Importance Of Philosophy Essay

I think philosophy is important for two main reasons: (1) it can help improve critical thinking skills and (2) it’s a good way to know certain things. Even so, much more can be said—especially considering each specific thing philosophy can teach us. Many things it can teach us are important for various other reasons.

There are many people who question the importance of philosophy (such as Lawrence Krauss), and I suspect that the main reason that they are unconvinced is because they don’t think philosophy can make progress or provide us with knowledge. Consider that at one point Krauss said, “[Science progresses and philosophy doesn’t.”1

What is philosophy? It is the attempt to reason well about certain traditional domains of study: logic (the study of good reasoning), epistemology (the study of knowledge), metaphysics (the study of reality), and ethics (the study of morality). Just like science, some philosophy is better than others, and a lot of philosophy done by amateurs misses the mark so badly that it is often better described as something else entirely. When

How many people think they reason properly and understand logic? Very few seem to realize that they need to improve their understanding of these things and one relevant study showed that people who were tested in their competence in logic “overestimated their logical reasoning ability relative to their peers. On average, participants placed themselves in the 66th percentile among students from their class, which was significantly higher than the actual [average score] …it was participants in the bottom quartile… who overestimated their logical reasoning ability and test performance to the greatest