The Nature of Philosophy: Truth, Ethics, and Consequentialism

The Nature and Purpose of Philosophy

In some ways, the nature of philosophy is complex. There are a number of difficult questions which philosophy considers and attempts to answer. In other ways, philosophy is fairly straightforward: it serves to provide a basis for a way of life most suited for the individual who chooses to apply it. As such, different people hold different philosophies regarding different facets of life. The nature of philosophy, then, is that of providing a basic foundation from which to approach the various situations one might encounter. In some respects, philosophy's nature is amenable, at least insofar as it is largely applicable to a variety of circumstances. For the most part, however, philosophy is rigid: its general principles may bear on a variety of situations, yet those principles themselves do not change.

Philosophy and Science: A Shared Methodology

Ultimately, the nature of philosophy is that it is concerned with the truth. Philosophy is a toeing of the line at the sands of eternity — it is humanity's ambition to draw a conclusion about something immutable and to use that conclusion to judge everything one encounters. In a less abstract sense, it is the nature of philosophy to determine what something actually is and to use that truth to determine other truths. In this regard, the nature of philosophy is much like the nature of science. The only true distinction between these two disciplines is that science is generally used for physical or observable phenomena, whereas philosophy is used for more metaphysical or less tangible phenomena.

Consequentialism as a Model of Philosophical Truth

The key similarity is that both disciplines utilize the same fundamental approaches. Science is widely based on empirical evidence. One may determine a hypothesis, for example, but only by proving that hypothesis through the demonstration of empirical evidence is something then accepted as fact. This same methodology is used in philosophy, although the forms of empirical evidence employed in science are replaced by whatever tenet of philosophy one considers to be the truth.

An excellent example of how the nature of philosophy is primarily concerned with truth is found in consequentialism. Consequentialist theory is a branch of philosophy known as ethics — the realm of philosophy largely concerned with determining what is right and wrong and what sorts of behavior are assigned to those judgments. The major tenet of consequentialist theory, which serves as its version of empirical evidence and as the operating principle of this theory, is the consequences of an action. Consequentialists believe that no action in and of itself is either ethical or unethical, right or wrong. Instead, proponents of this philosophy believe that only the consequences of an action determine whether or not it is ethically defensible (Alexander and Moore, 2007). Thus, if the murder of one person enables all of humanity to survive whereas sparing that person would result in the destruction of mankind, such a murder is ethically permissible. The basis of consequentialism — much as the basis for science is empirical evidence — is that the outcomes of actions determine whether or not they are ethical. That basis largely serves as the foundation by which truth is validated.

Conclusion

In summary, philosophy is a means of ascertaining the truth about intangible phenomena such as human nature. Its methodology is much the same as that of science, in that it establishes a premise as truth and applies it to many situations in order to measure them according to that truth.