What I Expect To Learn About Philosophy

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorCollege, Undergraduate September 2001

download word file, 2 pages 0.0

Downloaded 12 times

What I Expect to Learn About Philosophy The Oxford Dictionary defines philosophy as: that department of knowledge which deals with ultimate reality, or with the most general causes and principles of things; it is substantially following Plato. Taking that definition, and the knowledge read in the article you assigned, what we expect to learn by taking intro to philosophy could consist of: how to critically think; find answers to questions that are to abstract, from what we're used to; and also reading items of philosophers of the past and present that may have ideas we agree with or even disagree with.

Learning how to critically think is an important tool to have in life. It's taking our own experiences, and using them to project some sort of value or purpose, they may have that we've never though about. We can also use critical discussion between groups of people, so we don't just have our own picture; we have other peoples' ideas too.

All this critical thinking and discussion can't just appear. We have to have evidence behind our reasoning. We believe this class will show us, and give us, more opportunity to gather our own evidence.

Helping us answer questions that are to abstract, will give us more knowledge to be able to answer questions in the future. Telling us what, they think, life and nature "mean" ,and what value or purpose they have, will help us branch off and find what we think the issue value or purpose is. Different philosophers have different arguments, so we won't always get one persons opinion, we'll have many. Giving us an explanation behind why something is the way it is will help project our own views.

Taking things into consideration from philosophers of the past will also be an expectation we have.