Western Philosophy

Main branches of philosophyTo give an exhaustive list of the main divisions of philosophy is difficult, because there have been different, equally acceptable divisions at different times, and the divisions are often relative to the philosophical concerns of a particular period. They also overlap considerably. Nevertheless, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Logic, Moral Philosophy, and perhaps Politics (which Aristotle saw as part of Ethics) are considered to be the main branches. Most other areas are mixtures or versions of those. For example, the philosophy of various subjects (such as science, history, religion, mind, art) turns out to fall into the main divisions.

Metaphysics was first studied systematically by Aristotle, though he did not use that term. He calls it 'first philosophy' (or sometimes just 'wisdom') and says it is the subject which deals with 'first causes and the principles of things'. It is the highest science of all, because it is the most general, and its truths explain the truths of all other sciences.[6]The modern meaning of the term is any enquiry dealing with the ultimate nature of what exists. Within metaphysics, ontology is the enquiry into the meaning of existence itself, sometimes seeking to specify what general types of things exist (though sometimes the term is taken to be equivalent to metaphysics itself). The philosophy of mind, since it ultimately concerns the question of whether mind or consciousness exists, and what it is, is part of metaphysics.

Epistemology is concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, and whether knowledge is possible at all. Its central concern is the challenge posed by skepticism, that all our beliefs and thoughts may be somehow illusory or mistaken (such as if our waking life were really a dream).

Ethics or 'moral philosophy', is concerned with questions of how agents should or ought to act. For example, Plato's early dialogues search for definitions of virtues like temperance, justice, courage, piety. Metaethics, the study of whether value judgments can be objective at all, is generally distinguished from particular ethical systems (for example, Aristotelian, Kantian, or utilitarian) which attempt to prescribe principles of good behaviour.

Logic has two broad divisions: mathematical logic (dealing with formal logical apparatus) and what is now called philosophical logic. Often the term is taken to mean only the first of these. The second has come to include most of those topics traditionally treated by logic in general; it is concerned with characterising notions like inference, rational thought, truth, and contents of thoughts, in the most fundamental ways possible, sometimes trying to model them using modern formal logic.

Naturalism

Naturalism is any of several philosophical stances, typically those descended from materialism and pragmatism, that do not distinguish the supernatural (including strange entities like non-natural values, and universals as they are commonly conceived) from nature. Naturalism does not necessarily claim that phenomena or hypotheses commonly labeled as supernatural do not exist or are wrong, but insists that all phenomena and hypotheses can be studied by the same methods and therefore anything considered supernatural is either nonexistent, unknowable, or not inherently different from natural phenomena or hypotheses.

Any method of inquiry or investigation or any procedure for gaining poo that limits itself to natural, physical, and material approaches and explanations can be described as naturalistic.

Many modern philosophers of science[1][2] use the terms methodological naturalism or scientific naturalism to refer to the long standing convention in science of the scientific method, which makes the methodological assumption that observable effects in nature are best explainable only by similarly natural causes, and with irrelevance to the assumption of the existence or non-existence of supernatural elements, and so considers supernatural explanations for such events to be outside of science. They contrast this with the approach known as ontological naturalism or metaphysical naturalism, which refers to the metaphysical belief that the natural world (including the universe) is all that exists, and therefore nothing supernatural exists.

This distinction between approaches to the philosophy of naturalism is made by philosophers supporting science and evolution in the creation–evolution controversy to counter the tendency of some proponents of Creationism or intelligent design to refer to methodological naturalism as scientific materialism or as methodological materialism and conflate it with metaphysical naturalism to support their claim that modern science is atheistic. They contrast this with their preferred approach of a revived natural philosophy which welcomes supernatural explanations for natural phenomena and supports "theistic science" or pseudoscience.