How do we philosophize?

Philosophizing as stepping back: First, we must answer the question, what is philosophy? If it is supposed that knowing something requires examining it throughout history, then the definition of philosophy should also be taken from the history of philosophy. Simply put, philosophy is what philosophers do. When we examine this issue throughout the history of philosophy, we realize that the philosopher tries to go back in his thinking process and reconsider his theoretical and practical principles. Therefore, the followers of philosophers are not philosophers, but someone can be called a philosopher who has revised his intellectual principles or revised them in any order. It is enough to take a few steps back and evaluate your assumptions in an unbiased way. So, can't the philosophy of going back and reconsidering theoretical and practical principles? If we agree on the definition of philosophy, we can now raise the question of how a philosopher does his philosophical activity?

In fact, philosophical work is a practice, and this means, that while dealing with philosophy, we will understand how to do philosophical work. Therefore, an accurate understanding of philosophical work requires practice, engaging in a mental and logical challenge, and doing it. You may ask what exactly should I practice? I will give you some examples in this regard.?

Suppose you plan to go to the cinema tonight. First, ask yourself why should I do this? There must be something serious to convince me to go there tonight. What evidence is there of my willingness to do so? Pay attention to this argument:

• First premise: I like hot dogs.
• Second premise: Delicious hot dogs are cooked in the cinema restaurant.
• conclusion: I have to go to the cinema.

The two assumptions that have been said will support the result. But the basic question was whether those two propositions really support the result? To answer this question, we must first measure the strength of our argument. It means to think of ways that can question the strength of our reasoning. For this, we must first try to identify the method by which we made our argument and question it. Therefore, we can make the following points:

- Paying attention to the relationship between premise and conclusion: Maybe the fact that you like hot dogs and they cook delicious hot dogs at the cinema does not mean that you should go there. The argument must lead us to a logical and inevitable conclusion. But maybe I'm a vegetarian or I don't have enough money to buy a hot dog in that situation.

- Paying attention to the truth or falsity of the premises: can we pay attention to whether the cinema really has good hot dogs or not? Or, do I like hot dogs? (or am I just hungry, or...)Therefore, in general, the purpose of evaluating the premises is to find out whether the assumptions necessarily lead us to this conclusion or not. In other words, does the result really come from the premises?

Consider another example. Philosophers who reject human free will argue like this:

• First premise: The world's past determines its present and future.
• Second premise: human is a being in the world.
• Third premise: So the past of the world determines the destiny of human, not him.

Explanation: What happened before you were born was not your will, but it caused you to be born and grow in a certain cultural, geographical, political, and economic situation. Therefore, every decision you make in your life will be in response to events in that you had no involvement in their formation.

We can question the assumptions to criticize and evaluate this argument. We may say that the past cannot have much effect on the present and the future. or even man is a supernatural being and is not mixed with the world; Rather, it is a transcendent being with a soul.

A final point to keep in mind in how philosophy works is the importance of the "overall vision" that lies behind philosophical arguments. Perhaps Aristotle could easily reject the premises of a Platonic argument and invalidate the conclusion of the argument. But what is important is to know a general insight that Plato's argument was trying to explain. In other words, we reject an argument and because of the connection between that argument and an "overall vision", we think that we have also rejected that overall vision.

Also, when we are symbolizing an argument to express our overall vision, our argument is stronger when it makes a deeper connection with that insight. But no matter how much this connection is established, it still cannot be uncritical.

Philosophers have given various reasons for this attitude. For example, logical positivists believe that it is a property of language that cannot go beyond a certain area. However, what is important in the process of arguing or refuting an argument is the attention to the general theoretical atmosphere in which we are moving. Not just relying on the logical aspects of an argument.

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