A LOOK AROUND PHILOSOPHY

What is Philosophy?

                The word “Philosophy” means “love of wisdom”. We can recognise it as an activity that people do when they try to have understanding about themselves, the environment they live and their relationships with the society.  Philosophers are often engaged in questioning, rationing and reasoning on the fundamental questions of life. In short, Philosophy is the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality and existence. In general use, it is a guiding principal for behaviour or governance.

                It is important to study philosophy in order to understand others and to make the right decisions. How important it is ability to respect the opinion of others and to be able to understand the feelings of others while living in society? So, I think it is very valuable to have an understanding of philosophy.

                To solve philosophical questions, we must follow philosophical methods, but there is not just one method that philosophers use to solve philosophical questions.

The followings are some of those philosophical methods.

v  Questioning

v  Critical argument

v  Rational argument

v  Systematic presentation

Do you still have a problem with what philosophical questions are? I will show you some examples of philosophical questions.

v  Is there a god

v  What is truth

v  How do we know what we know

v  What is good(when making decisions)

v  Is reincarnation a fact?

The philosophy is divided into major areas for ease of study.

1.       Epistemology

       Epistemology is the study of Knowledge. Here we talk about the world and how we can know it. 

Ex:

• Do we know any think at all?
• How do we know what we know?

2.       Ethics

       Here we talk about what to do and what is the best to do.

Ex : 

• What is good? What make actions or people good?
• How should I treat others?

3.       Logic

       People’s answers to the questions and the reasons given are very important in studying philosophy. To this end, philosophers use logic to study the nature and structure of arguments.

Ex : What constitutes “Good” or “Bad” reasoning?

4.       Metaphysics

       Metaphysics is the study of the nature of reality, of what exists in the word,  what it is like and how it is ordered.

Ex : 

• Is there a god?
• Do people have minds?

    Many people in society have a misconception about arguments. That is why I thought to write this kind of article. I mainly wanted to explain the difference between an arguments and a quarrel. That also, according to philosophy, I wanted to explain what argument is and to change the attitude of some people towards argument in a positive way and show them how to find the right solutions to social problems through arguments. This article focuses on how to use logic correctly understand an argument to determine the truth. To that end, I have used some resources to explain the theoretical side of the arguments and to facilitate clarification of ideas.

   

ARGUMENTS

     Philosophy is the practice of making and assessing arguments. According to Wikipedia, an argument is a set of statements (called premises) that work together to support another statement (the conclusion). Each statement can be evaluated to be true or false. Making and assessing arguments can help us to understand the truth.

    An argument is not an abuse, name-calling, or yelling. Clearly, that is an important point that leads to logic. It leads us to critical thinking. An argument flows from the premises to the conclusions. We need to know how to apply the correct logic.

THE DEFINITION OF MONTY PYTHON

    "Argument clinic" is a sketch from Monty Python's flying circus, written by John Cleese and Graham Chapman. The sketch was originally broadcast as part of the television series, and has subsequently been performed live by the group. It relies heavily on wordplay and dialogue, and has been use as an example of how language works.

    In this skit, He proposes a definition to the argument as "an argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition."

    This definition is almost correct. The purpose of an argument need not always be to “establish” its conclusion, both because some conclusions were established in advance and because many reasons are inconclusive. Nonetheless, Monty Python’s definition needs to be modified only a little in order to arrive at an adequate definition as follows.

    "An argument is a connected series of sentences, statements, or propositions (called “premises”) that are intended to give a reason of some kind for a sentence, statement, or proposition (called the “conclusion”)."

THE STANDARD FORM OF AN ARGUMENT

    The standard form of an argument is a way of presenting the argument clearly. An argument consists of two main parts. Those are Premises and the Conclusion. In addition, there are indicator words.

The standard form looks like this:

        Premise 1

        Premise 2

        …

    Therefore,

         Conclusion

    A premise is a statement in an argument that provides reason or support for the conclusion. There can be one or more premises in a single argument.

    Conclusion is the final statement justified by the premises made within the argument. Premises are always intended to provide support or evidence for the conclusion.

    Conclusion and premise indicators are the words that are used to make clear which statements are premises and which statements are conclusions in arguments.

    A conclusion indicator is a word or phrase that indicates that the statement it's attached to is a conclusion.

    Ex: Therefore, So, In conclusion, Hence, Thus, It proves that, Consequently

    Premise indicators point to causal relationships reasons.

    Ex: Because, Since, As shown by, Given that, The fact that, Assuming that

A SIMPLE EXAMPLE FOR AN ARGUMENT

(P – Premises ,   C – Conclusion)

    P1 - I’m on leave this week

    P2 - I never answer work emails when I am on leave

Therefore,

    C - I’m not answering work email this week

Arguments are commonly classified as deductive or inductive.

Deductive reasoning is the process of reasoning from one or more statement to reach logical conclusion.

    Ex: old men are mortal. Joe is a man. Therefore, Joe is mortal.

Inductive reasoning is a type of reasoning that involves drawing a general conclusion from a set of specific observation.

    Ex: The coin I pulled from the bag is a penny. That coin is a penny. A third coin from the bag is a penny. Therefore, old the coins in the bag are pennies.

To fully understand arguments, we need to distinguish different uses of argument. In particular, we will focus on two exemplary purposes: justification and explanation.

Justification is a concept in epistemology used to describe beliefs that one has good reason for holding.

ex: An employer bringing evidence to support why they fired an employee

Explanation is a rationale in which the reason presents a cause of some fact represented by the conclusion. Its purpose is to help us understand how or why that fact occurs.

ex: Telling how rain forms

I would like to introduce learning philosophy as the way to intelligence. How can we make the most correct decision? How should we compare something correctly? How exactly to identify right and wrong? How to critique something correctly? The answers to each of these questions are based on each other's intelligence. Rationality exists in the in the intelligence. I would like to point out that the way to get that intelligence and rationality is to learn philosophy.

WHY ACTUALLY LEARNING PHILOSOPHY IS IMPORTANT?

    Overall, much of what is learned in philosophy can be applied in virtually any endeavor. It is very clear that this is both because philosophy touches so many subjects and, especially, because many of its methods can be used in any field. So, I think it is not wrong to say that you can find the solution to the problem whatever it is. Learning philosophy helps us to enhance our ability to solve problems, our communication skills, our persuasive powers, and our writing skills. 

Communication Skills

    It is clear philosophy contributes uniquely to the development of expressive and communicative powers. It provides some of the basic tools of self-expressions. For examples, skills in presenting ideas through well-constructed, systematic arguments that other fields either do not use or use less extensively. Philosophy helps us to express what is distinctive in our views, it enhances our ability to explain difficult material, and it helps us to eliminate ambiguities and vagueness from our writing and speech. 

General Problem Solving Skills

    The study of philosophy enhances our problem solving capacities. It clearly helps us to analyze concepts, definitions, arguments, and problems, and contributes to our capacity to organize ideas and issues, to deal with questions of value, and to extract what is essential from large quantities of information. I experience it best through the speaking and teaching style of our lecturer of philosophy of science, who is well versed in philosophy, with clear and neat work and a good understanding of his students' ideas and feelings.

    In one hand, it helps us to distinguish fine and subtle differences between views. On the other hand, it helps us to discover common ground between opposing positions. It also helps us to synthesize different ideas or perspectives into one whole. Then we can make the most correct decision with confidence and without a doubt. Having studied for a considerable period of time, I can say it very clearly as a student because in the subject of philosophy I learned how to see everything correctly and logically.

Writing Skills

    I understood that writing is taught intensively in many philosophy courses, and many regularly assigned philosophical texts are also excellent as literary essays through the philosophy of science cause that I have followed. At first it was difficult and unfamiliar, but later I realized the importance of it. Philosophy exactly teaches interpretive writing through its examination of challenging texts, comparative writing through emphasis on fairness to alternative positions, argumentative writing through developing students' ability to establish their own views, and descriptive writing through detailed portrayal of concrete examples. Considering the way assignments are given in the field of philosophy, I found that the teacher pays more attention to developing ideas using those students' imagination. It is clear that it helps us to have better point of views. 

Persuasive Powers

    Philosophy provides training in the construction of good arguments, clear formulations, and appropriate examples. It helps us to develop our ability to be convincing. We can learn to build and defend our own views, to appreciate competing positions, and to indicate forcefully why we consider our own views preferable to alternatives through learning philosophy. 

Development of  Methods of Research and Analysis

    Philosophy improves our ability to formulate hypotheses, to do research, and to put problems in a manageable way. Philosophical thinking strongly emphasizes the clear formulation of ideas and problems, the selection of relevant data, and the objective methods of evaluating ideas and suggestions. It emphasizes developing a sense of new directions suggested by new hypotheses and questions while doing research. 

Understanding Other Disciplines

    As I mentioned earlier, Philosophy helps us express what is distinctive in our views, it enhances our ability to explain difficult material, and it helps us to eliminate ambiguities and vagueness from our writing and speech. That also, As I know, philosophy of literature and philosophy of history are of similar value in understanding the humanities, and philosophy of art (aesthetics) is important in understanding both the visual and the performing arts. I knew that philosophy is, moreover, essential in assessing the various standards of evidence used by other disciplines through some reading materials. If you think about it more it further, you will see that it is true.

CONCLUSION

    Learning philosophy is the way to intelligence. It helps us to see rationally, and to look at a problem from different views. Then we can make the most correct decisions. That also, learning philosophy enhances our ability to solve problems, our communication skills, our writing skills, persuasive powers, and etc. Therefore, I can say with full confidence that learning philosophy is an essential thing in our life.

REFERENCES: The value of philosophy – Bertrand Russell, https://www.jmu.edu, Doyle, T. and Zakrajsek, T.D., 2018. The new science of learning: How to learn in harmony with your brain. Stylus Publishing, LLC.