Throughout my first semester, I was introduced to the humanities class of philosophy. Before my arrival at IE, I already had some prior experience with philosophy. My previous school followed the educational system of the IB which had a mandatory class that was very similar to philosophy. Throughout this essay, I will explain the main concepts that have been discussed and studied throughout this semester. This essay will also intend to summarize the course by analyzing each individual topic that was studied.
The beginning of philosophy was nicely structured around the basics of philosophy. This allowed students that had no prior knowledge of philosophy to gain an understanding of the foundations of philosophy. This was achieved by allowing the students to conduct critical thinking about what our morals and ethics are to allow us to think about how we decide what these values mean to us and how we decide what is right or wrong. These classes were also effective in giving the students an idea of the framework of the philosophy course since some students were unsure about the objectives of the class. Furthermore, philosophy forces students into critical through questions that may seem simple such as “how we can know anything and how we can know what is real or true”, these questions appear to be simple yet when they are being discussed they are far more complex, especially in an educational environment. Philosophy makes us evaluate our own morals and ethics through these simple questions. The first lessons of Philosophy were effective by allowing students to think critically because of the self-evaluation of ethics and morals as well as questioning the real world.
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The first lesson allowed the students to gain a fundamental on the concept of philosophy which allowed the class to proceed towards in-depth thinking. Thinking critically is an essential skill that is used throughout life, but it has to be trained. This is the reasoning for the next topic to be about recognizing whether an argument can be validated or invalidated. In order for an argument to be validated or invalidated, logic has to be used in order to come to a conclusion about a specific argument. Therefore, the class was focused on formal logic and also the informal methods of arguing a point. The formal way of logic is called deductive logic which is the method of reasoning from one or multiple statements to reach a logically certain conclusion. This can be used to validate or invalidate an argument by taking multiple statements into consideration before judging a statement. The ways of informally arguing a point are rhetoric and inductive. Inductive reasoning is “a method of reasoning in which the premises are viewed as supplying some evidence for the truth of the conclusion”. Through these methods arguments can be validated or invalidated by using logic to closely analyze the argument to understand if it is considered to be true or false.
After the first few lessons, the student already had a more in-depth insight into philosophy. The next class was based on questioning reality and also questioning the things we know. This was also done through the key theory of epistemology which is a branch of philosophy that concerns the theory of knowledge. It is also the study of justification and the nature of knowledge. It helps us to understand how we know things and how we can justify what we know. This was how the student was pushed to question what they know and if they can really be sure about what they know through the nature of that knowledge and the justification that they can provide for their knowledge. This also ties in with the last class about validating or invalidating an argument. This is because students are educated about the nature of knowledge and justification which is crucial to reason whether an argument is valid.
The next subject was specifically about morals and ethics. Morals can be seen to be more about the value of an individual while ethics are generally seen to be set by society when considering what is right and what is wrong. In class, we were questioned about the interests in society and whose interests we should focus on. This is highly debatable, yet the majority would agree that the ethical thing to do is to act in the interest of the community. This is because acting in the interest of the community would be more beneficial for everyone instead of concentrating on certain people only. This would also be unethical if we act in the interest of only a specific class of people. It was also crucial for students to develop an understanding of ethics and morals to gain a personal understanding of these factors.
Furthermore, the class also explored political philosophy. Throughout this subject, the class analyzed the different government systems that exist while also looking at what makes a good leader. This is crucial to understand as it is important for the future of every student to identify the key strengths that a leader has to possess. This is important because in order to grow in a professional work environment is to be able to lead people through the most effective leadership styles depending on the situation. It is also vital to understand the different government systems that exist to identify how they impact society. This has importance to a student’s future as it also relates to how employees are impacted through different leadership styles. Political philosophy relates to morals and ethics as well since it is relevant for government leaders to act morally and ethically appropriately when making decisions for society.
In conclusion, this essay outlines the philosophy course of the first semester. It is relevant to identify the real-life benefits of studying philosophy for the future business world as discussed throughout the essay. The course was also effective by continuously building on the student’s knowledge and developing critical thinking skills for the future.
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