philosophical disciplines

Culture

2022

We explain what the philosophical disciplines are and what they are, what they deal with and the characteristics of each one.

Philosophical disciplines offer different views on human existence.

What are the philosophical disciplines?

Philosophical disciplines, also called branches of philosophyThey are the various aspects of study that philosophy comprises, that is, they are inserted in it as a much larger field. Each one has objectives own and particular approaches of reasoning.

Together they constitute the different views that philosophy offers regarding the existence human. In addition, they have varied enormously since the origins of philosophy, back in the ages of classical antiquity, when it began its slow path of formal separation of religious knowledge and mysticism.

For that reason, many of the areas of knowledge that today we consider to be part of the Sciences, how can the astronomy (today part of the physical), were at one time branches of natural philosophy. It is for this reason that philosophy is considered the mother of all sciences.

Philosophy is a field of study dedicated to thought, and that tries to answer the most transcendental questions of the humanityHow are they? Who are we? Where we go? What is the meaning of life?

To some extent, there is a branch of philosophy for each of those momentous questions that rarely have a simple answer. Below we will see each of the philosophical disciplines separately.

Metaphysics

Its name comes from the Latin metaphysica and means "beyond the nature”, Since it deals with the study of the fundamental aspects of the reality. This involves answering the difficult question of what reality is, but also defining basic concepts such as "entity", "existence”, “to be"," Object ","weather”, “space" and many others.

These notions cannot be explained by empirical research, but are figures of reason. Metaphysics has two main branches: ontology, which is the study of being as such, and teleology, which is the study of transcendent ends.

Gnoseology

Also known as the "Theory of knowledge”Is the branch of philosophy that deals with thinking about what knowledge is, how it originates and what its limits are.

It does not address the possible types of knowledge, as can be the sciences, but of the very nature of knowledge, that is, of its understanding as an object of study. For this reason it has many points of contact with disciplines as the psychology, the education wave logic.

Epistemology

Epistemology studies how knowledge is reached and how it is validated.

Its name comes from the Greek epistêmê which translates "knowledge", and constitutes a branch close to gnoseology, although clearly differentiated from it. The epistemology studies the mechanisms for obtaining knowledge.

Specifically, it deals with the historical, psychological or sociological circumstances that lead to the obtaining and validation of human knowledge, as well as the criteria that serve to approve or invalidate it: truth, objectivity, reality or justification.

For many authors, epistemology would be a kind of theory of knowledge applied to scientific thought, but there are different opinions regarding where the limits of this discipline are.

Logic

This branch of philosophy is also a formal science, like the math, to which it is very close. It deals with the distinction between processes of reasoning that are valid and those that are not, from the principles of proof and inference, which includes the study of paradoxes, the fallacies and the truth itself.

Logic has specific applications within the field of other scientific disciplines, such as mathematical logic, computational logic, etc.

Ethics

Also known as the philosophy moral, ethics studies human behavior and aims to understand the differences between right and wrong, good and bad, and the notions of virtue, happiness and duty. Ethics can also be considered to be the discipline that studies morality, although many use these two terms as synonyms.

The ethics It is commonly divided into three sub-branches: metaethics, which studies the origin and nature of ethical concepts; normative ethics, which studies the standards or norms of regulation of the human conduct; and applied ethics, which studies controversies and ethical dilemmas to try to give them a useful answer.

Esthetic

Aesthetics studies how we experience and judge beauty.

The name of this discipline comes from the Greek aistehetikê, which translate "perception"Or" feeling. " It is the branch of philosophy that makes beauty its object of study. That is, it studies the essence and perception of beauty, aesthetic judgments, aesthetic experiences, and concepts such as the beautiful, the ugly, the sublime or the elegant.

Depending on the author, aesthetics can also be considered as the philosophical branch that studies perception, to try to find out why some things we consider pleasant and others not. It is common for him to deal with the forms of the art, but also the feelings that they evoke in us, or the values that may be contained in them.

Political philosophy

This discipline studies the relationship between individuals and society, and deals with fundamental concepts such as government, the laws, the politics, the Liberty, the equality, the Justice, the rights or the can politician. It is questioned as to what makes a government legitimate or not, what its functions are, and when it can be legitimately overthrown.

In this approach, political philosophy can approximate the Political Sciences or political science; but while the latter deal with the history, present and future of politics, philosophy deals with theorizing regarding its fundamental concepts.

Philosophy of language

As its name indicates, this discipline is dedicated to the philosophical study of language. Investigates the most fundamental aspects of language such as meaning, reference, its limits, or the relationship between language, the world and thought.

To do this, you can draw on knowledge that belongs to the linguisticsAlthough the latter studies language from an empirical perspective, while the philosophy of language does not distinguish between written, spoken or any other manifestation. Plus he only uses thought experiments.

The philosophy of language usually comprises two sub-disciplines that are the semantics (also shared with linguistics) that deals with meaning and meaning, that is, with the links between language and the world; and pragmatics, which studies the relationships between language and its users.

Philosophy of mind

Also called Philosophy of the spirit, this discipline makes the human mind its object of study. Study perceptions, sensations, emotions, fantasies and dreams, thoughts and even beliefs. It is questioned what defines that something belongs to the realm of the mental. In addition, the philosophy of mind reflects on how well we can know our own mind.

In this approach, the philosophy of mind approaches other sciences such as cognitive science or psychology, but as in other cases, the philosophical discipline always remains in questioning the fundamental concepts, that is, the essential and basic questions , instead of empirical knowledge.

Some of the fundamental dilemmas of this discipline are the relationship between the mind and the body, the permanence in time of the identity personal or the possibility of recognition between minds.

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