What exactly is philosophy

[imdow123]

What exactly comes under philosophy? To me, whatever questions science cannot answer currently seem to come under philosophy.

For e.g. :- Consciousness is something that science cannot answer satisfactorily, so we put it under philosophy. Similarly the beginning of universe is largely unknown so it's philosophy. So when we know these answers, will it come under science?

Am I right?

[Greg H.]

In my experience, science tends to focus on the what or the how. How things work, what happens when certain conditions are met. Philosophy tends to deal more with they why, which is something science doesn't handle very well: Why are we here? Why does the strength of gravity vary inversely to the square of the distance?

[imdow123]

In my experience, science tends to focus on the what or the how. How things work, what happens when certain conditions are met. Philosophy tends to deal more with they why, which is something science doesn't handle very well: Why are we here? Why does the strength of gravity vary inversely to the square of the distance?

Two questions:-

1) No offence (if you are a philosopher) but how do you answer the "why" questions? I find it impossible to answer why questions as it cannot be experimentally verified. You can give theories but you cannot test it.

2) Why are topics like consciousness, language part of philosophy? Shouldn't it be under biology, linguistics or psychology?

 

I'm still unclear what philosophy is.

[pears]

I think philosophy is often more about questions than answers, and trying to understand what questions to ask and how to ask them in a useful way by understanding the terms and definitions involved. Sometimes once a question is understood well enough it could then become a question that science might be able to investigate, for example philosophy might pose a particular question in the area of consciousness which science could go on to investigate. Philosophy does generally tends to be more open and science more definite. That's my understanding of it anyway.

 

Edit to add: both science and philosophy are about trying to understand the nature of reality. Science can help give quite concrete answers by experimentation etc but is limited in its domain. Philosophy basically tries to understand reality with the use of reasoning alone, so it can cover a domain that is out of reach of science, but it is less able to give concrete answers. They are different disciplines but they can complement each other. Science might come up with a an answer that sheds new light on philosophical ideas and prompt a change of thinking in an area. They can feed into each other somewhat I think.

Edited September 10, 2013 by pears

[Greg H.]

Two questions:-

1) No offence (if you are a philosopher) but how do you answer the "why" questions? I find it impossible to answer why questions as it cannot be experimentally verified. You can give theories but you cannot test it.

2) Why are topics like consciousness, language part of philosophy? Shouldn't it be under biology, linguistics or psychology?

 

I'm still unclear what philosophy is.

To point 1, this is why it's philosophy and not science. Anything that can't be experimentally verified is most likely either philosophy or religion. Answering the why questions is usually a matter of subtle interpretations of meaning and intent rather than cold hard numbers.

 

To point 2, there are some portions of, for instance, language that are sciences (though they aren't "hard" sciences like physics or chemistry). Studying how languages evolve and words change over time would be more of a scientific bent to linguistics, whereas studying why certain words or phrases have the meanings they do would be more of a philosophical angle.

 

You can even study the philosophy of science which is more concerned with how science is done than in doing the actual science.

 

Philosophy is useful in answering those questions that science has a hard time tackling - why are we here? What is the meaning of life? What does it mean to be moral? Questions that do not yield to empirical quantification are, more often than not, going to be philosophical in nature.

[imdow123]

I still see all philosophical questions as some sort of "tough" science or linguistics or neuro-biological questions.

 

Taking your examples:-

"Why are we here?" - This seems to me a scientific question questioning how universe got into existence. Science doesn't answer it yet but when it does, it will be science not philosophy

"What morals to follow?" - This is a biological / psychological question. We could approach this studying human behavior and deciding what is good or bad.

 

Isn't there a clear definition telling what philosophy is?

[ydoaPs]

What exactly comes under philosophy?

Philosophy breaks down into three categories, though many subjects of study intermingle them (things are hardly ever so clear cut).

 

The first ('first' as in it is the one I arbitrarily picked to talk about before the other two) category is called 'Epistemology' and it is the study of how we know. 'Know', here, is a technical word and is, at a minimum, 'justifiably believe something true'. That minimal requirement gives us two of the three large areas of study in epistemology. Justification being the study of what the grounds on which we can rationally believe something are. Truth is usually defined in the spirit of Tarsky's requirement. Some people find that this definition of 'know' is insufficient to accurately describe what we usually mean by 'knowledge', so they pose what have come to be called Gettier problems. This takes the definition of knowledge to "justified true belief +an anti-Gettier condition" and the last major area of study in epistemology is coming up with/arguing for/arguing against various anti-Gettier conditions.

 

The second category (again, in an arbitrarily chosen order) is called 'Metaphysics' and, loosely, is about what we can know. More accurately, it is about what there is, and what there could have been. The study of what there is is called "Ontology" and the study of what there could have been is modality. The first is about things like whether or not fields are existing things in the real world or whether they are nothing more than mathematical tools. Ontology usually studies the foundations of scientific theories-things taken by the theories as assumptions. The second is really just an exercise in modal logic.

 

The last category is ethics which is obviously the study of what we are to do and, maybe even more importantly, why. Broadly speaking, the competing ethical theories fall into one of four categories: Consequentialism, Deontology, Virtue Ethics, and Error Theory. Consequentialist theories say that what is right or wrong has to do with the consequences of the action. Deontological theories say that what is right or wrong is about whether or not a rule was followed. Virtue Ethics says that what is right or wrong is about what makes you a good or bad person. Error Theory is basically a fancy word for what we used to call 'Nihilism'. Error theorists say that we speak of right and wrong despite there being no such things.

 

To me, whatever questions science cannot answer currently seem to come under philosophy.

Actually, science started out as (and still is) a subset of philosophy.

 

In my experience, science tends to focus on the what or the how. How things work, what happens when certain conditions are met. Philosophy tends to deal more with they why, which is something science doesn't handle very well: Why are we here? Why does the strength of gravity vary inversely to the square of the distance?

Actually, philosophy mainly deals with the how as well. 'Why' is vague and either means 'how' or is about the intention of an agent and as such is worthless to philosophy.

[ajb]

I know very little about philosophy, but to me it seems like a lot of abstract ideas together with a little logic. If these abstract ideas can be rigorously stated and proved within a system then it is mathematics. If these abstract ideas can only be established as being true via observation and empirical evidence, then it is science.

 

Everything else is philosophy!

 

ydoaPs clearly knows more about this than I do.

[cladking]

 

Actually, science started out as (and still is) a subset of philosophy.

 

 

 

 

Indeed.

 

Philosophy is the attempt to define and understand nature in language. Since language is for most practical purposes the means by which we think and understand everything (consciousness), philosophy is the root of individual existence. It's possible for individuals to ignore this connection or to not understand it but their beliefs still constitute their personal philosophy. As such philosophy is and can be different for each person. We each understand our own thought because word definitions are fixed and grammatical errors become irrelevant since we know what is meant.

 

But the primary function of language is communication and the ability to relay thoughts and ideas to other people (at least in theory). This is where philosophy becomes important. We must understand premises and definitions to understand other's statements. We must have a referent for each of their words whose meaning depends on context. Ideally philosophy will serve to include logic and definitions which allow communication. Philosophy should by definition include theory and all human knowledge, or at the very least, never run counter to it. Philosophy is a sort of applied science for language.

 

To have value to humans it must place human life and value above all else.

 

In the modern world it seems philosophy is not being pursued, understood, kept current, or expressed as adequately as it should be. People are losing sight of what's right and wrong and most have come to believe in the absolute supremacy of their gods or the knowledge of man. They have come to put their trust in astrology or the latest fad in thought. Or they believe that so long as they are politically correct then they can do no harm. It's no longer even considered practical to avoid waste and destruction.

 

I used to consider logic the mother of philosophy and math but recent learning has tweaked this perspective somewhat. I now believe observation is the mother of logic which is the mother of both philosophy and math.

 

There might always be new ways to skin a cat even though there is nothing new under the sun.

[ADreamIveDreamt]

Philosophy is seeking for the Truth and only the Truth of something,to find all points of views from something and from all points of view opens a door of Truth at its core.(Like in the movie The Matrix where they have all them T.V's setup and it looks at the one in the center...) Its from the Love of Wisdom

 

Phil-O-Sophia

Edited September 11, 2013 by ADreamIveDreamt

[ajb]

Philosophy is seeking for the Truth and only the Truth of something...

But then can philosophy always define "truth"?

 

I mean somethings are clearly true, you can prove them in mathematics. Other things can be true in the sense that they agree well with what we observe, that is science. What about all the other sorts of questions that philosophy asks? Can they always be "true" or "false" in a meaningful way?

 

(Or am I just showing my lack of knowledge of philosophy here?)

[ydoaPs]

Philosophy is seeking for the Truth and only the Truth of something,to find all points of views from something and from all points of view opens a door of Truth at its core.(Like in the movie The Matrix where they have all them T.V's setup and it looks at the one in the center...) Its from the Love of Wisdom

 

Phil-O-Sophia

No. Philosophy isn't "anything goes". Sorry, we're not still in the age when people believed their underpants were made of fire.

But then can philosophy always define "truth"?

 

I mean somethings are clearly true, you can prove them in mathematics. Other things can be true in the sense that they agree well with what we observe, that is science. What about all the other sorts of questions that philosophy asks? Can they always be "true" or "false" in a meaningful way?

 

(Or am I just showing my lack of knowledge of philosophy here?)

Click the link in my above post. That's typically considered a necessary criteria (if not the only criterion) for truth by philosophers. A smart chap like yourself might even find it agreeable.

[ajb]

Click the link in my above post. That's typically considered a necessary criteria (if not the only criterion) for truth by philosophers. A smart chap like yourself might even find it agreeable.

I will have a look at it later on today if I get chance. Just skimming through it, this discusses model theory right? Model theory sits in the foundational arena of mathematics, which does seem at times very close to the philosophy of mathematics. For the record, I don't know much about model theory.

[cladking]

But then can philosophy always define "truth"?

 

I mean somethings are clearly true, you can prove them in mathematics. Other things can be true in the sense that they agree well with what we observe, that is science. What about all the other sorts of questions that philosophy asks? Can they always be "true" or "false" in a meaningful way?

 

(Or am I just showing my lack of knowledge of philosophy here?)

 

I believe there is "truth" that can come from philosophy outside of math and physical processes but that this "truth" is always dependent on definitions and is provisional based on the premises and assumptions. Unless we hold something as "sacred" such as the importance of human life or human freedom then there can be no real truth. Unless we accept concepts like free will and the reality of observation then truth becomes nothing more than a dream or so ephemeral that it can't be defined or held.

 

To a very real degree "truth" is like "knowledge"; it exists only viscerally and contingently.

[Gees]

What exactly comes under philosophy? To me, whatever questions science cannot answer currently seem to come under philosophy.

For e.g. :- Consciousness is something that science cannot answer satisfactorily, so we put it under philosophy. Similarly the beginning of universe is largely unknown so it's philosophy. So when we know these answers, will it come under science?

Am I right?

 

Hello Imdow123;

 

Yes, in many ways that is a correct assessment. In another forum, there was a member who used to say that philosophy studies what something is, and develops a theory about it, then passes it to science for validation. Science tests the theory and establishes whether or not it is correct and valid, then if it proves valid, they pass it on to business. Business then develops this thing into a product and makes a fortune off of it. (chuckle) Philosophy goes back to thinking, science goes back to finding funding and endowments, and business smiles and waits for the next development.

 

But what is philosophy? It is the study of that which is real. Sounds simple, doesn't it? But how can we know what is real? This question prompts all kinds of questions about knowledge; about how knowledge is aquired and whether or not that supposed knowledge is true. So before considering anything else, we can spend a lifetime just trying to establish what we know, how we know it, and whether or not that knowledge is true and valid. Then sometime in our old age, we realize that lies are also real, so we must understand knowledge, truth, and lies before we can attain wisdom.

 

G

[EdEarl]

 

natural philosophy

noun

1.

natural science.

2.

physical science.

Science without engineering is philosophy.

 

Philosophy is rigorous common sense. For example, in natural philosophy observe, exclude magic, and explain. Explanations describe the known and the unknown. An unknown may be unknowable or not. The steps are clearly obvious, except for exclude magic, because magic can play subtle tricks to confuse our observations and explanations.

 

Philosophers also observe the process of philosophy and explain it.

 

The things observed are challenging, they include the small, the large, the infinite, and the eternal.

[Kowalski]

philosophy is the art of thinking , it's a logical manner of thinking and solving a problem far from subjectivity .