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Lecture 1. Philosophy as social and cultural phenomena.

What is Philosophy?

Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence.
A philosophy is a comprehensive system of ideas about human nature and the nature of the reality we live in. It is a guide for living, because the issues it addresses are basic and pervasive, determining the course we take in life and how we treat other people.
The topics that philosophy addresses fall into several distinct fields. Among those of fundamental concern are:

• Metaphysics (the theory of reality).
• Epistemology (the theory of knowledge)
• Ethics (the theory of moral values)
• Politics (the theory of legal rights and government)
• Aesthetics (the theory of the nature of art)

The most widespread systems of ideas that offer philosophical guidance are religions such as Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Religions differ from philosophies not in the subjects they address, but in the method they use to address them. Religions have their basis in mythic stories that pre-date the discovery of explicitly rational methods of inquiry. Many religions nowadays appeal to mystical faith and revelation—modes of belief that claim validity independent of logic and the scientific method, at least for the biggest questions. But most religions are in their origins pre-rational rather than anti-rational, a story-teller's account of philosophic issues rather than a scientist's.
In Greek, "philosophy" means "love of wisdom." Philosophy is based on rational argument and appeal to facts. The history of the modern sciences begins with philosophical inquiries, and the scientific method of experimentation and proof remains an instance of the general approach that a philosopher tries to bring to a question: one that is logical and rigorous. However, while today the sciences focus on specialized inquiries in restricted domains, the questions addressed by philosophy remain the most general and most basic, the issues that underlie the sciences and stand at the base of a world-view.
Philosophy raises some of the deepest and widest questions there are. Addressing the issues in each branch of philosophy requires integrating everything one knows about reality (metaphysics) or humanity (epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics). Proposing reasonable positions in philosophy is therefore a difficult task. Honest philosophers have often disagreed about key issues, and dishonest ones have been able to slip their own positions into the mix as well. For this reason, there is not one philosophy worldwide, as there is one physics. Instead, there are many philosophies.
Over the course of history, philosophers have offered entire systems that pulled together positions in each of the branches of philosophy. Aristotle, the father of logic, authored such a system in ancient times, teaching that we could know reality and achieve happiness. In more modern times, philosophers such as John Locke and Immanuel Kant have written systematic accounts of their thought. Most modern philosophers, however, have specialized in one area or another within philosophy, although some schools of philosophy have emerged that are marked by the general positions of their members on a variety of issues and the members' shared admiration for a chain of historical figures. These schools have included Pragmatism, Logical Positivism, and Existentialism, but are little-known outside of university classes in modern philosophy.
Today philosophic issues often enter public life through political or social movements, some religious in inspiration, such as Christian conservatism, and others secular, such as left-wing environmentalism and socialism. The ideas of such movements are often called ideologies. That term, "ideology," is another name for the systems of ideas we have been talking about. Though the focus of ideological movements is political, their political beliefs tend to be rooted in shared conceptions of reality, human nature, and values.
Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, justice, beauty, validity, mind, and language.Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions (such as mysticism or mythology) by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned argument. The word philosophy is of Ancient Greek origin: φιλοσοφία (philosophía), meaning "love of knowledge", "love of wisdom".

Branches of philosophy

To give an exhaustive list of the main branches of philosophy is difficult, because there have been different, equally acceptable divisions at different times, and the divisions are often relative to the concerns of a particular period. However, the following branches are usually accepted as the main ones.

• Metaphysics investigates the nature of being and the world. Traditional branches are cosmology and ontology.
• Epistemology is concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, and whether knowledge is possible. Among its central concerns has been the challenge posed by skepticism and the relationships between truth, belief and justification.
• Ethics, or 'moral philosophy', is concerned with questions of how persons ought to act or if such questions are answerable. The main branches of ethics are meta-ethics (sometimes called "analytic ethics"), normative ethics and applied ethics. Metaethics concerns the nature of ethical thought, comparison of various ethical systems, whether there are absolute ethical truths, and how such truths could be known. Ethics is also associated with the idea of morality. Plato's early dialogues include a search for definitions of virtue.
• Political Philosophy is the study of government and the relationship of individuals and communities to the state. It includes questions about law, property, and the rights and obligations of the citizen.
• Aesthetics deals with beauty, art, enjoyment, sensory-emotional values, perception, and matters of taste and sentiment.
• Logic deals with patterns of thinking that lead from true premises to true conclusions. Beginning in the late 19th century, mathematicians such as Frege began a mathematical treatment of logic, and today the subject of logic has two broad divisions: mathematical logic (formal symbolic logic) and what is now called philosophical logic.
• Philosophy of Mind deals with the nature of the mind and its relationship to the body, and is typified by disputes between dualism and materialism. In recent years there is an increasing connection between this branch of philosophy and cognitive science
• Philosophy of language: is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language.

Most academic subjects have a philosophy, for example the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mathematics, and the philosophy of history. In addition, a range of academic subjects have emerged to deal with areas which would have historically been the subject of philosophy. These include Psychology, Anthropology and Science.
Philosophy as a world view. A world view (or worldview) is a term calqued from the German word Weltanschauung is the German word for "world", and Anschauung is the German word for "view" or "outlook." It is a concept fundamental to German philosophy and epistemology and refers to a wide world perception. Additionally, it refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs through which an individual interprets the world and interacts with it. The German word is also in wide use in English, as well as the translated form world outlook. (Compare with ideology).

Construction of worldviews

The 'construction of integrating worldviews' begins from fragments of worldviews offered to us by the different scientific disciplines and the various systems of knowledge. It is contributed to by different perspectives that exist in the world's different cultures. This is the main topic of research at the Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies.
According to Apostel, a worldview should comprise seven elements:

• An ontology, a descriptive model of the world
• An explanation of the world
• A futurology, answering the question "where are we heading?"
• Values, answers to ethical questions: "What should we do?"
• A praxeology, or methodology, or theory of action.: "How should we attain our goals?"
• An epistemology, or theory of knowledge. "What is true and false?"
• An etiology. A constructed world-view should contain an account of its own "building blocks," its origins and construction.

The first form of world view. The word mythology (from the Greek μυθολογία mythología, meaning "a story-telling, a legendary lore") refers to a body of folklore/myths/legends that a particular culture believes to be true and that often use the supernatural to interpret natural events and to explain the nature of the universe and humanity. Mythology also refers to the branch of knowledge dealing with the collection, study and interpretation of myths, also known as mythography. The study of myths from multiple cultures is called comparative mythology.

Myths are often intended to explain the universal and local beginnings ("creation myths" and "founding myths"), natural phenomena, otherwise inexplicable cultural conventions or rituals, and anything else for which no simple explanation presents itself.[citation needed] Most often the term refers specifically to ancient tales of historical cultures, such as Greek mythology or Roman mythology.[citation needed] Some myths descended originally as part of an oral tradition and were only later written down, and many of them exist in multiple versions.[citation needed] The products of a process independent of thought and will, they were, for the consciousness which underwent them, of an irrefutable and incontestable reality. Peoples and individuals are only the instruments of this process, which goes beyond their horizon and which they serve without understanding." Individual myths or mythemes may be classified in various categories:

• Ritual myths explain the performance of certain religious practices or patterns and associated with temples or centers of worship.
• Origin myths (aetiologies) describe the beginnings of a custom, name or object.
• Creation myths, which describes how the world or universe came into being.
• Eschatological myths are all stories which describe catastrophic ends to the present world order of the writers. These extend beyond any potential historical scope, and thus can only be described in mythic terms. Apocalyptic literature such as the New Testament Book of Revelation is an example of a set of eschatological myths.
• Social myths reinforce or defend current social values or practices.