Metaphilosophy

+Traci Auerbach talked me into starting this. So, what's this blog going to be about? Philosophy in general, by which I mean, my continuing ratiocination about what I believe to be various fundamental, necessary features of reality. Where to begin?

I'll begin with the question, "What is philosophy?" In a nutshell, philosophy is the use of intellectual intuition to discover necessary truths about reality. Let's break that sentence down: reality is all of existence; a truth is a proposition which accurately encodes information about reality; necessity means that something cannot be other than it is; discovery is the process of exploring different aspects of a thing in search of truths about it; intellectual intuition is the ability of sapient beings to analyze experience and synthesize coherent worldviews.

The next question is, "What is the method of philosophy?" The primary method of philosophy is logical analysis. Logic is the art and science of argumentation; there are two broad types of logic: deductive and inductive. A deductive argument is valid if and only if, if all of its premises are true then its conclusion must be true; it is sound if and only if it is valid and all of its premises are true. An inductive argument is cogent if and only if the conclusion is more likely to be true if its premises are true. While doing philosophy, one attempts to construct valid and cogent arguments in order to uncover truths about reality.

Next, "To what purpose does one do philosophy?" My purpose is to discover what my intuitive worldview is, analyze it for hidden contradictions, and synthesize a more accurate and coherent worldview. Why is this good? In my opinion, if ones worldview is incoherent, then one will find themselves in situations where they cannot, in principle, know what to do; also, the more accurate ones worldview is, the better one is able to navigate reality.