Philosophers: What is the use of Philosophy? Does it influence you one way or another?

Answer 1

Philosophy influences me in every way every day of my life. Studying the methodology of philosophy was one of my best choices in college. The search, by LOGICAL REASONING--of basic principles--universe, life, human perceptions. When I was truly able to see the fallacy of assumptions, speculations, contradictions & biased opinions--I never looked at anything in the same way again. It's helped me to see that there are exceptions to every rule, that there is no ABSOLUTE. That was my foundation. I had no wish or need to further study the ideas or teachings of particular philosophers, as they had drawn their own conclusions (which seemed, itself, a contradiction to philosophy). I know it's helped me to be more "fair," to know that there are more than two sides to the coin, & never make hasty judgments. I am "philosophical" but not a philosopher; the search is open & endless.

Edit: There was quite a long answer here, that I felt had valid points--but as I recall, in one of the paragraphs the word "stoicism" might have been appropriate than "philosophical." Stoicism most specifically names the "philosophy" originated by Zeno. Be aware of nuances in meaning.

Answer 2

Philosophy is usually to find the truth and the benefits to finding the truth is that you can understand reality better and therefore adapt to it, improve on it and prosper from it (in health, sense, happiness and peace etc). You can live life better. You can also prepare yourself better for the future as you can understand the laws of nature better. It can question and answer 'anything' whilst other subjects are constrained by the information regarding their interests but philosophy ranges everywhere and it maybe the only subject that will question any 'data, information and faiths'. It can make you fulfill you life to reach it's potential by maxmising your mind's capacity to think and be logical. It also creates justice by acknowledging truths to help anyone as other subjects may hide truths like history, politics or religions. Although truth can be subjective, it also is objective so philosophy can unite everyone in their existential state. The things about philosophy being useful is that it can be scary thinking of the greatest fears and pains as this is still life. This will influence you to explore life thus making it diverse with experience. It makes you feel the whole emotions of life and the universe and what it can give. But all philosophy should back truth, justice and wisdom to make it safe enough for all to be glad about life, with hope, health and happiness if possible.

Answer 3

good philosophy teaching introduces you to ideas and concepts that you can apply almost everywhere - what is necessary for us to say something is true? what is human consciousness like? where does it come from? can i make it...'more', or 'better'? why is science stupid? why is religion stupid?...

there are good answers and concepts for all of those questions and many MANY more!

for me i think that studying philosophy at a high level was really like going to mind-gym for a couple of years - i was able to think in ways, afterwards, that i simply wasn't before and that has helped me hugely in almost everything i have done, both in work and in my personal life.

thinking seems kinda important to me and philosophy is a great place to start if you want to develop it!

Answer 4

Philosophy by any other name is philosophy. Call it huba buba if you want, what is is.

The Will is positive, the Judgment is negative.

Answer 5

It helps me figure out the truths of this world. I influences me differently in different situation.

Answer 6

Since humans like to fixate on words, they need to have words that will justify their actions and existence.

Answer 7

The usage is to characterize as "philosophical" a specific attitude of acceptance, acquiescence, or submission to whatever happens, perhaps with some interpretive reason, as in "Jones took the news of his dismissal quite philosophically; he said that if the boss didn't want him there, it probably was a place where he wouldn't be happy working long anyway." Or "Smith took the news of the tragedy very philosophically; he said that was just the way life was sometimes and that you had to just accept it and go on or you would go crazy." Or "Johnson was philosophical about the tragedy, saying ‘We just have to trust in God to know what is best for all of us, even if it seems terribly sad at this time; it must all be for the best ultimately.'" This also is not related to philosophy in the sense of sustained, systematic, reflective analysis.

A more recent usage that is perhaps becoming more and more common is to equate philosophy with "mere idle speculation", particularly as in "Rather than sitting around merely philosophizing, we decided to do some actual empirical research into the phenomena." Or "There is no point in thinking about this philosophically; we need to find out what the facts are." Or "You can do all the philosophy about the likely result of this you want, but at some point you are going to have to get out of your chair and actually see what happens when you try to do it." In this sense, philosophy is equated with the kind of pointless thinking about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin; it is considered to be a waste of mental energy, for no useful purpose.

Loosely associated with this view of philosophy is the one that thinks philosophers are at best merely "book-smart" people who have no common sense because they come up with crackpot beliefs and ideas. While in some cases this may be true, more often it is believed because it is not the reasoning but only the conclusion that is looked at, and it is true that many conclusions philosophers reach are counter-intuitive or odd, or contrary to conventional belief. It is important, however, not to look just at conclusions that people reach, but the evidence and reasons they give for them. That is where insights lie if there are to be any.

Thus, in a time of great economic, scientific, and technological advancement, one might mistakenly believe that there is no particular use for philosophy, because it deals with intangible ideas, some seemingly crazy, which cannot be proved scientifically or verified objectively, and which have nothing to do with providing greater creature comforts or material progress. Pragmatists may believe at any time that there is not much use for philosophy and that philosophy is merely about having opinions, opinions which are no better than anyone else's opinions, and of no more value than idle speculation. So what is the use of philosophy?

In the first, and narrowest, place, for some people philosophy simply satisfies a personal need or interest. Philosophy is, as it has always been, interesting in its own right for that minority of people who simply like to think, or who are by nature driven to think about, and who appreciate and find great pleasure in discovering insights into, what seem to be intangible or complex issues, great or small.

But the tools of philosophy can be important to everyone because it potentially helps one think better, more clearly, and with greater perspective about almost everything. There are numerous specific topic areas in academic philosophy, many of interest only to a few, even among philosophers, but there are features and techniques common to all of them, and it is those features and techniques which also can apply to almost anything in life. These features have to do with reasoning and with understanding concepts, and, to some small extent, with creativity. Normally, all other things being equal, the better one understands anything and can think clearly and logically about it, the better off one will be, and the better one will be able to act on that understanding and reasoning. (It is my view, for example, that better conceptual understanding by NCAA and NFL administrators would lead to a far more workable and acceptable "instant replay review" policy.)

Furthermore, philosophy in many cases is about deciding which goals and values are worthy to pursue -- what ends are important. One can be scientific or pragmatic about pursuing one's goals in the most efficient manner, but it is important to have the right or most reasonable goals in the first place. Philosophy is a way of scrutinizing ideas about which goals are the most worthy one. A healthy philosophical debate about what is ideal or which ideals ought to be sought and pursued, is important. Efficiency in the pursuit of the wrong values or ends is not a virtue.

It is also important that beliefs and goals be examined, even if they are idealistic; that is, even if society is nowhere near ready to proceed from where they are to some idealistic state. For it is important to know what is most reasonably ideal, and to understand the reasons for thinking it is the ideal, in order to try to make stepwise progress (as society is ready to discover and accept any step in the right direction) and in order to reassess what one thinks is ideal when unexpected social responses show flaws or undesirable side-effect in the concept. For example, welfare and housing for the poor have often run into unexpected difficulties and in some cases have been counterproductive to the desire to help people improve their lives. While the basic goals of helping people escape poverty and substandard housing in order to become productive, secure, and hopeful about their lives may remain ideal, supplying homes or money in certain ways may not be the effective means to that, or may not be the equivalent to it as an end.

While science tests hypotheses by empirical means, philosophical pursuit of values and ideals tests concepts of the ideal in two ways: (1) by the debate of differing ideas and values to see what seems most reasonable, and (2) by the constant monitoring of the satisfactoriness and desirability of the stated goal as socially acceptable steps toward it come into place. Social progress toward an ideal often takes place in small stages, and sometimes flaws in the ideal become visible as the stages are implemented. It takes understanding of the stated values, ends, and means in order to recognize missteps.

However, it must be pointed out that there are people trained in philosophy who do not think very well, at least not on all, if any, topics. And there are people who have never had any sort of philosophy or logic course who are quite astute in their thinking in general. The study of philosophy is something like the intellectual equivalent of training in sports. Those with natural talent and no training will often be better than those with training but little natural talent, but proper training should develop and enhance whatever talent most people have to begin with.

And it also must be pointed out that not all philosophical writing or thinking is very good, and, perhaps more importantly, not all philosophy courses are very well taught or very good. In fact, there are a great many terribly taught philosophy courses, where students come out having learned very little and/or where they have mostly learned to hate what they think is philosophy and consider it to be stupid. In some cases, however, where teachers are entertaining and articulate, students come out favorably impressed, but still with little or no understanding. Neither of these kinds of courses serve students or philosophy very well, though the latter are at least more enjoyable than the former. So when I talk about the uses of philosophy or about "philosophy" itself, I really mean to be referring to the best of what philosophy has to offer, not necessarily what one might learn in some particular philosophy 101, or even upperclass or graduate level, course, and not necessarily what one might find in a book chosen randomly from the philosophy section of a university library or bookstore.

The tools of philosophy are important to individuals and to society because as long as we are not omniscient, factual knowledge by itself is no substitute for philosophy, just as philosophy is no substitute for factual knowledge. Philosophy is about the intelligent and rational uses of knowledge, and it is about the scrutiny of beliefs to see how clear and how reasonable they are in the light of knowledge we have. Knowledge is the substance of philosophy, not its opposite. As I explain in "Words, Pictures, Logic, Ethics, and Not Being God" because there is much we cannot know directly or even by observation, much of our knowledge comes from our use of reason. And philosophy, when done properly, perhaps more than any other field, gives training and practice in the most general and basic elements of reasoning. The essay "Reasoning" explains what reasoning is, how it works, and why it is important. It also explains that it does not always yield the truth or knowledge, but that in certain circumstances, it is the best we can do to try to attain knowledge. In many cases, reasoning will show us what we need to find out in order to have knowledge about a particular phenomena, by showing us what the gaps are in the knowledge we have.