think something out for oneself?

Question

By philosophy is usually meant our most general account of the nature of the world and of mankind's place and destiny in it-our world outlook.

That being understood, it is evident that everybody has some kind of philosophy, even though he has never learned to discuss it. Everybody is influenced by philosophical views, even though he has not thought them out for himself and cannot formulate them.

[Maurice Cornforth, Materialism and Dialectical method]

I have 2 questions to ask

1. What does "That being understood" mean?

2. Does "thought them out for himself" in the context mean or "invented by himself"?

Answer 1

being understood means you assume people have a personal philosophy

thought out means they have time to contemplate their navel and rationalize, intellectualize their feelings about life

most have some religious, secular or anti-relgioous viewpoint,

most lower income people are too busy working, worrying about their family and necessities to spend time intellectualizing. Philosophy is more often a luxury for the rich who ran out of fun things to do.

ethics is a branch of philosophy most relevant or most iimportant. People just have a "gut reaction" telling them an act or course of action is right or wrong. They dont' do Bentham's utilitarian calculus, Kant's categorical imperative or Aristotle's virtue ethics. They just "feel" unconfortable with something wrong, and "feel" good about what's right. Emotion triumphs over "reason." "reason' and intellectualizing are more often just rationalizing what you want to do.

Or they make you take a philosophy course in college to give phisoophy teachers a job.

Mathematicians are often major philosophers and vice versa. They share a common abstract logic independent of reality.

Philosophers like Plato told everyone life is not real, and just a shadow of real "forms" Pythagoreans believed mah was the explanation for the universe. Socrates said he was sure of only thing, that he's uncertain of everything.

Philosophy is like "cereal box religion" as the pop song lyrics go. Even for the most secular atheists, it goes by the way side as science advances. Secular & religious philosophers used to argue for perfect sphere shaped celestial objects, and perfectly circular orbits. That philosophizing was wrong, replaed by Kepler's elliptical orbits. As science advances, philosophy retreats. In the meantime philosophers act like they know everything about everything, covering diverse fields without limit, philosophy of language, philosophy of religion, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of history, philosophy of just about anything and everything. A strange hubris for a field so repeatedly found riddled with false beliefs.