GE 10

SOCIAL SCIENCE AND

PHILOSOPHY
ROCHENNE MAE C. ABERILLA
Course Instructor

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Module Template

Module No. & Title Schools of Philosophy

Hooray to a new academic year! The journey in this
pandemic has been tough yet you made it. New normal has
come, but the learning must continue. This would be happy
and exciting! As we start digging through this course pack,
Module Overview
we will focus on the topics dedicated to the Social Science
and Philosophy must be within the area of concern in
Philosophy of Human Person that has been expanded to
include other subject of logic, epistemology, and theology.

At the end of the module, you are expected:

Module  Recognize the minor and major branches of philosophy
 Recognize different Philosophers
Objectives/Outcomes
 Discuss the different school of thoughts
 Reflect every teachings and doctrines in one’s life

Lessons in the This module will tackle the following topics:

module Lesson 1: Background in Philosophy and the Philosophy of
Taoism and Confucianism
Lesson 2: The Philosophy of Human Person of Buddhism
and Hinduism
Lesson 3: Socrates and Pythagoras Philosophy of Human
person
Lesson 4: Hedonism, Epicureanism and utilitarianism
Philosophy of Human Person
Lesson 5: Empiricism Philosophy of Human Person
Lesson 6: Rationalism Philosophy of Human Person
Lesson 7: Naturalism Philosophy of Human Person
Lesson 8: Realism and Humanism Philosophy of Human
Person
Lesson 9: Skepticism and Positivism Philosophy of Human
Person
Lesson 10: Scholasticism Philosophy of Human Person
Lesson 11: Monism and Pluralism Philosophy of Human
Person
Lesson 12: Materialism and Determinism Philosophy of
Human Person
Lesson 13: Phenomenology and Existentialism Philosophy of
Human Person
Lesson 14: The Purpose Driven Life of Human Person
Lesson 15: The Rights of Human Persons
Lesson 16: The Human Person and His Happiness

Lesson 17: The Philosophy of Human Person in Socialism

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 Lesson 18: The Human Person and the Philosophy of
Communism

TEMPLATE 4: The Lesson Structure

Module No. and

Title Schools of Philosophy
Lesson No. and
Title
LESSON 5: Empiricism Philosophy of Human Person
Learning
 To discuss and defined the concepts of Empiricism.
Outcomes
Time Frame Week 6

Woopie! Welcome students. You are going to answer this module

Introduction hence the activities intended must be done on time. This lesson
reinforces your knowledge on the Philosophy of Buddhism and
Hinduism. Good Luck !

Define the following words base on your own perspective.

1. Experience -

2. Reason -
Activity
3. Power -

4. Goal -

5. Prejudice -

Well done! You did a great job in the activity. So now, let’s try to wrap
up what you’ve got in the activity by answering the following questions.

1. How experiences build’s individual skills?

Analysis 2. How power influence a person?
3. What are your goals in life and what are your steps or plans to
achieve your goals?

Historical Background
Abstraction

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Empiricism comes from two different etymological sources. First of all,
the term experience is derived from the Latin word experiential. It
might also have come from the word empiric, which was used in
classical Greek and Roman medicine to describe a doctor whose
training came from actual experience rather than theoretical
instruction. Empiricism was a philosophical position that was mostly
embraced by English philosophers of the 17th, 18th, and 19th
centuries until the 20th century. Of them, John Locke's notion of
empiricism was the first to be stated explicitly in the 17th century.
According to Locke, experiences leave their imprints on the tabula
rasa (clear slate or blank tablet) that is the human mind. Empiricism
contests the existence of inborn human conceptions and the
possibility of knowledge independent of experience.

Empiricism and rationalism, which holds that much information is

assigned to reason independently of the senses, are frequently
compared historically. As a result, this philosophy is opposed to
rationalism, which was exemplified by thinkers like the French
philosopher René Descartes, the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza,
the German thinkers Gotfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Christian Wolff, as
well as the British philosophers George Berkeley, David Hume, and
John Stuart Mill.

Basic concept of Empiricism

1. All knowledge is based on experiences, not on spontaneous ideas

or priori thought (innate ideas). Experience becomes the sole basis of
real knowledge; and. reason is only secondary.
2. Empiricism does not hold that we have empirical knowledge
automatically.
Rather for any knowledge to be properly inferred or deduced, it is to
be gained ultimately from one's sense-based experience.

Philosophers Associated with Empiricism

Some important philosophers commonly associated with empiricism
include John Locke, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Francis Bacon,
Thomas Hobbes, George Berkeley, David Hume and John Stuart Mill.

George Berkeley (1685-1753). He emphasized an extremely severe

kind of empiricism in Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human
Knowledge, his most famous work. He emphasized that something
can only be said to exist if it is being observed or if it is an entity that
is doing the perceiving. Berkeley claims that anytime people are not
present to perform the act of perception, God stands in for them. He
continued by pointing out that whatever pattern people may notice in
the natural world is God's writing or language.
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David Hume (1711-1776). He was a Scottish philosopher who
argued that no knowledge could be definitively proven by reason, not
even the most fundamental notions about the natural world.

According to him, a person's beliefs are more often the consequence

of ingrained habits that have formed in reaction to a lifetime of
sensory encounters. Additionally, he contended that it is not a given
that man's future will match his past. Finally, he said that many
beliefs, like those in the existence of the self and the outside world,
could not be rationally justified. Despite the deep roots in instinct and
tradition, these views had to be accepted.

Basic Concepts of Aquinas on the Nature of Man

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). Thomas of Aquin or Aquino,

sometimes known as Doctor Angelicus or Doctor Universalis, was a
philosopher and theologian in the scholastic tradition. He is the
founder of the Thomistic school of thought and the leading traditional
natural theology supporter. His most famous work is Summa
Theologiae. He is regarded as the greatest church theologian and is
one of the thirty-three Doctors of the Church.

1. Human beings have the natural capacity to know many things

without special divine revelation even though such revelation occurs
from time to time.
2. We are able to know about God through his creation. Thus, we can
speak of God's goodness only by understanding that goodness as
applied to humans is similar to, but not identical with, the goodness of
God.
3. Man must observe four (4) cardinal virtues as prudence,
temperance, justice and fortitude. These virtues are revealed in
nature, and are binding on everyone.
4. There are three theological virtues that should also be observed by
every man: faith, hope and charity.
5. There are four (4) kinds of law: eternal, natural, human, and divine
law. Eternal law governs all creations on earth. Natural law governs
man's participation in the eternal law and can be discovered by
human reason. Natural law states that good is to be done and
promoted and evil is to be avoided. The desires to live and to
procreate are based on human values.
6. Human beings have no duty of charity to animals because they are
not persons but it would be unlawful to use them for food, but this
does not give men ob license to be cruel to them.
7. Rational thinking and the study of nature like revelation, are valid
ways to understand God for God reveals himself through nature, so
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for a man to study nature is to study God.
8. Man uses his reason to grasp the truth about God and to
experience salvation through that truth.
9. The goal of human existence is union and eternal fellowship with
God. This goal can be achieved through beautify vision an event in
which a person experiences perfect, unending happiness by
comprehending the very essence of God. This vision which occurs
only after death is a gift from God to those who experienced salvation
and redemption through Jesus Christ while living
on earth.
10. A person's will must be ordered toward right things, such as
charity, peace and holiness as a way to happiness.

Basic Concept of Aristotle

Aristotle (384-322 BC). He was a Greek philosopher from antiquity

who studied under Plato and instructed Alexander the Great. He
wrote on a variety of topics, including politics, the government, ethics,
logic, poetry, biology, and zoology.

A brief outline of Aristotle's concept on man are as follows:

1. Ultimate reality in ideas is knowable only through reflection and
reason. Ultimate reality in physical objects is knowable through
experience.
2. In living creatures, form is identified with the soul; plants had the
lowest kinds of souls, animals had higher souls which could feel and
humans alone had rational, reasoning souls.
3. The universe had never had a beginning and would never end; it is
eternal.
4. Everything in nature has its end and function, and nothing is
without its purpose. Man is created for a purpose.
5. If there were no change in the universe, there would be no time
since the counting of motion depends for its existence on a counting
mind. If there were no human minds to count, there could be no time.
6. Mind and body are unified but they are not the products of
physiological conditions of the body. The soul manifests its activity in
certain faculties which correspond with the stages of biological
development. In humans, the soul manifest its activity in human
reason.
7. There are five (5) special senses. Of these 5, touch is the
rudimentary, hearing the most instructive, and sight, the most
enabling. The organs in these senses never acts directly, but they are
affected by some medium such as air. Even touch, that seems to act
by actual contact, probably involves some vehicle of communication.
The heart is the central sense organ because it recognizes the
common qualities which are involved in all particular objects of
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sensation. It is the sense which brings us a consciousness of
sensation. It acts before the mind, that means it holds up the objects
of our knowledge and enable us to distinguish between the reports of
the various human senses.

8. Imagination is the process by which an impression of the senses is

pictured and retained before the mind and is accordingly the basis of
memory. Illusions and dreams are both alike due to an excitement in
the organ of sense similar to that which would be caused by the
actual pressure of the sensible phenomena. 9. Reason deals with the
abstract and ideals aspects. Reason is the source of general ideas
but it is only potentially. Senses deal with the concrete and material
aspects of phenomena. Active reason, not passive reason, makes the
world intelligible and makes ideas accessible to thought.
10. Human aspirations and desires have some final pursuit - their
chief end is happiness. Happiness begins from the facts of personal
experience; it must be 6 something practical in humans. True
happiness lies in the outworking of the true soul and self-continued
throughout a lifetime.
11. The human soul has an irrational element which is shared with
animals (such as desire) and a rational element which is distinctly
human. The irrational element is the vegetative faculty (nutrition,
growth) and the appetitive faculty (emotions and desires, such as joy,
grief, hope and fear). The rational element is the ability to control
these desires with the help of reason. Man's desires are not
instinctive, but learned and are the outcome of both teaching and
practice.
12. The doctrine of the mean states that moral virtues are desire-
regulating character traits which are at a mean between more
extreme character traits (or vice). For example, if we develop the
virtue of courage, if an excessive: character trait is developed, it
becomes a rash (it is a vice); if we develop a deficient character trait,
cowardice is developed (it is also a vice). The virtue of courage then
lies at the mean between the excessive and deficient character traits.
14. A slave is a piece of live property having no existence except in
relation to his master.
15. Wealth is everything whose value can be measured in terms of
money; but it is the use of the money than the possession of the
commodities which constitute Luoe riches.

Bacon’s Concepts of Man

Francis Bacon (1561-1626). He was an English philosopher, lawyer,
essayist, historian and champion of modern science. He was born in
London to a prominent and well-respected family. His chief works are
the Essays, The Advancement of Learning, Cogitata et Visa and
Novum Organum
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 1. Knowledge is the power of establishing the knowledge is power.
ominion of man over earth for knowledge is power.
2. To arrive at knowledge, man must study natures with the intention
of grasping their forces. Natures are the natural phenomena of heat,
sound, light, forms are the imminent forces of the natural.
3. Human mind must be free of all prejudices (idols) and pre-
conceived attitudes because they prevent successful study of natural
phenomena. There are four (4) prejudices (idols) of the human mind.
These are prejudices arising from human nature (idols of the tribe);
prejudices coming from the psychic condition of the human soul (idols
of the cave); prejudices resulting from social relationships (idols of the
marketplace); and prejudices deriving from false philosophical
systems (idols of the theatre).

Hobbes Basic Concepts of Man

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). He was born in Wiltshire, England on

April 5, 1588. Some of his works include Leviathan, Human Nature,
De Corpore Politics, The Elements of Law, etc.
1. In the natural condition of mankind, some men may be stronger or
more intelligent than others. None is so strong and smart as to go
beyond fear of violent death. When threatened with death, man in his
natural state cannot help but defend himself in any way possible. Self-
defense against violent death is the highest human necessity and
rights are of necessity.
2. In a state of nature, all men have the right or license to everything
in the world.
3. Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.
4. Man has a self-interested and materialistic desire to end war. The
passion that incline men to peace are fear of death, desire of such
things as are necessary to commodious living, and a hope of their
industry to obtain them.
5. Men form peaceful societies by entering into a social contract.
Society is population beneath an authority to whom all men in that
society covenant just enough of their natural right for the authority, to
be able to ensure internal peace and a common defense.
6. As long as one man does no harm to any other, the sovereign
should keep its hands off him.
Answer the Following:
Application
1. Explain the statement that “ there is no certainty that the future
will resemble the past”. Cite a situational case to explain this
statement.
2. What is the goal of life, according to the following.
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 a. St. Thomas Aquinas
b. David Hume
c. Thomas Hobbes
d. Bertrand Russell

Closure Well done! You have finished this lesson. Keep working and learning!
Now if you are ready, please proceed to Lesson 6.