Excerpt from Essay :

¶ … Sub-Disciplines of Philosophy

Final Argumentative Paper Three important -disciplines philosophy addressed: ETHICS, EPISTEMOLOGY, RELIGION. For paper, develop argument includes view specific topic relating -disciplines. A list topics choose attached.

There are three main sub-disciplines of philosophy, which are ethics, epistemology, and religion. Philosophy deals mainly with ultimate value questions Mironov, 2013.

These questions cannot be answered using scientific or empirical data. The questions are mainly concerned with truth, reality, justice, goodness, beauty, and meaning. Mainly these questions cannot be answered by human beings, but the questions cannot be avoided. Ethics deals with questions regarding how human beings should behave and live, what is right and wrong, and what is a good life. Ethics allows people to either analyze their actions through the consequences of those actions or analyze their actions by the rules that preceded those actions. Analyzing actions allow human beings to determine what is ethically correct. Epistemology deals with questions regarding if a person knows anything and if they do how do they know. There are three positions in epistemology namely skepticism, rationalism, and empiricism. The position of a person not knowing anything in regards to a particular subject or in general is referred to as skepticism. The position that a person's source of knowledge is solely sense perception is referred to as empiricism. All knowledge reflects the reason or exercise is the position taken by rationalism. The philosophy of religion is mainly concerned with religion and questions regarding religion like God's existence, God's nature, religious texts, and religious experiences. Philosophy of religion should not be confused with religious philosophy as it mainly discusses the religious nature as a whole, and does not examine problems that have arisen due to the various belief systems.

The fundamental principles of ethics

There are four fundamental principles of ethics that are widely recognized. These are beneficence, autonomy, justice, and non-maleficence Gordon, Rauprich, & Vollmann, 2011.

These main principles deal with how human beings should treat each other with respect by ensuring that their actions are well intended, and the consequences are good. The four fundamental principles of ethics should provide answers to questions like "What should a person do?" Or "How should a person act?" Focusing mainly on these two questions will make people to neglect a more important factor, which is "What should people be?" This brings up another question of "What kind of person does one want to be?" Ethics should make people treat each other as they would want to be treated, and it should make people act in ways that show respect for other human beings.

The issues here is should people be always checking their actions against a preset table of do's and do not's? Human beings have the mental power to determine what is right or wrong depending on their perceptions. Using these perceptions a person should always endeavor to do what they believe will make them a better person. These will depend on the kind of person this individual would like to become. A person who chooses to do wrong will have decided that they want to become a wrong doer, and the others will also treat them as such. The fundamental principles of ethics should be guidelines and not rules that people should follow blindly. A person should use these principles to make decisions that would not only benefit them but would also benefit all humanity.

Ethics does not deal with these moral principles, but it also deals with moral virtues. Moral virtues are ideals that a person has adopted in their life. These virtues include courage, honesty, generosity, integrity, fairness, self-control, courage, fidelity, prudence, and compassion. Using these virtues a person is able to be morally good and would endeavor to become a better person. Allowing people to be virtuous in their undertakings gives people the opportunity to dedicate their work and decision for a

Analyzing actions based on ethical virtue will allow an individual to not only make a decision based on the consequences, or actions that occurred before, but they will use their character traits, or attitudes in making a decision.

The fundamental principles of ethics make a person to follow specific moral rules and apply them to differing situations. This does make a person moral but does not instill morality in the person. The only way that morality can be instilled is by using the virtue approach. Virtue is mainly concerned with community. This is how a person was brought up, the ideals their community prized, and personality traits of role models. Using this approach an individual will not merely be concerned with the moral rules applicable to different situations, but they will use their ethical virtues in making decisions. Virtuous decisions are for the good of all people, and it would be easier for a person to be virtuous than to follow moral rules.

For example, a lawyer may use the fundamental principles of ethics in defending their client. It will not matter if the client is wrong and they committed the accused crime. This is because the lawyer is morally obligated to defend their client, which means they will lie to the jury in order to get their client acquitted. On the other hand if the lawyer was virtuous they would not have taken up that case. This is because their virtues would require them to do right, and since this is not one of their virtues it would not have been for the common good.

The limits of skepticism

Skepticism mainly deals with any questionable attitude in regards to opinions, knowledge, beliefs, or facts Yli-Vakkuri, 2013.

It also deals with doubts that towards claims that other people have taken for granted. In philosophical skepticism, all information should be supported by evidence. Skepticism does not allow a person to claim anything to be true even though it is, but it recommends the suspension of belief instead. Skepticism gives rise to two questions "What can we know? And how can we know it?" Looking at these two questions it is clear that people know many things and they presume many things before wondering about them. It makes no sense to doubt some of the things that people have presumed before. For example, optical illusions, hallucinations, and mirages are these things real or are they just presumptions? It is common for someone to look familiar from a distance, but as they get closer it dawns that it was not the case. These shows that everything we see can be doubted no matter how much we believe or presume it to be true.

This does not mean that everything should be doubted, there are some things which are quite obvious and doubting them would not make any sense. For example, it would not possible for a student to doubt the fact that a lecturer is teaching in class. If the student does not believe this it would be easy to prove this fact and the best way would be for the student to touch the lecturer. This might be true in some situations, but there are other situations that it is not possible to touch the thing.

This continual doubting of everything would lead to not knowing anything. This is because people will always question what they claim when it appears to be otherwise. Skepticism would be limited in case people agreed that nothing can be known, which is what skepticism is all about. From a skeptical point-of-view, one would want to still doubt this statement, and try to provide some form of evidence to indicate that things can be known. This would make skepticism self-refuting.

Skepticism would be limited because assuming that people know nothing then there could be many ways that a person can do something Avnur, Brueckner, & Buford, 2011.

This would make some of the suggestions that a person can use to be completely absurd. If a person wants to get down from a building, there many ways they can do it one they can use the lifts, two they can use the stairs, and lastly they can jump. All this would be correct assuming that no one knows anything, so no one knows what will happen. This shows the limitations of skepticism. It is clear that skepticism cannot take over from reasoning. People will always reason and decide what is right or wrong, what they believe or doubt. This means that skepticism can only be used for situations that people cannot understand.

From an ethical perspective skepticism would not be used often. If a person keeps questioning their ethical decisions they would never make any decision at all. Going back to the building example before, a person would know that jumping from the top floor of the building would result in death, severe bone fractures, or it could also be considered to be suicide. Moral rules would not allow a person to do that, but if skepticism…