Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. It is distinguished from other ways of addressing fundamental questions (such as mysticism, myth, or religion) by being critical and generally systematic and by its reliance on rational argument. It involves logical analysis of language and clarification of the meaning of words and concepts.
The word "philosophy" comes from the Greek philosophia (φιλοσοφία), which literally means "love of wisdom".
Branches of philosophy
The branches of philosophy and their sub-branches that are used in contemporary philosophy are as follows.
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is study of the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and the creation of personal kinds of truth. Philosophy of art
Epistemology
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies the source, nature and validity of knowledge.
Social epistemology – inquiry into the social aspects of knowledge. Formal epistemology – the application of formal models to study knowledge. Metaepistemology – studying the foundations of epistemology itself.
Ethics
Ethics – study of value and morality. Applied ethics – philosophical examination, from a moral standpoint, of particular issues in private and public life that are matters of moral judgment. It is thus the attempts to use philosophical methods to identify the morally correct course of action in various fields of human life. Bioethics – analysis of controversial ethical issues emerging from advances in medicine. Environmental ethics – studies ethical issues concerning the non-human world. It exerts influence on a large range of disciplines including environmental law, environmental sociology, ecotheology, ecological economics, ecology and environmental geography. Medical ethics – studies ethical issues concerning medicine and medical research Professional ethics – ethics to improve professionalism Discourse ethics – discovery of ethical principles through the study of language Normative ethics – study of ethical theories that prescribe how people ought to act Metaethics – branch of ethics that seeks to understand the nature of ethical properties, statements, attitudes, and judgments
Logic
Logic – the systematic study of the form of valid inference and reasoning.
Also regarded as the separate formal science
Classical logic
Propositional logic
First-order logic
Second-order logic
Higher-order logic
Non-classical logic
Description logic
Digital logic
Fuzzy logic
Intuitionistic logic
Many-valued logic
Modal logic
Alethic logic
Deontic logic
Doxastic logic
Epistemic logic
Temporal logic
Paraconsistent logic
Substructural logic
Metaphysics
Metaphysics – concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world that encompasses it.
Cosmology – the study of the nature and origins of the universe.
Ontology – philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence, or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. Meta-ontology – study of the ontological foundations of ontology itself. Philosophy of space and time – branch of philosophy concerned with the issues surrounding the ontology, epistemology, and character of space and time.
Other
Metaphilosophy
Phenomenology
Philosophy of action
Philosophy of education
Philosophy of history
Philosophy of language
Philosophy of law
Philosophy of mathematics
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of religion
Philosophy of science
Philosophical anthropology
Philosophy of archaeology
Philosophy of biology
Philosophy of chemistry
Philosophy of computer science
Philosophy of artificial intelligence
Philosophy of geography
Philosophy of medicine
Philosophy of physics
Interpretations of quantum mechanics
Philosophy of social science
Philosophy of economics
Philosophy of psychology
Political philosophy
Pragmatism
Philosophic traditions by region
Regional variations of philosophy.