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Hello, and welcome to the first video in the series, "What is Philosophy?"
My name is Brian Coffey, and in this video series, I will do my best to give a clear and simple answer to the question:
What is philosophy?
Turns out that this question is ITSELF a bit of a philosophical question, and is thus,
not so easy to answer.
Again, I will do my best.
Many professors of philosophy begin their introductory classes by exploring the etymology,
that is, the origin, of the word, "Philosophy." This method of answering the question can
be helpful when applied to many other fields of study. For instance, the etymology of the
word "Biology" shows that this word is derived from the Greek 'bios' meaning 'life', and
'logia' meaning roughly 'topic of study.' Biology is the study of life. So what is the
etymology of 'Philosophy'? It also derives from Greek, 'philo' meaning 'loving' and 'sophia'
meaning wisdom. Philosophy is the loving of wisdom.
While that sure sounds quite pretty and even lofty, it is not a very illuminating answer
to our question: What is philosophy.
Another way we might try to answer our question is by looking for patterns or trends in the
kinds of questions that people within that field of study are investigating. I am sure
that after looking at enough of the current research being done by biologists we would
notice that all of them are asking questions about living things.
Here are some sample questions studied by philosophers:
What is knowledge? What can we truly know?
Do we have free will? Is there a God?
How ought we to live? What is the good life?
Now, these questions can be grouped together under a few different subfields of philosophy.
The first pair of questions falls under the subfield of epistemology—the study of knowledge.
The second pair falls under the subfield of metaphysics—the study of what exists and
what it is like. Finally, the third pair falls under the subfield of ethics—the study of
what is right, wrong, good and bad. There are many other subfields of philosophy—this
sampling was just to give you a taste.
I want you to notice that there is no clear, identifiable pattern between these questions
other than maybe that they are all really tough questions—and it isn't obvious how
one would even go about answering them. Some people might even be convinced that we could
never answer them—or, even more boldly, that these questions have no answers. But
we should be cautious here: it is a big jump in reasoning from "This is a hard question"
to 'This question cannot be answered' or to 'This question has no answer'. In the next
video, I will show why we are not right to conclude that these tough philosophical questions
cannot be answered or have no correct answers.