STUDY GUIDE BAST

Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person

Grade 11, Quarter 1

MELCS
1. Distinguish opinion from truth;
2. Realize that the methods of philosophy lead to wisdom and truth
Specific objectives:
1. Identify the meaning, importance, and source of knowledge.
2. Describe, the steps/processes of acquiring knowledge.
3. Explain how validating one’s knowledge leads to truth.
4. Compare/contrast different theories of truth.

Have you ever experienced believing in something you thought is true but in the end you
discovered that it is false? For example, you feel that the person standing in front of you is a true
friend who will never betray you but in the end he did betray you. Or during an examination
period you feel strongly that “A” is the right answer for item number 12 but it turned out to be “B.”
Or you feel that your belief(s) can guide you in the correct path only to discover that that it leads
to disaster. These, and countless examples from your experiences, show that there is a BIG
difference to what we feel is true and what is really true.
According to philosophy if you want to know the truth you have to use, not emotions, but
thinking. To think however is an act of choice which is not always done properly. Sometimes we
need guidance to straighten our thoughts. This is what module 2 provides. Welcome to the
province of epistemology.

Right now we are living in a very challenging time that some

people call the “New Normal.” In this time things that we
usually take for granted like the freedom to travel, entertainment like
concerts and movies and yes, even haircuts, are hard to come
by. Not only that the economy is bleeding to death with
thousands losing their jobs and countless businesses closing.
And we must not forget the thousands of people who were
infected and lost their lives. All of this happened because we
have one tiny enemy which we can’t see but is deadly: The Covid 19 virus.

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No wonder scientists in giant pharmaceutical companies are in a race to develop the vaccine for
this virus. The survival of human civilization may depend on their achievement. And in all of this
mankind is relying on one thing which can defeat the virus: the knowledge inside the head of
every scientist developing the cure. Without knowledge the vaccine needed to end this
pandemic is impossible.
Our reliance however on knowledge is not new. Even before the Covid 19 pandemic people are
already relying on knowledge for their survival. Without knowledge on how to create a fire, how
to cook one’s food, how to build a shelter, how to build dams to control flooding, how to create
laws to preserve order in society and yes even how to think properly, we would still be in a
prehistoric cave. Knowledge literally enabled mankind to survive and reach the present level of
our civilization.
It is on the recognition of the supreme importance of knowledge that gave rise to the branch of
philosophy known as epistemology. Let us therefore explore the meaning, foundation and
importance of epistemology.

WHAT IS EPISTEMOLOGY?
There is no one correct definition of epistemology. The one that I’m going to use came from the
philosopher Ayn Rand:
“Epistemology is a science devoted to the discovery of the proper method of acquiring and
validating knowledge” (Rand 1990).
The purpose of epistemology therefore is two-fold:
1. To show how we can acquire knowledge.
2. To give us a method of demonstrating whether the knowledge we acquired is really
knowledge (i.e., true).
Since knowledge plays a central role in epistemology let us briefly described its nature.
THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE
According to Ayn Rand knowledge is a “mental grasp of reality reached either by perceptual
observation or by a process of reason based on perceptual observation” (Rand 1990).
When you know something (be it the behavior of your friend, the movement of the planets, or the
origin of civilizations) you understand its nature. You identify what it is. And it stays with you.
Knowledge is a retained form of awareness (Binswanger 2014).
So how do you acquire knowledge? Miss Rand’s definition gives us two ways:
First, we can acquire knowledge using our senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling, smelling.
How do you know that the table is brown? Because you see it. How do you know that fire is hot?
Because you feel it. This method of acquiring knowledge is called empiricism and it has many
adherents in the history of philosophy such as John Locke, George Berkley, David Hume.

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Second, we can acquire knowledge by thinking with the use of our minds (what philosophers call
the rational faculty). This is what rationalism advocates. (Some well-known rationalists in
history are Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz).

However, thinking is just half of the story of knowing (in fact the second half). The reason is that
thinking involves content. To think is to think of something. You cannot think about nothing. This
is where sense perception enters the picture by feeding our minds with data coming from the
outside world so that we can have something to think about.
ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE
Let us now explore the first part of epistemology: the process of acquiring knowledge.
1. Reality
- To know is to know something. This “something” is what philosophers call reality, existence,
being. Let us employ the term existence. Existence is everything there is (another name for it is
the Universe [Peikoff 1990]). It includes everything we perceive (animals, plants, human beings,
inanimate objects) and everything inside our heads (e.g., our thoughts and emotions) which
represents our inner world.
Existence is really all there is to know. If nothing exists knowledge is impossible.

2. Perception
- Our first and only contact with reality is through our senses. Knowledge begins with perceptual
knowledge. At first the senses give us knowledge of things or entities (what Aristotle calls
primary substance): dog, cat, chair, table, man. Later we became aware not only of things but
certain aspects of things like qualities (blue, hard, smooth), quantities (seven inches or six
pounds), relationships (in front of, son of) even actions (jumping, running, flying). These so
called Aristotelian categories cannot be separated from the entities that have it. Red for example

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cannot be separated from red objects; walking cannot be separated from the person that walks,
etc.
3. Concept
- After we perceive things we began to notice that some of the things we perceive are similar to
other things. For example, we see three individuals let’s call them Juan, Pablo and Pedro who
may have nothing in common at first glance. But when we compare them with another entity, a
dog for example, suddenly their differences become insignificant. Their big difference to a dog
highlights their similarity to one another (Binswanger 2014)
We therefore grouped them into one class or group, named the group (“man” or “human being”)
and define what that group is to give it identity (Peikoff 1990). We now have a concept which
according to one dictionary means “an abstract or generic idea generalized from particular
instances” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
The first concepts we formed are concepts of things like dog, cat, man, house, car. These
elementary concepts are called first level concepts (Rand 1990). From these first level concepts
we can form higher level concepts through a process which Rand calls “abstraction from
abstractions” (Rand1990).
Let us describe the two types of abstraction from abstractions: wider generalizations (or simply
widening) and subdivisions (or narrowing) (Binswanger 2014):
Wider generalization
- is the process of forming wider and wider concepts.
- For example, from Juan, Pedro and Pablo we can form the concept “man”. Then from man,
dog, cat, monkey we can form a higher and wider concept “animal”. And from plant and animal
we can form a still higher and wider concept “living organism”. As we go up to these progressive
widening our knowledge increases.
Subdivisions
- consist of identifying finer and finer distinctions.
- For example, “man” is a first level concept that we can subdivide according to profession
(doctor, entertainer, fireman, teacher), or race (Asian, Caucasian [white], black), or gender (man,
woman, lesbian, gay), or nationality (Filipino, Chinese, American) among other things. As we go
down these progressive narrowing our knowledge of things subsumed under a concept
increases.
The result of this progressive widening and narrowing is a hierarchy (or levels) of concepts
whose based is sense perception. As we move further from the perceptual base knowledge
becomes more abstract and as we move closer to the perceptual level knowledge becomes
more concrete.
4. Proposition
- When we use concepts in order to classify or describe an “existent” (a particular that exist be it
an object, a person, an action or event, etc.) (Rand 1990) we use what philosophers call a
proposition (Binswanger 2014).
- A proposition is a statement that expresses either an assertion or a denial that an existent
belongs to a class or possess certain attribute.
- Proposition is usually expressed in a declarative sentence.

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When I say, for example, that “Men are mortals” I am making an assertion of men which are
affirmative in nature (thus the statement is an affirmative proposition). When I make an opposite
claim however, “Men are not mortals” I am denying something about men and thus my
statement is negative in nature (thus the proposition is called a negative proposition)
An affirmative proposition therefore has the following structure: “S is P” (where S is the subject,
P is the predicate and “is” is the copula stating the logical relationship of S and P) while the
negative proposition has the structure “S is not P” (“is not” is the copula expressing denial).
Notice that statements like “Men are mortals”, “Angels are not demons”, and “Saints are not
sinners” can either be true or false. “Truth and falsity are called the two possible truth values of
the statement” (Hurley 2011). (Later were going to explore the nature of truth).

5. Inference
- How do we demonstrate that the statement is true? By providing an argument. According to
Hurley an argument “is a group of statements, one or more of which (the premises) are claimed
to provide support for, or reason to believe one of the others (the conclusion) (Hurley 2011). To
clarify this definition let’s give an example using the famous Socratic argument:
All men are mortals
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
Here we have three related statements (or propositions). The last statement beginning with the
word “therefore” is what we call a conclusion. A conclusion is a statement that we want to
prove. The first two statements are what we call premises (singular form: premise). A premise
provides justification, evidence, and proof to the conclusion.
An argument expresses a reasoning process which logicians call inference (Hurley 2011).
Arguments however is not the only form of inference but logicians usually used “argument” and
“inference” interchangeably.

THE NATURE OF TRUTH

Now that we know how we know, it’s time to see whether the knowledge we acquired is “really”
knowledge i.e., is true. This is the second part of epistemology: validating one’s knowledge.
The first step in validating one’s knowledge is to ask oneself the following question: “How did I
arrive at this belief, by what steps?” (Binswanger 2014). Thus you have to retrace the steps you
took to acquire the knowledge, “reverse engineer” the process (Binswanger 2014). This is what
Dr. Peikoff calls reduction (Peikoff 1990). One will therefore realize that the steps you took to
acquire knowledge (perception-concept-proposition-inference) are the same steps needed to
validate knowledge (but in reverse order). Thus what the ancient pre-Socratic philosopher
Heraclitus said is true when applied to epistemology: “the way up [knowledge acquisition] is the
way down [knowledge validation]” (quoted by Dr. Binswanger 2014).
If we perform the process of reduction, we will realize that all true knowledge rest ultimately on
sense perception. “A belief is true if it can be justified or proven through the use of one’s senses”
(Abella 2016). Consider the following statements (Abella 2016):

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I am alive.
I have a body.
I can breathe.
You can only validate the above statements if you observed yourself using your senses. Feel
your body. Are you breathing? Feel your pulse. Observe your body. Is it moving? These and
countless examples provided by your senses proved that you’re alive (Abella 2016).
Not all statements however can be validated directly by the senses. Some beliefs or ideas need
a “multi-step process of validation called proof’ (Binswanger 2014). Nevertheless, proof rests
ultimately on sense perception.
Statements based on sense perception are factual and if we based our beliefs on such facts our
beliefs are true (Abella 2016).
For example, the belief that human beings have the right to life rests on the following claim:
1. Human beings are rational animals.
2. Animals (including human beings) are living organisms.
And of course the fact that we are alive can be demonstrated perceptually as shown above.
A third way to determine if the statement is true is through a consensus (Abella 2016). If the
majority agrees that a statement is true, then it is true. However, there are certain limitations to
this approach. Far too many times in history false ideas became popular which ultimately leads
to disaster. For example, the vast majority of Germans during the time of Adolph Hitler believed
that Jews are racially inferior. This is obviously false supported by a pseudo biological science
of the Nazi. The result of this false consensus is the extermination of millions of Jews in many
parts of Europe.
A fourth way to determine whether a statement is true is to test it by means of action (Abella
2016). For example, you want to know if a person is friendly. Well the best way to find out is to
approach the person. Thus the famous Nike injunction of “Just do it” is applicable in this
situation.
TRUTH VS OPINION
Identifying truth however can sometimes be tricky. The reason is that there are times when we
strongly held an idea that we feel “deep down” to be true.
- For example, religious people strongly believed that there is life after death. Some people who
embraced democracy may passionately embrace the idea that the majority is always right. Or on
a more personal level you may feel strongly that your sister is “selfish”.
However, we must not confuse strongly held beliefs with truth. Truth is knowledge validated and
when we say validated we mean they are based on the facts of reality.
You must understand dear student that the facts of reality are independent of your thoughts,
feelings or preferences (Ayn Rand calls this the primacy of existence [Rand 1982]). That is the
characteristic of truth. For example, the statement “Jose Rizal died in 1896” is true. You may not
like that statement or deny it strongly. That does not change the fact that the statement is true
because it is based on what really happened in the past. There are many sources that can
validate the truth of that statement if one cared to look.
However, when you say that “Jose Rizal is the greatest man who ever lived” you are stating your
preference and not facts. This is an opinion. Now it is true that there are many facts about Rizal

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but that statement is asserting something that is beyond what the facts state. That statement
represents not facts but your interpretation of facts which may reveal your biases.

To summarize an opinion has the following characteristics:

1. Based on emotions
2. Open to interpretation
3. Cannot be confirmed
4. Inherently biased
While truth is:
1. Based on the facts of reality
2. Can be confirmed with other sources
3. Independent of one’s interpretation, preferences and biases

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References
Books:
Abella, Roberto D. (2016). Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person. Quezon City:
C&E Publishing
Binswanger, Harry. (2014). How We Know. New York: TOF Publications.
Copi, Irving M. and Cohen, Carl (2002). Introduction to Logic (11th edition). New Jersey:
Prentice Hall
Hurley, Patrick J. (2011). A Concise Introduction to Logic (11th edition). Boston: Cengage
Learning
Mabacquiao, N. (2017). Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person. Quezon City:
Phoenix Publishing.
Peikoff, Leonard (1990). Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton
Rand, Ayn (1990). Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (2nd edition). New York: Meridian
Stumpf, Samuel Enoch & Fieser, James (2008). Socrates to Sartre and Beyond (8th edition).
New Yok: McGraw Hill
Wilber, Ken (2006). Integral Spirituality. Boston: Integral Books
Websites:
Adapted from articles by Austin Cline:
http://atheism.about.com/b/2007/05/29/epistemology-correspondence-theoryof-truth.htm
accessed May 31, 2020.
http://mrhoyestokwebsite.com/Knower/Useful%20Information/Three%20Different %20Theories
%20of%20Truth.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth
https://wmpeople.wm.edu/asset/index/cvance/allegory

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