Reflection No.

1 (At least 200 words)

Question: What is the value of philosophy?

Outline:

PROBLEM: first principles is not equal to general truths!!!

I. For me, the chief value of philosophy is it allows us to interrogate, evaluate, and ultimately
improve the foundations of our beliefs.

Three sub-questions I hope to answer:

1. What does it mean to arrive at the very foundations of our beliefs?
- The process of examining the foundations of my beliefs, especially those of the physical world,
is not new to me. As a science student, I am being trained to question how the world works,
observe how it behaves, and conclude from these observations. But whenever a conclusion is
generated, new questions always arise. These new questions aim to generalize and try to see
the bigger picture oreality one question at a time. For example, if the laws of nature allowed
life to exist in this planet, can we generalize as to say that it is an inevitability in the universe?
Or is life just an accident in the cosmic lottery and is destined to eventually die out? This
process of generalizing i.e. getting a bigger and bigger picture, ultimately leads to a point where
we can no longer generalize any further i.e. we arrive at the very foundations of our beliefs
about life and reality itself.

2. Why is it important to go back to first principles?

- Arriving at the foundations of our beliefs allows us to:

o Live a coherent and more truthful life
 As we age, we learn new things, and these learnings have to be integrated
into our pre-existing set of beliefs.
 However, when we fail to examine ourselves, we inevitably run into the
danger of living an incoherent set of beliefs that is full of contradictions.
 Philosophy helps us to reexamine such beliefs, rethink the answers we grew
comfortably with, and see if they still hold water at the face of new
knowledge.
 If they don’t stand to scrutiny anymore, then we are given the wonderful
opportunity to explore new directions and to rebuild a new coherent set of
beliefs, built on a stronger foundation that are now a closer approximation to
the truth.

3. How does philosophy allow us to examine the foundations of our beliefs?

- By developing in us a skeptical attitude towards everything. Inevitably, such skepticism will
be directed at our personal beliefs and their underlying assumptions.
o Always inquiring and interrogating
- By allowing us to speculate and enable us to come up with better, temporary answers to
questions, until such time that new evidence comes in that prompts us to re-question our
beliefs and replace it with a better ones.
o In the end, coherent beliefs that are a closer approximation to the truth enable us to
live a meaningful life
First draft:

For me, the chief value of philosophy is it allows me to arrive at the first principles of my beliefs.
In expounding this position, I will answer three sub-questions: (1) what does it mean to go back to first
principles? (2) why is it important for me to go back to first principles? and (3) how does philosophy allow
me to arrive at first principles?

As a science student, I am being trained to question how the world works, observe how it behaves,
and conclude from these observations. But whenever a conclusion is generated, new questions always arise.
An answer always leads to more general questions. For example, what are the conditions required for life
to emerge? Once determined, we then ask, what is the probability of such conditions from occurring here
on Earth? Eventually, we stumble upon the fundamental nature of life itself: is life merely an accident, or
is it an inevitability in the universe? This act of asking increasingly general questions about what we observe
eventually leads us to a starting point – to a first principle – that interrogates the bigger picture of things. In
other words, to arrive at first principles is to generalize and to boil things down to their fundamental truths.