Ways-of-doing-philosophy-methods.pptx q1zg

Ways of Doing Philosophy “my way”

Lesson Objectives • Distinguish opinion from truth • Analyze situations that show the difference

Methods of Philosophizing

Philosophizing is to think or express oneself in a philosophical manner.

Phenomenology: On Consciousness • Phenomenology was founded by Edmund Husserl. • It comes form the Greek word phainómenon meaning “appearance.” • It is the scientific study of the essential structures of consciousness.

• A method for finding and guaranteeing the truth that focuses on careful inspection and description of phenomena or appearances.

• Husserl’s phenomenology is the thesis that consciousness is intentional.

Every act of consciousness is directed at some object or another, possibly a material object or an “ideal” object.

Phenomenology uncovers the essential structures of experience and its objects.

Husserl’s Phenomenological Standpoint  The first and best known is the epoche or “suspension” that “brackets” all questions of truth or reality and simply describes the contents of consciousness.

The second reduction eliminates the merely empirical contents of consciousness and focuses instead on the essential features, the meanings of consciousness.

Phenomenologists are interested in the contents of consciousness, not on things of the natural world as such.

Existentialism: On Freedom Existentialism is not primarily a philosophical method nor is it exactly a set of doctrines but more of an outlook or attitude ed by diverse doctrines centered on certain common themes.

 the human condition or the relation of the individual to the world;  the human response to that condition;  being, especially the difference between the being of person (which is “existence”) and the being of other kinds of things;  human freedom;

 the significance (and unavoidability) of choice and decision in the absence of certainty and;  the concreteness and subjectivity of life as lived, against abstractions.

• Existentialism emphasizes the importance of free individual choice, regardless of the power of other people to influence and coerce our desires, beliefs, and decisions.

• To be human, to be conscious, is to be free to imagine, free to choose, and responsible for one’s life.

AUTHENTICITY

Postmodernism: On Cultures

• Postmodernism is not a philosophy. • “Postmodernism” has come into vogue as the name for a rather diffuse family of ideas and trends that in significant respect rejects, challenges, or aims to supersede “modernity”.

• Postmodernists believe that humanity should come at truth beyond the rational to the nonrational elements of human nature, including the spiritual. • Beyond exalting individual analysis of truth, postmodernists adhere to a relational, holistic approach.

Analytic Tradition • For analytic philosophers, language cannot objectively describe truth because language is socially conditioned.

Analytic philosophy is the conviction that to some significant degree, philosophical problems, puzzles, and errors are rooted in language and can be solved or avoided by a sound understanding of language and careful attention to its workings.