Philos­ophy is a slippery subject. Every effort to define it or to contain it is met with a resis­tance that is hard to overcome. In retro­spect, we can define this field of study as the analysis of the undefin­able and the immutable.

One aspect of philos­ophy is its contri­bu­tion to identi­fying the under­lying princi­ples of life. Viewed in isola­tion, every action performed by every intel­li­gent being can be under­stood as a conse­quence of a myriad factors. Each of these factors can be catego­rized as either a logical (or rational) influ­ence, or an emotional (or irrational) one. The catego­riza­tion, while not strictly true, is neces­sary because human under­standing is based on the creation of divisions and sub-divisions, and the relation­ships thereof. An implicit assump­tion in this catego­riza­tion is that there is no third factor that influ­ences choices; ratio­nality can be consid­ered a basis for such divisions. Again, we can assume this to be gener­ally true, based on empir­ical evidence.

If we step back and look for patterns and designs in the inter­play between rational and irrational forces in the life of an individual, the picture is less amenable to inves­ti­ga­tion. In our effort to make sense of the chaos, we can try to extrap­o­late and thereby identify ‘rules’ or axioms that can be applied consis­tently across events, albeit with some degree of error. Again, the purpose of such analysis is catego­riza­tion. An individual may have a ‘rule’ set in his subcon­scious, that says, “Don’t steal”. There is a level of abstract­ness associ­ated with each of these axioms, because our intel­li­gence pushes us to constantly review and revise our own defin­i­tions. As an example of how defin­i­tions can be manip­u­lated, consider your own thoughts when, walking on the pavement, you notice a purse lying nearby containing a wad of currency notes. The ideal response, or at least the most socially-acceptable one, is to return the whole item to its owner. However, this is motivated by a force of habit, devel­oped in the course of your inter­ac­tions with society, and has no true logical basis. Your logical thinking might motivate you to pocket the cash, justi­fying it by observing that this is an oppor­tu­nity to be grabbed, you need the money, or that the next person who walks by might take it so better you do it than him. The act of ‘stealing’ in this sense, is quite different from the legal defin­i­tion of the word. Moreover, a person who pockets the currency lying on the sidewalk will invari­ably find it easier to do the same thing again, given another oppor­tu­nity to do so, unless other factors come into play later.

We can view the result of such analysis as a three-dimensional picture that symbol­izes a person’s likely responses to situa­tions encoun­tered in the course of life. Consider a map drawn on a plain surface, whose X-axis repre­sents the degree of ratio­nality of the reason behind a decision and Y-axis repre­sents a set of events in the life of the person. The altitude of each point indicates the weigh­tage given to the under­lying reason in arriving at a decision. The resulting terrain is indica­tive of the kind of person­ality behind the person: a rough landscape would suggest changing ideas and uncer­tainty, whereas a smooth terrain would imply that logical thinking as well as habit and emotion are given due consid­er­a­tion under the umbrella of estab­lished rules. The slope of the plane would give us an indica­tion of the kind of balance between logic and emotion achieved in this decision-making process.

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