The Philosophical Matrix: A Shared Conceptual Schema

A Shared Conceptual Scheme: Matrix
Philosophy in a Practical Key
© 2007, D. Stephen Heersink

What Is Philosophy?

Philosophy, etymologically, means “love of wisdom.” Since its founding in Greek antiquity, philosophy has sought to understand the world and humans' place in it, as well as understanding ourselves.

Broadly, philosophy uses the formal sciences of inductive and deductive logic, scientific method, probability, and fallacy detection to analyze linguistic grammar, rhetoric, and hermeneutics in order study and understand our deliberative processes of reason, emotions, will, imagination, appetites, and recall in forming critical judgments. It studies life. And then lives it through insights. Perhaps vice versa. Perhaps dynamically. In a “dialectic of tension in that phase transition between chaos and death. It ultimately seeks the good life through the art of living well.

Again broadly, philosophy distinguishes three distinct types of critical judgments: (1) factual, (2) value, and (3) speculative, which correspond respectively to its three principal endeavors of (1) epistemology, (2) axiology, and (3) metaphysics, together with its critical tools (4) organon.

The Matrix of Decisions

Every waking moment our minds form "decisions" ("judgments" in philosophical parlance) that have distinctive features, and, moreover, and those judgment seem to fit the five words in the previous post in this series. So, repeating the "template" from before, I will modify it slightly, by adding the type of mental decision or judgment we form in each categorical type of thinking (highlighted in blue):

Axiology (Theory of Value). What do we value, and why do we value it? Good/Bad Judgments.

Epistemology (Theory of Knowledge) What do we know, and how do we know it? True/False Judgments.

Praxeology (Theory of Action) Why do we act? Which acts are better than others? Why? Right/Wrong Judgments.

Ontology (Theory of Reality) What is/are the irreducible constituent(s) of reality? Is/Is-Not Judgments.

Metaphysics (Theory of the Speculatively Shared) What about "intangibles," such as our minds, thoughts, ideas, language, principles? These call for "shared judgments."

Notice, in each case, a different type of judgment corresponds to its own category of thought. Actually, the direction of fit is of the categories corresponding to the type of judgment we make. The type of judgment occurs, and we recognize the type of judgment with the category of thought related to it. And virtually every aspect of human thinking can be placed in these respective categories.

I. Epistemology. Asks the question, What do I know, and how do I know it? What counts as belief, knowledge, opinion, faith, superstition, etc., are evaluated analytically. It establishes the conditions and criteria for making Judgments of Fact that are answered with “true or false.” The majority of the Judgments of Fact apply to empirical, natural, events and objects that are confirmable, verifiable, and capable of being falsified by others.

Biology, chemistry, physics, geology, astronomy, etc., are paragons of this area of inquiry. So, too, the formal sciences of mathematics, logic, probability, the scientific method are included in the Judgment of Facts that epistemology (study of knowledge).

II. Axiology. Asks the question, What is valuable and why? How does one make a judgment of value? Ethics, morality, politics, economics, art, aesthetics, are practical values in action, and the principal subjects of interest, like love, beauty, truth, wisdom as values.

III. Metaphysics. Asks the questions that have no answers, or at least answers that can never be known with assurance. Do humans have freewill? Are time and space actual and real? What occurs in the mind? Are numbers essences? Are souls, essences, and channeling the dead possible? What is the basis reality of all reality (ontology)? Is it a first principle? And so on. Except for Mental Theories, which can be shared by like-to-like experiences, any other “beyond nature” inquiry has been largely ignored within philosophy for over a century.

IV. Praxeology. Asks the question, what is the right/wrong action to take? It utilizes the facts from epistemology and the values from axiology, and in a synthesis of these two question, What do I know? and What is good or bad? It asks, What is right and wrong in this case?

Clearly, the use of language, of experience, of reasoning, deliberating, thinking, emoting, willing, desiring, imagining function critically in “doing philosophy.” Thus, it is itself a division of the enterprise, along with its methods:

V. The Organon. The organon is the set of tools “used to do” philosophy as well as serves its own object of study: The Tools and The Use of the Tools, is the organon. Primitively use of language is primary: its uses, denotation, connotation, utterances, grammar, performative, descriptive, evocative, imperative, contextual, and hermeneutics are explored. The distinction between nominalism and essentialism also plays a significant role. Interpreting linguistic use is the domain of hermeneutics.

Then, the formal sciences are applied: symbolic logic, predicate calculus, propositional calculus, rules of inference, mathematics, modality, etc. Logic is divided into formal and informal, the former is deductive of necessity from the general to the particular; the latter is inductive of probability from particulars to the general. Included in formal logic is the scientific method, Boolean logic, algebra and calculus, set theory, etc.

Within informal logic is probability theory, decision theory, practical or “instrumental” reasoning, valuation methods, heuristics (process of discovery), and sophistry (fallacy detection) are examined in detail.

The philosophical method is unique to philosophy, applying a skeptical stance to all propositions of fact and value and the analysis of these propositions in context of their larger conceptual schemes. The method deliberately “doubts” a claim and then applies all the other tools for its analysis, including contextualizing the claim in its larger conceptual scheme.

Philosophy’s Resources

Experience. Language, Logics, Sophistry, Skeptical Stance, Scientific Method, Analysis, Heuristics, Hermeneutics are all integrated into philosophy’s methodology of methodological doubt and rational examination. In sum, the totality of human experience is embraced, with certain methods being "privileged" for having achieved the best insights, for having avoided the worst pitfalls, and for having kept the inquiry both focused enough to be enhanced as needed, precise as required, and yet braod enough to be meaningful.

The Aim of Philosophy

Philosophy seeks to know the truth (facts) and to live well, in order that individuals and their societies may flourish according to the principles of truth and excellence. It recognizes various “ends” by various “means” to those ends in its instrumental (practical) reasoning, based on all the available evidence, on all the rigorous rules of human thought. It serves no authority, no power, no ideology, nothing more than to know oneself, true from false, and right from wrong.

Analytic vs. Continental Divide

The philosophy of Edmund Husserl and phenomenology marks the divergence of analytic from Continental philosophy around World War II. In many respects, the Empirical versus Rational movements from the Age of Enlightenment simply took on a different appearance with the advent of German Idealism. Each approach has its critics and their defenders.

In the U.S. and Great Britain, the analytic or “Anglo-American” approach is typically favored. On the European continent, the “Continental” or Ideological approach is favored. The analytic approach favors the empirical, rational, and logical methods, while minimizing metaphysical and ideological speculation.

Some have equated the Continental approach as Ideological, due to its heavy reliance on Marxist, Structuralist, Freudian, Existentialist, and Deconstructionist themes. Some have equated the Anglo-American approach as exceedingly atomistic, myopic, and dry like a Natural Science. Both criticisms are fairly lodged. Attempting to bridge the “gap” of differences, many philosophers have been attracted to pragmatism, especially in the U.S., from which it originated.

Suffice it to say that the tension between Philosophy and Ideology have historically been antagonists to one another, going back to Plato and his student Aristotle. The seeds of modern tension were sown by G. F. Hegel and K. Marx. Religion and political movements that “use” philosophy as the “handmaiden” of theology and “political resistance,” which hit a “wall of separation between ideology and philosophy” in Anglo-American analytic philosophy.

If the seeds of modern discontent were sown by Kant, Hegel, and Marx and the German Idealism of the 19th century, many of the pioneers of analytic philosophy have European roots, e.g., Frege, Popper, Wittgenstein, Hayek, Carnap, Godel, Ayer, Comte, etc.

Philosophy’s Historical Matrix

Since antiquity, the matrix of philosophical inquiry has become systematic in four primary divisions:

1. Theoretical,
2. Practical,
3. Natural, and
4. Creative.

Different matrices are often used, but this four-fold division tends to focus on the underlying nature of philosophical inquiry. Significant parallels exist between the historical and modern matrix persist.

This matrix is coexistent with the matrix of Epistemology, Axiology, and Metaphysics and the Organon. It is in the nature of our minds to “categorize” like-to-like associations, pursuits, and inquiries. However, while useful pedagogically to study philosophy in a systematic manner, the divisions are not necessary to the enterprise, merely useful divisions within a shared conceptual scheme. A brief idea of topics in each division may help illustrate the matrix:

Philosophy’s Matrix

As a discipline of study, the following conceptual scheme categorizes the endeavors. In academia, the organon is both the “tools” for inquiry and the “object” of inquiry, as the merits of the tools require evaluation as well as their use.

Organon

Grammar. Rhetoric, and Introduction to Logic
Theory of Language
Formal Logic, I Symbolic Notation, Theorems, Propositional & Predicate Calculus
Formal Logic, II Modality, Sets, Identity, Meta-logic
Informal Logic. Induction, Probability, Decision-theory, Instrumental Reason, Sophistry
Philosophical Method & Heuristics
Hermeneutics & Criticism

Epistemology (Judgment of Facts)

Theory of Knowledge
Theory of the Formal Sciences
Theory of the Natural Sciences: Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Astronomy
Theory of Science
Theory of Informal and Practical Reason
Theory of Phenomenonology: Behavior, Perception, Signaling
Theory of Consilience: Unity of Knowledge

Axiology (Judgment of Values)

Theory of Value
Theory of Ethics
Theory of Morality. Religion, Kantian, Utilitarianism, Benevolence
Theory of Exchange
Theory of Society
Theory of Polity
Theory of Culture
Theory of Art, Aesthetics, & Beauty

Metaphysics

Classic Metaphysics
Ontology, Identity,
Theory of Mind, I Nature of Rationality
Theory of Mind, II: Nature of Emotions & Desires
Theory of Mind, III: Intentionality
Theory of Mind, IV: Mechanisms, Symptoms, & Affects
Theory of Mind, V: Behavioral & Mental Disorders
Theory of Occultism: Spiritualism, Transcendentalism, Religion, Psychology

Alternative Matrix

The approach here has certain advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is it covers all formal study except the applied sciences of law, medicine, anthropology, etc. The disadvantage is it covers too much to suggest everything is within philosophy’s domain, and that offends those who feel left out of such a broad compass, or believe their slice of pie threatened. The other disadvantage is the distinction between creative and theoretical, which if one is referring to “psychology,” “fiction,” and “poetry,” could be either or both, but for painting and sculpture, is principally creative. Then, some artisans repudiate any “philosophy” attends to their creative and imaginative efforts, and from a solipsistic perspective they would be correct. Nevertheless, it has historical significance as these four subjects replaced the quadrivuum of the “seven liberal arts” between Scholasticism and the modern university. The trivuum of Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic remained the same.

Creative Philosophy
Practical Philosophy
Natural Philosophy
Theoretical Philosophy

Philosophy’s Movements (chronological)

Platonism -- Socrates and Plato resolve the ancient tension between permanence and flux through the process of dialectic.
Aristotleanism -- Plato's student introduces a more nuanced view with both theoretical and practical reason
Cynicism -- "it really does not matter."
Epicureanism -- Pleasure is man's chief pursuit, pain his chief avoidance. No deity. No afterlife. Ethics. The first "modern" philosopher
Skepticism -- "suspends" claims to know or believe based on the circularity of reason and the unreliability of sense experience
Stoicism -- looks to nature for "objective" answers to man's best course
Scholasticism -- importation and absorption of Aristotle into 13th century Christianity to rescue it from oblivion
European Rationalism -- the reliance on reason alone for theory
British Empiricism -- the reliance on the "particular sensory realities" in structuring theory
Germanic Idealism -- speculative emphasis on combining rationalism and empiricism (Kant) or speculative entirely (Hegel, Marx)
American Pragmatism -- only the "useful" as the criterion of truth and value
Existentialism -- existence precedes essence
Analytic Philosophy -- ditching of metaphysics and highly analytic examination into language, mind, and knowledge claims
PostModernism -- a neo-revivial synthesis of Marx, Freud, and Derrida into absolute relativism and arbitrariness
Hermeneuticism -- examining the world as one examines a "text."

Principal Philosophical Texts

Readers do well to read in a generally chronological order as many writings respond to previous writings. Items marked with an asterisk (*) are critical works, Secondary sources are provided separately and are especially useful for the writers mentioned.

No inference to omissions should be made as many excellent works are excluded, not because they’ve been repudiated or refuted or are deficient. Laplace, Comte, Poincare, Pascal, are just a few of the worthy omissions. The “bullshit” of PostModernism’s Ideological biases are consciously and deliberately omitted.

Alas, creative works, such as Greco-Roman drama and epics, Shakespeare’s plays and poetry, Walt Whitman’s poetry, and James Joyce’s and Dostoevsky’s novels, to name but a few examples, are so immensely diverse identifying even these few examples would require a syllabus of endless pages.

These texts should not be seen as “approved,” but rather as “immensely important.” Many of the works listed have been thoroughly rejected, others have received wide acceptance, but each has philosophical, pedagogical, and instrumental merit (bolded authors of personal preference)

The Pre-Socratics, Fragments (selections) Protagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, Democratus
Plato, Euthyphro, Protagoras, *Gorgias, *Republic, *Theatetus, Symposium,*Phaedrus
Aristotle, *Categories, *Interpretation, *Prior Analytics, *Posterior Analytics, *Topics, *Nichomachean Ethics, *On the Soul, *Metaphysics (selections)
Epicurus, Fragments (selections)
Epictetus, *Discourses
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
Sextus Empiricus, *Outlines of Pyrrhonism (selections)
Augustine of Hippo, Confessions (selections), City of God (selections)
Anselm of Canturbury, Proslogion (selection)
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (selections)
William of Ockham, *Summa Logicae
Montaigne, “Of Friendship,”“Of the Uncertainty of our Judgment, “ ”Of Presumption,” “Of the Useful and the Honorable,”“Of the Art of Discussion, “Of Practice”
Francis Bacon, The Great Instauration, *Novum Organum (selections)
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (selections)
Rene Descartes, Rules for the Direction of Our Native Intelligence, *Meditations on First Philosophy (selections), Passions of the Soul
Benedict Spinoza, Ethics (selections)
David Hume, *Treatise on Human Nature,*Dialogue Concerning Natural Religion
Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry (selections)
Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (selections)
Immanuel Kant, *Critique of Pure Reason (selections), Critique of Judgment (selections), Metaphysics for the Groundwork of Morals (selections), Eternal Peace
Karl Marx, German Ideology (selections), Contributions to a Critique of Political Economy (selections)
T. H. Huxley, *Evolution and Ethics
Emile Durheim, “Division of Labor and Social Solidarity”
Freiderick Nietzsche, The Gay Science (selections), *Genealogy of Morals
J. S. Mill, “The Authority of Society over the Individual,” *On Liberty, Utilitarianism. *Representative Government
Gottlob Frege, Begriffssschrift, Grundlagen
William James, “Philosophy and Its Critics,”“A World of Pure Experience,” “The Problem of Metaphysics” Pragmatism *“What Pragmatism Means”
Ludwig Wittgenstein, *Philosophical Investigations (selections)
Alfred Lord Russell, “Appearance and Reality,” “Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description,” “Truth and Falsehood,”*“The Value of Philosophy” *Principia Mathematica (selections)
Alfred N. Whitehead, *Process and Reality, Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect, Adventures in Ideas
Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions
Karl Popper, *“Evolutionary Epistemology,” *“The Aim of Science,” *“Truth and Approximation to Truth,” *“Individualism versus Collectivism” also, Conjecture & Refutation, Logic of Scientific Discovery, Objective Knowledge, Open Society and Its Enemies
J. L. Austin, *“Meaning of Words,” *“Unfair to Facts”
Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
Robert Nozick, The Nature of Rationality
John Searle, Speech Acts, Intentionality, Rediscovery of the Mind, Construction of Social Reality, Rationality in Action

Secondary Resources

Plato

A. E. Taylor, Plato: The Man and His Work
Gregory Vlastos, Platonic Studies
Terrence Irwin, Plato’s Ethical Theories

Aristotle

J. H. Randall, Aristotle
W. F. R. Hardie, Aristotle’s Ethical Theory
T. H. Irwin, Aristotle’s First Principles

Hellenism

Martha Nussbam, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics
Benson Mates, The Skeptic Way: Sextus Empiricus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism
Miles Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition

Medieval

Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas

Modern Philosophy

Don Garrett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza
Norman Kemp Smith, The Philosophy of David Hume
Don Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy

Continental Thought

Robert C. Solomon, What Nietzsche Really Said
Robert C. Solomon, Existentialism
Robert C. Solomon, The Joy of Philosophy: Thinking Thin versus the Passionate Life

Analytic Philosophy

David G. Stern, Wittgenstein on Mind and Language
P. M. S. Hacker, Insight and Illusions: Themes in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein
James Griffin, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance
Stephen Macedo, Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism
Walter Lippmann, A Preface to Morals
David Wiggins, Needs, Values, Truth
David Miller & Michael Walzer, Pluralism, Justice, and Equality
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey
Michael Sandel, Democracy’s Discontents: America in Search of a Public Philosophy
Ian Shapiro, Political Criticism
Lawrence E. Cahoone, Civil Society: The Conservative Meaning of Liberal Politics

Philosophical References

Ted Honderich (ed.), The Philosophers: Introducing Great Western Thinkers
Ted Honderick (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy