Overview of Philosophy and Its Definitions

Welcome to an Introduction to Philosophy. This is Unit 1, Lecture 1, An Overview of Philosophy. In this first video, we're going to introduce two preliminary definitions of philosophy. The etymological definition will give us insight into what the word philosophy meant in its original context and how the word came about. The academic definition of philosophy will help us to understand what we mean by philosophy today. and what it means to study philosophy in the modern academy. Let's begin our exploration of philosophy by looking at how the word came into our language. This will be our etymological definition. Now, etymology is the study of where words come from and how they change over time. When we apply this archaeology of language to the word philosophy, we find that it's actually a mash-up of two words from ancient Greek, philia and sophia. So, etymologically speaking, philosophy is literally the love of wisdom. But why was this word invented? What was happening in ancient Greece that caused someone to create a new word to describe that new activity? To better understand that, we need to take a closer look at this ancient mashup. First, let's consider the ancient Greek word philia. You probably know this is often translated as brotherly love, but that translation is associated with how the word would come to be known in the Hellenistic period of the 4th to 1st centuries BCE. 300 years earlier, its meaning was less filial and more closely associated with the attitude one had toward their tribe, their community, or polis in Greek. And there were few things more important to the personal identity of an archaic Greek than their community. Who a person was could not be separated from the polis they lived in, and given the chronic struggle for natural resources that plagued early Greek city-states and their fierce competition with one another over those scarce resources, an individual's survival was inextricably tied to the survival of their community. We thus come to grasp that Philea represented an active and passionate disposition toward its object, the beloved. In our case, the object of desire is Sophia, or wisdom. But what exactly does that mean? Sophia is a deeply enigmatic term, and capturing its meaning in the 6th century BCE is even more difficult. Associated with being clever, and having skills that cause admiration in others, it comes to be associated with a kind of knowledge which is rare. And knowledge, as opposed to opinion, implies the truth. Thus, Sophia communicates a state of understanding how things really are, not just how they seem or how people believe them to be. While opinion or belief is common to all, Sophia is rare. It's associated. with those who are extraordinary, distinct, different from the common person in their comprehension of the truth. The earliest usage of this new mashup is attributed to Pythagoras of Samus in the late 6th century BCE. Although we don't know if the anecdote is historically accurate, after all, we have very little firm knowledge of Pythagoras at all, it is thought that he described himself in a set self-deprecating manner as a lover of wisdom, as opposed to a possessor of wisdom, or a sophist. While Pythagoras may have been the first to use the term, it was popularized and immortalized a hundred years later by Plato in reference to his mentor, Socrates. It was his accounts of Socrates cross-examining his fellow Athenians while failing to ever discover wisdom for himself. that would forever cement the word philosophy in western civilization thus we can conclude our etymological definition of the term philosophy by saying that it means the love or pursuit of wisdom implying that those who are seeking it have not yet found it of course when we think of philosophy today we mean something quite different from what it meant in ancient greece today when we hear the word philosophy We immediately think of the academy and higher education. Academy, of course, is a generic word referring to the social institution that is dedicated to the discovery, transmission, and preservation of knowledge. In the contemporary world, we assign the discovery of knowledge to both public and private research institutions, like tier one universities or corporations, while the transmission of knowledge is the function of primary and secondary schools and post-secondary colleges and universities, preserving knowledge. is the primary domain of libraries, usually attached to cities, colleges, and universities. But emerging technologies are expanding this function into what we euphemistically call the cloud. So the academy is that part of society that is dedicated to all aspects of knowledge. All this traces its history back to the Academia, founded by Plato in the early 4th century BCE. Named for the Olive Grove, where Plato and his students met on the outskirts of Athens, Plato's Academy was the first formal educational institution with an established curriculum and standards of admittance. It would be followed by other schools like Aristotle's Lyceum and the Great Museum of Alexandria, the world's first think tank. Today's Academy, particularly higher education, both public and private, is broadly divided into two main curricular divisions, the arts and the sciences. Each of these divisions, in turn, contain multiple subdivisions, which further divide into sub-subdivisions and departments. So where does philosophy fit into the modern academy? If we think about this question solely from the curricular point of view, it really doesn't fall under either branch. It really forms one of its own. To illustrate why, let's first focus on science in the academy. There are two main branches of academic science, the natural sciences and the social sciences. Both divisions are focused on knowledge of the world around us, the material world. Under natural science, there are three main branches of physical science, physics, chemistry, and biology. Similarly, there are distinct social sciences as well. Each of these sub-disciplines, in turn, further divides into a myriad of other sub-sub-disciplines, like botany, zoology, psychology, astronomy, etc. These are the sub-and sub-sub-disciplines of science, and these we're all familiar with. The point is, the word science, in the academic sense, isn't a single thing. Rather, it's an umbrella term for a host of distinct but related investigations into the world. We can understand academic philosophy in a parallel way. In the modern academy, philosophy is not a single subject, but rather an umbrella term for five distinct but related areas of research and teaching. Epistemology, metaphysics, axiology, logic, and the history of philosophy. This will be our second definition of philosophy. This is our academic. definition. In the following videos, we'll explore the sub-disciplines in much more detail, but to conclude this video, we'll give a ridiculously brief overview of each of these sub-disciplines of academic philosophy in turn, and in no particular order. In academic philosophy, epistemology is the sub-discipline that focuses on problems and puzzles relating to the nature and acquisition of knowledge. Of course, The entire focus of the Academy is on the acquisition, transmission, and preservation of knowledge about the world. The whole point of going to school is to get knowledge that one lacks. But there's actually only one discipline that makes knowledge itself the subject of inquiry, and that is epistemology, which literally means the rational explanation of knowledge. This entire investigation focuses around three basic questions, the first of which is aimed at distinguishing knowledge from opinion. Everyone has opinions, but obviously not everyone has knowledge. So identifying the difference between these two cognitive states is of utmost importance. Once we've arrived at a clear definition of what knowledge is, we can move on to the second important question, which is whether we, limited and finite as we are, can achieve knowledge. As we'll see, There's some debate about this point, which is important to understand. But if we conclude that knowledge is indeed possible for fallible beings like us, we can proceed to the third and perhaps the most difficult basic question. How do we go about getting knowledge? Now, if this all seems a bit trivial, keep in mind that everything we do in the academy is aimed at knowledge of one subject or another. Hence, the whole enterprise ultimately rests on a theoretical foundation of epistemology. There can be no knowledge of the natural world without the scientific method, and there can be no scientific method without the theory of empiricism. So the entire enterprise of science rests on a philosophical foundation that far too few people understand or appreciate. Another major subdivision of academic philosophy is metaphysics. Less focused than epistemology, metaphysics can be thought of as the first principles or most basic questions of philosophy. Essentially, This is the branch that investigates the nature of existence itself, as well as the existence of, or non-existence of, many of the phenomena that appear to us. But as we all know, what appears to be the case isn't always the case. Metaphysics deals with questions like these. What is the case? What isn't the case but could be? And what could not possibly be the case in any universe? We often define this field as the philosophical investigation into the nature of ultimate reality. Just as an example, and this is by no means an exhaustive list, we can note three major foci of metaphysics. The first, ontology, is the philosophical investigation into the nature or essence of existence itself. What does it mean for something to exist? What is the nature of existence? Is it the case that everything that exists is ultimately composed of one and only one kind of substance, for example, matter, or perhaps mind? If so, then monism is the correct view. But what if there are two different properly basic or non-reducible substances from which everything is made? This view would be metaphysical dualism. There are even some who argue that there are more than two. basic substances that compose all existence. This view is what's called pluralism. Whatever the right answer turns out to be, ontology is the area of metaphysics that tries to answer questions regarding the makeup of that which exists. Another phenomenon we struggle to explain in metaphysics is consciousness. Now, each of us is convinced that we are conscious, as we have direct access to our own minds. But what is the nature of the mind? What is its substance? Are there other minds in the universe? If so, what's the difference between my consciousness and other minds that might exist? Has my consciousness always existed? How long will it continue to exist? And what is the relationship of my consciousness with my body? These are questions addressed in the philosophy of mind, which is just one of the many first questions of philosophy. A third example of metaphysical interest concerns the nature of divinity. We humans have spent a lot of time and effort thinking about God and our relationship to God. Indeed, anthropologists have discovered that concern with God is seemingly a ubiquitous activity of human culture. But what exactly is God? What would it mean to be divine? And once we understand what the nature of divinity entails, we must struggle to understand if God exists. And if so, what is God's relationship with the universe? These are the central questions addressed in the philosophy of religion. These are just a few of the areas of interest in academic metaphysics. There's also time and space to consider, as well as causality, and other relational properties that seem to be basic aspects. of the universe. So as you can see, metaphysics, as a sub-discipline of academic philosophy, has a very broad field of interest. A third area of philosophical concern deals with evaluative judgments, which are some of our favorites as human beings. But what does it exactly mean to say that one thing is better than another? What gives judgments their meaning? This is the focus of axiology, the philosophical investigation of value. Ethics is the sub-branch of axiology that investigates value. moral judgments. Aesthetics analyzes the concept of beauty and includes fields like the philosophy of literature, philosophy of architecture, philosophy of music and art and others. Also, there's political philosophy or political theory, which focuses on the nature of justice. What is a just person? What is a just society? Why is one form of social organization better than another? If these questions interest you, axiology is the branch of philosophy that you're going to want to check out. A fourth major subdivision of academic philosophy investigates the nature of rational thought. Logic is the systematic investigation of reason and argument. We can think of reason as a set of rules that that govern relationships between ideas. And when we express rational thought in language with the intention of persuasion, we're giving an argument. Of course, we're not always successful when we attempt to express reason in the form of an argument. So it's a central concern of logic to learn exactly what an argument is, what necessary conditions must be met, and what sufficient conditions will guarantee that we're engaged in argument. Beginning with Aristotle, a student of Plato, and the first philosopher to offer a systematic analysis of reasoning, we've discovered that there are two very different forms of argumentation, or two different systems of logic induction also known as informal logic is a method of argument that allows us to derive conclusions that follow with a degree of probability from sufficient and relevant evidence deduction on the other hand or formal logic is a system that allows us to derive conclusions with necessity while all branches of the academy use logic they don't explicitly study the structures of reason itself nor do they investigate how or why the methods they use work. But in philosophy, logic is not just the methodology by which we struggle with the problems of metaphysics and epistemology and axiology. It's also a subject of investigation itself. In fact, philosophy is the only academic field that makes its methodology a distinct subject of its own inquiry. The final main subdivision of academic philosophy is the study of those who have engaged in the philosophical enterprise itself, as well as the ideas which have emerged from that study, and how they've shaped us over time. All human beings are part of an historical and cultural context, and philosophers are no exception to that rule. Therefore, in order to fully understand why different philosophers are interested in different questions, it has to be a It helps to understand the context in which they live. For example, to fully understand why someone like Socrates was so desperately seeking knowledge of virtue or human excellence, we have to understand what it was like to live in 5th century BCE Athens. That doesn't mean we might not be interested in the same question today, but to fully understand Socrates'quest, we need to understand the world in which he lived and how that world shaped his understanding of the world. understanding of the problem, as well as the kind of answers that he would find acceptable. The history of philosophy is the attempt to understand both the philosophers as well as the ideas that they derive in the social and historical context in which they occurred. It's far more than just telling the story of philosophy. It's an attempt to critically analyze and understand how it's developed and why. That That in turn helps us to recognize our own contextual limitations, and by recognizing those barriers we can avoid making unjustified assumptions about our own pursuit of wisdom. So what I'd like to emphasize to you again is that academic philosophy, like science, is not a single discipline, but rather an umbrella discipline that encompasses distinct but related investigations. These subfields themselves divide into further subdisciplines to such an extent that it's impossible for anyone to be an expert in all the areas of philosophy, just as it's impossible for someone to be an expert in all the scientific disciplines. However, we should have a general grasp of the proper domains of philosophy, just as it's important to have a general understanding of the scientific disciplines. and their respective areas of investigation. To recap, we've looked in a very brief way at what philosophy is all about by introducing two working definitions of philosophy. Etymologically, we learned that philosophy was a term applied to those who were seeking, but had not yet attained, wisdom. Today, however, we can say that philosophy is an academic discipline. It's a formal approach to a certain set of questions that we've been struggling with for over 2,500 years. We compared philosophy to science in the academic context, meaning that it's a broad set of formalized investigations that make up an important part of the modern academy. In the formal discipline of philosophy, there are five major sub-disciplines. Metaphysics, Epistemology, axiology, logic, and the history of philosophy, each with its own focus. But each of those sub-disciplines are related to the others, not only through overlapping content, but also because they all use the same methodology, logic. And why do we do philosophy? Why do we even bother? Because we have a deep interest in understanding the truth. We want to understand not just how the world is, but also why it is the way it is. And this is one of the most important distinctions between philosophy and other academic disciplines. Philosophy is not merely... descriptive. It is analytically normative. It isn't enough to understand that there are rules or laws governing the way the universe is. We also need to understand what the nature of ruling is. What are the structures that underlie the laws of the universe? Or more simply put, why is there order instead of chaos? Is it part of the nature of the universe itself, or perhaps even an essential part of any possible universe? In the following videos, we're going to explore those different areas of philosophy in more detail. But first, we're going to give an historical definition of philosophy, attempting to answer where, when, and why this thing we call philosophy got started in the first place. See you next time.

The academic definition of philosophy will help us to understand what we mean by philosophy today. and what it means to study philosophy in the modern academy. Let's begin our exploration of philosophy by looking at how the word came into our language. This will be our etymological definition.

Now, etymology is the study of where words come from and how they change over time. When we apply this archaeology of language to the word philosophy, we find that it's actually a mash-up of two words from ancient Greek, philia and sophia. So, etymologically speaking, philosophy is literally the love of wisdom.

But why was this word invented? What was happening in ancient Greece that caused someone to create a new word to describe that new activity? To better understand that, we need to take a closer look at this ancient mashup. First, let's consider the ancient Greek word philia. You probably know this is often translated as brotherly love, but that translation is associated with how the word would come to be known in the Hellenistic period of the 4th to 1st centuries BCE.

300 years earlier, its meaning was less filial and more closely associated with the attitude one had toward their tribe, their community, or polis in Greek. And there were few things more important to the personal identity of an archaic Greek than their community. Who a person was could not be separated from the polis they lived in, and given the chronic struggle for natural resources that plagued early Greek city-states and their fierce competition with one another over those scarce resources, an individual's survival was inextricably tied to the survival of their community.

We thus come to grasp that Philea represented an active and passionate disposition toward its object, the beloved. In our case, the object of desire is Sophia, or wisdom. But what exactly does that mean?

Sophia is a deeply enigmatic term, and capturing its meaning in the 6th century BCE is even more difficult. Associated with being clever, and having skills that cause admiration in others, it comes to be associated with a kind of knowledge which is rare. And knowledge, as opposed to opinion, implies the truth. Thus, Sophia communicates a state of understanding how things really are, not just how they seem or how people believe them to be. While opinion or belief is common to all, Sophia is rare.

It's associated. with those who are extraordinary, distinct, different from the common person in their comprehension of the truth. The earliest usage of this new mashup is attributed to Pythagoras of Samus in the late 6th century BCE.

Although we don't know if the anecdote is historically accurate, after all, we have very little firm knowledge of Pythagoras at all, it is thought that he described himself in a set self-deprecating manner as a lover of wisdom, as opposed to a possessor of wisdom, or a sophist. While Pythagoras may have been the first to use the term, it was popularized and immortalized a hundred years later by Plato in reference to his mentor, Socrates. It was his accounts of Socrates cross-examining his fellow Athenians while failing to ever discover wisdom for himself. that would forever cement the word philosophy in western civilization thus we can conclude our etymological definition of the term philosophy by saying that it means the love or pursuit of wisdom implying that those who are seeking it have not yet found it of course when we think of philosophy today we mean something quite different from what it meant in ancient greece today when we hear the word philosophy We immediately think of the academy and higher education.

Academy, of course, is a generic word referring to the social institution that is dedicated to the discovery, transmission, and preservation of knowledge. In the contemporary world, we assign the discovery of knowledge to both public and private research institutions, like tier one universities or corporations, while the transmission of knowledge is the function of primary and secondary schools and post-secondary colleges and universities, preserving knowledge. is the primary domain of libraries, usually attached to cities, colleges, and universities. But emerging technologies are expanding this function into what we euphemistically call the cloud.

So the academy is that part of society that is dedicated to all aspects of knowledge. All this traces its history back to the Academia, founded by Plato in the early 4th century BCE. Named for the Olive Grove, where Plato and his students met on the outskirts of Athens, Plato's Academy was the first formal educational institution with an established curriculum and standards of admittance. It would be followed by other schools like Aristotle's Lyceum and the Great Museum of Alexandria, the world's first think tank. Today's Academy, particularly higher education, both public and private, is broadly divided into two main curricular divisions, the arts and the sciences.

Each of these divisions, in turn, contain multiple subdivisions, which further divide into sub-subdivisions and departments. So where does philosophy fit into the modern academy? If we think about this question solely from the curricular point of view, it really doesn't fall under either branch. It really forms one of its own.

To illustrate why, let's first focus on science in the academy. There are two main branches of academic science, the natural sciences and the social sciences. Both divisions are focused on knowledge of the world around us, the material world.

Under natural science, there are three main branches of physical science, physics, chemistry, and biology. Similarly, there are distinct social sciences as well. Each of these sub-disciplines, in turn, further divides into a myriad of other sub-sub-disciplines, like botany, zoology, psychology, astronomy, etc.

These are the sub-and sub-sub-disciplines of science, and these we're all familiar with. The point is, the word science, in the academic sense, isn't a single thing. Rather, it's an umbrella term for a host of distinct but related investigations into the world. We can understand academic philosophy in a parallel way. In the modern academy, philosophy is not a single subject, but rather an umbrella term for five distinct but related areas of research and teaching.

Epistemology, metaphysics, axiology, logic, and the history of philosophy. This will be our second definition of philosophy. This is our academic.

definition. In the following videos, we'll explore the sub-disciplines in much more detail, but to conclude this video, we'll give a ridiculously brief overview of each of these sub-disciplines of academic philosophy in turn, and in no particular order. In academic philosophy, epistemology is the sub-discipline that focuses on problems and puzzles relating to the nature and acquisition of knowledge.

Of course, The entire focus of the Academy is on the acquisition, transmission, and preservation of knowledge about the world. The whole point of going to school is to get knowledge that one lacks. But there's actually only one discipline that makes knowledge itself the subject of inquiry, and that is epistemology, which literally means the rational explanation of knowledge.

This entire investigation focuses around three basic questions, the first of which is aimed at distinguishing knowledge from opinion. Everyone has opinions, but obviously not everyone has knowledge. So identifying the difference between these two cognitive states is of utmost importance. Once we've arrived at a clear definition of what knowledge is, we can move on to the second important question, which is whether we, limited and finite as we are, can achieve knowledge. As we'll see, There's some debate about this point, which is important to understand.

But if we conclude that knowledge is indeed possible for fallible beings like us, we can proceed to the third and perhaps the most difficult basic question. How do we go about getting knowledge? Now, if this all seems a bit trivial, keep in mind that everything we do in the academy is aimed at knowledge of one subject or another. Hence, the whole enterprise ultimately rests on a theoretical foundation of epistemology.

There can be no knowledge of the natural world without the scientific method, and there can be no scientific method without the theory of empiricism. So the entire enterprise of science rests on a philosophical foundation that far too few people understand or appreciate. Another major subdivision of academic philosophy is metaphysics. Less focused than epistemology, metaphysics can be thought of as the first principles or most basic questions of philosophy. Essentially, This is the branch that investigates the nature of existence itself, as well as the existence of, or non-existence of, many of the phenomena that appear to us.

But as we all know, what appears to be the case isn't always the case. Metaphysics deals with questions like these. What is the case?

What isn't the case but could be? And what could not possibly be the case in any universe? We often define this field as the philosophical investigation into the nature of ultimate reality. Just as an example, and this is by no means an exhaustive list, we can note three major foci of metaphysics.

The first, ontology, is the philosophical investigation into the nature or essence of existence itself. What does it mean for something to exist? What is the nature of existence?

Is it the case that everything that exists is ultimately composed of one and only one kind of substance, for example, matter, or perhaps mind? If so, then monism is the correct view. But what if there are two different properly basic or non-reducible substances from which everything is made? This view would be metaphysical dualism. There are even some who argue that there are more than two.

basic substances that compose all existence. This view is what's called pluralism. Whatever the right answer turns out to be, ontology is the area of metaphysics that tries to answer questions regarding the makeup of that which exists.

Another phenomenon we struggle to explain in metaphysics is consciousness. Now, each of us is convinced that we are conscious, as we have direct access to our own minds. But what is the nature of the mind? What is its substance? Are there other minds in the universe?

If so, what's the difference between my consciousness and other minds that might exist? Has my consciousness always existed? How long will it continue to exist? And what is the relationship of my consciousness with my body?

These are questions addressed in the philosophy of mind, which is just one of the many first questions of philosophy. A third example of metaphysical interest concerns the nature of divinity. We humans have spent a lot of time and effort thinking about God and our relationship to God. Indeed, anthropologists have discovered that concern with God is seemingly a ubiquitous activity of human culture.

But what exactly is God? What would it mean to be divine? And once we understand what the nature of divinity entails, we must struggle to understand if God exists. And if so, what is God's relationship with the universe? These are the central questions addressed in the philosophy of religion.

These are just a few of the areas of interest in academic metaphysics. There's also time and space to consider, as well as causality, and other relational properties that seem to be basic aspects. of the universe.

So as you can see, metaphysics, as a sub-discipline of academic philosophy, has a very broad field of interest. A third area of philosophical concern deals with evaluative judgments, which are some of our favorites as human beings. But what does it exactly mean to say that one thing is better than another? What gives judgments their meaning?

This is the focus of axiology, the philosophical investigation of value. Ethics is the sub-branch of axiology that investigates value. moral judgments. Aesthetics analyzes the concept of beauty and includes fields like the philosophy of literature, philosophy of architecture, philosophy of music and art and others.

Also, there's political philosophy or political theory, which focuses on the nature of justice. What is a just person? What is a just society? Why is one form of social organization better than another?

If these questions interest you, axiology is the branch of philosophy that you're going to want to check out. A fourth major subdivision of academic philosophy investigates the nature of rational thought. Logic is the systematic investigation of reason and argument. We can think of reason as a set of rules that that govern relationships between ideas. And when we express rational thought in language with the intention of persuasion, we're giving an argument.

Of course, we're not always successful when we attempt to express reason in the form of an argument. So it's a central concern of logic to learn exactly what an argument is, what necessary conditions must be met, and what sufficient conditions will guarantee that we're engaged in argument. Beginning with Aristotle, a student of Plato, and the first philosopher to offer a systematic analysis of reasoning, we've discovered that there are two very different forms of argumentation, or two different systems of logic induction also known as informal logic is a method of argument that allows us to derive conclusions that follow with a degree of probability from sufficient and relevant evidence deduction on the other hand or formal logic is a system that allows us to derive conclusions with necessity while all branches of the academy use logic they don't explicitly study the structures of reason itself nor do they investigate how or why the methods they use work. But in philosophy, logic is not just the methodology by which we struggle with the problems of metaphysics and epistemology and axiology.

It's also a subject of investigation itself. In fact, philosophy is the only academic field that makes its methodology a distinct subject of its own inquiry. The final main subdivision of academic philosophy is the study of those who have engaged in the philosophical enterprise itself, as well as the ideas which have emerged from that study, and how they've shaped us over time.

All human beings are part of an historical and cultural context, and philosophers are no exception to that rule. Therefore, in order to fully understand why different philosophers are interested in different questions, it has to be a It helps to understand the context in which they live. For example, to fully understand why someone like Socrates was so desperately seeking knowledge of virtue or human excellence, we have to understand what it was like to live in 5th century BCE Athens. That doesn't mean we might not be interested in the same question today, but to fully understand Socrates'quest, we need to understand the world in which he lived and how that world shaped his understanding of the world. understanding of the problem, as well as the kind of answers that he would find acceptable.

The history of philosophy is the attempt to understand both the philosophers as well as the ideas that they derive in the social and historical context in which they occurred. It's far more than just telling the story of philosophy. It's an attempt to critically analyze and understand how it's developed and why. That That in turn helps us to recognize our own contextual limitations, and by recognizing those barriers we can avoid making unjustified assumptions about our own pursuit of wisdom.

So what I'd like to emphasize to you again is that academic philosophy, like science, is not a single discipline, but rather an umbrella discipline that encompasses distinct but related investigations. These subfields themselves divide into further subdisciplines to such an extent that it's impossible for anyone to be an expert in all the areas of philosophy, just as it's impossible for someone to be an expert in all the scientific disciplines. However, we should have a general grasp of the proper domains of philosophy, just as it's important to have a general understanding of the scientific disciplines. and their respective areas of investigation.

To recap, we've looked in a very brief way at what philosophy is all about by introducing two working definitions of philosophy. Etymologically, we learned that philosophy was a term applied to those who were seeking, but had not yet attained, wisdom. Today, however, we can say that philosophy is an academic discipline.

It's a formal approach to a certain set of questions that we've been struggling with for over 2,500 years. We compared philosophy to science in the academic context, meaning that it's a broad set of formalized investigations that make up an important part of the modern academy. In the formal discipline of philosophy, there are five major sub-disciplines.

Metaphysics, Epistemology, axiology, logic, and the history of philosophy, each with its own focus. But each of those sub-disciplines are related to the others, not only through overlapping content, but also because they all use the same methodology, logic. And why do we do philosophy? Why do we even bother? Because we have a deep interest in understanding the truth.

We want to understand not just how the world is, but also why it is the way it is. And this is one of the most important distinctions between philosophy and other academic disciplines. Philosophy is not merely...

descriptive. It is analytically normative. It isn't enough to understand that there are rules or laws governing the way the universe is.

We also need to understand what the nature of ruling is. What are the structures that underlie the laws of the universe? Or more simply put, why is there order instead of chaos?

Is it part of the nature of the universe itself, or perhaps even an essential part of any possible universe? In the following videos, we're going to explore those different areas of philosophy in more detail. But first, we're going to give an historical definition of philosophy, attempting to answer where, when, and why this thing we call philosophy got started in the first place.

See you next time.

Transcript for:Overview of Philosophy and Its Definitions

Transcript for:
Overview of Philosophy and Its Definitions