All entries for Friday 01 May 2015

What is that discipline called Philosophy?

I have been thinking about the role of Philosophy in research for many months, and continue to think and engage with lots of reading about the subject especially recently in relation to Educational research and my own Ph.D research project. When you are asked what Philosophy is, it’s a bit difficult to really describe Philosophy because it is quite an intricate and complex subject mostly because, unlike Science, there is no real general consensus on the way that the world should be perceived and interacted with. There are no agreed terms and no particular Philosophical perspective is considered more important than the other. I’ve become to realise over the many months of research and thinking about Philosophy that it’s not really a case of trying to push a particular perspective as correct, but to utalise the most appropriate perspective for the context that is being considered. Philosophy in general therefore could be regarded as a discipline or knowledge domain that defines human interaction with each other, with themselves, and with objects of reality. There are many branches of Philosophy and many contexts of which Philosophy could be applied, but for this post I’ll just focus on some of my thoughts regarding the importance of Philosophy in research

What is Philosophy? This is a question that can be answered in many ways, but for me as a person taking part in Ph.D research, it is a perspective of reality that can have major implications on personal understanding of knowledge of reality and the way in which knowledge of this reality can be explored. The construct of a Ph.D thesis and the way in which everything is approached can be solely determined by an individual’s Philosophical stance: from the approach of the literature review, to the selection of research methodologies, to the design of the research methodologies, to the exploration of data, and to the reporting of findings. Perhaps it’s really not much of a surprise to find out that there are many cases where a person is a little confused about their Philosophical stance and this is reflected in their thesis where at the beginning they suggest a particular stance then as they construct their thesis they show that they are actually supporting another stance.

Personally I’ve been thinking about my own Philosophical stance for many years: I do believe that I’m fairly clear with my own Philosophical beliefs of reality and the way in which we should interact with reality. That doesn’t mean to say that my particular Philosophical stance of reality is correct; it just means that I’m beginning to form full arguments that support my stance against other stances. It’s important as a Ph.D researcher to think about reality; to think about where your general considerations of knowledge of reality is within the context of reality, and develop appropriate arguments that supports that stance. Argumentation development is very important in an area such as Philosophy where there is essentially no common agreement with Philosophers as to which should be the most dominant and correct perspective. This is probably a major reason why some people simply do not like Philosophy as they prefer to grasp what they perceive to be “real” answers and not some set of answers that could be correct depending on context.

This is just a brief overview of my general thinking of Philosophy. My understanding of Philosophy and considerations of my own Philosophical perspectives of reality and explorations of reality are continuously developing. More postings of Philosophy in Research shall be forthcoming as I do believe that this is an important topic that learners should be getting to grips with.

Alex Darracott : 01 May 2015 22:50 |  Tags: Philosophy Thesis |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem