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as the unifying principle of the universe. This definition expresses the craving and
desire of the philosopher who want to discover the right application of knowledge.
Philosophy as the search for reality
This definition draws its potency from, and is related to “metaphysics”- a
major branch of philosophy. It emphasizes the role of the philosopher in
discovering the principles of life and existence, as well as transcendence i.e. going
beyond the natural.
Philosophy as the search for truth
This definition is the representation of “epistemology” in philosophy as one of
its main branches. It emphasizes the continuous drive of the philosopher in his
quest for knowledge and truth; as well as the principles and presuppositions
guiding their operation.
Philosophy as the search for value or the best forms of life
This definition falls within the domain of “ethics”-the third major branch of
philosophy. It shows what the moral philosopher aims at achieving within human
society and how he intends to create stability in an unstable world.
Knowledge
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The subject of philosophical cognition is not only the universe and its most
general laws as they exist in themselves, but also the relationship between human
and the universe. It can be said that the basic question of philosophy, that is, the
question of the relationship of thinking to being. It became a part of its subject at
the early stages of the formation of philosophical thought.
Naturally, the subject of philosophy has never remained static. It has
developed historically and has taken its own shape along with the development of
human culture, including the culture of thought itself. Moreover, at various periods
one or another philosophical school or individual thinker has given preference to
questions of ontology, the theory of being, or to questions of the theory of
knowledge and logic, or to problems of morality, philosophical anthropology, and
so on.
If we considered the history of philosophy and what this or that thinker
regarded about the basic subject of philosophical reflection, the answers would be
many and various. Socrates, for example, urged that philosophy should stop
pondering the first principles of existence and concentrate on knowing about
human affairs, particularly the problems of morality. According to Plato, the
purpose of philosophy was to know the essence, the eternal and the intransient, and
according to Aristotle, philosophy should understand the causes and principles of
things. Francis Bacon described philosophy as the universal science, from which
all other sciences grew like the branches of a tree. According to Descartes, it was
the highest wisdom that could be achieved by logic; it taught the reason how to set
about obtaining knowledge of unknown truths. Locke and Hume saw the task of
philosophy in elaborating a theory of knowledge and theory of morality. Helvetius
thought the main question was the nature of human happiness. Hegel defined
philosophy as the highest stage of theoretical thought, the self-cognition of the
absolute idea, and called philosophy the epoch embodied in thought.
consciousness and reality, subject and object of thought. Mythological stories tell
us about human-beings ‒ gods and heroes that represent different natural
principles. In the mythological worldview world the human were a single whole.
Break this unity led to the split of human being, losing its harmony with the
world, making it possible theoretical relationship to the world and the rise of such
forms of worldview as science, religion, philosophy.
The mythological worldview (myth - the legend of heroes and gods deeds)
was characteristic of primitive society. It was based on totemism (is a belief
associated with animistic religions. The totem is usually an animal or other natural
figure that spiritually represents a group of related people such as a clan.).
The mythological worldview divides the world into visible (there are people)
and invisible (there live heroes and gods), dissolving people in nature. This was the
beginning of the history of the spirit.
Mythological consciousness arises and develops during the period of hunting
and gathering, before agriculture and animal husbandry. So thinking of primitive
people is based on the principles of expediency. Myths are the result of
spontaneously formed collective, clan-tribal consciousness, which was the result of
long domination of nature over people.
Only in period of agriculture, accustomed as soil fertility and strength of
animals, people rise to the realization of the objective laws of nature force. The
mythological worldview - is not a product of ignorance.
It put the following questions, which concerned humanity in our time:
- The origin of the world and human;
- The chaos and space;
- The finiteness and infinite world, and so on.
However, they were put in the form of myth. Myth - the oldest form of
ideology.
A myth is any traditional story consisting of events that are ostensibly
historical, though often supernatural, explaining the origins of a cultural practice or
natural phenomenon. Myths are often stories that are currently understood as being
exaggerated or fictitious. The word "myth" is derived from the Greek word mythos
(μῦθος), which simply means "story". Mythology can refer either to the study of
myths, or to a body or collection of myths. A myth also can be a story to explain
why something exists.
Human cultures usually include a cosmogonical or creation myth, concerning
the origins of the world, or how the world came to exist. The active beings in
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myths are generally gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, or animals and
plants. Most myths are set in a timeless past before recorded time or beginning of
the critical history. A myth can be a story involving symbols that are capable of
multiple meanings.
Mythological worldview was not aimed at a quick creative search for new,
more advanced forms and methods of relations with the between outside world and
people. It was aimed at preserving traditional and continuous actual state of affairs
which has developed over many generations. Myth as a special worldview was the
first and probably the most important defender of tradition, tribal morality, tribal
communities, customary conditions of life in general. It had transformed.
A myth is a sacred narrative because it holds religious or spiritual significance
for those who tell it. Myths also contribute to and express a culture's systems of
thought and values.
Myth is a first form of ideology, worldview which form human activity. Fairy
tale is a myth, devoid of something sacred. Explanation by presentation. Myth does
not need justification and explanation. Myth birthed philosophy.
The religious worldview clearly divides world and human, natural and
supernatural, earthly and that, what belonging to the other world. Human, which
created in the image and likeness of God, takes the main, central position in the
God’s world. In the religious worldview, through beliefs in the afterlife,
supernatural divine origin, the human makes its own relationship to the world,
gives it the semantic completeness and achieves harmony with it.
Religious worldview is intrinsically connected to the belief in a supreme being
or God presupposed as the basis and determinant of reality. In this regard, religions
play a very major role. They express a perception and understanding of reality but
in connection with a supreme being. The religious worldview is very idealistic in
outlook concerning reality. Example of a religious worldview is the story of
creation in the Christian bible; the worldview that the universe was created by a
supreme being (God).
For the first time in human history religious worldview raises the idea of
freedom.
Social history appeared as a linear process of unity in the past, present and
future, while the mythological world was turned back, searching for ancestors in
nature.
The philosophical worldview began to emerge almost simultaneously with the
religious, but it had a different background. The basis for the emergence of
philosophical worldview was a need to get knowledge about natural phenomena
with which people have been dealing in the production process.
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granted. Philosophy has gone the opposite way, putting the philosophical question
under mind control, choosing the reasonable explanation of the universe.
The philosophical worldview operates with such categories as "world",
"man", "nature," "being," "exists", "consciousness", "thought", "matter",
"substance", "space" , "time" and many others. These ideological categories help
people navigate the world correctly, learn it, do things and phenomena of material
and spiritual culture, form their own idea of truth, goodness, beauty. Philosophy
based on achieving natural, social and human sciences and engineering,
summarizing its discovery.
Solution of the main problem which deals with philosophy, is the problem of
relationship between the human and the world.
3. Functions of philosophy.
Some philosophers do not always agree on the nature and function of
philosophy. Here are some definitions that attempt to explain what is generally
meant by the term philosophy. These definitions do not necessarily reflect a
consensus of philosophical opinion.
The most important functions of philosophy.
1. The worldview function promotes entire world view, developing the doctrine
of the world structure and the structure of universe, determines human's place in it
and the principles of interaction between human and the world. Philosophy in a
certain way orients human in his life.
2. Methodological function of philosophy produces basic methods of
knowledge of the world (reality). The philosophical methodology based on the
development of philosophical method of understanding the world. Philosophical
methods at different historical periods of its development were dialectics and
metaphysics. Dialectics is a discourse between two or more people holding
different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through
reasoned arguments. Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy investigating the
fundamental nature of being and the world that encompasses it. Metaphysics
attempts to answer two basic questions:
1. Ultimately, what is there?
2. What is it like?
Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their
properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility. A central branch of
metaphysics is ontology, the investigation into the basic categories of being and
how they relate to one other. There are two broad conceptions about what "world"
is studied by metaphysics. The strong, first assumes that the objects studied by
metaphysics exist independently of any observer, so that the subject is the most
fundamental of all sciences. The weaker, second assumes that the objects studied
by metaphysics exist inside the mind of an observer, so the subject becomes a form
of introspection and conceptual analysis.
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the specialised sciences and does not command them, but it does arm them with
general principles of theoretical thinking, with a method of cognition and world-
view. In this sense scientific philosophy legitimately holds one of the key positions
in the system of the sciences.
Can philosophy develop by itself, without the support of science? Can
science "work" without philosophy? Some people think that the science can stand
apart from philosophy, that the scientist should actually avoid philosophizing, the
latter often being understood as groundless and generally vague theorizing. If the
term philosophy is given such a poor interpretation, then of course anyone would
agree with the warning "Physics, beware of metaphysics!" But no such warning
applies to philosophy in the higher sense of the term. The specific sciences cannot
and should not break their connections with true philosophy.
Science and philosophy have always learned from each other.
Philosophy frames the questions and sets the rules of debate. It does this by
exploring the landscape of what might be true and figuring out how different
approaches to truth interrelate. The dialog of philosophy focuses on logic, rules of
argumentation, and the definition of abstract concepts. The approach and practice
of science, including the "scientific method" arose out of philosophy.
Science is a strategy for arriving at consensus answers to questions about the
natural world. It focuses on discovering "facts", "laws", and "mechanisms". Often
what are discovered are new objects that were previously unseen and unknown to
exist.
Philosophy of mind and the scientific study of consciousness are two fields
that are interacting closely on an unresolved issue and present an interesting
history of how philosophy and science work together.
Philosophy of mind has debated the nature of the mind for centuries, since
Aristotle, and has developed dozens of interrelated frameworks, often called the
"- isms" (dualism, functionalism, materialism, reductionism,
epiphenomenalism, ...). Consciousness has fascinated thinkers, including scientists,
and especially psychologists and physicists, for a very long time ‒ again, since
Aristotle.