In the year 2004 it is difficult to discover an achievement of philosophy other than it is popularly viewed as a subject that confuses and dissembles truth; confirmation that without a clear definition, philosophy must remain an unhelpful discipline.

To allow philosophy to become a useful science I suggest the following self-evident truths be adopted:

1. Philosophy is the study of understanding.

2. Understanding is the bestowing of meaning upon observations.

3. Meaning is the realisation obtained by applying beliefs to the observations of an understanding —the use of reason. These beliefs are the understanding .

4. Two Kinds Of Beliefs:

i. Control the Understanding —those bestowed by nature and modified by infancy in the creation of an understanding so are unchangeable: that is, the instincts and infantile experiences, which dictate what the creature should, or should not, do — survive, eat, sleep, multiply, etc.— thus allowing the recognition of right from wrong, and are the morality of the understanding.

ii. Tools of the Understanding — those revealed by the understanding's experience of cause and effect. That is, if you step off a cliff you fall, and these axioms, which are collected and refined throughout the life of the understanding, allow the recognition of true or false and are the knowledge of the understanding.

— this Morality and Knowledge together form the beliefs, or truths, of the understanding. Hence:

5. Truth is the beliefs, or realisations, of an understanding, and form the reality of an understanding.

6. Reality is the creation of an understanding as it is the remembered meanings, or experience, of an understanding and consists of:

i.	The nature of the understanding—its senses
ii.	The position of the understanding—what it can observe
iii.	The experience of the understanding—the meaning it realises.