PHILOSOPHIC METHOD
- INTRODUCTION.
Before we begin to examine the problems of philosophy and their solutions,
let us examine the method that philosophy uses to solve these problems.
We will first look at the history of the philosophic method.
- HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHIC METHOD.
- Socratic Method.
This is the method of questions and answers that Socrates (c.470-399
B.C.) used in teaching by which he professes to impart no information,
because he said that he had no information to impart. By the use of
skilfully worded and pointed questions he draws out of the leaner the
information. For Socrates believed that children are born with
knowledge already in their souls but without some help thay cannot
recall or recollect it (the theory of anamnesis). With this
belief is associated what is called Socratic Irony; this is the
profession of ignorance on the part of the questioner, who in fact is
quite knowledgeable. By this method Socrates attempted to arrive at
the meaning of certain concepts and the essence of things, that is,
what they are, which the mind apprehends and expresses in definitions.
This method of question and answer, called the dialectic (Greek,
dia legein, "through speaking, discourse"), is illustrated by
the story in the Meno of Plato where Socrates' questions a
slave boy, leading the boy step by step to prove a special case of the
Pythagoren theorem. When this method is applied to debate, one
debater defends the thesis and another debater defends another
proposition, called the antithesis or negation of the thesis. Through
argumentation the truth or falsity of the thesis is discovered.
- Aristotelian Method.
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) developed the deductive method of reasoning
that centered in the syllogism, that is, that form of reasoning whereby
given two propositions, called the premises, a third proposition, called
the conclusion, necessarily follow from them. The basis of syllogistic
inference is the presence a common term, called the middle term, in the
two premses, so related as subject or predicate to each of the other
two terms that the conclusion may be drawn necessarily regarding the
relation of these two terms to one another. For example, given the two
premises "S is M" and "M is P", the conclusion "S is P" follows, where
M is the middle term. Aristotle was the first to formulate the theory
of the syllogism, and his minute analysis of its various forms involving
the subject-predicate propositions is definitive, so that to this part of
deductive logic little has been added since his day. Along side
deductive reasoning Aristotle recognize the necessity of inductive
method of reasoning, that is, the process whereby the premises of
the syllogism, particularly the first premise, is established as an
universal. Induction involves passing logically from particulars
(the things known by the senses) to the universals or general
statements. If this inductive process resulted in necessary and
universal principles, the deductive syllogistic reasoning using these
premises reults in demonstrated knowledge, which he called
science. The procedure of science differs from
dialectics, which uses probable premises, and from
eristics, which aims not at truth, but at victory in
disputation.
- Baconian Method.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) developed a form of the inductive method.
Like Aristotles' inductive method the process of the method passed
from particulars to universals, but the particular are facts and the
universals are laws of nature. The purpose of this method, which he
called the Great Instauration, was to enable man to attain
mastery or power over nature in order to use it for the benefit of
man. He insisted on an exhausive enumeration of positive instances of
occurences of phemomena, the recording of comparative instances, in
which an event manifested itself with greater and lesser intensity,
and the recording of negative instances. A hypothesis is formed and
experiments should be performed to test it. There are impediments to
the use of this method, which he grouped under four headings or Idols:
- Idols of the Tribe, or human anthropocentric ways of thinking,
for example, explanation by final causes,
- Idols of the Cave, or personal prejudices,
- Idols of the Market Place, or failure to define terms, and
- Idols of the Theatre, or blind acceptance of tradition or authority.
- Cartesian Method.
The French philosopher Rene Descartes (Cartesius) (1596-1650), being
dissatified with the lack of agreememt among the philosophers, decided
that philosophy needed a new method, that of mathematics. He begins
by doubting everything that did not pass his criterion of truth of
clear and distinct ideas; that is, a proposition must be clear as a
whole and distinct in its details and relations. Anything that passed
this test was to be admitted as self-evident. From these self-evident
truths, he deduced other truths which logically follow from them.
Clear and distinct propositions are apprehended by the mind
intuitively, like the axioms of geometry. Nothing directly
apprehended by the senses is likely to be clear and distinct;
rational intuition, therefore, not sensation, is the source of
knowledge. Thus Descartes is a rationalist, not an empiricist.
Each step in the proof of a theorem must be seen to be true
intuitively and a series of these intuitions constitute a
demonstration. Each step of a demonstration must be absolutely
certain being seen intuitively with clearness and distinctness.
Taking inventory of the ideas in his mind, he distinguished three
types of ideas:
- Innate ideas, which were within himself but that he did not
originate, such as the idea of himself,
- Adventitous ideas, which come to him from without through the
senses,
- Factitious ideas, which are produced within his own mind by the
imagination.
He found most difficulty with the second type of ideas. Among the first
type of ideas he discovered the idea of the thinking self. Though he
could doubt all else, Descartes could not resonably doubt that he,
who was thinking, existed as a res cogitans, a thinking thing.
"Cogito ergo sum." ["I think, therefore, I am."] This famous
statement is not a compressed syllogism, in spite of its form, but an
immediate intuition of his own thinking mind. Another reality, whose
existence could not be doubted, was God, the Supreme Being. Though he
offered several proofs for existence of God, he was convinced that he
knew this truth as an innate idea, which is a clear idea. But he did
not have any clear idea of extra-mental bodies in the physical world.
He suspected their existence but a logical demonstration was needed to
establish this truth. He argued that God as a perfect being would not
deceive us in thinking that they existed when they did not. By this
and other arguments he convinced himself that these bodies do exist.
- Hegelian Method.
The German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
used a method he called the dialectic. On its formal side, the
method is a triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Behind this
triadic form lies the relationships of contrariety and its resolution.
Everywhere in his writings this method is grounded in system;
and the transition from thesis and antithesis to synthesis is held to
be necessitated by the structure of the system within which it is
grounded. This is the characteristic of the method that Hegel calls
its negativity, its "holding fast the positive in the negative";
this characteristic is to him the essense of the dialectic.
The thesis and antithesis are opposites, not contradictories.
The kind of system which grounds this method is not the kind within
which the principle of contradiction holds. Contradictories cannot
be resolved; between them there is no ground of synthesis. Such
systems of contradictories are abstract, that is, are exemplified only
in formal deductions; they lack in factual content. The dialectic
method is applicable only within systems that are factual, that is,
that are made up of statements of fact and statements that are
possibly grounded in fact. Here the principle of contrariety, not the
principle of contradiction, holds; the dialectic method is identical
with the resolution of contraries. Here, and here alone, to factual
systems is the dialectical method applicable.
- Mill's Method.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) held that inductive inference advances
knowledge through the discovery of causal connections among phenomena.
Mill elaborated a set methods based on the principles of association,
which men use to separate causal relations from other phenomena.
These rules of inductive inference are called Mill's Methods.
- Method of Agreement. Where two or more instances of a
phenomenon have only one circumstance in common, that circumstance is
the cause (or effect) of the phenomenon.
- Method of Difference. If an instance in which the phemomenon
occurs, and an instance in which it does not occur, have all
circumstance in common save one, that one occuring only in the former,
the circumstance in question is the effect or cause, or part of the
effect or cause, of the phenomenon.
- Joint Method of Agreement and Difference. This method combines
the separate methods of agreement and difference.
- Method of Comcomitant Variation. If some part of the set of
circumstances varies as the phenomenon varies, this part of the set
of circumstances is causally related to the phenomenon.
- Method of Residues. Take away from the phenomenon what is known
by previous inductions to be the effect of certain antecedents; the
residue of the phenomenon is the effect of the remaining antecedents.
- Axiomatic Method.
The method of constructing a deductive system, which consists of a set
of axioms or postulates, undefined and defined terms, and specific rules
for deducing all others statements of the system, called theorems.
This method is used in mathematics and was devised by the Greek
mathematican Euclid of Alexandria (c. 300 B.C.), the founder of
Euclidean geometry. He used this method in his famous work, The
Elements, in 13 books. Euclid distinguished between axioms and
postulates: axioms, he said, are "common notions," broader than geometry,
which he regarded as self-evident, as true and not subject to doubt;
postulates, on the other hand, are statements that are not self-evident,
neither are they demonstrable, requiring proof, but are necessary for
the demonstration of the theorems. Most modern mathematicans do not
make this distinction between them, not regarding axioms as
self-evident, and thus use the terms interchangeably, regarding axioms
the same as postulates. The concept of axiom as self-evident in the
history of philosophy has contained one or more of the following claims:
- They are indemonstrable but necessary propositions upon which one
builds a deductive system,
- They are self-evident principles that are certain to any one who
takes time to examine them carefully,
- They are, not only subjectively certain, but also objectively true,
- They are not derived only from experience, but are somehow innate
in the human mind and are called forth by one's experience.
Plato, Descartes, and Leibniz would make all four claims. Aristotle
and Locke would drop the fourth (d) claim to innateness. Kant would
drop the third (c) claim to objective truth while affirming the other
three claims. Modern empiricism would follow Locke, except for
Berkeley who would no doubt drop the third claim. Hume would probably
drop the second (b) claim also. Mill and Russell would certainly make
only the first (a) claim. Descartes attempts to claim (c) on the
basis of (b), that is, he attempts to base objective truth or
certainty on subjective certainty. The difficulties in making this
argument has led to its rejection. John Locke's direct challenge of
the concept of innate ideas in the first book of his Essays
has been responsible for the wide spread rejection of innate ideas.
Empiricism has been almost solely defined by this rejection, as
rationalism has been almost solely defined by its affirmation of them.
- Scientific Method.