Realize that the methods of philosophy lead to wisdom and truth

It is important to realize that the methods of philosophy lead to wisdom and truth. No doubt, philosophy is practical and significant as it develops one’s critical mind. In addition, philosophy provides the most fundamental as its methods lead to discovering wisdom and truth.

For discussion in Filipino/Tagalog of this topic, read: ‘Nahihinuha na patungo sa katotohanan ang mga pamamaraan ng pamimilosopiya’

Methods of philosophy that lead to wisdom and truth

According to Filipino Philosophy professor and textbook author Jensen DG. Mañebog, the following are some of the methods of philosophizing that lead to wisdom and truth. The discussion on each topic is also significantly based on his lectures:

1. “The Elenchus” (Socratic Method)

The term “elenchus” is Hellenistic Greek for inquiry or cross-examination. It is a kind of inquiry or examination that discloses people to themselves, making them see what their opinions really amount to.

The Socratic Method or method of elenchus is a form of logical refutation. This method called the elenchus refers to the Socratic method of stimulating critical thinking and drawing out ideas and underlying presuppositions.

Socratic Method: leading to wisdom and truth

Socratic Method leads to wisdom and truth for it asks a series of incisive questions to determine whether a supposed knowledge could rationally be justified, defended, and accepted with clarity and logical consistency.

This philosophical method (also called elenctic method or Socratic debate) is used to refute an argument. It is a type of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to extract truth.

The elenchus is designed so that a person will come to realize what his opinions, no matter how long-held and deep-seated they may be, really amount to.

Socratic Method: Examples and applications

One must remember that the Socratic Method is an open system of philosophical inquiry. An example is when a person methodically interrogates somebody about his beliefs or claims from many vantage points.

A person using the elenchus does not demand allegiance to a certain philosophical dogma, rather, he uses common sense and common speech.

To do this Socratic Method, a person asks probing questions to determine whether someone’s claims to knowledge could be rationally justified with clarity and logical consistency.

For more examples and applications of the Socratic Method, read Logic as a Branch of Philosophy: Featuring Critical Thinking and Debate and How to Improve Critical Thinking: Featuring Logic and Common Sense.

For a detailed discussion on this topic, read: Socratic Method: The Elenchus.

2. The “Methodic Doubt” (Cartesian Philosophy)

The “Methodic Doubt” is also called Cartesian Philosophy because it was introduced by French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes (1596-1650), dubbed as the “Father of Modern Philosophy.”

Basically, the Methodic Doubt is a way of looking for certainty—for certain, indubitable truths—by methodically, although tentatively, doubting everything.

Methodic Doubt: Doubting everything leads to truth and wisdom

Rene Descartes answer’ to the epistemological question “How can I know?” is to doubt everything. He believed that only after doubting that a person can uncover certainty.

Utilizing this methodic doubt, Rene Descartes attempted to demonstrate philosophical truths, which he believed could defeat the most radical doubt or skepticism. Indeed, this method intends to lead us to truth and wisdom.

What Descartes did was categorize all statements according to type and source of knowledge: (a) knowledge from experience or empirical knowledge, (b) knowledge from tradition or authority, and (c) mathematical knowledge.

What is methodic doubt?

Using the Methodic Doubt, propositions from each class are scrutinized, that if a way can be thought to doubt the truth of any statement, then all other statements of that class are also dismissed as dubitable, though not necessarily false.

Rene Descartes supposed that by eliminating all statements and types of knowledge whose truth can be doubted in any way, we will find some indubitable certainties or truths that cannot be doubted.

So Descartes held that we cannot completely depend on experience as source of knowledge. He explained that experience, being based on sensation, is deceiving. For instance, one cannot assure that what he experiences now is reality and not just a dream, because sensations while dreaming and sensations when one is awake are hard to tell apart.

Also, the knowledge from tradition and authority must be doubted since they can be deceptive. Traditions can be mere convention and culturally relative while no authority is infallible.

Descartes believed that mathematical knowledge, too, must be doubted, for all we know two times two is in fact six and not four, and we are merely controlled by a malevolent demon or a scheming god.

So what can we learn from the Methodic Doubt as a philosophical method that leads to truth and wisdom? This Cartesian Method or Philosophy is teaching us to doubt everything until what is left is already beyond doubt. By teaching us not to settle for knowledge that are dubious, the method is teaching us to be cautious and meticulous.

For more discussions on this matter and about “Cogito Ergo Sum,” read: Methodic Doubt: The Cartesian Method of Philosophy

3. The “Lived Experience” (Phenomenological Method or Inquiry)

Phenomenological inquiry studies phenomena, that is, objects and events as perceived and understood in the human consciousness, and not of anything independent of consciousness. Phenomenology is a method of philosophy that focuses on the essence of lived experience.

Dealing with human experience

Phenomenology in research deals with human experience and how people experience. This method examines structures of conscious experience as experienced from a first-person point of view (subjective standpoint).

Experience, in phenomenological inquiry, contains not only the relatively passive experiences of sensory perception, but also volition, thought, imagination, emotion, desire, and action. In other words, experience includes everything that we do or live through.

Phenomenology study: Examples and Applications

So what are some examples and applications of this phenomenological inquiry? For example, in treating a sick person, phenomenology zooms in the veiled aspects of one’s existence such as components of his awareness like intuition and feeling. These are normally often overlooked when doctors are absorbed in the anatomical and biochemical aspects of the patient.

Phenomenology intends to expose original experience and its meaning. Thus, in medicine and intensive care nursing, phenomenology presents a deeper understanding or ‘diagnosis’ that can lead to enriched praxis.

Phenomenology intends to understand human experience from an individual’s viewpoint. This is contrary to the objectifying and reductionist character of science and empiricist research methods that cut down a person to five senses. And so phenomenological method depicts the patient as a whole human being with various human needs other than recovering from a certain illness.

So what can we learn from phenomenological inquiry as a method in philosophy? Phenomenology thus teaches us to look at human experience to bring a holistic approach to various endeavors like human treatment.

To better understand this method, read: Phenomenology Study: The Phenomenological Inquiry and the ‘Lived Experience’

4. Dialectical Method (Hegelian Dialectics)

Dialectical Method is also called Hegelian Dialectics as this was proposed by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), a German philosopher and a significant figure of German idealism.

Dialectic as leading to truth

In his lecture (the basis of this article), Filipino Philosophy professor and textbook author Jensen DG. Mañebog explains how thatHegelian dialectic leads to truth (and wisdom). He clarifies that in this interpretive method in philosophy, the contradiction between a proposition (thesis) and its antithesis is resolved at a higher level of truth (synthesis).

This can be clearly understood in the three stages of development or “the triad” comprising the Hegelian dialectic:

First stage: a thesis

This refers to a beginning proposition or statement of an idea.

Second stage: the antithesis

This is a reaction that contradicts or negates the thesis.

Third stage: the synthesis

It is a proposition through which the differences between the two points are resolved. Here, the thesis and antithesis are reconciled to form a new statement.

We can use as an example of this method by using a usual child’s personal development in relation to his relationship with his parents:

Characteristically, we, as a young child, consider our parents to be an ultimate authority. But as we become older, we start to form our adult personalities, and the various changes we undergo during puberty usually make us a problematic teenager whose parents stop being authoritative (and, for some, even become a sort of an embarrassment).

Now, when our character as teenager develops into a young adult, our negative attitude to our parents tones down, and our relationship with them even becomes better once we attain full independence.

In this example, the thesis is childish obedience, the antithesis is a form of adolescent rebellion, and finally the synthesis is independent adulthood with a good relationship with parents.

Hegel dialectic example

There are some practical applications of this Hegelian dialectic. For one thing, dialectics may help to develop one’s ingenuity. For instance, a man wants to sleep in the open (thesis), but mosquitoes make his plan awful (antithesis), and so he invents the mosquito net(synthesis).

Take note that the Hegelian method of dialectical unification ideally continues in various grades as the synthesis itself becomes a thesis to which there is an antithesis. Then, the two again become unified and transcended in a still higher synthesis and the process works progressively. Thus, the dialectical method leads to a linear development from less sophisticated views to more refined ones later.

To better understand this method of philosophy, read: Dialectic: The Hegelian Method

5. Critical Method (Kant’s Transcendental Idealism)

The so-called Critical Method (also called Kant’s Transcendental Idealism) suggests that in knowing things we should focus on the analysis of the conditions and limits of knowledge. The idea was introduced by the influential German philosopher in the Age of Enlightenment Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).

Kant believes that the material of our knowledge is presented by the senses, but the necessity and universality about it come from the very nature and constitution of the understanding, which is the knower of all things in the world.

For Kant, the correct philosophical method is not to ponder on the nature of the world around us but to do a critique of our mental faculties, exploring what we can know, defining the limits of knowledge, and ascertaining how the mental processes through which we make sense of the world influence what we know.

The Critical Method teaches that to get the answers to our philosophical questions is to investigate our mental faculties and not to do a metaphysical speculation of the universe around us. For Kant, the mind is not a passive receptor as it dynamically forms our perception of reality.

Immanuel Kant philosophy vs Some Idealists

Idealists are those who hold that the world is made up principally of mental ideas, not of physical things. But Kant differs from most idealists in the sense that he does not deny the existence of an external reality and does not claim that ideas are more elemental than things.

Kant, nonetheless, argues that we can never transcend the limitations and the contextualization provided by our minds, so that the only reality we will ever know is the reality of phenomena.

What can be learned from Critical Method (Kant’s Transcendental Idealism)

We can learn from the Critical Method (Kant’s Transcendental Idealism) that reason, though a beneficial tool, must be well controlled to avoid impulsively accepting things for which we have no enough evidence.

The method tells us that reason is not an unqualified good, that it must be used analytically in order to avoid being led to the wrong path.

As a philosophical attitude, the Critical Method enables us to determine which questions reason can answer, and which ones it cannot. As an application, this method teaches us to give up things we do not really need, like traditions and manmade religious practices that are baseless or needless for moral conduct.

For more discussion about it (and about noumena and phenomena), read: Immanuel Kant Philosophy: Critical Method/Transcendental Idealism

6. Inductive and Deductive Reasoning

Induction or reasoning inductively is fundamentally inferring a general conclusion from a collection of particular facts. For example, one might conclude that “All flowers are fragrant” because ilang-ilang, sampaguita, rose, and rosal are fragrant.

Induction is also inferring or reaching a conclusion based on observations. For instance, after witnessing for years that grasshoppers invade our rice plants during summer, we may conclude that next summer our rice plants will again be invaded by grasshoppers.

One way to create a reliable inductive inference is to base its conclusion on ample amount of individual representative instances.

On the other hand, deduction is a process of reasoning in which reasons are given in support of a claim. An argument is thus deductive if the premises claim to give conclusive grounds for the truth of the conclusion.

Application

So what can we learn from Deduction and induction as philosophical methods that lead to truth and wisdom? They are both used in everyday conversations and even in scientific reasoning.

Bringing together these two forms of reasoning are effective in establishing general laws, drawing conclusions about a population, predicting the occurrence of a future event based observations of similar past events, and drawing conclusions about causes of an illness based on observations of symptoms.

In creating argumentative paragraph in writing or speaking, philosophy, especially Logic, prescribes that we can use both valid deductive and reliable inductive argument.

For detailed discussions (and examples) on Induction and Deduction, read: Inductive and Deductive Reasoning (Induction vs. Deduction)

*Free lecture for the next lesson (MELC) in Intro to the Philosophy of the Human Person: Evaluate truth from opinions in different situations using the methods of philosophizing

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Note: Teachers may share this as a reading assignment of their students. For other free lectures like this (especially for students), visit Homepage: Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person

*Free lectures on the subject Pambungad sa Pilosopiya ng Tao

Philosophy of Man Articles:

Distinguish Opinion from Truth

Do a philosophical reflection on a concrete situation from a holistic perspective

Realize the Value of Doing Philosophy in Obtaining a Broad Perspective on Life

Distinguish a Holistic Perspective from a Partial Point of View (Holism vs Partial Perspective)

The Blind Men and the Elephant: Attaining a Holistic Perspective

Methods in Philosophy:

Socratic Method: The Elenchus

Methodic Doubt: The Cartesian Method of Philosophy

Phenomenology Study: The Phenomenological Inquiry and the ‘Lived Experience’

Dialectic: The Hegelian Method