Philosophy and Logic

Atty. Reyaine A. Mendoza

What is Philosophy?

Philosophy comes from a Greek word which means “love of wisdom”

• It is the study of the general and fundamental problems
concerning knowledge, existence, values, reason, mind and
language
• The term was coined by PYTHAGORAS
• Philosophical Methods includes: QUESTIONING, CRITICAL
DISCUSSION, and RATIONAL ARGUMENT
What is Philosophy?

Philosophy comes from a Greek word which means “love of wisdom”

• It is the study of the general and fundamental problems
concerning knowledge, existence, values, reason, mind and
language
• The term was coined by PYTHAGORAS

• Is what man does when he is not busy dealing with everyday

business and get a chance to wonder simply about LIFE and the
UNIVERSE he lives in
Classical Philosophical Questions:
1. Is it possible to know anything?
2. What is real and not real?
3. What is the best way to live?
4. Is it better to be just or unjust?
5. Do humans have free will?
Human Nature
• Inquisitive in nature: we wonder about the world around us
• Equipped with very powerful intellectual capability which helps us
reason and wonder about the things around us.

WHENEVER WE REASON, WE ARE THINKING PHILOSOPHICALLY

The First Philosophers
• Ancient Greece and China
thinkers who were not satisfied with established explanations
provided by religion and custom and they looked for answers
which had rational justifications
- Established schools to teach not just the conclusions but how they
were arrived at.
Debate and Dialogue
• Socrates
- encouraged students to disagree and criticize ideas as a means
of refining them and coming up with new and different ideas
- established debate and discussion, of questioning the
assumptions of other people to gain a deeper understanding
and elicit fundamental truths
• Plato
- a student of Socrates
- writings are in the form of dialogues with Socrates as the main
character
• Aristotle
- student of Plato
- he has opposite views on fundamental questions with that of Plato
School of Athens
• Masterpiece painting by a Renaissance
painter Raphael

• One of the rooms in the Vatican

• Represents “Philosophy”

• Phrases: "Seek Knowledge of Causes,"

"Divine Inspiration," "Knowledge of
Things Divine", "To Each What Is Due.“

• Accordingly, the figures on the walls

below exemplify Philosophy, Poetry
(including Music), Theology, and Law

• Central figures where Plato and

Aristotle
Debate Topics: Fundamental Questions
1. Existence and Knowledge
- 2,500 years ago, Ancient Greeks wondered about the world around them: SUN, MOON, PLANET
AND STARS
Natural phenomenon: WEATHER, EARTHQUAKES, and ECLIPSES

The First Questions:

a. What is the universe made of?
b. What is the nature of whatever it is that exists?

METAPHYSICS – a branch of Philosophy that concerns with the ESSENCE OF A THING

- This includes questions of being, becoming, existence, and reality.
- The word "metaphysics" comes from the Greek words that literally mean
"beyond nature".
- "Nature" in this sense refers to the nature of a thing, such as its cause and purpose.
Debate Topics: Fundamental Questions
Ontology – a branch of metaphysics deals with the nature of human
existence and what it means to be a conscious being

• How do we perceive the world around us?

• Do things exist independently of our perception?
• What is the relationship between our mind and body, and is there
such a thing as an immortal soul?
Debate Topics: Fundamental Questions
Epistemology – a branch of metaphysics deals with the study of nature
and limits of knowledge

• How we acquire knowledge?

• How we come to know what we know? Is some (or even all)
knowledge innate, or do we learn everything from experience?
• Can we know something from reasoning alone?
Debate Topics: Fundamental Questions
2. Logic and language
- Reasoning relies on establishing the truth of statements, which
can then be used to build up a train of thought leading to a
conclusion.
- the idea of constructing a rational argument distinguished
philosophy from the superstitious and religious explanations
that had existed before the first philosophers.
- These thinkers had to devise a way of ensuring their ideas had
validity.
Debate Topics: Fundamental Questions
Logic
- a technique of reasoning that was refined over
time
- basic structure of logic is that it is composed
of premises that would lead to conclusions
- systematic study of the form of valid inference
 VOLTAIRE

Superstition sets the whole world in flames ;

philosophy quenches them
Debate Topics: Fundamental Questions
3. Morality and Politics
• Philosophers search for questions such as:
- What is justice?
- What is beauty?
- What is means to lead a good life?
- What is justice and happiness?
Debate Topics: Fundamental Questions
Ethics or Moral Philosophy - branch of Philosophy that is
concerned on how we should behave

Aesthetics – a branch of ethics that is concerned with the

question of what is beauty?

Political Philosophy – questions on what kind of society we

would like to live in, how it should be governed, and the rights
and responsibilities of its citizens (Plato’s Republic to Karl
Marx’s Communist Manifesto)
Debate Topics: Fundamental Questions
4. Religion
• Philosophy also examines Religion itself, asking questions such as:
- Does God exist?
- Do we have an immortal soul?
 Death of Siddhartha Empedocles proposes
Traditional date of
Gautama, the his theory of the four
birth of Kong Fuzi
Thales of Miletus, Buddha, Classical elements;
(Confucius), whose
the first known Greek founder of the he is the last Greek
philosophy is
philosopher, seeks religion and philosopher to record
centered
rational answers philosophy of his ideas in verse.
on respect and
to questions about Buddhism.
tradition.
the world we live in.

624-546 BC 551 BC 480 BC c. 460 BC

569 BCE 508 BCE 469 BCE 404 BCE

The powerful Greek Birth of Socrates, whose Defeat in the

Birth of Pythagoras, methods of questioning Peloponnesian
city-state of Athens
the Greek thinker who in Athens formed the War leads to the
adopts a democratic
combined philosophy basis for much of later decline of Athens’
constitution.
and mathematics.
Western philosophy. political power.

Zeno of Citium
formulates his stoic
Plato founds his
philosophy, which
hugely influential
goes on to find favor
Academy in
in the Roman Empire.
Athens.
Ptolemy, a Roman Galen of Pergamum
citizen of Egypt, produces
proposes the idea extraordinary
that medical research that
Earth is at the center remains unsurpassed
of the universe and until
does not move. the work of Vesalius
in 1543.

c. 385 BCE c. 332 - 265 BCE c. 100-178 CE c. 150 BCE

335 BCE 323 BCE 122 CE 220 CE

The death of Alexander Construction begins The collapse of the

Aristotle, Plato’s
student, opens his own
school in Athens—the
Lyceum.
the Great signals the end on Hadrian’s Wall in Han Dynasty
of the cultural and political Britain, marking the marks the end of
dominance of Greece in northernmost border a unified China.
the ancient world. of the Roman Empire. The Period of
Disunity begins.