The Significance Of Philosophy In My Personal Philosophy Of Life

Philosophy “love of wisdom”, the study of knowledge an activity some people take part in when they seek to understand fundamental truths about themselves, the world they live in, and their relationships to the world and to each other. As an academic discipline philosophy is much the same. According to an article & interview by Vikas Sham MBE where Jules Evans answer on why we need philosophy “Our ability to do philosophy is one of the things that distinguishes us from other animals- in some ways, it is that which makes us sapiens, “wise monkeys”. Other animals definitely question why they do things a certain way, and try to find strategies that are more intelligent to meet goals and whilst you could say this is ‘philosophizing,’ only humans seem to have developed this capacity for higher-order questioning asking, ‘to what end are we doing this?’, ‘why are we doing this at all?'. Philosophy is embedded in everything. We all have philosophies which form the basis for our motivations and what we do with our days. Everyone has their own philosophy of life; every institution has a philosophy. Donald Trump has a philosophy, Walmart will have a philosophy, Playboy magazine will have a philosophy, your next-door neighbor will have a philosophy… but for most of us, those philosophies are unexamined and more or less automatic and instinctual. Philosophy as a named activity, is quite recent in human history- and is the attempt to examine these instinctive and automatic motivations and say, ‘is this definitely wise?’, ‘is this coherent?”( VIKAS SHAH MBE). I never question how important breathing is in my life even though it's quite obvious to understand that I just do it because I know I'm going to die, if I stop breathing. For example, take Charles Sanders Peirce’s “pragmatism” which mean that we always think about the practical side of thing without worrying about theory or ideology. When I was born, I was unaware of knowledge, wisdom or truth. I was just eating, breathing, sleeping and peeing my pants but the moment I develop my senses I started seeing the world around me, more importantly the people around me, was amazed by some activity people were doing which was beyond my imagination.

Philosophy is an attitude which we develop towards life, which helps us to make decisions when the consequences matter, which helps us to bear the pain and not shed tears, which helps us to understand that we all are worthless creatures on this planet(merely a product of biological evolution) and still pushes us to do something for the good of all other creatures who we share our home with, which no other animal can possibly think of( Ankur Khare,2018).

Peirce distinguished four ways of coming to a fixed belief about some subject matter, four methods of settling opinion. Techniques that can be used to arrive at what we think is true. Peirce points out first that we invariably think each of our beliefs to be true as long as we have no cause to doubt it. It is only in that uneasy state of doubt that we wonder about the truth of our beliefs (pg. 567). Philosophy help us solve our problems mundane or abstract and it help us make better decisions by developing our critical thinking (Saidah,2017). What is critical thinking and what is the relationship between philosophy and critical thinking? Critical thinking means making reasoned judgments that are logical and well thought out. Critical Thinking was one of the most important aspects of philosophy. In fact, we would not have the scientific method, or the foundations of mathematics without it (Cooper Nicholas, 2018). Four hundred years ago, Rene Descartes earned notoriety as the “Father of Modern Philosophy” for establishing a philosophical distinction between mind and body. In the Second Meditation where the intuitively grasped truth of “I exist” occurs. So, the discussion here of this truth will take place from the first person or “I” perspective. All sensory beliefs had been found doubtful in the previous meditation, and therefore all such beliefs are now considered false. This includes the belief that I have a body endowed with sense organs. But does the supposed falsehood of this belief mean that I do not exist? No, for if I convinced myself that my beliefs are false, then surely there must be an “I” that was convinced.

Often called America’s greatest psychologist, William James was a distinguished contributor to pragmatist philosophy, he is noted the will to believe, the variety of religious experience, and the meaning of the truth. James stressed the connection between our beliefs and our practical life. But more than others, he emphasized the practical consequences of actually believing one thing or another. Because our beliefs are shaped as much by our needs and interest as by the world, we are justified in taking those needs and interests into account when deciding what to believe (Norman Melchert, pg.580 We are scarcely able to canvas everything Dewey contributed, even to pragmatic philosophy. We all deal with problem-solving on our everyday life problems are forever and we can’t avoid them. Dewey thinks of intelligence or inquiry as a matter of problem-solving. Like Peirce he understands problem-solving as the endeavor to remove doubt and establish habits we can use to advantage. “the function of reflective thought is to transform a situation in which there are experienced obscurity, doubt, conflict, disturbance of some sort, into a situation that is clear, coherent, settled, harmonious”.

In conclusion, Philosophy is important in our life because we all use philosophy daily if not in a way in the other in our critical thinking, our beliefs and the way we judge things our religions are all philosophically related that’s why philosophy is significant in my life.