How studying philosophy helped me in business and tech.

In my previous post “Who Is Esaias Burnette?”, I quoted the statement, “Studying philosophy was one of the single best decisions I made to develop both my business acumen and IT-related skills”.

In this post, I shared three concepts that I learned from studying philosophy, which allowed me to be successful both in tech and business. I wish to share these concepts with you, to allow you to succeed as well.

Firstly, what is Philosophy? The word itself is literally translated to, “Love of wisdom”. Philo means “love”, and Sophia means “wisdom”. As an academic discipline, it takes a fundamental look at historical and contemporary issues. Providing philosophical debate on matters such as knowledge and belief; reason and logic; truth and meaning, just to name a few.

If you’re someone who loves debating, analyzing complex ideas, and loves both welcoming and dissecting sound reasoning, then taking a philosophy course may be great for you. It doesn’t have to be an entire degree. It may be just a short course. Whichever you chose, the cognitive growth will be rewarding.

The three concepts I will be sharing with you are Logic, Epistemology, and Methodology. Let’s review these concepts.

1. Logic

In philosophy, there is a great deal of material on the concept of logic. M. Sainsbury puts it this way, “Logic is the study of reasoning. It attempts to give a general answer to the question: what makes the difference between good reasoning and bad? It’s a normative
subject, dealing not with how we in fact reason, but how
we should reason. “

This concept helped me much more with technology than business surprisingly. In technology, we deal with strict logic. The reason any piece of technology acts in a particular way is because of the arguments it abides by.

In philosophy, an argument is valid if, and only if all the premises are true. With technology, you receive a result if, and only if specific steps are taken.

Let’s use the OSI model as an example. The OSI model describes seven layers that computer systems use to communicate over a network. Whenever you click on a browser on your computer, and a webpage comes up, the following sequence happens:

(I) You begin to interact with the application layer,

(ii) The application is rendered to you by the presentation layer,

(iii) The presentation layer gets a connection to the session layer,

(iv) The data is transmitted through the transport layer,

(v) The physical path to the transport layer is decided by the network layer,

(vi) Which is defined by a data link layer and

(vii) Physically connected through a physical layer.

Physical > Data Link > Network > Transport > Session > Presentation > Application

Computer systems communicate through a specified logical process.

All switches and routers operate under specific logic. Learn the logic.

All programming language operates under a specific logic. Learn the logic.

All cloud technologies operate under a specific logic. Learn the logic.

Once you understand that logic, you understand how that technology works.

2. Epistemology

In Philosophy “Epistemology is the study of knowledge. It aims to
provide a systematic account of the following: what it is to know; how we know; and how much we know.”

Particularly, the section on “how we know” was of keen interest to me as a business person. There are 5 ways in which we “get to know” something.

(i) By seeing – perception (advertising a product/business)

(ii) By remembering – memory (Placing that product/business in a memorable location)

(iii) By someone else  – testimony (Customer testimonials)

(iv) By reasoning that this thing has always been there – inductive inference (Established since 1900 or 50 years of experience in the field)

(v) By reasoning that something has happened, so the results should happen – deductive inference (It is Christmas, so this business should have a Christmas sale)

As a business person, you need to bring your customers into the “know”.

They need to know about your product, its cost, and its quality. Also, they need to know where you are from, how they can benefit from your product, how long you have been in business, your contact information if any support is needed, and the list can go on. Your customer needs to be “in the know”. By understanding the way people “know”, you can utilize methods to draw persons into the “know”, and in turn build trust and relationships that ultimately drive sales and repetitive purchases.

3. Methodology

Methodology falls under a branch of philosophy called the philosophy of science. This branch of philosophy “involves philosophical inquiry into the nature of a range of properties or concepts relevant to the theory and practice of science.”

One aspect of Methodology is induction. It can be explained by the following. If all A’s have been observed to be B’s, then all As, whether observed or unobserved, are B’s. In other words, if all diamonds are observed to be white, then all diamonds, whether observed or unobserved are white.

This is a “common sense” approach. In philosophy, we are taught to question such an approach. I find this particularly useful when troubleshooting issues and with general problem-solving.

When solving problems, we generally take the inductive approach. But be encouraged to not “stop there’. Think outside of the box. And one of the ways you do that, is by questioning the standard way of doing things.

If there is a problem that has occurred many times, and the solution for it has worked every time, don’t focus simply on that solution, but consider other approaches.

Question the existing approach. Not in a biased way, but in a creative way to improve it. By questioning the existing inductive reasoning, you will always be on the cutting edge, thinking and considering new and better ways of doing things.

This has helped me tremendously both in tech and business. Question the inductive approach!

Conclusion

What you should understand from this, is not to study philosophy, (if you are not inclined to), but to think critically about every situation. Learn to analyze deeply, the concepts which you are trying to understand. Ask more questions than you usually would. And as much as possible, find the “why” behind any topic of interest. With these, you will be able to succeed in any field that you are in.