WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? INSIGHT INTO THE SOCRATIC METHOD

EVERY OTHER SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINE IS JUST AN APPLICATION OF PHILOSOPHICAL METHODS. 

Why do you need to care about Socrates? About Stoicism? Skepticism? Or any other -isms? You must have heard people who claim they don't belong to any "-isms" anyhow. It's quite amusing to see how people think just asking silly questions about existence or just thinking about how the world must function, how the economic systems progress is Philosophy. Thinking about these topics in philosophy are just like talking about black holes only in physics. These questions are part of just a populist culture. 

Philosophy is an account of how we humans reason things. It is the "way" of asking any question and trying to contemplate answers regardless of what question you ask. It may be the most common looking question that you encounter in your lives. And since every Scientific discipline is just asking questions and trying to give answers, philosophy has to do with every discipline. 

MAN IS A RATIONAL ANIMAL. 

~ ARISTOTLE

Regardless of the fact that women are also rational ( politically correct statement), this statement can be regarded as the reason for philosophy to exist. 

Rationality is the basic trait of Humans.It is the way of reasoning that Humans have cultivated to see how one occurrence leads to other and how one fact is connected to other fact and how by arguing, one can make a logical sense between two facts. 

The most primitive philosophical method is The Socratic method. 

Socrates, The Greek philospher gave the most primitive way of reasoning known (may be the only till date) . 

Many of us are not good at arguments. At least, Not in the true rational sense. If forcefully spitting nonsensical arguments just to win an argument is on stake, then I think many of us will upvote themselves. Comparisons of two facts not so ever related, misrepresentation of the argument altogether and many other seemingly savage qualities are part of today's popular tweet culture. 

Plato never said that but you know, many of us are Plato in our own minds. 

So What is the correct method to reason following which you can be sure of one thing that the conclusion is really of some value and not some trash resulting from a trashy argument? 

THE SOCRATIC METHOD HAS THREE WAYS OF REASONING, VIZ. 

1. THE DEDUCTIVE METHOD

    

    In the Deductive method we begin by setting premises. What are premises? Premises are assertions that we think are true best to our knowledge and then lead to the conclusion based on the interrelations of the assertions. 

In short, premises lead to the only possible conclusion. 

For example, 

•Premise 1 :- All Animals are Mortal. 

•Premise 2 :- All Humans are Animals. 

•Conclusion:- All Humans are Mortal. 

In this kind of reasoning, you can see, there are two premises, which are based on truth that one knows best to one's knowledge, and thus, concludes the only possible conclusion. 

Now just a bit of change in premises and see how conclusion changes, 

• Premise 1 :- All Animals are Mortal. 

• Premise 2 :- All Humans are Mortal. 

• Conclusion:- All Animals are Humans. 

Sensed something illogical? Yes! What exactly? 

The thing is both the premises are correct. But The two premises do not lead to the given conclusion. There are Animals that are not necessarily Human. 

So you can see, in any of your reasonings in life, there may be many types of mistakes, viz. 

• The premises are not true. 

• The premises are correct but the conclusion drawn is wrong. 

And so on. 

You see, in a rush of an argument, we sometimes bluntly conclude something out of something so haphazardly without knowing that Socrates gave the correct way to do it. (At least He Told the possible ways of being wrong). 

Next we will have a look on the other types of methods in the Socrates way of reasoning, viz. The Inductive method and The Abductive method. 

Let's do it in other one. Ponder over it. Are you a person with good arguments, or just any random egoistic guy who thinks winning arguments is more important than really knowing something. 

This series is going to be long. After the Socratic method, we are going to look into the philosophical pathway that many wise men of their times used to ask some of the most common but important questions and how they started new "-isms" And how all -isms , however bizzare they seem are based on the correct ways of reasoning and are more logical than your reason of why you wake up and then want to put every other thing in your mouth till night and say that you are hungry. 

Let it be short but let us assume future blogs will be stuffed with lots of reasoning and logic. 

And thus, this photo was related.