Speaker 1: Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast, where I help
Speaker 1: you drift off one fact at a time. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Benjamin Boster, and today's episode is about philosophy. Philosophy from
Speaker 1: ancient Greek philosophia, literally love of wisdom is a systematic
Speaker 1: study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, knowledge, mind, reason, language,
Speaker 1: and value. It is a rational and critical inquiry that
Speaker 1: reflects on its methods and assumptions. Historically, many of the
Speaker 1: individual sciences, such as physics and psychology, formed part of philo. However,
Speaker 1: they are considered separate academic disciplines in the modern sense
Speaker 1: of the term. Influential traditions in the history of philosophy
Speaker 1: include Western, Arabic, Persian, Indian, and Chinese philosophy. Western philosophy
Speaker 1: originated in ancient Greece and covers a wide area of
Speaker 1: philosophical subfields. A central topic in Arabic Persian philosophy is
Speaker 1: the relation between reason and revelation. Indian philosophy combines the
Speaker 1: spiritual problem of how to reach enlightenment with the exploration
Speaker 1: of the nature of reality and the ways of arriving
Speaker 1: at knowledge. Chinese philosophy focuses principally on practical issues about
Speaker 1: right social conduct, government, and self cultivation. Major branches of
Speaker 1: philosophy are epistemology, ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epistemology studies what
Speaker 1: knowledge is and how to acquire it. Ethics investigates moral
Speaker 1: principles and what constitutes right conduct. Logic is the study
Speaker 1: of correct reasoning and explores how good arguments can be
Speaker 1: distinguished from bad ones. Metaphysics examines the most general features
Speaker 1: of reality, existence, objects, and properties. Other sub fields are esthetics,
Speaker 1: philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy
Speaker 1: of science, philosophy of religion, philosophy of history, and political philosophy.
Speaker 1: Within each branch, there are competing schools of philosophy that
Speaker 1: promote different principles, theories, or methods. Philosophers use a great
Speaker 1: variety of methods to arrive at philosophical knowledge. They include
Speaker 1: conceptual analysis, reliance on common sense and intuitions, use of thought, experiments,
Speaker 1: analysis of ordinary language, description of experience, and critical questioning.
Speaker 1: Many scientific academic disciplines have associated philosophical sub feels, like
Speaker 1: philosophy of physics and philosophy of biology, examining their fundamental concepts, methods, assumptions,
Speaker 1: and implications. Philosophy is related to and informs many other fields,
Speaker 1: such as law, business, and journalism, providing an interdisciplinary perspective
Speaker 1: in addressing their athacal questions. Before the Modern Age, the
Speaker 1: term philosophy was used in a wide sense. It included
Speaker 1: most forms of rational inquiry, such as the individual sciences,
Speaker 1: as its subdisciplines. For instance, natural philosophy was a major
Speaker 1: branch of philosophy. This branch of philosophy encompassed a wide
Speaker 1: range of feels fields, including disciplines like physics, chemistry, and biology.
Speaker 1: The meaning of philosophy changed towards the end of the
Speaker 1: modern period, when it acquired the more narrow meaning common today.
Speaker 1: In this new sense, the term is mainly associated with
Speaker 1: disciplines like metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, among other topics. It
Speaker 1: covers the rational study of reality, knowledge, and values. It
Speaker 1: is distinguished from other disciplines of rational inquiry, such as
Speaker 1: the empirical sciences and mathematics. The practice of philosophy is
Speaker 1: characterized by several general features. It is a form of
Speaker 1: rational inquiry. It aims to be systematic and it tends
Speaker 1: to critically reflect on its own methods and presuppositions. It
Speaker 1: requires attentively, thinking, long and carefully about the provocative, vexing,
Speaker 1: and enduring problems central to the human condition. The philosophical
Speaker 1: pursuit of wisdom involves asking general and fundamental questions. It
Speaker 1: often does not result in straightforward answers, but may help
Speaker 1: a person to better understand the topic, examine their life,
Speaker 1: dispel confusion, and overcome prejudices and self deceptive ideas associated
Speaker 1: with common sense. For example, Socrates stated that the unexamined
Speaker 1: life is not worth living, to highlight the role of
Speaker 1: philosophical inquiry in understanding one's own existence, and according to
Speaker 1: Bertrard Russell, the man who has no tincture of philosophy
Speaker 1: goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense,
Speaker 1: from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation,
Speaker 1: and from convictions which have grown up in his mind.
Speaker 1: Was out the cooperation or consent of his deliberate reason.
Speaker 1: Some definitions characterize philosophy in relation to its method, like
Speaker 1: pure reasoning. Others focus on its topic, for example, as
Speaker 1: the study of the biggest patterns of the world as
Speaker 1: a whole, or as the attempt to answer the big questions.
Speaker 1: Such an approach is pursued by Immanuel Khan, who holds
Speaker 1: that the task of philosophy is united by four questions,
Speaker 1: what can I know, what should I do? What may
Speaker 1: I hope? And what is the human being? Both approaches
Speaker 1: have the problem that they are usually either too wide
Speaker 1: by including non philosophical disciplines or too narrow by excluding
Speaker 1: some philosophical subdisciplines. Many definitions of philosophy emphasize its intimate
Speaker 1: relation to science. In this sense, philosophy is sometimes understood
Speaker 1: as a proper science in its own right. According to
Speaker 1: some naturalistic philosophers, such as W. V. O. Quinn, philosophy
Speaker 1: is an empirical yet abstract science that is concerned with
Speaker 1: wide ranging empirical patterns instead of particular observations. Science based
Speaker 1: definitions usually face the problem of explaining why philosophy in
Speaker 1: its long history has not progressed to the same extent
Speaker 1: or in the same way as the sciences. This problem
Speaker 1: is avoided by seeing philosophy as in immature or provisional science,
Speaker 1: whose subdisciplines cease to be philosophy once they have fully developed.
Speaker 1: In this sense, philosophy is sometimes described as the midwife
Speaker 1: of the sciences. Other definitions focus on the contrast between
Speaker 1: science and philosophy. A common theme among many such concer
Speaker 1: is that philosophy is concerned with meaning, understanding, or the
Speaker 1: clarification of language. According to one view, philosophy is conceptual analysis,
Speaker 1: which involves finding the necessary and sufficient conditions for the
Speaker 1: application of concepts. Another definition characterizes philosophy as thinking about
Speaker 1: thinking to emphasize its self critical, reflective nature. A further
Speaker 1: approach presents philosophy as a linguistic therapy. According to Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Speaker 1: for instance, philosophy aims at dispelling misunderstandings to which humans
Speaker 1: are susceptible due to the confusing structure of ordinary language.
Speaker 1: Phenomenologies such as Edmund Husserl characterized philosophy as a rigorous
Speaker 1: science investigating essences, a practice a radical suspension of theoretical
Speaker 1: assumptions about reality to get back to the things themselves,
Speaker 1: that is, as originally given in experience. They contend that
Speaker 1: this base level of experience provides a foundation for higher
Speaker 1: order theoretical knowledge, and that one needs to understand the
Speaker 1: former to understand the latter. An early approach found in
Speaker 1: ancient Greek and Roman philosophy is that philosophy is the
Speaker 1: spiritual practice of developing one's rational capacities. This practice is
Speaker 1: an expression of the philosopher's love of wisdom and as
Speaker 1: the aim of improving one's well being by leading a
Speaker 1: reflective life. For example, the Stoic saw philosophy as an
Speaker 1: exercise to train the mind and thereby achieve youdemonia and
Speaker 1: flourish in life. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that
Speaker 1: studies knowledge. It is also known as theory of knowledge
Speaker 1: and aims to understand what knowledge is, how it arises,
Speaker 1: what its limits are, and what value it has. It
Speaker 1: further examines the nature of truth, belief, justification, and rationality.
Speaker 1: Some of the questions addressed by epistemologists include by what
Speaker 1: methods can one acquire knowledge? How is truth established? And
Speaker 1: can we prove causal relations. One area in epistemology is
Speaker 1: the analysis of knowledge. It assumes that declarative knowledge is
Speaker 1: a combination of different parts and attempts to identify what
Speaker 1: those parts are. An influential theory in this area claims
Speaker 1: that knowledge has three components, it is a belief that
Speaker 1: is justified and true. This theory is controversial, and the
Speaker 1: difficulties associated with it are known as the gettier problem.
Speaker 1: Alternative views state that knowledge requires additional components, like the
Speaker 1: absence of luck, different components like the manifestation of cognitive
Speaker 1: virtues instead of justification, or they deny that knowledge can
Speaker 1: be analyzed in terms of other phenomena. Another area in
Speaker 1: epistemology asks how people acquire knowledge. Often discussed sources of
Speaker 1: knowledge our perception, introspection, memory, inference, and testimony. According to empirisis,
Speaker 1: all knowledge is based on some form of experience. Rationalists
Speaker 1: reject this view and hold that some forms of knowledge,
Speaker 1: like innate knowledge, are not acquired through experience. The regress
Speaker 1: problem is a common issue in relation to the sources
Speaker 1: of knowledge and the justification they offer. It is based
Speaker 1: on the idea that beliefs requires some kind of reason
Speaker 1: or evidence to be justified. The problem is that the
Speaker 1: source of justification may itself be in need of another
Speaker 1: source of justification. This leads to an infinite regress or
Speaker 1: circular reasoning. Foundationalists avoid this conclusion by arguing that some
Speaker 1: sources can provide justification without requiring justification themselves. Another solution
Speaker 1: is presented by coherentis, who state that a belief is
Speaker 1: justified if it coheres with other beliefs of the person. Ssex,
Speaker 1: also known as moral philosophy, studies what constitutes right conduct.
Speaker 1: It is also concerned with the moral evaluation of character, traits,
Speaker 1: and institutions. It explores what the standards of morality are
Speaker 1: and how to live a good life. Philosophical ethics addresses
Speaker 1: such basic questions as or moral obligations relative, what has
Speaker 1: priority well being or obligation, and what gives life meaning.
Speaker 1: The main branches of ethics are meta ethics, normative ethics,
Speaker 1: and applied ethics. Meta ethics asks abstract questions about the
Speaker 1: nature and sources of morality. It analyzes the meaning of
Speaker 1: ethical concepts like right action and obligation. It also investigates
Speaker 1: whether ethical theories can be true in an absolute sense
Speaker 1: and how to acquire knowledge of them. Normative ethics encompasses
Speaker 1: general theories of how to distinguish between right and wrong conduct.
Speaker 1: It helps guide moral decisions by examining what moral obligations
Speaker 1: and rights people have. Applied ethics studies the consequences of
Speaker 1: the general series developed by normative ethics in specific situations,
Speaker 1: for example, in the workplace or for medical treatments. Logic
Speaker 1: is the study of correct reasoning. It aims to understand
Speaker 1: how to distinguish good from bad arguments. It is usually
Speaker 1: divided into formal and informal logic. Formal logic uses artifical
Speaker 1: languages with a precise symbolic representation to investigate arguments in
Speaker 1: its search for extra criteria. It examines the structure of
Speaker 1: arguments to determine whether they are correct or incorrect. Informal
Speaker 1: logic uses non formal criteria and standards to assess the
Speaker 1: correctness of arguments. It relies on additional factors, such as
Speaker 1: content and context. Logic also investigates incorrect forms of reasoning.
Speaker 1: They are called fallacies and are divided into formal and
Speaker 1: informal fallacies based on whether the source of the error
Speaker 1: lies only in the form of the argument or also
Speaker 1: in its content and context. Is the study of the
Speaker 1: most general features of reality, such as existence, objects and
Speaker 1: their properties, pulls and their parts, space and time, events
Speaker 1: and causation. There are disagreements about the precise definition of
Speaker 1: a term, and its meaning has changed throughout the ages.
Speaker 1: Metaphysicians attempt to answer basic questions including why is there
Speaker 1: something rather than nothing of what does reality ultimately consist?
Speaker 1: And are humans free? An important area in metaphysics is ontology.
Speaker 1: Some zeroists identify it with general metaphysics. Ontology investigates concepts
Speaker 1: like being, becoming, and reality. It studies the categories of
Speaker 1: being and asks what exists on the most fundamental level.
Speaker 1: Another sub field of metaphysics is philosophical cosmology. It is
Speaker 1: interested in the essence of the world as a whole.
Speaker 1: It asks questions including whether the universe has a beginning
Speaker 1: and an end, and whether it was created by something else.
Speaker 1: A key topic in metaphysics concerns a question of whether
Speaker 1: reality only consists of physical things like matter and energy.
Speaker 1: Alternative suggestions are that mental entities such as souls and experiences,
Speaker 1: and abstract entities such as numbers, exists apart from physical things.
Speaker 1: Another topic in metaphysics concerns the problem of identity. One
Speaker 1: question is how much an entity can change while still
Speaker 1: remaining the same entity. According to one view, entities have
Speaker 1: essential and accidental features. They can change their accidental features,
Speaker 1: but they cease to be the same entity if they
Speaker 1: lose an essential feature. A central distinction in metaphysics is
Speaker 1: between particulars and universals. Universals like the color red and
Speaker 1: exist at different locations at the same time. This is
Speaker 1: not the case for particulars, including individual persons or specific objects.
Speaker 1: Other metaphysical questions are whether the past fully determines the
Speaker 1: present and what implications this would have for the existence
Speaker 1: of free will. Aesthetics, in the philosophical sense, is the
Speaker 1: field that studies the nature and appreciation of beauty and
Speaker 1: other esthetic properties like the sublime. Although it is often
Speaker 1: treated together with the philosophy of art, aesthetics is a
Speaker 1: broader category that encompasses other aspects of experience, such as
Speaker 1: natural beauty. In a more general sense, esthetics is critical
Speaker 1: reflection on art, culture, and nature. A key question in
Speaker 1: esthetics is whether beauty is an objective feature of entities
Speaker 1: or a subjective aspect of experience. Aescetic philosophers also investigate
Speaker 1: the nature of esthetic experiences and judgments. Further topics include
Speaker 1: the essence of works of art and the processes involved
Speaker 1: in creating them. The philosophy of language studies the nature
Speaker 1: and function of language. It examines the concepts of meaning, reference,
Speaker 1: and truth. It aims to answer questions such as how
Speaker 1: words are related to things and how language affects human
Speaker 1: thought and understanding. It is closely related to the disciplines
Speaker 1: of logic and linguistics. The philosophy of language rose to
Speaker 1: particular prominence in the early twentieth century and analytic philosophy
Speaker 1: due to the works of Frega and Russell. One of
Speaker 1: its central topics is to understand how sentences get their meaning.
Speaker 1: There are two broad theoretical camps, those emphasizing the formal
Speaker 1: truce conditions of sentences and those investigating circumstances that determine
Speaker 1: when it is suitable to use a sentence, the latter
Speaker 1: of which is associated with speech act theory. The philosophy
Speaker 1: of mind studies the nature of mental phenomena and how
Speaker 1: they are related to the physical world. It aims to
Speaker 1: understand different types of conscious and unconscious mental states, like beliefs, desires, intentions, feelings, sensations,
Speaker 1: and free will. An influential intuition in the philosophy of
Speaker 1: mind is that there is a distinction between the inner
Speaker 1: experience of objects and their existence in the external world.
Speaker 1: The mind body problem is the problem of explaining how
Speaker 1: these two types of thing, mind and matter are related.
Speaker 1: The main traditional responses are materialism, which assumes that matter
Speaker 1: is more fundamental, idealism, which assumes that mind is more fundamental,
Speaker 1: and dualism, which assumes that mind and matter are distinct
Speaker 1: types of entities. In contemporary philosophy, another common view is functionalism,
Speaker 1: which understands mental states in terms of the functional or
Speaker 1: causal roles they play. The mind body a problem is
Speaker 1: closely related to the hard problem of consciousness, which asks
Speaker 1: how the physical brain can produce qualitatively subjective experiences. The
Speaker 1: philosophy of religion investigates the basic concepts, assumptions, and arguments
Speaker 1: associated with religion. It critically reflects on what religion is,
Speaker 1: how to define the divine, and whether one or more
Speaker 1: gods exist. It also includes the discussion of worldviews that
Speaker 1: reject religious doctrines. Further questions addressed by the philosophy of
Speaker 1: religion are how are we to interpret religious language if
Speaker 1: not literally, is divine omnissions compatible with free will? And
Speaker 1: are the great variety of world religions in some way
Speaker 1: compare in spite of their apparently contradictory theological claims. It
Speaker 1: includes topics from nearly all branches of philosophy. It differs
Speaker 1: from theology since theological debates typically take place within one
Speaker 1: religious tradition, whereas debates in the philosophy of religion transcend
Speaker 1: any particular set of theological assumptions. The philosophy of science
Speaker 1: examines the fundamental concepts, assumptions, and problems associated with science.
Speaker 1: It reflects on what science is and how to distinguish
Speaker 1: it from pseudoscience. It investigates the methods employed by scientists,
Speaker 1: how their application can result in knowledge, and on what
Speaker 1: assumptions they are based. It also studies the purpose and
Speaker 1: implications of science. Some of its questions are what counts
Speaker 1: as an adequate explanation, is a scientific law anything more
Speaker 1: than a description of a regularity? And can some special
Speaker 1: sciences be explained entirely in the terms of a more
Speaker 1: general science. It is a vast field that is commonly
Speaker 1: divided into the philosophy of the natural sciences and the
Speaker 1: philosophy of the social sciences, with further subdivisions for each
Speaker 1: of the individual sciences under these headings. How these branches
Speaker 1: are related to one another is also a question in
Speaker 1: the philosophy of science. Many of its philosophical issues overlap
Speaker 1: with the fields of metaphysics or epistemology. Political philosophy is
Speaker 1: a branch of philosophy that aims to seek knowledge on
Speaker 1: the essence of politics. It examines the basic concepts, assumptions,
Speaker 1: and arguments in the field of politics. It investigates the
Speaker 1: nature and purpose of government and compares its different forms.
Speaker 1: It further asks under what circumstances the use of political
Speaker 1: power is legitimate rather than a form of simple violence.
Speaker 1: In this regard, it is concerned with the distribution of
Speaker 1: political power, social and material goods, and legal rights. Other
Speaker 1: topics are justice, liberty, equality, sovereignty, and nationalism. Political philosophy
Speaker 1: involves a general inquiry into normative matter and differs in
Speaker 1: this respect from political science, which aims to provide empirical
Speaker 1: descriptions of actually existing states. Political philosophy is often treated
Speaker 1: as a sub field of ethics. Influential schools of thought
Speaker 1: and political philosophy are liberalism, conservatism, socialism, and anarchism. Methods
Speaker 1: of philosophy are ways of conducting philosophical inquiry. They include
Speaker 1: techniques for arriving at philosophical knowledge and justifying philosophical claims,
Speaker 1: as well as principles used for choosing between competing theories.
Speaker 1: A great variety of methods have been employed throughout the
Speaker 1: history of philosophy. Many of them differ significantly from the
Speaker 1: methods used in the natural sciences, and that they do
Speaker 1: not use experimental data obtained through measuring equipment. The choice
Speaker 1: of one's method usually has important implications, both for how
Speaker 1: philosophical theories are constructed and for the arguments cited for
Speaker 1: or against them. This choice is often guided by epistemological
Speaker 1: considerations about what constitutes philosophical evidence. Methodological disagreements can cause
Speaker 1: conflicts among philosophical theories or about the answers to philosophical questions.
Speaker 1: The discovery of new methods has often had important consequences,
Speaker 1: both for how philosophers conduct their research and for what
Speaker 1: claims they defend. Some philosophers engage in most of their
Speaker 1: theorizing using one particular method, while others employ a wider
Speaker 1: range of methods based on which one fits the specific
Speaker 1: problem investigated best. Philosophical inquiry is relevant to many fields
Speaker 1: that are connected with what to believe and how to
Speaker 1: arrive at evidence for one's beliefs. This is a key
Speaker 1: issue for the sciences, which have as one of their
Speaker 1: prime objectives the creation of scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge is
Speaker 1: based on empirical evidence, but it is often not clear
Speaker 1: whether empirical observations are neutral or already include theoretical assumptions.
Speaker 1: A closely connected problem is whether the available evidence is
Speaker 1: sufficient to decide between competing theories. Epistemological problems in relation
Speaker 1: to the law include what counts as evidence and how
Speaker 1: much evidence is required to find a person guilty of
Speaker 1: a crime. A related issue in journalism is how to
Speaker 1: ensure truth and objectivity when reporting on events. In the
Speaker 1: field of politics, philosophy addresses issues such as how to
Speaker 1: assess whether a government policy is just. Philosophical ideas have
Speaker 1: prepared and shaped various political developments. The idea that philosophy
Speaker 1: is useful for many aspects of life and society is
Speaker 1: sometimes rejected. According to some academics, philosophy is mainly undertaken
Speaker 1: for its own sake and does not make make significant
Speaker 1: contributions to existing practices or external goals.