Major Lessons Learned

Philosophy is a wide range of knowledge. There are a lot of topics under philosophy. In a short period of time that we have been studying philosophy, the thing that caught my attention was the topic about reality vs. truth.

Truth always comes before reality. Something that we believe is true may not actually be true when we see the reality of it. Just like the example given to us, truth is what we see in commercials but the reality is the actual product. We cannot always believe what we see in televisions unless we see it ourselves.

That was just one of the topics we discussed in our philosophy class. We were also taught about the meaning of philosophy and ethics, major philosophers and relativism. I just thought of giving emphasis to the Reality vs. Truth topic because I believe that among all the topics tackled, it is the one that can be really applied to everyday life. Well, all topics under Philosophy and Ethics can be applied to life, I just want to talk about this particular topics. It was only discussed for a short time but for me, it is a major one.

Science vs. Philosophy

The relationship between philosophy and science has always been an ugly one. This two differ in process of finding reality.

Philosophy always tends to come up with a conclusion without doing experimentations. They rely on theories they make and they just look for believers. They do not seek for truth instead they just want people to believe them to say that their conclusion is true.

Science on the other hand conducts experiments first before arriving at a conclusion. They do not state something is true unless they prove it through experiments. The only problem with science is they sometimes tend to go beyond reality. They just do experiments even though it is quite impossible to have a realistic answer.

Philosophy and science may have differences between each other but these two go together. Philosophy may somehow have greater power than science because it cannot escape philosophy. An article said that if science tries to escape from philosophy, it will just be a slave of it. Philosophy is inevitable; a person should always have a philosophy in life even though he/she does not intend to have one.

Philosophy Is Not a Science

By JULIAN FRIEDLAND

      Firstly, the article is too long when in the end the author will just say Philosophy is not a Science. Too much information was put in and most of the time my mind went to other places while reading. Yes, it did help prove that Philosophy is not a Science though I did not understand some parts of it.

     I just got curious while reading the article, why do we still need to battle between Philosophy and Science when in the end we all get confused. These are just two different fields, deal with it !

My Ideal Philosopher

      I chose Socrates as my ideal philosopher because of his Socratic Method. Socratic method is learning through asking questions. It says that students should not just learn through spoon feeding but by throwing questions.

     Curiosity about something can lead to more learning. Better than being curious is asking questions about a certain thing. If we ask questions we learn and at the same time, the person we asked the question will also learn. It's like hitting two birds with one stone. You ask a question, we both learn.

     Asking questions may be frightening because we might get embarrassed but if we don't take risks, we'll just get stuck and learning won't occur. Learning starts with a simple question, we just need to be brave enough to ask. So that is why Socrates is my ideal philosopher.

Socrates: I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.       

     This belief of Socrates simply states that a wise man knows when to act and when not to act. He knows when he cannot do such things and should think things over. A man that is not wise will always get into situations without being sure if he can handle the consequences of what he did. So there, knowing that you know nothing is a proof of being a wise man.

Philosophy and Ethics

      Philosophy is learning based on reason. Sometimes the things that we believe is right might be wrong in the perspective of others. It depends on how they understood it and how they reason out on such things.

      Ethics is what we call Moral Philosophy. It is knowing the difference between good and bad, right and wrong. It is rightfully judging what we see and observe around us. We just don't give out opinions, we must think carefully the right words to say so that people will believe us and not think of us a laughing stock because of all the non-sense we say.

By just reading the definitions of Philosophy and Ethics, I can really say that studying this is important. The reason is that it molds the character of a person, as a student and as a whole human being. It teaches us the proper way to think and respond to such situations.


Socrates: I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.       

    Yes, I do agree with this saying simply because all of us have our capacities, our limitations. Saying that being wise is knowing that you know nothing for me, means that we know when to do things and when we should stop and think first. Jumping into conclusions without thinking and having an "I know everything" mindset is just stupid. Firstly, it's not a humble thing to say. Secondly, it just says that you don't know your limitations. We should always think first before acting.