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Assignment in PHL102
Is there a God?
What is truth?
What is a person? What makes a person the same through time?
Do people have free wills?
What is it for one event to cause another?
EPISTEMOLOGY
What is knowledge?
Do we know anything at all?
How is knowledge acquired?
Can we be justified in claiming to know certain things?
Can we be certain of anything?
Rationalism
Rationalism stresses reason as the most important element in knowing. It holds
that knowledge is acquired primarily through the mind. Rationalism also
asserts that one is born with innate ideas that precede any experiences we may
have through our physical senses.
Empiricism Empiricism on the other hand stresses that all ones knowledge
comes from the five senses. According to empiricist John Locke, our minds are a
blank state at birth, thus knowledge comes from our experiences.
ETHICS
Ethics is the study of moral value. It involves placing value to personal actions,
decisions and relations. Large questions about what is right and wrong arise
due to the struggle with this issue so the ethicist attempts to answer such
questions as:
Nowadays, important ethical issues include abortion, sexual morality, the death
penalty, euthanasia, pornography and the environment.
LOGIC
Logic is the field of philosophy that deals on how to develop valid arguments or
reasons. It studies the nature and structure of arguments (also includes
mathematical logic). Logicians ponder on questions such as:
AESTHETICS
Aesthetics is the study of beauty and artistic perception. It attempts to address
such issues as:
What is art
What is the relationship between beauty and art?
Are there objective standards by which art can be judged?
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?
to understand other disciplines because every field employ its own reasoning
and sets standards of evidence, logic and epistemology philosophy of literature,
arts, science, etc).
4. Reasons why we study philosophy.
We study philosophy to address our curiosity. Philosophy began by attempting
to answer two deceptively simple questions: What can we know? And How
should we live our lives? And these questions in turn gave rise to others and
triggered mans thirst for knowledge and discovery.
Another reason is probably to benefit the many skills and abilities that we can
learn in studying philosophy. Many of these proficiencies are transferable, not
just in academic disciplines, but in other endeavors as well. Studying
philosophy lets us enhance our critical reasoning skills, communication skills
and general problem-solving skills which are of great help in any field of study.
http://www.whatisphilosophy.net/
http://www.arn.org/realscience/kog1asample/kog-phil-chem-1a-sample.pdf
http://philosophy.fsu.edu/content/view/full/36588
http://theologicalstudies.org/resource-library/philosophy-dictionary/85-5-branchesof-philosophy