The Many Branches of Philosophy: A Tutorial

It's always a good idea to know what you're getting involved in before you actually get involved. Thus if you're thinking of studying philosophy at the college level, you might read this primer on the various branches of philosophy. You should find, after reading this that the label "philosophy" really doesn't apply to a single discourse, but instead to many.

The academic study of philosophy is broken up into many parts. You've probably heard of several of these branches, but probably not all.

Metaphysics

Don't confuse the term metaphysics with the New Age connotation. I really can't comment on that use, but I can say a few things about it with respect to its place in academic philosophy.

Metaphysics is the study of reality. As a name of a discipline, metaphysics refers to Aristotle's books. In particular, the metaphysics means the book after the physics. Physics is the study of the material (physical) world, whereas metaphysics is the study of what makes that world possible.

Ontology

Ontology is the study of existence. It is the study of "being" or what makes things exist and/or what kinds of things (really) exist. If this sounds confusing, it is. Philosophical arguments concerning God's existence, for example, are famous for equivocation concerning existence and/or "being". Thus an ontological argument concerning the nature of God might first contain "exists" in the sense of "an existent thing". Later on it might contain "exists" in the sense of "existence itself".

Think of the difference between a being (a thing that exists) and 'Being' (the verb 'to be', that is, existence itself and independent from things which exist) The latter is sometimes thought of as the totality of existent things (i.e. the verb "to be" means or refers to "the total number of all things that exist") This difference, between particular being(s) and existence itself (or the verb "to be") has lead to a lot of confusing work, most notably the work of Martin Heidegger.

Epistemology

Epistemology is the study of knowledge. In particular it is the study of what it means to have knowledge, or what kinds of knowledge there are, or what must occur in order for something to be considered knowledge.

Epistemology is famous for the distinction between a priori knowledge and a posteriori. The former refers to propositions whose truth obtains (seemingly) necessarily. In logic these are often referred to as tautologies. Thus regardless of whether or not there are individuals to think or prove that 2+2=4, it necessarily obtains because arithmetic is a closed system. Dissimilarly, the belief that it will rain tomorrow depends for its truth on conditions external to its utterance. It may rain tomorrow or it may not. We can utter it and be wrong, but we can't utter 2+2=4 and be wrong because the conceptual system that justifies that proposition is closed. In all cases of utterance, if you add two and two, it will always total 4. It will not always be the case that when you say it will rain tomorrow, that it actually will.

Epistemology thus has significance in several areas, including the study of language, theory of science, and logic and math. Speaking of logic...

Logic

Logic is taken usually to be a subset of epistemology. The reason is pretty simple: at the very least a statement must be logically valid if it is true. The term "valid" is used a lot in the sciences as a synonym for truth or soundness. In philosophy, validity is necessary for soundness but it is not sufficient for it. That is, a statement can be valid even if it's not true (sound). But in order for a statement to be true it must be valid.

But what is a valid statement in logic? A statement is valid simply if it is not the case that it contradicts itself, or implies a proposition that then implies the original statement is false. So basically take any proposition P. If it's not the case that P implies that P is false, then its valid. So failure for a proposition to be valid is the same thing as a proposition implying its own falsity.

There are many different systems of logic as there are systems of math. First-order propositional logic, for instance, is wholly distinct from modal predicate logic. Whereas simple logical system characterization truth as absolute truth, more advanced systems construct truth relationally, as a function of a subject's relation to other subjects and/or things.

The study of logic is sometimes analogous to the stud of geometry in the sense that it requires rigorous thinking and is very procedural. If you draw an implication, you must justify that implication with a citation of the proper rule.

Contemporary Areas

What I mean by "contemporary areas" is simply developments in philosophy that are more recent and/or aren't included in the kind of elaboration above. One area is called Feminist Epistemology. Feminist epistemology can be regarded as a sort of critique of traditional epistemology. It opposes many central tenets to theory of science and/or conditions of knowledge. In the words of my feminist philosophy professor, it's a very hot area right now. Feminist epistemology has many branches of its own, including feminist standpoint theory and feminist philosophy of science. Feminist philosophers of science vary with respect to the extent to which traditional epistemological regulations are opposed. Some feminist philosophers of science are also biologists. Here the motive might not be to resist standard epistemology, but rather use the feminist standpoint to correct and/or lead to better scientific theories (especially concerning sex, sexuality, gender, and reproduction).

The philosophy of history, sometimes referred to as Historiography, is the study of what makes the discipline of history construct the story it does concerning past events, developments, and contributions. Thus for instance what were the social or political conditions that made it possible for historians to systematically ignore one scientist's contributions to his field?

Closing Remarks

Hopefully this gave you a sense of the various parts to the large and extremely varied discipline of philosophy. The good news is that you can study it without really knowing what you intend to do with it. The bad news is that you can study it without being guided (i.e. forced?) into knowing what you intend to do with it.