Group 1 “Method of

Philosophizing”
COVERAGE
LESSON 1
*KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM AND OPINION
LESSON 2
*NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE
LESSON 3
*KNOWLEDGE AND TRUTH
 LESSON 1
“KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM AND
OPINION”
➢ WILL DISCUSS THE 2 POPULAR METHODS OF
PHILOSOPHIZING
*THE DIALECTAL METHODS (SOCRATIC METHODS)
*AN EXERCISE IN SKEPTICISM USING DESCARTES’ METHOD
OF SYSTEMATIC DOUBT

➢ PLATO’S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE AND HIS CORRESPONDING

METAPHYSICAL SYSTEM, PLATO’S ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE
➢ PLATONIC CONCEPT OF THE DIVIDED LINE
➢ PLATO’S THEORY OF FORMS AND IDEAS
“PLATO’S METAPHYSICAL SYSTEM”
(THE QUEST FOR THE IDEA OF THE GOOD)

❖ Philosophy is WISDOM
❖ Platonic philosophy will add further that
knowledge is wisdom and virtue is knowledge.
❖ Was based on a complete worldview that is
consistently explained within his assumptions.
 According to Alfred North Whitehead- a
philosopher and logician: “The safest
characterization of western philosophy
is that of a series of footnotes to Plato”.
His philosophical views had towards the
establishment of the first ever institution
for tighter education called the
academy.
“PLATO”
➢ Believed that this world is not a basis for the
attainment of true and real knowledge.
➢ Assumed the existence of another world in other
dimension where he claimed that the objects of real
knowledge must be ageless and eternal.
➢ Unfortunately, everything in this world is considered as
appearances.
➢ Therefore assumed that there is an existence of
another world where real objects of knowledge could
be found because this world could not be the source of
ultimate knowledge.
“PLATO”
➢ Called the other dimension as “World of
Forms and Ideas”. That everything we see in
this world is merely a secondary copy that exist
in the other world, which is the ultimate basis
for knowledge.
➢ Assumed that before we were born, our souls
was once part of the “World Soul” (Has
immediate and direct contact with the World Forms and
Ideas)
 In the world of forms and ideas there
is an hierarchical structure
World of Forms and Ideas
GOOD

MATHEMATICAL
PERFECT WORLD
KNOWLEDGE
ABSTRACT SOUL

MATERIAL OBJECTS
“PLATO”
➢ He claimed that “Knowledge is a Remembrance”
➢ Plato forwarded the idea of the dualism between
mind and body.
➢ Later, philosophers like St. Augustine and Scholastic
Philosophy would incorporate this into the Christian
Doctrine, where the body is Evil and the spirit is
Good.
➢ The pursuit of Knowledge is connected with
Wisdom
➢ “Virtue is knowledge” and “knowledge is wisdom”
THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE

➢ A process of the enlightenment of the soul or

the mind’s eye to represents its ascent from
the world of opinion inside the cave with its
beliefs and illusions, to the world of real
knowledge where the real object of
knowledge could be found, the forms and
ideas.
THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE
The Divided Line – Knowledge
and Opinion
➢ Plato made a distinction between the sensible
world or the world of experience and the
intelligible world or the world of true
knowledge, is popularly known as Plato’s
Divided Line.
➢ The sensible world is known through the use
of our senses paving the basis for opinion.
➢ The intelligible world is known through the use
of the intellect paving the basis for knowledge.
The Divided Line – Knowledge and
Opinion
➢ Opinion, which could only produce appearance or
reality as it appears to us, is further divided into
belief and illusion.
➢ Between the two types of opinion, eikasia or
illusion or imagination is considered as the lower
type in Plato’s allegory.
➢ Belief or convection or pistis on the other hand,
our commonsensical view about the world.
FOR PLATO, THE REAL OBJECTIVE IS THE
SEARCH FOR KNOWLEDGE HAS 2 LEVELS
 REASON/NOESIS USING THE INTELLECT.
 DIANOIA, UNDERSTANDING USING
SCIENTIFIC, MATHEMATICAL/ ABSTRACT
HYPHOTHESIS.
➢ NOEISIS- claimed to be higher than DIANOIA
because it deals with grasping of complete or
perfect knowledge of the forms and Ideas
especially the Idea of the God in the World of
Forms and Ideas
• Knowledge is not dependent on the physical world
or the world of senses. It is a knowledge that is
achieved through competition.
According to Socrates

“The unexamined life is not

worth living” meant to emphasize the
importance of the contemplation or the
philosophical life in order to remember
the perfect knowledge that the soul know
before it joined the body.
Aporia /Ignorance
 Before achieving full/complete knowledge, the
person has to go through the process of
recognizing.
 This recognition and realization of one’s
limitations and ignorance will help the soul
gain noetic insights and enlightenment.
 The attainment of this knowledge means that
no one would simultaneously proceed to the
particular instances in his life, thus becoming
virtuous and attaining wisdom.
Dianoia
 Has to do with the lower type of
knowledge, which is associated with
mathematical, abstract/ scientific
understanding.
 Still relies on some assumptions,
hypothesis, and imagery from physical/
sensible world.
 The Socratic Method — an
Exercise in Dialects

➢ Actually an example of the method of dialects.

➢ This constitutes the embracing and taking on the
hypothesis of view of your opponent as if you agree
with it.
➢ Could show the contradiction or absurdity of your
opponent’s argument by asking a series of insightful
questions in a dialogue that would lead to this
absurd or contradiction conclusion.
 Method of Systematic Doubt –
an Exercise in Skepticism
 Rene Descartes, in his book, “Meditations on First
Philosophy (1641)” believed that knowledge can
proceed or start from very few premises or starting
points just like his model of Mathematics.
 He saw the structure of knowledge as an inverted
pyramid where a few premises are the starting
point. To be accepted as a starting point of
knowledge, an idea must be clear, distinct and
certain.
Method of Systematic Doubt –
an Exercise in Skepticism
 Believed that reason is an important instrument or
source in gaining knowledge about reality.
➢ 3 Indubitable Premises of Knowledge: the self,
the God, and material objects. These 3 could be
discovered using Systematic Doubt.
➢ Systematic Doubt consists of doubting everything
that can be doubted when you arrive at clear and
distinct ideas.
Method of Systematic Doubt –
an Exercise in Skepticism
 he began his proof for the essence of the self
by doubting everything that can be doubted.
Even if you doubt everything that can be
doubting, you can still be sure of one thing, that
you are doubting.
 As a result, the self exists at the very act of
doubting, which is a form of thinking. In other
words, cogito, ergo, sum, or “I Think, Therefore,
I Am”
Method of Systematic Doubt –
an Exercise in Skepticism
➢ Proved the other 2 indubitable premises of
knowledge, the existence of God, and Material
objects; as infallible knowledge of substances
guaranteed by the faculty of reason.
➢ Some critics on the other hand could not accept
Descartes’ argument. It is the Claim of Empiricism
which contradicts the rationalism of Descartes,
but this process of doubting or a little amount of
skepticism would later leave us with a very
important lesson in life.
LESSON 2
“NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE”
➢ WILL DISCUSS THE PROCESS OF ACQUIRING
AND APPREHENDING CONCEPTS, INCLUDING
THE STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A
CONCEPT FOR KNOWLEDGE TO BE POSSIBLE.

➢ ALSO DISCUSS THE NATURE OF CONCEPTS

AND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SENTENCES
AND STATEMENTS.
“STAGES IN THE APPREHENSION
OF A CONCEPTS BEFORE
KNOWLEDGE BECOMES POSSIBLE”

1. Perception

2. Abstraction

3. Judgment
1. Perception
 Has 2 types; External Perception and
Internal Perception

➢ External Perception
-happens when we perceive things using our
five senses. The result of the process is called PERCEPT.
➢ Internal Perception
-happens when you use your imagination and
memory. The product of this process is called an
image or PHANTASM.
 2. Abstraction
 The second stage that distinguish us as animals.
 Was described buy Charles Coppens, S.J. as a
simple apprehension or conception.
 Simple apprehension is the act of perceiving the
object intellectually, without affirming or denying
anything concerning it. Thus it involves the us of
the use of intellect where we grasp what is
universal among the different particulars that we
observed from perception. From the percepts and
images, you were able to arrive at the concepts
using your intellect.
2. Abstraction
 Concepts exist in the minds. Our minds has the
capacity for constructing concepts as general
terms like the concept of a chair or even abstract
concepts like love or beauty.
 Concepts are said to be the building blocks of
knowledge, but you need to put the blocks
together for knowledge to be possible
 According to Acunia, concepts could either be
vague or precise, sufficient or insufficient, but they
are neither true or false.
3. JUDGMENT
➢ This is the second stage to complete the act of the mind.
➢ This is were we are going to make a knowledge claim because
we are going to take at least two concepts and put them
together in order to make a statement or a proposition that
could either be a true or false.
➢ Therefore affirming or denying something about the concept, or
you may be pronouncing about the agreement or disagreement
between these two concepts.
➢ The result of this process is a statement or proposition.
➢ It completes the act of the mind for knowledge to become
possible.
➢ If concepts are considered as the building blocks of
knowledge, you need the statements to cement them together
in order to construct an argument.
SENTENCES AND STATEMENTS
➢ The concepts that we put together are expressed
using sentences.
➢ We are already familiar with the 5 types of
sentences: Declarative (meant to express a
statement), Interrogative (meant to ask a
question), Imperative (meant to issue a
command), Expletive (meant to issue a wish),m
and Exclamatory (meant to express surprise).
➢ Sentences have no truth value.
➢ They are merely uttered as the verbal means of
communicating or expressing commands,
questions, emotions like surprise or pleasure and
wishes.
TYPES OF STATEMENTS
➢ Philosophers have considered it a necessary
tool of analysis to classify two meaningful
types of statements based on two sources
that could be accepted or verified.
➢ They came up with two meaningful types
which could be traced on the empiricist
tradition of David Hume. It could be found on
his article, ‘Skeptical Doubts Concerning the
Operations of the Understanding’. The two
statements are known as analytic and
empirical statements.
Analytic statements
➢ The truth or falsity of the knowledge can be
claim being made by an analytic statement
could be found within the statement itself.
➢ It also means that you have not given
additional information that is contingent or is
dependent on the state of affairs in the world,
aside from what is being used and accepted
as a definition.
➢ Are also known or identified as: truths of
language, truths of reasons, ‘is’ of identity, a
priori, matters of logic, or formal statements.
Empirical Statements
➢ Are different from analytic statements because their
truth or falsity depend on the state of affairs being
claimed. Its truth or falsity of statement would now
depend on whether or not the state of affairs being
described actually obtains at the moment.
➢ You will not be able to discover the truth of the
statement by mere analysis of the key terms
contained therein. You have to go outside of the
statement and to look and see whether the state of
affairs being claimed actually corresponds the
empirical world.
➢ Are also known or identified as in philosophical
literature as truths of facts, synthetic, matters of
fact or a posteriori statements.
TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE
➢ From the distinction established by
Hume, a group of philosophers in the
science and mathematics would adopt
his idea.
➢ It leads to the traditional distinction of
two general types of knowledge as
Formal and Empirical knowledge.
Formal Knowledge
➢ Corresponds to the knowledge in the
formal sciences whose main concern
is the validation of their knowledge
claims within the formal system in their
respective discipline.
➢ Could be logical, mathematical,
linguistic or any formal system whose
method of validation depends entirely
on the particular system being used.
Empirical Knowledge
➢ Is the general term used to describe the different
disciplines in the empirical sciences, ranging
from hard sciences of Physics, Chemistry,
Biology and other to the soft sciences of
Sociology, Political Science, Psychology, and
others.
➢ The empirical sciences gives the information
about what the world is.
➢ Uses the method of Inductive to arrive at their
conclusion. In induction, the grounds or premises
support the conclusion only with probability and
not with the local certainty.
LESSON 3: KNOWLEDGE AND
TRUTH
➢ Willdiscuss the different theories
of Truth, Coherence,
Correspondence, and Pragmatic.
➢ This will also discuss the different
sources of knowledge, reason,
experience, and intuition.
THEORIES OF TRUTH: COHERENCE
THEORY
➢ The coherence theory of truth has to do with the well-formed
formulas adopted in the field of formal sciences like
mathematics, logic, trigonometry, geometry, or linguistic
systems where definitions are considered as tautologies.
➢ These well-formed formulas have been accepted as
universal and have proven to be true within the assumptions
or axioms of the systems where they belong.
➢ Coherence deals with the consistency of the truth of
statements being claimed within the systems that is being
used or employed.
➢ The faculty of reason is the one responsible for the formal
types of knowledge that we accept. It is of course, assumed
that man’s rationality is universal.
CORRESPONDENCE
THEORY
➢ The correspondence theory of truth has to do with
the correspondence of the knowledge claims being
made with the states of affairs in the world.
➢ The correspondence theory assumes that there is
something given outside, in the realm of sense
experience that we perceive as an objective reality.
➢ It would have sense perception of experience as its
source of knowledge. It was emphasized by Alfred
Jules Ayer in his book entitled ‘Language, Truth and
Logic (1963)” where he defined clearly limits of
empirical statements as only those that are
empirically verifiable through experience.
PRAGMATIC THEORY
➢ Pragmatism is a philosophical viewpoint
associated with an American philosopher and
doctor of medicine, William James. In his book
entitled “pragmatism (1907)” James makes a
pronouncement about truth based on the good or
practical consequences of an idea.
➢ For him, nature is pragmatic, as it is found to
have a successful application in the world.
 Sources of knowledge

 There are 2 accepted sources of knowledge:

Reason and Experience. This has been
accepted as mainstream since it have
undergone scrutiny from scholars in different
fields. There is however, a third source of
knowledge called Intuition mainly used by
moral philosophers claiming to have the
source of knowledge for moral goodness.
Sources of knowledge:
REASON
 Reason- a cause of explanation, or justification for
an action or event.
 The Faculty of Reason is construed here as an
analytic faculty that is able to determine the truth of
analytic statements.
 The analytic faculty of reason as a legitimate
source is confined to the ability of human being to
perform his rational function including the act of
thinking and analysis.
Sources of knowledge:
EXPERIENCE

 The faculty of Experience or sense of

perception, has to do with the use of Five
Senses, including sensory extending
devices for the purpose of our empirical
claims and as a result, leading to empirical
knowledge.
Sources of knowledge:
INTUITION
 Intuition- the ability to understand something
instinctively without the need for conscious reasoning.
 The Faculty of Intuition, as a third source of
knowledge, deals with the immediate or direct
recognition of self-evident truths. Others call it Tacit
knowledge which is unmediated by conceptual
process.
 George Edward Moore, is the proponent of
intuitionism in ethics. In his article entitled, Principia
Ethica (1903), he appealed to the faculty of intuition
for the direct or immediate knowledge of the idea of
goodness.
Evaluating Opinions
 Distinguishing between fact and opinion requires
scrutiny, because it is indeed a challenge to weed
out opinions based on one’s biases and subjective
views from facts based on accurate and objective
information.
 Thus, there must be a set of criteria in our
examination of these opinions before accepting
them as true.
 Acuña, in his book Philosophical Analysis, 7 th ed.,
reminded that we have one very important
obligation as a critical thinker that is, “Never
accept the truth of any statement or belief unless
there is adequate evidence for it”.
Evaluating Opinions
 Polycarp Ikuenobe, in his article entitled
“Questioning as an Epistemic Process of
Critical Thinker”, mentioned that we have to
consider and realize our fallibility through the act
of questioning.
 In examining opinions and beliefs, it is important
to avoid dogmatism.
 this give us the gist of one’s epistemic obligation
as a critical thinker. By adapting an attitude of
healthy skepticism or ‘methodical skepticism’,
this will allow us to be on our toes as a critical
thinker.
The End...