This is Philosophy Bytes with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

Philosophy Bites is available at www.com.

We probably should have asked this question 19 years ago when we first started philosophy bites,

but better late than never. What is philosophy?

A question for Janet Radcliffe Richards, author of, among other books,

The Skeptical Feminist and Human Nature After Darwin.

Janet Radcliffe Richards, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Very pleased to be here.

The topic we're going to focus on is, what is philosophy?

So my first question is that, on is what is philosophy so my first question is that really what is

philosophy well it's silly to try and give a general answer because everybody has different ideas

but i think what is probably relevant is where you begin doing philosophy and i find it's not at all with philosophy as grand or mysterious.

One thing I do is suggest that if you're talking to children

and you ask them how they know somebody is lying,

one of the things they can do is say that the person has told something which they personally know isn't true.

But the other thing they can do is notice that the person has contradicted themselves.

And these are two completely different ways of knowing something.

One depends on your having the information. The other

doesn't depend on your having it at all. You just know that what they've said can't be true

because they've said things that contradict each other. And I think that's a very good way of

thinking about philosophy. It's a kind of inquiry you take to all kinds of subjects. And one way

a colleague of mine put it was, science is about getting your ideas to match the world, and philosophy

...