what is philosophy?

Philosophy is in essence, the act of questioning thoughts using thought.
philosophical questions are ones that have answers that are debated, and those answers are of importance to our very existance.

the reason that these answers are debated is that they are not known with reasonable certainty. the reason for this is that philosophy deals with questions outside of science's scope. for instance, can we ask a scientist if science really gives knowledge? he could answer that, but he could not answer scientificly.

the other reason is that that common sense can not really probe it either. as we know common sense can be wrong.

another resource is from dogma, that dogma is refered to as religion. that turns the answer into a statement of faith, this faith does not in any way validate an answer because one person may say that they belive this by faith just as much as another can belive the oppisite with the same faith.

that is why the true philosophical questions are still with us.
they are from the times of the ancient greeks, and some earlier than that. that is not to say however that there have not been many more created and tacked on to the long list of things studied.

The only way of giving a proper answer for a philosophical question is by thinking critically about the parameters of the question and answering it point by point without readily made bias towards a favorited belief. for instance take the question on the nature of gods existance, our pre concived notion of whether he does or does not exist does not prove it either way, but certain aspects of certain gods can be argued about. such as arguing about suffering with an all loving god. these are philosophical questions.

all of this requires very critical thought. that means paying attention to all things involved in a question, phrases, words, defintion of words. taking apart those things and breaking all things involved into the tinyest of aspects so that we can see fully the nature of the problem instead of just waht we notice.

it also means developing ways to approach parts of the problem peice by peice until they all fit together in a logical manner.

once this is done, we can then know at least all the factors that the answer needs to have to be complete.

only then after we have made sure to eliminate all previous bias can we honestly give a credible answer.

even with such carful thought, the greatest of minds have debated the issues that are dealt with philosophy, and yet we still have debate. The most one could achieve is that you can make the statment that your belief is more inclusive and explanitory ir just a better theory than the someone elses.

the main questions that will be addressed on this blog are the ones that are the most popular. the question is how do we take apart these questions and how do we use that way of thinking to answer things like "what do we know and how do we know it?" , "what exists? and how can we provide evidence for it?", and "what is ethical and where do we get those ethics from?"