Philosophy 1, on Dec. 31, 2013

Today I wanted to find out something about philosophy.  I didn't know what I wanted to find out, but I felt there was something in it that I wanted.

I started at wikipedia.org.  I entered "philosophy" and got the following information near the beginning of the article, which I list together with a few comments from myself:

1.  Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems.

2.  Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.

3.  In more casual speech ... 'philosophy' can refer to 'the most basic beliefs, concept, and attitudes of an individual or group'.

4.  Within philosophy is the sub-topic "epistemology".  Epistemology is about knowledge.  [ From what I heard elsewhere, epistemology is about how we can know things. ]

5.  I encounter two common concepts, within the realm of "how we can know things".  They are:
    a.  Observational evidence
    and
    b.  Reasoning.

6.  ( The notion of observational evidence is connected with the philosophical term "empiricism" and with the logic term "induction".  The notion of reasoning is connected with the philosophical term "rationalism" and with the logic term "deduction". )

7.  Observation and reasoning are widely respected concepts.  I think I first heard about them in late grade school.  I would add a third way, which is less generally respected:  intuition.  I mean intuition in a broad sense, to mean almost anything which isn't strictly reason nor observation.

8.  Intuition could be evaluated according to its consistency and according to how it feels emotionally -- or simply whether one likes a particular intuition or not.

9.  So, for me, there are at least 3 ways to know things:  observation, reasoning, and intuition.