What is philosophy?

[Fifty]

in the lit student's mind: a way for us impress people by name-dropping

in the (uninformed) scientists mind: a way for douchebag lit students to impress people by name-dropping.

in the mind of the scientist who tried to read some legitimate philosophy but doesn't understand logic or semantics well enough to understand what the pejorative sense of something "boiling down to semantics" actually is: a bunch of word games

in the mind of the philosophy student (and smart scientist): an attempt to answer interesting questions about the world that are unavailable to empirical science or mathematics, and to do so in as careful and rigorous a manner as possible.

 

[GoodGame]

in the mind of the philosophy student (and smart scientist): an attempt to answer interesting questions about the world that are unavailable to empirical science or mathematics, and to do so in as careful and rigorous a manner as possible.

What questions would those be? (other than 'Does God exist where we aren't looking?')

 

[Fifty]

What questions would those be? (other than 'Does God exist where we aren't looking?')

what is causation, what is morality, what is the true normative theory, what is knowledge, what is belief, what does linguistic meaning amount to, what sorts of things are numbers, what fundamental ontological kinds exist, etc. etc. etc. (I could conceivably go on for hours).

Note that empirical science might have (and often does have) some useful and interesting things to say about these questions, but they can't offer complete answers. Philosophers usually take what science says to be constraints on any philosophical theory (so if your philosophical theory conflicts with science, it is a devestating strike against your theory). Some philosophical theories seem like they conflict with science on the face of it, but they almost always don't if you think real carefully. Also, its easy to find prima facie conflicts between philosophy and science when you get your science from popularizations (this happens especially in supposed conflicts between physics and metaphysics). Are these questions all "word games"? Not in any meaningful pejorative sense. They are "word games" to the same extent that the question "what are stars?" is a word game. The next criticism that often gets launched is something like "well if science can't investigate those things then no answer is possible", but its difficult to make sense of that criticism. Sure, none of the "big philosophical questions" have received a well-accepted solution, but who cares? We don't have a true physical theory of the universe yet, either, but that doesn't mean physics is crap and ought to be stopped! All it means is that we have to keep on working and keep on trying to get closer to the truth of the matter.

 

[pau17]

Sure, none of the "big philosophical questions" have received a well-accepted solution, but who cares? We don't have a true physical theory of the universe yet, either, but that doesn't mean physics is crap and ought to be stopped!

Check out this article and then we'll talk, mister. Pretty deep stuff here, so you might want to give it a few read-throughs.

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html

 

[Agent327]

an attempt to answer interesting questions about the world that are unavailable to empirical science or mathematics, and to do so in as careful and rigorous a manner as possible.

Actually, there is no law prohibiting philosophers from employing empirical methods, mathematics or any other scientific discipline to explore such questions as you mention.

 

[Fifty]

Actually, there is no law prohibiting philosophers from employing empirical methods, mathematics or any other scientific discipline to explore such questions as you mention.

Actually, I never said there was such a law.

 

[Kerozine]

Something that is 'beyond our comprehension'.

 

[Fifty]

Something that is 'beyond our comprehension'.

A square circle is beyond our comprehension yet it isn't philosophy! And whether mental states are physical states of the brain isn't beyond our comprehension yet it is philosophy!

 

[C~G]

I think one of the most important tasks in which philosophy hasn't yet delivered would be to really go through the language/terminology the people in social sciences and example in psychology are using.

The logical errors many are making are simply astounding.

Also there are such cliches and complete mumbo-jumbo still floating around such that of diversion between nature/nurture and nature/culture.

Philosophers could really help these guys out especially in those sectors and work at least translators when people build up these logical constructs.

I think philosophy's biggest challenge is get out of the closet and be hip again instead of being just curious case of answering age old questions. Or appear to only do so.

Philosophy needs to redefine itself and needs some serious PR work.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Philosophy alone is.

I can be trolled.
And so as to not jsut spam the thread, I would add that if Philosophy provided more answers to the questions its asks, it would be more useful.

 

[GoodGame]

Leading to another eternal question.....quality or quantity?

 

[Fifty]

I would add that if Philosophy provided more answers to the questions its asks, it would be more useful.

Is that a general principle or one which only applies to philosophy?

 

[Agent327]

Now that is a good question. I say certain social sciences should do well to have a course in logic, for starters. That is not a task of philosophy, it is a task of such sciences themselves.

Actually, there is no law prohibiting philosophers from employing empirical methods, mathematics or any other scientific discipline to explore such questions as you mention.

Actually, I never said there was such a law.

I would say it it implictly stated here, where you state that philosophy be

an attempt to answer interesting questions about the world that are unavailable to empirical science or mathematics

so as to not jsut spam the thread, I would add that if Philosophy provided more answers to the questions its asks, it would be more useful.

Actually, there are posts here on every page that do not address any issue raised here. People might want to actually read the opening post first.

 

[Fifty]

I would say it it implictly stated here, where you state that philosophy be

No, it isn't. Perhaps something is being lost in translation

 

[Birdjaguar]

Is that a general principle or one which only applies to philosophy?

In this thread it only applies to Philosophy. I raised it because of this:

an attempt to answer interesting questions about the world that are unavailable to empirical science or mathematics, and to do so in as careful and rigorous a manner as possible.

It appears to me that since the answers to those difficult and interesting questions are not readily found, Philosophy is more about prolonging the discussion rather than actually finding answers.

 

[Fifty]

In this thread it only applies to Philosophy.

Why is philosophy alone then in its requirement to answer more questions than it asks?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Why is philosophy alone then in its requirement to answer more questions than it asks?

It isn't, but I was trying to stay on topic and not drag other things into the thread like I often do. I don't think it needs to answer more questions than it asks, but some of the big ones would be nice.

 

[Fifty]

It isn't, but I was trying to stay on topic and not drag other things into the thread like I often do. I don't think it needs to answer more questions than it asks, but some of the big ones would be nice.

Okay. The reason I asked wasn't to shift this into a discussion of other disciplines. I was just going to say that if yours was a general principle, then it seems like either:

a) the principle that 'each scientific question we find an answer to opens up a bunch of new subsequent questions' is false, or

b) most sciences aren't useful

since neither of these seem like palatable options (although it would be interesting to see what exactly you mean by "questions"... I can think of several possible disambiguations), it seems like your general principle is false, and thus not applicable to philosophy.

 

[Mark1031]

It is a course or set of courses that everyone has at some point in College that explains some basic principles and tenants for how we think about problems and the covers the great thinkers on various topics in the past that form the basis of our modern social and political institutions. Some people develop a strong interest in this as it makes you sound smart and some types of girls will sleep with you because of this. In general most people move on to more productive pursuits. A few that remain may do something useful although I have not seen any great philosophical breakthroughs in my lifetime. In general they develop logically consistent proofs based on faulty or ambiguous premises or on subtle differences in the meaning of words. See here for a discussion which in my view demonstrates this point.

Caveat: My knowledge of modern professional Philosophy is limited to a small part of the philosophy of mind. I welcome an education on the major contributions of professional philosophy in the last 50 yrs.

 

[Birdjaguar]

in the mind of the philosophy student (and smart scientist): an attempt to answer interesting questions about the world that are unavailable to empirical science or mathematics, and to do so in as careful and rigorous a manner as possible.

what is causation,
what is morality,
what is the true normative theory,
what is knowledge,
what is belief,
what does linguistic meaning amount to,
what sorts of things are numbers,
what fundamental ontological kinds exist,

What is God
What is the nature of Truth
what is real

It was not that complicated. Nor meant to raise a philosophical point. You posted that Philosophy tries to answer interesting questions that science struggles with. You listed some questions. I added three of my own here. My remark was that if Philosophy started actually answering some of those interesting questions it has been struggling with for an extended period of time, it would be more useful.