ABSTRACT
A person's philosophy might include the fundamental ethical principles he or she believes. A religious person might say that it is part of his or her philosophy that God exists; an atheist might say that it is part of his or her philosophy that there is no God and that there is no life after death. Metaphysics is the part of philosophy that attempts to describe, in very general terms, what there is. Perhaps philosophers use the term "philosophy" in a way that departs fundamentally from what ordinary people mean when they say that they have a philosophy. One thing that makes it difficult to define “what philosophy is” is that the subject has been around at least since the ancient Greeks and has changed a great deal. Philosophers tend to talk about “arguments” rather than “proofs.” The goal is to try to reach answers to important philosophical questions by reasoning correctly from assumptions that are plausible.
