Approaches in Doing Philosophy

1. Encoded by: Lester Anthony A.
Gaoiran

2. 1. What is your idea about critical and analytical thinking? How
can you apply the lesson on analytic philosophy in your
everyday life?
2. Are there beliefs that you may have questioned as you go
through with your life? Have you examined your evidence for
believing in them? Do you find them worth holding on to
amidst this scrutiny?
3. Use speculation in thinking about the nature of the universe
or any wild or ‘out of this world’ idea. Do you think that this
could be part of speculative philosophy?
4. Cite situations or examples in your everyday life where you
have used holism as your perspective in looking at the world
and your experiences in it. Do you think it is useful in gaining
a different perspective? Explain your answer.

3. • C.D Broad, in his article entitled
The Main Tasks of Philosophy,
differentiated two main
approaches in doing philosophy:
Critical or analytic and speculative
or metaphysical philosophy

4. Two fundamental tasks of Analytic philosophy according to
Broad:
1. The analysis and definition of our fundamental concepts
2. The clear and resolute criticism of our beliefs

5. What came
first? The
chicken or the

6. There are many beliefs which are often based on our
prejudices. A very good example would be our bias
against Muslims.
Because of terrorist acts of a small group of bandits like
Abu Sayyaf, many Christians, especially those who are
not exposed to Islamic traditions and live in cities
predominated by Christians, would carry their prejudice
against all muslims and regard them as terrorists and
troublemakers.

7. • Tries to find an underlying explanation or general
principle that could explain reality in its entirety.
• As Broad put it, ”speculative philosophy aims to reach
some general conclusions as to the nature of the
universe; and as to our position and prospects in it. It is
an attempt to think synoptically of all the facts – the
results might be trivial but the process will remind us of
the extreme complexity of the world.
• The attempt of the pre-Socratic philosophers to explain
reality is an example of this process.
Abstraction – the process of extracting a unifying
explanation from the multiplicity of things around
philosophers

8. • In an article by Willy Ostreng entitled “Reductionism
versus Holism – Contrasting Approaches”, he singled out
the distinction between holism and reductionism in doing
philosophy.

9. • A reductionist approach of doing philosophy refers to
understanding complex ideas by reducing them to their
parts or individual constituents. It holds the notion of a
classical Newtonian assumption that a complex system is
nothing but just a sum of its parts that everything in it can
be reduced to individual properties
• Rene Descartes first introduced the concept of
Reductionism during 17th century in Part V of his treatise
called Discourse on the Method
• In science, reductionist philosophy and methods are
considered the basis for many areas of modern science
such as physics, chemistry and biology

10. • He likened the world to a machine with pieces working
like a clockwork mechanism
• He argued that the machine can only be understood if an
individual would take its pieces apart and study its
individual components before putting it back together to
understand the bigger picture

11. • Works on the assumption that all properties in a given
system cannot be broken down by its component parts
alone, but rather the system as a whole entity decides
how the individual parts behave.
• Holism is the idea that something can be more than the
sum of its parts: more specifically to the concept of reality
• The word holism came from the greek word holos which
means “all”,”whole” or “total”.

12. • Holism was summed up by Aristotle in Metaphysics in
which he stated that, “The whole is more than the sum of
its parts.”
• The term holism was introduced into the language by
South african Jan Smuts
Atomism – contends that everything can be broken down
into smaller parts

13. • The fundamental assumption underpinning the holistic
perspective is that the properties of the parts contribute
to the understanding of the whole. However, the
properties of the parts can only be fully understood
through the dynamics of the whole.
• The primary focus of holism is the relationship between
the parts or its interconnectedness and interactions.
• Holism in philosophy refers to any kind of doctrine that
gives priority to the whole over its parts.

14. There are two types of Holism:
1. Epistomological Holism
 what you get when you apply to language the theory of
holism
 Also called confirmation holism
 This type of holism claims a scientific theory cannot be tested
individually , since testing a single theory would always
depend on other established theories and hypotheses.
Theory-laden approach(dependent on theory)
 Notion that evidence alone is insufficient to assert which kind
of philosophy is correct

15. There are two types of Holism:
2. Semantic Holism
The idea behind semantic holism is that every word has
meaning only in relation to other words, sentences, or the
language in which it is used.
It is a doctrine in the Philosophy of Language which
suggests that a certain part of language, a term or a
complete sentence, can only be understood through its
relations to a larger segment of language or possibly the
entire language.

16. • Although Epistomological Holism and Semantic Holism
are closely related, Epistomological Holism gained more
acceptance among philosophers compared to Semantic
Holism
• The birth of Moderate Holism or Semantic Molecularism
served as middle ground for contrasting views of
philosophers in semantic holism.
• Moderate Holism – refers to the belief that the meanings
of words depend on some subset of the language and
not the entire language

17. 1. ___ wrote the article entitled Philosophy: Critical and Speculative, w/c
singled out two main approaches in doing philosophy
2. What are the two main tasks of analytic philosophy?
3. who introduced the concept of Reductionism during 17th century?
4. Who introduced the term holism?
5. ____ philosophy aims to reach some general conclusions as to the
nature of the universe and as to our position and prospects in it.
6. ___ philosophy works on the assumption that all properties in a given
system cannot be broken down by its component parts alone, but rather
the system as a whole entity decides how the individual parts behave.
7. ___ type of holism claims a scientific theory cannot be tested
individually since testing a single theory would always depend on other
established theories and hypotheses.
8. The word holism came from Grk word ___ w/c means all.
9. A ____ approach of doing philosophy refers to understanding complex
ideas by reducing them to their parts or individual constituents.
10. The attempt of the pre-socratic philosophers to explain reality by
abstracting a unifying principle or substance is an example of the ___
approach.