WRITING YOUR THESIS

In this short article I am going to discuss some steps for a successful writing of the thesis. We find here some points that are very valuable for those who are involve in the activities like writing of essay, article, dissertation or thesis writing. We call them Signpost to Success:

Justification of arguments- Checks the arguments you are making, and ensure that they are soundly based on logic and evidence.

Theoretical Dimension- Include a theoretical dimensions in your research. Make sure you are clear about the reasons for selecting that dimension.

Referencing- Select your references with care and accuracy relevant and detailed referencing is central to a good thesis.

Setting Targets- Set yourself a series of staged targets in order to complete the thesis on schedule. Do everything possible to meet your targets.

Writing Style- Write in a style which communicates your ideas clearly and accurately and which is appropriate for your methodology.

Heading and subheadings- Give careful thought to the use of headings, in order to help your reader understand the structure of the thesis.

Aims- Your research aims are at the very heart of your thesis. They should be the thread which links it together.

Range of Literature- Draw upon as many sources of relevant literature as possible, while at the same time ensuring that they are academically credible and relevant to your study.

Ethics- Make sure that you discuss the variety of steps which you took to ensure everyone involved in the research was treated fairly.

Transparency of Analysis- Try to be as clear and transparent as possible in the way you describe your data analysis. This will help the reader, and make your thesis more understandable.

Contribution to Knowledge- Particularly in the case of a doctoral thesis, ensure that you provide a clear statement of the original contribution to knowledge made by your research.

Proofreading- Check your thesis carefully. Better to correct errors before the viva than to do them afterwards.

Selecting an academic journal- When you are writing your article, think carefully about the journal to which you will submit it. Ask experienced academics for advice on the most suitable journal.

Defending your thesis- If you have planned your research and writing carefully have confidence in what you have written and have confidence in your ability to defend your thesis.

The above mentioned points are very helpful in good writing and it can be explain in different styles and description but the main issues are only those, we discuss above.

                                                                                DESH RAJ SIRSWAL                                   

                                                                                http://drsirswal.webs.com

Ryle’s Dispositional Analysis of Mind and its Relevance

In this seminar we have discussed the traditional approach to the relation of mind and body assumes that there is a basic distinction between Mind and matter. According to Ryle, the classical theory of mind, as represented by Cartesian rationalism, asserts that there is a basic distinction between mind and matter.

 

Mind is  just the way the human body and its brain function. Thus, according to Ryle, a dualist makes a big category mistake by confusing the terms of different types to be terms of the same type. Mind and body are, according to him, further holds that it is improper to cojoin or disjoin the terms of different categories or types. ‘Mind exists’ and ‘Body exists’ are valid, though conjunctive or disjunctive statements like ‘Mind and Body exist’ and ‘Mind or Body exists’ are invalid.

 

Man has many dispositions or bents or inclinations in him. He acts at opportune moments according to those dispositions. But these dispositions are not stored in an inner private chamber called mind. There are just the ways in which the public behaviour of men as dispositions.

 

Mind-involving concepts mean tendencies leading to behaviour in appropriate circumstances. Mind is behaviour, as behaviour it is nothing secret.it is open and public. By observing our own behaviours, we can have a look into our own minds. By observing the behaviour of others, we can have a look into their minds. There is an open access into the minds of others as well as of our own selves.

 

The Concept of Mind that have been re-discovered by contemporary philosophers of mind and cognitive science: the primacy of knowledge how, the intrinsic connection between thought and action, and anti-representationalism, the idea that thinking is not the processing of representations. The Concept of Mind was recognized on its appearance as an important contribution to philosophical psychology, and an important work in the ordinary language philosophy movement. It is the time to consider some new dimensions of Ryle’s philosophy, which have relevance in the contemporary world of thought.

The Official Doctrine and its Relevance Today

This seminar is an attempt to show that “official doctrine” is dead in only one of its ontological aspects: substance dualism may well have been repudiated but property dualism still claims a number of contemporary defenders. Here we will discuss Ryle’s explanation of Descartes’ dualism and also about its relevance. This doctrine of separation between mind and body is referred by Ryle as “the dogma of the ghost in the machine.” Ryle argues that there is no ghostly, invisible entity called ‘the mind’ inside a mechanical apparatus called ‘the body’. Ryle argues that the traditional approach to the relation of mind and body assumes that there is a basic distinction between Mind and Matter. According to him this assumption is a basic ‘category mistake’, because it attempts to analyze the relation between mind and body as if they were terms of the same logical category. Ryle argues that traditional Idealism makes a basic ‘category-mistake’ by trying to reduce physical reality to the same status as mental reality, and that materialism makes a basic ‘category-mistake’ by trying to reduce mental reality to the same status as physical reality. The Ontological commitments: The ontological commitment of the view is that there are two different kinds of things, body and mind, that are somehow harnessed together. The view that mind and body are somehow fundamentally different or distinct, but nonetheless interact, leads to the philosophical conundrum known as the mind-body problem. Thus two ontological aspects of the official doctrine – finding a place for the mental in the physical world and the problem of mental causation – still survive today. The Epistemological Commitments: According to the traditional view, bodily processes are external and can be witnessed by observers, but mental processes are private, “internal” as the metaphor goes. The epistemological commitments of the official doctrine lead to the philosophical conundrum known as the problem of other minds. Descartes was contributing to the field of cognitive science hundred of years before it was officially established. Descartes changed the way rational thinkers believed then and continues to influence people now. Most modern philosophers have rejected the view that mind and matter are different substances, but many remain realists about the mind. It is fair to say that Descartes is as an integral part of cognitive science as anyone, despite the fact that he didn’t ever know it.

Methodology of the Research

The present research work is related to the same problem what is described in the previous section. Here we are going to discuss the nature of mind with special reference to Rene Descartes, David Hume and Gilbert Ryle. These three thinkers are also introduced in the historical section of the problem of the mind. All the thinkers, which will be discussed in the different chapters, are from different traditions i.e. Descartes is the founder of rationalism, Hume is the eminent scholar of empiricism and Ryle is one from the renowned analytical thinkers. Here is the hypothesis that all thinkers are failed to explain the real nature of mind, but all have a spirit of special expression of the issue that are also relevant in today’s philosophical world. In the forthcoming chapters, we will discuss it in detail.

 

Let’s discuss about the methodology. We have used analytical method as core method in this work. As we know a methodology is a system of principles and general ways of organising and structuring theoretical and practical activity, and also the theory of this system. Genetically methods go back far into the past, when our distant ancestors were acquiring, generalising and handing down to new generations their skills and means of influencing nature, the forms of organising labour and communication. As philosophy emerged, methodology became a special target of cognition and could be defined as a system of socially approved rules and standards of intellectual and practical activity. These rules and standards had to be aligned with the objective logic of events, with the properties and laws of phenomena. The problems of accumulating and transmitting experience called for a certain formalisation of the principles and precepts, the techniques and operations involved in activity itself. For example, in ancient Egypt geometry emerged in the form of methodologically significant precepts concerning the measuring procedure for the division of land. An important role in this process was played by training for labour operations, their sequence, and the choice of the most effective ways of doing things.

 

With the development of production, technology, art, and the elements of science and culture, methodology becomes the target of theoretical thought, whose specific form is the Philosophical comprehension of the principles of organisation and regulation of cognitive activity, its conditions, structure and content.

 

In Descartes’ the problem of methodology is central. Methodology is required to establish on what basis and by what methods new knowledge may be obtained. For Descartes the analysis of concepts was only a preparation for the construction of a system of knowledge based on certain ‘clear and distinct ideas’ obtained by analysis. Descartes worked out the rules of the rationalistic method, the first rule being the demand that only propositions that are clearly and distinctly comprehensible may be accepted as true. The first principle is  axiomatic knowledge, that is, ideas perceived intuitively by reason, without any proof. From these immediately perceived propositions new knowledge is deduced by means of deductive proof. This assumes the breaking down of complex problems into more specific and comprehensible problems and a strictly logical advance from the known to the unknown.

 

Another line in methodology was represented at this time by English empiricism, which sought to devise modes of thought that would help to build a strictly experimental science guided by proofs of scientific truths arrived at through induction. The limitations of both trends were revealed by German classical philosophy, which produced a searching analysis of the conditions of cognition, its forms and organising principles. In contrast to mechanistic methodology, which metaphysically interpreted the ways and means of cognition, classical German Philosophy developed a dialectical methodology in idealistic form.

 

Kant produced a critical analysis of the structure and types of man’s cognitive abilities and defined the constructive and regulative principles of cognition and the relationship between its form and content. Whereas Descartes’ initial methodological principle was to subject everything to doubt in order to obtain sound and unquestionably authentic knowledge and Hume had doubted the very fact of the existence of the world, for Kant a critical attitude to present knowledge was the methodological basis for overcoming dogmatic and metaphysical views of the world. His work was aimed against both dogmatism and scepticism and sought to defend the principle of the authenticity and general significance of knowledge. Dualism and apriorism however, prevented consistent realisation of this principle.

 

All the three thinkers discussed in this work are used analytical method. We can find Descartes’ method’s preliminary sketch in his book Discourse on the Method. Hume also used experimental method, in a sense it is development of analysis. But Ryle being as a logical positivist, has widely acknowledged for this analytical method. We will find some reflection on it in forthcoming chapters. Analysis has always been at the heart of philosophical method, but it has been understood and practiced in many different ways.  Perhaps, in its broadest sense, it might be defined as a process of isolating or working back to what is more fundamental by means of which something, initially taken as given, can be explained or reconstructed.  The explanation or reconstruction is often then exhibited in a corresponding process of synthesis.  This allows great variation in specific method however.  The aim may be to get back to basics, but there may be all sorts of ways of doing this, each of which might be called ‘analysis’.

 

The Greek word ‘analysis’ means the resolution of a complex whole into its parts as opposed to ’synthesis’, which means working into the construction of a whole out of parts.  Philosophers have always had two main aims, the construction of systems of Metaphysics, Logic or Ethics (synthesis) and the clarification of important ideas (analysis) these cannot always synthesis from one point of view is analysis from another.  Plato’s Republic, for example, may be considered as the construction in thought of a perfectly just society or as the analysis of the ideas of a just society.  Major part of Aristotle’s Ethics is concerned with the analysis of such important ideas as ‘voluntary action’, ‘virtue and vice’, ‘’pleasure’ etc.

 

In modern time Continental philosophy has tended to be synthetic and British philosophy to be analytic. From the beginning of the twentieth century the view that analysis is the distinguishing feature of philosophy was widely accepted in English-speaking countries.  Philosophers who follow this trend often have little in common with each other except the use of the word ‘analysis’ to describe their various activities.  The most that can be said is that they take the function of philosophy to be, not the acquisition of new knowledge (which is the function of the special sciences) but the classification and articulation of what we already know. 

 

Both analytical philosophy and phenomenology can be seen as developing far more sophisticated conception of analysis, which draws on but go beyond decompositional analysis. But it is important to see in the wider context of twentieth century methodological practices and debates for it is not just in ‘analytic’ philosophy despite its name-that analytic methods are accorded, a central role.  Phenomenology, in particular, contains its own distinctive set of analytic methods, with similarities and differences to those of analytic philosophy.  Phenomenological analysis has frequently been compared to conceptual clarification in the ordinary language tradition and the method of ‘phenomenological reduction’ that Husserll invented in 1905 offers a striking parallel to the reductive project opened up by Russell’s theory of descriptions, which also made its appearance in 1905.  Analytic Philosophy is ‘analytic’ much more in the sense that analytic geometry is ‘analytic’ than in the crude decompositional sense that Kant understood it.

Discussing the Nature of Philosophy

Discussing the Nature of Philosophy

By Desh Raj Sirswal

Research Scholar (ICPR-JRF), Department of Philosophy,

Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra-136119

Web Link: http://drsirswal.webs.com

——————–

 

Philosophy is characterized as much by its methods as by its subject matter. Although philosophers deal with speculative issues that generally are not subject to investigation through experimental test, and philosophy therefore is more fully conceptual than science, philosophy properly done is not mere speculation. Philosophers, just like scientists, formulate hypotheses which ultimately must answer to reason and evidence. This is one of the things that differentiates philosophy from poetry and mysticism, despite its not being a science. In this article I am going to discuss about the general nature of Philosophy and it’s importance in practical life.

 

Philosophical inquiry is very demanding, suitable only for those who possess a fair degree of courage, humility, patience and discipline. The two aims, though distinct, are inseparable; for, on the one hand, there can be no positive philosophy without a basis of social science, without which it could not be all-comprehensive; and, on the other hand, we could not pursue social science without having been prepared by the study of phenomena less complicated than those of society, and furnished with a knowledge of laws and anterior facts that have a bearing upon social science. Though the fundamental sciences are not all equally interesting to ordinary minds, there is no one of them that can be neglected in an inquiry like the present; and, in the eye of philosophy, all are of equal value to human welfare. Even those that appear the least interesting have their own value, either on account of the perfection of their methods, or as being the necessary basis of all the others.

 

Philosophic thought is an inescapable part of human existence. Almost everyone has been puzzled from time to time by such essentially philosophic questions as “What does life mean?” “Did I have any existence before I was born?” and “Is there life after death?” Most people also have some kind of philosophy in the sense of a personal outlook on life. Even a person who claims that considering philosophic questions is a waste of time is expressing what is important, worthwhile, or valuable. A rejection of all philosophy is in itself philosophy.

 

Philosophy has had enormous influence on our everyday lives. The very language we speak uses classifications derived from philosophy. For example, the classifications of noun and verb involve the philosophic idea that there is a difference between things and actions. If we ask what the difference is, we are starting a philosophic inquiry.

 

Doing philosophy requires courage, because one never knows what one will find at the end of a philosophical investigation. Since philosophy deals with the most fundamental and important issues of human existence, and since these are things that most people initially take for granted, genuine philosophical inquiry has great potential to unsettle or even to destroy one’s deepest and most cherished beliefs. Genuine philosophical inquiry also carries the risk of isolation among one’s peers, both for the unorthodox views to which it may lead one, and for the simple unpopularity of critical thinking. A philosopher must be able to face both consequences.

 

Doing philosophy requires humility, because to do philosophy one must always keep firmly in mind how little one knows and how easy it is to fall into error. The very initiation of philosophical inquiry requires one to admit to oneself that one may not, after all, have all of the answers.

 

Doing philosophy requires both patience and discipline, because philosophical inquiry requires long hours of hard work. One must be prepared to commit huge amounts of time to laboring over issues both difficult and subtle. People who avoid philosophy often complain that thinking about philosophical questions makes their heads hurt. This is unavoidable: if the answers come easily to you, your inquiries are almost certainly superficial. To do philosophy, one must commit oneself to pain. The only difference between one who chooses to shoulder the pain and one who does not is that the former recognizes that there is no shortcut to truth: every advance must be fought for tooth and nail.

 

These virtues are always imperfectly represented in any given person, which is why philosophy is best done in a community: the critical scrutiny of other thinkers provides an often necessary check on defects invisible to one’s self. And lastly, lots of discussion has been made about the above mentioned topics. So, we can read or know about everything of philosophy. Mainly areas of philosophy developing with the new situations and circumstances of the world. We can draw the need of Philosophy in these lines:

“Philosophy is a way of being in the world of questioning it, interacting with it, and responding to it. Indeed, human mind is an ongoing dialogue about the topics of philosophy– topics such as good and evil, right and wrong truth and falsity, appearance and reality.”

 Science & Philosophy are certainly the two most dominant forces that have shaped the course of humanity. It is also true that science alone can solve the problems related to hunger, poverty, illiteracy, environment pollution, illness and unemployment but then through the study of Philosophy one can achieve compassion, love, honesty and integrity, peace, tolerance, discipline and humanism without which the very existence of mankind will be at stake.

 

 

References:

Course of Positive Philosophy (1830) by Auguste Comte

Cited from: http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/comte_cpp.html

February 26, 2008

 

The Nature of Philosophy (2007) By Mark I. VuleticLast

Cited from:

http://www.vuletic.com/hume/ph/philosophy.html February 28, 2008  

 

Socio-Ethical and Cultural Importance of Philosophy (2007)

http://niyamakreference.blogspot.com/2008/03/socio-ethical-and-cultural-importance.html

 

Thinking Philosophically (2003) By Richard Creel

SOME METHODS OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY (1947) By C.D. Broad

http://www.ditext.com/broad/smsp.html, dated:19-08-2008

The Importance of Philosophy in Human Life

Cited from:
http://www.unexplainable.net/artman/publish/article_1182.shtml,

Dated:22-042008

 

 

 

METHODOLOGY OF DAVID HUME

The aim of this paper is to analyze the Hume’s conception of methodology for philosophy. Philosophers before David Hume, mainly medieval philosophers had been much concerned to show that the various branches of philosophy fall naturally into a  certain order, gradually that view of the  matter come to be traditions which is summarized by  Descartes in his preface to The Principles of Philosophy, “philosophy” wrote Descartes, ” is like a tree whose roots are metaphysics, whose trunk is physics, and whose branches, which arise from this trunk, are all the other sciences.” Hume set out to show that the theory of human nature, not metaphysics is the roots and that the moral sciences, not physics, are the trunk. This is the principal intent of his philosophy. Metaphysics, he argues, is in part non-sense, in part psychology in disguise-it is nonsense when it talks about essences occult qualities and the like; it is psychology when it concern us itself with causality, substance, identity. He adopted scepticism about all these abovesaid concepts. Scepticism means a philosophy according to which the knowledge of the basic problems of philosophy viz. God, soul, mind, substance, cause-effect relations and matter etc. is impossible. Knowledge may be either of idea or of the sense impressions. Therefore, Hume concludes that while the knowledge of mathematics and science is possible, the knowledge of philosophy is impossible. Hume follows this rule in his entire speculation, but softly. He realizes that one cannot follow this rule in his practical life, if we will adopt scepticism in general, we cannot do anything faithfully and cannot  live whole life easily. So, David Hume is both an epistemological and metaphysical subjectivist and a moral and ethical relativist. This sceptical conclusion of Hume is rooted in the empiricism of John Locke.

 

Foundations of Hume’s Ideas

Hume challenged traditional philosophical beliefs in ways that shocked the readers of his day and have demanded the attention of philosophers ever since. Several classical philosophical problems are now permanently associated with his name, his analysis of causality, the problem of personal identity and the problem of induction. So, the twentieth century analytical philosophy can be said to start with the problems raised by Hume. In this article my aim is to analyses the foundations and method of Hume’s ideas and reflections of Hume’s thinking. Because if we want to understand Hume’s thinking we should clear about influence over Hume of other thinkers. Many thinkers directly influenced his views like Descartes, Nicholas Malebranche, George Berkeley, Pierre Bayle,  Cicero and John Locke. Modern analytic philosophy is essentially empirical. And this empiricism can well be said to be developments over Hume in a similar line. We can included A.J. Ayer, Russell, Wittgenstein , Gilbert Ryle and Srawson etc. in this list.

Mind in It’s Historical Settings

There are numerous aspects of the nature of man and each aspect gives rise to many problems.  Some of these problems are comparatively simple, other deep and perplexing. Throughout time, people have made distinction between the material or physical world and mental or psychical world, the former may be perceived by any observer; the later remains a private experience. Philosophy of mind, today centrally dealing with four issues: the nature of mind and body, mental content, mental causation and consciousness. The nature of mind is one of the most important issues that philosophy has to consider and one of the most complex and baffling. The answer depends on our definition of mind and our interpretation of the universe. Any single interpretation of mind is inadequate. The aim of the paper is to analyze the concept of mind in it’s historical setting, because this is the matter of a general interest. When analyising mind, we must recognize life itself. Firstly, because human life cannot be conceived independently of human mind and vise-versa. Secondly, the above indicated fact entails that our theories or what may be called conceptual analyses of mind must cohere with our ordinary discourse pertaining to human life.  Our theories must remain synthetic and adaptable to new information. In a word, we should adopt Gestalt attitude viz. that the whole is more than the sum of its parts; wholes often have qualities not presented in their parts.

Descartes as a Methodologist

Rene Descartes (156-1650) is one of the most important western philosophers. During his lifetime, he was famous as an original physicist, physiologist and mathematician. His pursuit of mathematical and scientific truth soon led to a profound rejection of the scholastic tradition in which he had been educated . Much of his work was concerned with the provision of a secure foundation for the advancement of human knowledge through the natural sciences. But he attempted to restart philosophy in a fresh direction. For example, he refused to accept the Aristotelian and Scholastic tradition that had dominated philosophical thought throughout the medieval period. He attempted to fully integrate philosophy and theology and such a new direction for philosophy made him into a revolutionary figure. The philosophical writings for which he is remembered are extremely circumspect in their treatment of controversial issues. His work was influential although his studies in physics and the other natural sciences are much less than his mathematical and philosophical works. He was the founder of analytical geometry and the Cartesian co-ordinates; the name is derived form the Latin form of his name, Carteious.

 

Discourse on the Method, Optics, Geometry and Meteorology was published in French language. The Discourse contains a sketch of Descartes’ life and education together with a sort or summary of his philosophical and scientific position and basically it is the preface of the above said three scientific treatises. These scientific essays are presented as samples of what his method can accomplish. “He had the gift of  presenting complicated philosophical doctrines so elegantly that they appeared fully intelligible on first reading and yet still provide matter for reflection to the most advanced specialists”. Throughout the 17^th and 18^th centuries Descartes ‘ philosophical ghost was always present. Locke, Hume, Leibniz and even Kant felt compelled to philosophical entanglement with this intellectual giant. For these reasons, Descartes is often called as the “father” of the modern philosophy.

 

Concept of Self in Hume and Buddha

The aim of this paper is to give a descriptive analysis of the conception of self in eastern and western tradition with special reference to David Hume and the Buddha. David Hume concludes that self is merely a composition of successive impressions. Philosophers call Hume’s theory of self as a “bundle theory of mind” and again Hume says, “I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.”  We can easily consider that like other substances Hume also denies the self. We can compare this idea of Hume with Buddha. The Buddha denies the existence of any permanent entity either physical or mental. He considers the human person as a psychophysical complex. For him all worldly things are momentary and likewise the self is not more than it and rejects commonly believed conception of self. But how, it may be asked, does he then explain the continuity of a person through different births, or even through the different states of childhood, youth and old age? Though denying the continuity of an identical substance in man, Buddha does not deny the continuity of the stream of successive states that compose his life….This continuity is often explained with the example of  a lamp burning throughout the night….The existence of man depends on this collection and it dissolves when the collection breaks up. The self or the ego denotes nothing more than this collection. But there is also much difference between Hume’s and Buddha’s conception of self. We can conclude that both describe self in empirical sense not as a metaphysical entity.

 Note: This paper is presented at 44th session of the All India Oriental Conference held on 28-30 July,2008 at Kurukshetra University,Kurukshetra.