St.
Mary University
Logic and Critical Thinking Lecture Note
By
Girma Ayalew (Lecturer)
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA
Oct/2022
CHAPTER ONE
1. Meaning and Nature of Philosophy
It is difficult to define philosophy in terms of a specific subject
matter.
However, we can define it etymologically or literal/word by
word and conceptual.
1. Etymological Definition
Philosophy comes from two Greek words:
philo and
sophia which mean love and wisdom as love of wisdom.
The ancient Greek thinker Pythagoras was the first to use
the word philosopher; to call a person who clearly shows a
marked curiosity/interest in the things he experiences.
Based on the Socratic understanding of wisdom,
philosophy, as
a pursuit of wisdom.
the development of critical habits,
the continuous search for truth, and
the questioning of the apparent.
2. Conceptual definition of Philosophy
It is a rational and critical enterprise that tries to
formulate and answer fundamental questions
through an intensive application of reason.
an application that draws on analysis, comparison,
and evaluation.
Philosophy refers to the development of critical
habits, the continuous search for truth, and the
questioning of the apparent.
It involves reason, rational criticism,
examination, and analysis.
It attempts to formulate rationally defensible
answers to certain fundamental questions concerning
the nature of reality, the nature of value, and the
nature of knowledge and truth - constructive side.
It deals with giving a rational critic, analysis,
clarification, and evaluation of answers given to basic
metaphysical, epistemological, and axiological
questions- critical side.
It is an activity. It is not something that can be
easily mastered or learned in schools.
However, what makes someone a great philosopher is not the
produced philosophy, but his/her outstanding ability to
philosophize.
Basic features of philosophy
As an academic discipline, philosophy has its own
salient features that distinguishes it from other academic
disciplines, be it natural, social and humanistic
disciplines.
Questioning/criticism is not the final end of philosophy,
though raising the right question is often taken not only
as the beginning and direction of philosophy but also as
its essence.
The general features of philosophy;
1) Philosophy is a set of views or beliefs about life and the
universe, which are often held uncritically.
We refer to this meaning as the informal sense of
philosophy or having a philosophy.
Usually when a person says my philosophy is, he/she is
referring to an informal personal attitude to whatever
topic is being discussed.
2) Philosophy is a process of reflecting on and criticizing
our most deeply held conceptions and beliefs.
This is the doing or formal sense of philosophy.
These two senses of philosophy cannot be treated
entirely independent of each other, if we did not have a
philosophy in the formal, personal sense, then we could
not do a philosophy in the critical, reflective sense.
However, having a philosophy is not sufficient for doing
philosophy.
A genuine philosophical attitude is searching and
critical; it is open-minded and tolerant willing to
look at all sides of an issue without prejudice.
To philosophize is not merely to read and know
philosophy; there are skills of argumentation to be
mastered, techniques of analysis to be employed,
and a body of material to be appropriated such that
we become able to think philosophically.
3) Philosophy is a rational attempt to look at the world as a
whole.
Philosophy seeks to combine the conclusions of the various
sciences and human experience into some kind of consistent
worldview.
Philosophy, attempts to bring the results of human inquiry,
religious, historical, and scientific into some meaningful
interpretation that provides knowledge and insight for our
lives.
4) Philosophy is the logical analysis of language
and the clarification of the meaning of words
and concepts.
It is one function of philosophy.
In fact, nearly all philosophers have used
methods of analysis and have sought to clarify
the meaning of terms and the use of language.
5) Philosophy is a group of perennial problems that
interest people and for which philosophers always
have sought answers.
Philosophy presses its inquiry into the deepest
problems of human existence.
Many questions, however, have been answered
only tentatively, and many problems remain
unsolved.
Philosophical questions
• What is truth?
• What is the distinction between right and wrong?
• What is life and why am I here?
• Why is there anything at all?
• What is the place of life in this great universe?
• Is the universe friendly or unfriendly?
• Do things operate by chance or through sheer mechanism, or is there
some plan, purpose, or intelligence at the heart of things?
• Is my life controlled by outside forces, or do I have a determining or
even a partial degree of control?
Why do people struggle and strive for their rights, for
justice, for better things in the future?
What do concepts like right and justice means, and what
are the marks of a good society? Often men and women
have been asked to sacrifice their lives, if need be, for
certain values and ideals.
What are the genuine values of life and how can it
attained?
Is there really a fundamental distinction between right and
wrong, or is it just a matter of one‘s own opinions?
What is beauty?
Should religion count in a person‘s life?
Is it intellectually valid to believe in God?
Is there a possibility of a life after death?
Is there any way we can get an answer to these and
many related questions?
Where does knowledge come from, and can we have
any assurances that anything is true?
Philosophy also means the various theories or systems of
thought developed by the great philosophers, such as
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes,
Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Royce,
James, Dewey, Whitehead, and others.
Without these people and their thoughts,
philosophy would not have the rich content it has today.
Even though we may be unconscious of the fact, we are
constantly influenced by ideas that have come down to us in
the traditions of society.
Core Fields of Philosophy
The followings are the core fields of philosophy.
A. Metaphysics,
B. Epistemology,
C. Axiology, and
D. Logic
A. Metaphysics
The term metaphysics is derived from the Greek words
“meta” means (beyond, upon or after) and physika, means
(―physics).
Literally, it refers “those things after the physics.”
Aristotle‘s writings on first philosophy‘ came after his treatise
on physics, therefore,
Aristotle‘s editor, Andronicus of Rhodes, named them
metaphysics.
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies
about the ultimate nature of reality or existence.
It deals with issues of
reality,
God,
freedom,
soul/immortality,
the mind-body problem,
form and substance relationship,
cause and effect relationship, and other related issues.
Metaphysicians seek an irreducible/absolute
foundation of reality from which absolute knowledge
or truth can be induced/encouraged and
deduced/reasoned.
Here are some of the questions that Metaphysics primarily
deals with:
What is reality?
What is the ultimately real?
What is the nature of the ultimate reality?
Is it one thing or is it many different things?
Can reality be grasped by the senses, or it is
transcendent?
What makes reality different from a mere appearance?
What is mind, and what is its relation to the body?
Is there a cause and effect relationship between reality and
appearance?
Does God exist, and if so, can we prove it?
Are human actions free, or predetermined by a supernatural
force?
What is human being? A thinking mind? A perishable body? Or
a combination of both?
What is time?
What is the meaning of life?
Metaphysical questions may be divided into four subsets
or aspects.
i) Cosmological Aspect: it study about the origin, nature, and
development of the universe as an orderly system.
Questions such as these populate the realm of cosmology are:
How did the universe originate and develop?
Did it come about by accident or design?
Does its existence have any purpose?
ii) Theological Aspect: it is part of religious theory that deals with
conceptions of and about God.
Is there a God? If so, is there one or more than
one?
What are the attributes of God?
If God is both all good and all powerful, why
does evil exist?
If God exists, what is His relationship to
human beings and the real‘ world of everyday
life?
iii) Anthropological Aspect: It deals with the study of
human beings and asks questions like the following:
What is the relation between mind and body?
Is mind more fundamental than body, with body
depending on mind, or vice versa?
What is humanity‘s moral status?
Are people born good, evil, or morally neutral?
To what extent are individuals free?
Do they have free will, or are their thoughts and actions
determined by their environment, inheritance, or a divine being?
Does each person have a soul? If so, what is it?
iv) Ontological Aspect: is the study of the nature of existence, or
what it means for anything to exist.
Several questions are central to ontology:
Is basic reality found in matter or physical energy (the world we
can sense), or is it found in spirit or spiritual energy?
Is it composed of one element (e.g., matter or spirit), or two
(e.g., matter and spirit), or many?
Is reality orderly and lawful in itself, or is it merely
orderable by the human mind?
Is it fixed and stable, or is change its central feature?
Is this reality friendly, unfriendly, or neutral toward
humanity?
B. Epistemology:
Etymologically, the word epistemology has been derived from
the Greek words episteme, meaning knowledge, understanding,
and logos-study of.
It studies about the nature, scope, meaning, and possibility of
knowledge.
It deals with issues of knowledge, opinion, truth, falsity,
reason, experience, and faith.
Epistemology is also referred to as theory of knowledge.
It seeks to answer the basic questions as:
o What is true?
o How do we know? Thus, epistemology covers two areas: the
content of thought and thought itself.
o The study of epistemology deals with issues related to the
dependability of knowledge and the validity of the sources
through which we gain information.
• The following are among the questions/issues with which
Epistemology deals:
What is knowledge?
What does it mean to know?
What is the source of knowledge? Experience? Reason?
Or both?
How can we be sure that what we perceive through our
senses is correct?
What makes knowledge different from belief or
opinion?
What is truth, and how can we know a statement is true?
Can reason really help us to know phenomenal
things without being informed by sense
experiences?
Can our sense experience really help us to know
things beyond our perception without the
assistance of our reasoning ability?
What is the relationship and difference between
faith and reason?
• Epistemology seeks answers to a number of fundamental
issues.
i. reality can even be known.
• Skepticism: in its narrow sense is the position claiming
that people cannot acquire reliable knowledge and that
any search for truth is in ineffective(vain).
• A term closely related to skepticism is agnosticism.
• Agnosticism is a profession of ignorance in reference to
the existence or nonexistence of God.
ii. all truth is relative, or whether some truths are absolute.
Is all truth subject to change?
Is it possible that what is true today may be false tomorrow? If
the answer is Yes to the previous questions, such truths are
relative.
If, however, there is Absolute Truth, such Truth is eternally and
universally true irrespective of time or place. Closely related to
the issue of the relativity and absoluteness of truth are the
questions of whether knowledge is subjective or objective, and
whether there is truth that is independent of human experience.
Sources of human knowledge
a. Empiricism
Central to most people‘s answer to that question related to knowledge
obtained through the senses. Empirical knowledge appears to be built
into the very nature of human experience.
i.e Knowledge that can be gained from human experience is called
empiricism. The questions are:
If one accepts the fact that there is truth and even Truth in the universe,
how can human beings comprehend such truths? How do they become
human knowledge?
b. Rationalism (reason): The view that
reasoning, thought, or logic is the central factor
in knowledge is known as rationalism.
The rationalist, in emphasizing humanity‘s
power of thought and the mind‘s contributions
to knowledge, is likely to claim that the senses
alone cannot provide universal, valid
judgments that are consistent with one another.
Rationalism in a less extreme form claims that
people have the power to know with certainty
various truths about the universe that the senses
alone cannot give.
In its extreme form, rationalism claims that
humans are capable of arriving at
irrefutable/unquestionable knowledge
independently of sensory experience.
Formal logic is a tool used by rationalists.
c. Intuition: expressions as immediate feeling of certainty.
Intuition occurs beneath the threshold of consciousness
and is often experienced as a sudden flash of insight.
Intuition has been claimed under varying circumstances as
a source of both religious and secular knowledge.
Certainly, many scientific breakthroughs have been
initiated by intuitive hunches that were confirmed by
experimentation.
d. Revelation: Revealed knowledge has been of prime importance in the
field of religion.
It presupposes a transcendent supernatural reality that breaks into the
natural order.
Christians believe that such revelation is God‘s communication
concerning the divine will.
Believers in supernatural revelation hold that this form of knowledge
has the distinct advantage of being an omniscient source of
information that is not available through other epistemological
methods.
The truth revealed through this source is believed by Christians to be
absolute and uncontaminated.
e. Authority: knowledge is accepted as true because it comes
from experts or has been sanctified over time as tradition.
In the classroom, the most common source of information is
some authority, such as a textbook, teacher, or reference work.
C. Axiology: is the study or theory of value. The term Axiology
stems from two Greek words Axios, meaning value, worth, and
logos, meaning reason/ theory/ symbol / science/study of.
Hence, Axiology is the philosophical study of value, which
originally meant the worth of something.
Axiology asks the philosophical questions of values that
deal with notions of what a person or a society regards as
good or preferable, such as:
What is a value?
Where do values come from?
How do we justify our values?
How do we know what is valuable?
What is the relationship between values and knowledge?
What kinds of values exist?
Can it be demonstrated that one value is better than another?
Who benefits from values? Etc….
Axiology deals with the above and related issues of value in three
areas, namely;
Areas of Axiology
I. Ethics,
II. Aesthetics, and
III. Social/Political Philosophy.
I. Ethics: which is also known as Moral Philosophy.
It is a science that deals with the philosophical study
of moral principles, values, codes, and rules, which
may be used as standards for determining what kind
of human conduct/action is said to be good or bad,
right or wrong.
Ethics raises various questions including:
What is good/bad?
What is right/wrong?
Is it the Right Principle or the Good End
that makes human action/conduct moral?
Is an action right because of its good end,
or it is good because of its right principle?
Are moral principles universal, objective,
and unconditional, or relative, subjective
and conditional?
What is the ultimate foundation of moral principles? The
supernatural God? Human reason? Mutual social contract?
Social custom?
Does God exist? If so, is He Benevolent and Omnipotent?
If God is Benevolent, why He creates evil things? If God does
not create evil things, then, there must be another creator who
is responsible to creation of the evil things? But, if it is so,
how can God be an Omnipotent creator?
Why we honor and obey moral rules? For the sake of our own
individual benefits?, or for the sake of others?, or just for the
sake of fulfilling our infallible duty?
Ethics, or ethical studies, can be grouped into three broad categories:
1. Normative ethics,
2. Meta-ethics, and
3. Applied Ethics.
4. Normative Ethics: refers to the ethical studies that attempt to study
and determine precisely the moral rules, principles, standards and
goals by which human beings might evaluate and judge the moral
values of their conducts, actions and decisions.
It is the reasoned search for principles of human conduct, including a
critical study of the major theories about which things are good, which
acts are right, and which acts are blameworthy.
• Consequentialism or Teleological Ethics,
• Deontological Ethics, and
• Virtue Ethics are the major examples of normative ethics.
2. Meta-ethics: is the highly technical philosophical discipline that
deals with investigation of the meaning of ethical terms, including
a critical study of how ethical statements can be verified. It is
more concerned with the meanings of such ethical terms as good
or bad and right or wrong than with what we think is good or bad
and right or wrong.
Moral Intuitionism, immediate and non-argumentative forms of
judgment.
Moral Emotivism, try to influence others to agree with us.
Has no cognitive content.
Moral Prescriptivism, the concept where a certain language
variety is promoted as linguistically superior to others.
Moral Nihilism is a philosophy, or family of views within
philosophy, that rejects general or fundamental aspects of
human existence, such as objective truth, knowledge, morality,
values or meaning.
Ethical Relativism are the main examples of meta-ethical
studies.
3. Applied Ethics: is a normative ethics that attempts to
explain, justify, apply moral rules, principles, standards,
and positions to specific moral problems, such as capital
punishment, euthanasia, abortion, adultery, animal right,
and so on.
II. Aesthetics: is the theory of beauty. It studies about the
particular value of our artistic and aesthetic experiences.
It deals with beauty, art, enjoyment, sensory/emotional
values, perception, and matters of taste and sentiment.
• The following are typical Aesthetical questions:
What is art?
What is beauty?
What is the relation between art and beauty?
What is the connection between art, beauty, and truth?
Can there be any objective standard by which we may judge
the beauty of artistic works, or beauty is subjective?
What is artistic creativity and how does it differ from scientific
creativity?
Why works of art are valuable?
Can artistic works communicate? If so, what do they
communicate?
Does art have any moral value, and obligations or constraints?
Are there standards of quality in Art?
III. Social/Political Philosophy: studies about of the value
judgments operating in a civil society, be it social or political.
Why works of art are valuable?
Can artistic works communicate? If so, what do they
communicate?
Does art have any moral value, and obligations or constraints?
Are there standards of quality in Art?
III. Social/Political Philosophy: studies about of the value
judgments operating in a civil society, be it social or political.
What form of government is best?
What economic system is best?
What is justice/injustice?
What makes an action/judgment just/unjust?
What is society?
Does society exist? If it does, how does it come to existence?
How are civil society and government come to exist?
Are we obligated to obey all laws of the State?
What is the purpose of government?
The importance of learning philosophy
Studying philosophy has a primordial contribution. Here below are some
of them.
1) Intellectual and Behavioral Independence:- This is the ability to
develop one‘s own opinion and belief.
2) Reflective Self-Awareness:- Philosophy helps us to intensify our self-
awareness by inviting us to critically examine the essential intellectual
grounds of our lives.
3) Flexibility, Tolerance, and Open-Mindedness:- evolutionary nature of
intellectual achievement and the ongoing development of human
thought.
4) Creative and Critical Thinking: - this is the ability to
develop original philosophical perspective on issues,
problems, and events; and to engage them on a deeper
level.
5) Conceptualized and well-thought-out value systems in
morality, art, politics, and the like: - since philosophy
directly deals with morality, art, politics, and other
related value theories, studying philosophy provides us
with an opportunity to formulate feasible evaluations of
value; and thereby to find meaning in our lives.
