Philosophy: Any personal belief about how to live or how to deal with a situation

Iago

can this definition be true? do any of us actually have any beliefs that are just our personal beliefs and not dictated by nurture, society, history, evolution?

My philosophy is to do whatever makes me feel good....


but is that really my philosophy or just me rebelling against the norm which is encapsulating my life? Or is it a by-product of my childhood and the example and advice my parents gave me? Is it then their philosophy that has imprinted itself on my conciousness to such and extent that I believe it's my own...


does any of this make sense?? (probably not, but then it would't be the first time, my philiosophy is publish and be damned, at least I think it's my philosophy:D )

simu

Philosophy: Any personal belief about how to live or how to deal with a situation can this definition be true?

Well, the above definition of philosophy is commonly used amongst non-philosophers. You hear people talking about thier own philosophy on life or even a company's philosophy. With more formal philosophy though, it's not just about beliefs about different things - philosophers usually search for a broader framework that accounts for any possible situation rather than particular events. They would also question beliefs - what are they, where do they come from, do they stand up to rigorous questioning and so on. But even when it's a case of philosophers come up with more thorough, thought-through theories on aspects of life, personality and experiences do seem to play some sort of a role as well - for example, you see different philosophers interpreting the teachings of others differently and starting new schools of thouught based on these and so on.

do any of us actually have any beliefs that are just our personal beliefs and not dictated by nurture, society, history, evolution?

I think that beliefs are a product of the environment of the believer. If you were a cat, you couldn't get your head around say, existentialism, or if you are a stone age human and are trying to figure out how the world works, you're not going to come up with the idea of empirical experiment out of nowhere!

I suppose that it is possible for a person to have beliefs that nobody agrees with - lets say a comet strikes the earth and only 10 people survive. You might be the only person of the ten who believes that eating animals is wrong - there you go, you've got a unique belief. But I don't think it's possible to have beliefs that are personal in the sense that they can only be understood by one person - if you took the time to explain, I think the other nine people would understand your belief even if they did decide that it was silly.

You might have a unique combination of the beliefs that are common in your environment but as far as I can see, no idea, no matter how radical, comes out of nowhere. Ideas always seem to arise as developments of previous ideas or rejections or recombinations of previous ideas or as reactions to impressions made by the senses or the imagination. It's a very interesting question though, I'd be interested to read what others think about this!

My philosophy is to do whatever makes me feel good....

It would be more correct to say that your take on ethics is to do whatever makes you feel good - ethics is a sub-branch of philosophy dealing with how people should behave, the nature of morals and so on.

You might want to elaborate on that definition btw - would you do what makes you feel good even if it meant causing other people to suffer? How exactly do you define good? For example, eating ice cream three times a day might make you feel good in the short-term but twould be bad for your health in the long-term so how do you decide whether that's good or not?