What is philosophical reflection and is it important?

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Philosophical reflection is the activity of utilizing the tools that philosophy provides us to examine our lives, and our most basic beliefs about life. The end goal is to achieve a higher level of understanding which results in rebalancing or changing your life in positive ways i.e. rejecting unimportant things or activities in life in favor of the things which are truly important....Show more

I am sorry to say that although I have a BA in Phil from a highly reputable research university, I do not know exactly what it means either. Maybe it means holding up a Phil text to a mirror and seeing its reflection!

The best I can make of it is as follows. Insofar as reflection involves the spirit of something bouncing off something else, I take it that philosophical involves a superficial examination of something from a philosophical perspective. Say something happens to you during the day. You go home and review what happened in accordance with philosophical methods, or in accordance with objects of philosophical inquiry.

Philosophical methods largely involve the use of logic, and the use of concepts like necessary and sufficient conditionality, and disambiguation of terms. Objects of phil. inquiry include the natures of reality, knowledge, right action, modality, logic, science method, mind, language.

If you bounce an idea or the details of an event off the methods or objects of philosophy, then I guess you are philosophically reflecting.

Is it important? It must be. People have been doing it for a long time, to some extent or other, and however astutely. Better yet, now that I have laid out a reasonable answer to the first part of your question, can you determine for yourself whether it is important to you?...Show more

Reflection of any kind is mandatory in my opinion. We should all reflect on our lives from time to time. The problem is when we stay in a reflective mode too long. One can see where that would be a problem and that includes people with philosophical leanings as well. I tend to ponder things once in a while but am careful not to dwell there for very long due to real time responsibilities. We need to live in the present conciousness but a short vacation into another one is often recommended....Show more

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What is philosophical reflection and is it important?
I would like to understand others perspectives as to why philosophical reflection is or isnt important. I dont totally understand what is philosophical reflection....Show more

What Is Philosophical...Show more