What is philosophy?

Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to
existence. … In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which
makes the forest possible.—Ayn Rand, Philosophy.
A philosophy is a comprehensive system of ideas about human nature and the nature of the reality we live
in. It is a guide for living, because the issues it addresses are basic and pervasive, determining the course we
take in life and how we treat other people.
The topics that philosophy addresses fall into several distinct fields. Among those of fundamental concern
are:
• Metaphysics (the theory of reality).
• Epistemology (the theory of knowledge)
• Logic (the theory of nature of thinking)
• Ethics (the theory of moral values)
• Politics (the theory of legal rights and government)
• Aesthetics (the theory of the nature of art)
What is philosophy of scince?
The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations,
and implications of science. The field is defined by an interest in one of a set of
"traditional" problems or an interest in central or foundational concerns in science. In
addition to these central problems for science as a whole, many philosophers of
science consider these problems as they apply to particular sciences (e.g. philosophy
of biology or philosophy of physics). Some philosophers of science also use
contemporary results in science to draw philosophical morals. Philosophy of science
focuses on metaphysical, epistemic and semantic aspects of science. Ethical issues
such as bioethics and scientific misconduct are usually considered ethics or science
studies rather than philosophy of science.
What is philosophy of language?
Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and
usage of language. As a topic, the philosophy of language for analytic philosophers is
concerned with four central problems: the nature of meaning, language use, language
cognition, and the relationship between language and reality. For continental
philosophers, however, the philosophy of language tends to be dealt with, not as a
separate topic, but as a part of logic, history or politics. First, philosophers of
language inquire into the nature of meaning, and seek to explain what it means to
"mean" something. Second, they would like to understand what speakers and
listeners do with language in communication, and how it is used socially. Third, they
would like to know how language relates to the minds of both the speaker and the
interpreter. Finally, they investigate how language and meaning relate to truth and
the world. Philosophers tend to be less concerned with which sentences are actually
true, and more with what kinds of meanings can be true or false.
The meaning of to think philosophically?

There are four basic branches of philosophy:

• Metaphisics (is defined as the branch of philosophy that examines the true
nature of reality, whether visible or invisible. Metaphysics includes the relationship
between mind and matter, substance and attribute, and, fact and value. Basically,
 metaphysics is the philosophical study of being and knowing. It is concerned with
explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world. It is very closely related
to spirituality, but it is not a religion.)
• Epistemology(is the investigation into the grounds and nature of knowledge
itself. The study of epistemology focuses on our means for acquiring knowledge
and how we can differentiate between truth and falsehood. Modern epistemology
generally involves a debate between rationalism and empiricism, or the question
of whether knowledge can be acquired a priori or a posteriori:
Empiricism: knowledge is obtained through experience.
Rationalism: knowledge can be acquired through the use of reason.)
• Logic (is the study of reason, that is, of rational ways of drawing or establishing
conclusions. It is the art and science of reasoning. More specifically, it is defined to
be "The formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct
reasoning". As a discipline, logic dates back to Aristotle, who established its
fundamental place in philosophy. It became a fundamental part of a classical
education, and is now an integral part of disciplines such as mathematics,
computer science, and linguistics. Logic concerns the structure of statements and
arguments, in formal systems of inference and natural language. Topics include
validity, fallacies and paradoxes, reasoning using provability and arguments
involving causality and time. Logic is also commonly used today in argumentation
theory)
• Ethics (is a branch of philosophy which seeks to address questions about morality,
such as what the fundamental semantic, ontological, and epistemic nature of
ethics or morality is (meta-ethics), how moral values should be determined
(normative ethics), how a moral outcome can be achieved in specific situations
(applied ethics), how moral capacity or moral agency develops and what its nature
is (moral psychology), and what moral values people actually abide by (descriptive
ethics).

What is materialsm
Materialism is the idea that everything is either made only of matter or is ultimately
dependent upon matter for its existence and nature. It is possible for a philosophy to
be materialistic and still accord spirit a (secondary or dependent) place, but most
forms of materialism tend to reject the existence of spirit or anything non-physical. If
materialism argues that matter is the only or primary thing that exists, what is matter
supposed to be? Materialists disagree on this, but generally accept that something is
material if it has physical properties: size, shape, color, electrical charge, spatial and
temporal location, etc. The list of attributes is open-ended and disagreements tend to
be in what qualifies as a “physical property.” It can be, therefore, difficult to identify
the boundaries of the class of material things. Materialism thus tends towards
determinism: because there are material causes for every event, then every event
follows necessarily from its causes.

What is idealism
Idealism refers to any philosophy that argues that reality is somehow dependent upon
the mind rather than independent of it. More extreme versions will deny that the
“world” even exists outside of our minds. Narrow versions argue that our
understanding of reality reflects the workings of our mind first and foremost — that
the properties of objects have no standing independent of minds perceiving them.
The nature and identity of the “mind” upon which reality is dependent is one issue
that has divided idealists of various sorts. Some argue that there is some objective
mind outside of nature, some argue that it is simply the common power of reason or
rationality, some argue that it is the collective mental faculties of society, and some
focus simply on the minds of individual human beings. According to Platonic Idealism,
there exists a perfect realm of Form and Ideas and our world merely contains
shadows of that realm.

What is empiricism
is a theory of knowledge which asserts that knowledge arises from sense experience.
Empiricism is one of several competing views about how we know "things," part of the
branch of philosophy called epistemology, or "the Theory of Knowledge". Empiricism
emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception, in the
formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas (except in so far as
these might be inferred from empirical reasoning, as in the case of genetic
predisposition). Empiricism is the philosophical concept that experience, which is
based on observation and experimentation, is the source of knowledge. According to
empiricism, only the information that a person gathers with his or her senses should
be used to make decisions, without regard to reason or to either religious or political
teachings. Empiricism gained credibility with the rise of experimental science during
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and it continues to be studied by many
scientists today. Empiricists have included English philosopher John Locke (1632–
1704), who asserted that there is no such thing as innate (having at birth) ideas—that
the mind is born blank and all knowledge is derived from human experience.

What is rationalism
rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or
justification" (Lacey 286). In more technical terms it is a method or a theory "in which
the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive" (Bourke 263).
Different degrees of emphasis on this method or theory lead to a range of rationalist
standpoints, from the moderate position "that reason has precedence over other
ways of acquiring knowledge" to the radical position that reason is "the unique path
to knowledge" (Audi 771). Given a pre-modern understanding of reason, "rationalism"
is identical to philosophy, the Socratic life of inquiry, or the zetetic interpretation of
authority (open to the underlying or essential cause of things as they appear to our
sense of certainty). In recent decades, Leo Strauss sought to revive Classical Political
Rationalism as a discipline that understands the task of reasoning, not as
foundational, but as maieutic. Rationalism is often contrasted with empiricism. Taken
very broadly these views are not mutually exclusive, since a philosopher can be both
rationalist and empiricist (Lacey 286–287). Taken to extremes the empiricist view
holds that all ideas come to us through experience, either through the five external
senses or through such inner sensations as pain and pleasure, and thus that
knowledge is essentially based on or derived from experience.

Deductive logic reasoning

Concerned with the rules for determining when an argument is valid. It is reasoning
which constructs or evaluates deductive arguments. In logic, an argument is said to
be deductive when the truth of the conclusion is purported to follow necessarily or be
a logical consequence of the premises and (consequently) its corresponding
conditional is a necessary truth. Deductive arguments are said to be valid or invalid,
never true or false. A deductive argument is valid if and only if the truth of the
conclusion actually does follow necessarily (or is indeed a logical consequence of) the
premises and (consequently) its corresponding conditional is a necessary truth. If a
deductive argument is not valid then it is invalid. A valid deductive argument with
true premises is said to be sound; a deductive argument which is invalid or has one or
more false premises or both is said to be not sound (unsound).
Example : (1) all Indonesian are mortal. Because (2) all indonesian are human beings.
(2) all human beings are mortal.
Sentence (1) is an inference or conclusion or argument. Sentences (2) and(3) are
reasons. The conclusion is valid because the reasons are true (valid)

What is inductive logic reasoning

Induction, also known as inductive reasoning or inductive logic, is a type of
reasoning which involves moving from a set of specific facts to a general conclusion. [1]
It can also be seen as a form of theory-building, in which specific facts are used to
create a theory that explains relationships between the facts and allows prediction of
future knowledge. The premises of an inductive logical argument indicate some
degree of support (inductive probability) for the conclusion but do not entail it; i.e.
they do not ensure its truth. Induction is used to ascribe properties or relations to
types based on an observation instance (i.e., on a number of observations or
experiences); or to formulate laws based on limited observations of recurring
phenomenal patterns. It is concerned not with valid inferences, but with inferences
which are probable, given as evidence (reason) the truth of certain sentences, upon
which they are based.
Example : Many speeding tickets are given to teenagers.
Therefore:
All teenagers drive fast.
In this example, the premise is built upon a certainty; however, it is not one that leads
to the conclusion. Not every teenager observed has been given a speeding ticket.
Therefore the conclusion drawn is false.