaning to science.
Gilbert Ryle
(1900–1976)
was a British philosopher who focused
on philosophy of mind, and of language.
He famously coined the term “the ghost in the machine” to refer to

the soul in the dualism promoted by René Descartes. Ryle believed
that the mind is not a distinct entity, seperate from the body, and
that mental processes are merely a description of the physical
processes within the physical brain.
Ryle also introduced the term “category mistake” when describing

the problems of dualism. He saw mind-body dualism as redundant
in its description, and that when speaking of mind as a seperate
entity, philosophers were making a mistake of category by placing
mental events on the same level as physical ones.
Gilbert Ryle
(1900–1976)
In The Concept of Mind, Ryle provides other

examples of category mistakes to illustrate
his point. He supposes that someone is being
shown around a university. During the tour,
the person is shown the various academic departments,
libraries, museums, sports fields, classrooms and offices. The
person then responds, “I've seen the departments, libraries,
museums, sports fields, classrooms and offices … but where is
the university?”. In this example, the person commits a
category mistake by supposing that the abstract concept of the
university is something separate, in the same category (or on
an equal level of existence) as the classrooms, libraries, etc.
Alfred Tarski
(1901–1983)
was a Polish logician and mathematician, most

famous in philosophy for his semantics of logic and
development of set theory. He is considered to be one
of the most important logicians of all time.
Tarski developed a system by which a semantics from a metalanguage (such as

English) can be applied to an object language of symbolic logic, allowing logicians to
examine not only the syntactic relationship between logical expressions, but the
semantics as well.
Tarski's model theory provides the ability for notions that are symbolized by logic and
mathematics to themselves be derived from the object languages of logic. His method
involves creating models for logical expressions, in which certain propositions or
predicate symbols are considered to be true or false on a given model or
interpretation.
From this, Tarski developed the notion of logical consequence as a relation between
some premises and a conclusion, stating that the conclusion is the logical
consequence of its premises if and only if every model of those premises (that is,
every interpretation which makes those premises true) is also a model of the
conclusion (one which makes the conclusion true).
Karl Popper
(1902–1994)
is best known as one of the most prominent

philosophers of science.
Popper says that in order for a theory to be scientific

in nature, it must be potentially falsifiable — that is, any hypothesis is
only scientific in nature if it there is some logical possibility that would
falsify that hypothesis. On the other hand, unfalsifiable things, such as
logical truths or religious claims, are not scientific in nature — there is no
way to prove them to be false.
According to Popper, scientific claims are never fully verified, they are
only corroborated very consistently by experience. As long as there
remains a logical possibility that any claim is false, it cannot be claimed to
be true with perfect confidence. Hence, science must admit, and always
be aware of, the problem of induction. Rather than making claims which
may turn out to be false, it is the duty of science to propose falsifiable
hypothesis and then, over the course of time, test them and adjust
theories accordingly.
Jean-Paul Sartre
(1905–1980)
was a French writer and philosopher who is one of

the leading figures in 20th-century existentialism.
He imagines men as lonely creatures in a
meaningless world. He emphasizes the importance
of choice and responsibility. Sartre's influences
include many of the German
philosophers, especially Heidegger, of
whom he was a student. He also had a
close relationship with femenist
writer Simone de Beauvoir.
Kurt Gödel
(1906–1978)
was an Austrian-American mathematician

and philosopher, and one of the most
important logicians in history.
Incompleteness Theorems
Gödel is perhaps best known for his two incompleteness theorems
which demonstrate the limits of existing systems of logic and
mathematics.
The first theorem states that any sound axiomatic system of number
theory is incomplete — that is, there are true things that can be
expressed in the system but are unprovable (or undecidable).
The second theorem states that any theory sophisticated enough to
formally express its own soundness (i.e., consistency) within its system
can do so if and only if it is unsound (i.e., inconsistent).
Simone de Beauvoir
(1908-1986)
was a French author and philosopher.
Simone de Beauvoir was also close friend and

lover to Jean-Paul Sartre and was a frequent editor
of his works.
In addition to Sartre, de Beauvoir had a great

interest in the works of many other philosophical
thinkers of her time, including Albert Camus. On
her own, she is most recognized for her work The
Second Sex which most clearly establishes de
Beauvoir’s feminist views.

Willard Van Orman Quine
(1908–2000)
was an analytic philosopher and logician. Quine

made contributions to the discussion
of epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy
of mind and logic.
Quine is best known for his naturalism, namely

his physicalist theory of mind and his behaviourism with regards to
language. He is known for his naturalized epistemology in
particular, in which he rejects traditional methods of epistemology
in favour of examining the empirical data around human stimulation
and formation
“Two Dogmas of Empiricism”

In a 1951 paper, Quine asserted that there is no important
distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, arguing that
there is no real distinction between those beliefs which are
believed and asserted confidently, and those statements which are
said to be necessarily true.
Albert Camus
A French writer from Algeria, was
famous for his deep, yet concise, literary
pieces. In addition to his novels, essays
and plays, Camus was a journalist, and
during World War II, a member of the
French resistance against German
occupation. His philosophy, which is
described in his essay,
The Myth of Sisyphus,
centers around the absurdity
of the human condition.
Camus was labeled as an
existentialist but rejected the title.
Albert Camus
Camus brings a certain humanism to
the existing existentialism of his time.
While all of his characters are aware
(or quickly become aware) of the
absurd, they all rebel against their
circumstances. Camus
illustrates his views
with his stories of
characters
who live by that philosophy.
John Rawls
(1921–2002)
was an American political philosopher, and a

professor at Cornell, MIT and Harvard.
Rawls is most famous for A Theory of Justice, in which
he argues for a version of the social contract which
defines “justice as fairness”.
The Original Position

Rawls believed that the social contract must be drawn up from
an original position in which everyone decides on the rules for
society from behind a veil of ignorance. The veil of ignorance is
essentially a manner of blinding oneself from ones own social
status. It is only from behind this veil that one can truly develop a
fair society. When considering whether or not slavery is
permissible, for example, one must not know whether one is
going to be a slave or a slave-owner.
The Original Position
From this original position, Rawls believes that two principles of justice arise.
The first is the liberty principle, the idea that all people should have access to
their basic liberties — freedom of speech, political freedoms, personal property
and freedom from arbitrary arrest — insofar as those liberties are compatible
with the same liberties of other people.
The second principle, the difference principle, states that inequalities in social
and economic distribution must be arranged so that they provide the greatest
benefit to those with the least advantage. That is, if goods are being distributed
in a society, those who need them most should be given priority to receieve
them.
Rawls claims that we must arrive at this conclusion from the original position
because we do not want factors beyond our control to dictate the opportunities
we have in life. If we are born at a disadvantage, into a poor family, for example,
we must be given the opportunity to overcome it in a way that puts us on equal
ground with those who did not have to overcome the same obstacles.
An asteroid in the solar system's main belt was named in honour of John Rawls,
called 16561 Rawls.
Thomas Kuhn
was an American professor of history and
philosophy, who wrote and lectured about
the history and philosophy of science.
His most important work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1964),

focuses on the notion of paradigm shifts in science. According to Kuhn,
science does not progress in a linear fashion, but rather through a series
of revolutions in which our understanding of science abruptly and
radically changes. Revolutions inspired by Copernicus, Newton and
Einstein are examples of paradigm shifts.
During the periods between paradigm shifts, scientists are engaged in the
more mundane exercise of applying the knowledge of the current
paradigm to current situations, and finding new data to enforce it. Data
that seem to contradict the paradigm are seen as errors on the part of the
everyday scientist, rather than anything that may be wrong with the
paradigm itself.
Hilary Putnam (1926– )
is an American philosopher, best known for his
work in epistemology, philosophy of language
and philosophy of science.
Mind: Brain in a Vat

Putnam offers a well-known thought experiment on the
issue of scepticism: the brain in a vat. In it, he supposes
that a brain in a vat, which is fed sensory data identical to
that it would normally receive, has now way of knowing
whether it is a brain in a vat or a brain in a skull.
Essentially, the problem highlights the epistemic problem
of confirming the existence of an external world.
Edmund L. Gettier III (1927– )
is an American philosopher and professor.
He is best known for his contribution to epistemology.
Gettier is best known for a very short but

surprisingly groundbreaking article, “Is Justified True Belief
Knowledge?”. In this article, he presents what would become
known as the Gettier counterexamples, which challenged the
accepted definition of knowledge. Since Plato, philosophers
have generally considered knowledge to be justified true belief.
The counterexamples presented by Gettier are those of beliefs
that seem to have justification in their belief, and inferences
based on those beliefs which turn out to be true by some
degree of chance.
The Gettier counterexamples sparked a renewed interest in

epistemology and a new question of epistemic luck, as many
began the attempt to either save the defininition of knowledge
from Gettier, or expand it. Others, still, have found further
counterexamples which question further the definition of
knowledge.
Jürgen Habermas (1929– )
is a German philosopher and sociologist.
Habermas is perhaps best known for his

theory of communicative reason, a theory
of human rationality which credits
communication as the original cause of
reason. Communicative reason places the
human faculty and conception of reason
within the structures of communication,
rather than as something immediately
inherent to the individual or present as a
feature of the universe.
Harry Frankfurt (1929— )
is perhaps best known to the public for his recent books, On Bullshit and On
Truth. On Bullshit was originally written in 1986 as a paper, and was
published in 2005 as a book. The brief text became a bestseller, and
Frankfurt wrote On Truth as a follow up. The first book is a philosophical
investigation into the specific sort of deception, while the follow-up discusses
the apparent decline in society’ value of the truth. Frankfurt received some
fame by appearing on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart twice as a guest,
once for each of these books.
Free will and responsibility

In philosophy, Frankfurt is perhaps best known for
his ideas on the topic of free will and moral
responsibility. He provided the Frankfurt
counterexamples to the principle of alternative
possibilities (PAP). These examples featured people
who had no real choice of whether or not they
would perform some morally impermissible act, but
nevertheless demonstrated some sense of free will
in their decision.
Jaakko Hintikka (1929– )
is a Finnish logician and philosopher,
and professor of philosophy at Boston University.
Epistemic Logic
Hintikka presented a method of doing epistemic logic, a
contextual logic meant to symbolize sentences about
knowledge and belief. In his 1962 book Knowledge and
Belief, he provides new operators which closely resemble
those of modal logic:
•Ka := a knows that…
•Pa := It is possible, for all a knows, that…
•Ba := a believes that…
•Ca := It is compatible with everything a knows that…
Jacques Derrida
(1930–2004)
Born in French
Algeria, became a
prominent figure in
continental philosophy,
and is known as the
founder of deconstruction.
Carl Ginet (1932— )
is an American philosopher.
Carl Ginet is also credited with the barn-
façades counterexample to both
the traditional and causaldefinitions of
knowledge. The barn example first appears
in Alvin Goldman’s paper, “Discrimination
and Perceptual Knowledge” as a challenge to
Goldman’s own causal theory.
Alvin Plantinga (1932– )
is an American philosopher, and professor at the University of
Notre Dame. He is known for his contributions
to epistemology and metaphysics, and, as a Christian, for his
philosophy of religion and defense of Christian beliefs.
Christian philosophy
Plantinga argues that one can have knowledge of God without
justification, in the same way that one can have knowledge of the
existence of other minds. He argues that one may doubt both from
scepticism, but ultimately one must accept both in order to be consistent.
Additionally, Plantinga also argues that there is no “problem of evil”, and

that there is no logical contradiction between the existence of an
omnipoetent, benevolent god and the evil that occurs in the world.
Plantinga argues that God created human beings with free will, and that
free will is necessary for good to exist. Thus, in order for there to be good,
God must allow some evil to exist in the world, otherwise there would be
no free creatures capable of moral good.
Alvin Plantinga (1932– )
Modal Ontological Argument

Plantinga has offered one of many formalizations of Anselm’s ontological argument in modal logic,
the logic of neccessity and possibility. His argument may be summarized as follows:
•Premise: In some possible world, Δ, a being has maximal excellence if, and only if,
that being is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent at Δ
•Premise: A being has maximal greatness if it has maximal excellence at every
possible world.
•Premise: Maximal greatness is possible.
•So, it is possibly neccessary that an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent
being exists.
•So, it is necessary that an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent being exists.
•Therefore, an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent exists.
Plantinga’s argument assumes a modal logic of S5, in which (4) is possible—that is, things that are
possibly neccessary are necessary. The main objection to his argument, however, is with (3), that
maximal greatness is possible as Plantinga has defined it.
John Searle (1932—)
is an analytic philosopher and
professor of philosophy at the
University of California, Berkeley. He is
known for his contributions to
the philosophy of mind and philosophy
of language.
Chinese Room
John Searle is well known for producing
the chinese room argument against strong
artificial intelligence (AI). Strong AI theorists
often suggest that if an artificial intelligence were
created that could perform all of the functions of
a human being, it would have experiences and
understanding, just as humans do.

Chinese Room
To argue against this, Searle first gives the example of

a computer that has been built to read Chinese
characters. The computer then takes these characters,
and following its programming, produces a
meaningful output in Chinese. The computer is
sophisticated enough to fool any Chinese speaker into
believing that they are communicating with another
Chinese-speaking human. A strong AI theorist would
argue that the computer's ability to take Chinese
characters, interperet them and produce meaningful
results implies that the
computer understands Chinese.

Chinese Room
Searle challenges this assertion by giving an

alternative version of the machine. This time,
an English-speaking person is sitting in a closed
room, and has a book, written in English, with the same instructions
that the computer's program has. The person is supplied with all of
the materials they would need to write Chinese characters, and the
book instructs them, based on the shapes of the characters provided
to them, how to draw the forms of Chinese characters as a response.
Chinese-speakers are then able to slip messages through or under the
door, where the English speaker follows his English instructions
based on the character and, properly following them, produces
meaningful responses in Chinese, just as the computer does. A
Chinese-speaker is similarly fooled into believing that the room (or
the person in it) speaks Chinese.
Chinese Room
Searle points out the obvious: that

the person performing the task in
the Chinese Room does not
understand Chinese, despite the fact
that the procedures he follows are
essentially equivalent to those of the
computer.
Thomas Nagel (1937—)
is an American philosopher and professor at New
York University. He has made contributions
to philosophy of mind, ethics and political
philosophy.
Nagel is perhaps most famous for his 1974

paper, “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?”. In it, Nagel
argues that there is something fundamentally
important about conciousness that is often
overlooked — namely, that an organism has
mental states and is conscious if there is
something it is like to be that organism. A pure
reduction of mental states to physical brain
states is therefore incomplete — we must
account for what it is like to be in mental states.

Robert Nozick (1938–2002)
was an American social and political philosopher
and a professor at Harvard.
Political Philosophy
Nozick's most influential work is Anarchy, State and
Utopia. This 1974 book is largely a response to A Theory of Justice from John
Rawls.
While Rawls sought an egalitarian view of justice that saw the government
correcting arbitrary social inequalities, Nozick strongly argued that the role of a
government should be minimal. All the state should be concerned with is “the
narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of
contracts, and so on” (“Anarchy, State and Utopia”, xi). Nozick claimed that human
beings rights were so strong that the idea of a government having any power over
people was highly questionable. As a result, the only thing a government ought to
be able to do is to provide protection for certain individual rights from other
people.
Robert Nozick (1938–2002)
Political Philosophy
Nozick argues for a libertarian political philosophy in which people
are generally free, and the government's only role, and the only
reason against anarchy, is for the protection of people. Such a state
would arise naturally out of anarchy, but nothing beyond this
minimalist agency could be justified.
Epistemology
Nozick also contributed to epistemology with his tracking
theory of knowledge. Nozick offered conditions for
knowledge that deal with Gettier counterexamples to the
traditional definition of knowledge by ensuring that
knowledge reliably keeps track of the truth.
Alvin Goldman (1938–
is an American professor of philosophy, best
known for his contributions to epistemology.
Epistemology
Goldman contributed to epistemology a causal theory of
knowledge, which provided a new account of what
knowledge is, in response to the Gettier counterexamples.
Goldman also presented a commonly-used counterexample
invented by Carl Ginet, which, unlike Gettier’s examples,
does not rely on an inference from a false premise. Ginet’s
example is known as the barn-façades example, and
presented Goldman’s causal theory with a counterexample.
Goldman is also interested in the social aspects of
epistemology, and currently serves as editor of Episteme, A
Journal of Social Epistemology.

Saul Kripke (1940—)
is a logician and professor of philosophy
best known for his contributions to logic,
epistemology and philosophy of language.
Kripke semantics
Kripke semantics is a method of providing semantics for non-
classical logical systems. In the 1930s, Alfred Tarski provided a model
theory for classical logics, but until Kripke, no such theory existed
for modal logic. To remedy this, Kripke created the possible world
semantics, which described the modal operators
of neccessity and possibility in the context of truth in multiple
possible worlds.
Kripke described a model in modal logic as an object consisting of a
set of possible worlds, W, a set of binary relations between
them, R and a relation between individual worlds and formulae that
are true in those worlds, ⊩. Such a model is expressed through the
notation 〈W, R, ⊩〉.
Saul Kripke (1940—)
Kripke semantics
Thus, necessity and possibility can be semantically

defined: Something is necessarily true in some world
when it is true in all worlds accessible to that world,
and something is possibly true in a world when it is
true in at least one possible world accessible to it.
Kripke's semantics have drawn a renewed interest in

modal logic and many developments in their study. It
has also brought questions from those such as Quine,
who ask to what one is referring when discussing
possible worlds, and whether or not such semantics
commit one to affirming their existence.
Frank Jackson (1943— )
Australian philosopher, has contributed to the
areas of philosophy of
mind, epistemology and metaphysics.
Mary’s Room
Jackson is often cited for his knowledge argument against physicalism in philosophy of mind. Mary’s
Room thought experiment in philosophy of mind.
The argument supposes that a woman, Mary, spends her life in a room where she was unable to see
any colour, but nevertheless learns all of the physical facts about colour and colour perception.
Jackson then considers what happens when Mary leaves the room and sees colour for the first time.
Since it seems obvious that Mary learns something knew upon seeing colour, the existence of
something apart from the physical world is demonstrated.
Initially, Jackson used Mary’s Room in order to support his dualist response to the mind-body
problem, but later decided that the knowledge argument is more intuitive than it is scientific, and it
is actually misleading.
Peter Singer (1946— )
is a well-known moral philosopher,
best known for his utilitarian stance on
ethics.
The central idea of Peter Singer’s

utilitarian moral philosophy is as
follows: If you can prevent the misery of
others without causing
similar misery or
sacrifice for yourself,
you ought to.
World poverty
Singer is known in part for his stance against world
poverty. Singer criticizes the gap between the wealthy
and the poor, claiming that the fact that some people
live with great wealth while others are unable to meet
their basic needs is morally impermissible. It is well
within the means of the developed, wealthy people of
the world to prevent the widespread poverty in other
areas, and the wealthy would not have to make a
sacrifice anywhere near the level that the poor
currently endure. Singer holds that our prefrence of
our own comfort over everyone else’s is unethical, and
perhaps even irrational.
Animal Liberation
Singer’s 1975 book Animal Liberation has
become an important text outside of the
philosophical community among those
promoting animal welfare. In Animal
Liberation, Singer says that society is guilty
of “speciesism”—in that it favours the well-
being of the human species, with nearly
universal disregard for all of the other
species on the planet.
David Chalmers (1966— )
The Australian philosopher , is best known for
his work in philosophy of mind. He is a professor
at the Australian National University.
Chalmers first addresses the difference

between the two types of problems in the science of
the mind. The easy problems, he says, are the ones that have to do with
how the brain functions and handles specific tasks. The hard problem,
however, is how and why the brain gives rise to consciousness at all.
Although many theories address the weak problems, Chalmers does not
agree that the hard problem is addressed at all by the scientific
community.
He then argues for a version of property dualism. In making is his point,

Chalmers invokes the Mary’s Room thought experiment from Frank
Jackson. He supposes that if someone (Mary, in the example) spends
her whole life without seeing colour, yet learns all of the physical and
neurological facts about it, she still learns something new about colour
when she sees it for the first time with her own eyes.
Chalmers believes that this argument proves the
existence of a non-physical fact about
consciousness. Therefore, there must be
something beyond the physical world as it is
known that must account for consciousness. He points out
that physics attempts to provide a “theory of everything”,
but it will continually fail to do so as long as it fails to
include consciousness in its considerations.
As with previous unexplained phenomena, Chalmers

supposes that the solution is to add a fundamental feature
in order to close the explanatory gap between physics and
consciousness. He argues that there must be some new
mental properties, what he calls “psychophysical laws”,
that must be accounted for, and that those properties must
not be reducible to the physical properties of the brain.
Chalmers doesn”t suppose to know what those
things are, however. He speculates that it may be
the case that information theory will come into
play — that information-bearing systems give rise
to a certain experiential property. The more complex the
system, the greater that experiential property becomes,
until it becomes conscious.
A potential problem with this speculation, which Chalmers

acknowledges, is that it may imply the consciousness of
things that we would not normally consider to have
consciousness at all. For instance, Chalmers wonders if
this means that a thermostat may have some experiential
properties, even if they are especially dull. He does not
commit to the notion that they do, but the possibility
remains in the more speculative area of his thought.
BESTLINK COLLEGE OF THE PHILIPPINES
1071 Brgy. Kaligayahan, Quirino Highway, Novaliches, Quezon City
This Power Point Presentation is a pre-requisite for

completion of requirements in Philo1 (Introduction
to Philosophy with Logic)
Professor: Mr. Ferdinand Pantorilla
Created by: BSED 2201

1st Semester
A.Y. 2016-2017
BESTLINK COLLEGE OF THE PHILIPPINES
1071 Brgy. Kaligayahan, Quirino Highway, Novaliches, Quezon City
This Power Point Presentation is a pre-requisite for

completion of requirements in Philo1 (Introduction
to Philosophy with Logic)
CREATED BY :
Mamaril, Rose Fatima L.

Metaphysics, Epistemology and Value Theory: A Concise Overview

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from Greek φιλοσοφία, philosophia,

literally “love of wisdom”

is the study of general and

Classic philosophical questions include: Is it

However, philosophers might also pose more

For example, Newton's 1687 Mathematical

metaphysics ("concerned with the

epistemology (about the "nature and grounds

ethics, aesthetics, political

Natural ("physics") was the study of the

Moral ("ethics") was the study of goodness,

("logos") was the study

Logic, science and mathematics

is the study of the most

Philosophy Philosophy of Philosophy of

e Philosophy of education analyzes the

e A major issue in the philosophy of mathematics revolves around

"a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the

i Values of life and of a positive value

d Charles formal branch

Pre-Socratic Pluralism and

Xenophanes Pythagoreanism Hellenistic

He came to Athens as ambassador from Ceos,

•Even if it can be communicated, it cannot

“For men can endure to hear

regarded by Aristotle as the first

According to tradition, Thales was able to

Thales inspired the Milesian school of

who argued that the substratum or arche

Pythagoreanism also incorporated ascetic ideals,

Classical Greek philosophy

The latter remains a commonly used tool in a wide range of discussions,

Classical Greek philosophy

heavenly bodies (stars and planets).

1. Material cause---- describes the

engineer to create his drawings.

3. The efficient cause- --- is "the primary source", or that from

•Academic Skepticism: Arcesilaus, Carneades, Cicero (Roman)

•Stoicism: Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Crates of Mallus (brought

•Epicureanism: Epicurus (Greek) and Lucretius(Roman)

(UK spelling scepticism; from Greek σκέψις skepsis,

It is generally agreed that knowledge requires justification. It

Skepticism is not a single position but covers a range of different

took the dogmatic position that knowledge was not possible;

refused to take a dogmatic position on any issue—including skepticism.

ends in the paradoxical claim that one cannot know anything—including

Skepticism can also be classified according to its

focuses on the process of justification rather than the possibility of

Philosophical skepticism is distinguished

Skepticism can be classified according to its scope.

involves being skeptical about particular areas of knowledge, e.g. moral

was a school of skepticism founded

Pyrrho is renowned for creating the first formal approach to

skepticism in Western Philosophy: Pyrrhonism.

(eudaimonia ) must consider these three questions: First, how

•The same impressions

Superordinate to these ten modes stand three other modes:

•I: that based on the subject who judges (modes 1, 2, 3 &

•II: that based on the object judged (modes 7 & 10).

•III: that based on both subject who judges and object

Superordinate to these three modes is the mode of

the vicissitudes of life (ἁδιαφορία).

"What will be in it for me after I become a philosopher?" "You will be