What is philosophy? What makes something philosophical?
I took up an interest in philosophy about ten years ago, and since then I have learned a quite a bit; relatively speaking. That said, I'm interested in hearing from those whom are more knowledgeable than I am on the subject of philosophy, as to what it actually is/means.
What is philosophy?
Can you explain to me what makes something a philosophy or philosophical?
How does one intentionally participate in philosophical dialogue?
Where can I turn for a reliable and insightful explanation of philosophy?
Thank you for your time and help.
What is philosophy?
Can you explain to me what makes something a philosophy or philosophical?
How does one intentionally participate in philosophical dialogue?
Where can I turn for a reliable and insightful explanation of philosophy?
Thank you for your time and help.
Comments (65)
“....Of all the a priori sciences of reason, therefore, mathematics alone can be learned. Philosophy—unless it be in an historical manner—cannot be learned; we can at most learn to philosophize. Philosophy is the system of all philosophical cognition. We must use this term in an objective sense, if we understand by it the archetype of all attempts at philosophizing, and the standard by which all subjective philosophies are to be judged. In this sense, philosophy is merely the idea of a possible science, which does not exist in concreto, but to which we endeavour in various ways to approximate, until we have discovered the right path to pursue—a path overgrown by the errors and illusions of sense—and the image we have hitherto tried in vain to shape has become a perfect copy of the great prototype. Until that time, we cannot learn philosophy—it does not exist; if it does, where is it, who possesses it, and how shall we know it? We can only learn to philosophize; in other words, we can only exercise our powers of reasoning in accordance with general principles, retaining at the same time, the right of investigating the sources of these principles, of testing, and even of rejecting them.
In this view philosophy is the science of the relation of all cognition to the ultimate and essential aims of human reason, and the philosopher is not merely an artist—who occupies himself with conceptions—but a lawgiver, legislating for human reason. In this sense of the word, it would be in the highest degree arrogant to assume the title of philosopher, and to pretend that we had reached the perfection of the prototype which lies in the idea alone....”
(CPR A838-9/B866-7)
Others surely will offer different takes on "philosophy" according to their respective preoccupations (e.g. mine is 'human' agency), so here's how I define it today:
Philosophy is the study and art of reflectively reasoning to better, more probative, questions as a way to practice living, what Socrates called, "the examined life".
At minimum, IME, "the philosophical" consists in supposing, or proposing, reflections which make explicit ordinarily implicit (i.e. unreflective) discursive uses, misuses and abuses of e.g. concepts, criteria, questions, problems, knowledge, etc. Understanding, or making explicit (i.e. problematizing), is the endless task, path, ladder ... of opposing – escaping from – "confusion, contradiction and folly" (~@unenlightened) as much as one is able.
Study dead philosophers and (honestly, non-fallaciously, charitably) discuss your studies with students living philosophically.
Here is a link that may satisfy this query.
Philosophy uses philosophical methods of inquiry (logic, language, epistemology, etc) to analyze beliefs or belief systems. You can't escape philosophy, we all do it, its just a matter of whether we do it well or not. If you have beliefs about life, morality, politics, science, mathematics, family, business, then you're doing philosophy. So, all of us are philosophers to one degree or another.
FWIW, here's my attempt to define "philosophy", for the purposes of my personal worldview. :
Philosophy :
The ancient Greeks began to distinguish the rational search for understanding of the world from the myth-making of religion. They became skeptical of prophets & seers, who were often ambiguous or dead-wrong in their proclamations. So they decided to rely on the only source of knowledge they could trust implicitly, their own personal reasoning ability. Unfortunately, the disciples of philosophers, like those of religious founders, tended to turn their time- & culture-bound doctrines into dogmas for all times & places. But by judicious application of information from all three forms of knowing, we can enjoy the practicality of Science, the Mystery of Religion, and the Rationality of Philosophy. [See Philosophy popup]
Since modern Science has become very successful at discovering practical physical knowledge, and Religions still have mass appeal as the gateway to supernatural wisdom, Philosophy has been relgated to the nerdy niche of metaphysical understanding. So philosophers usually offer their expert opinions on a few basic questions : 1. How can we know what’s real & true? (Ontology), 2. What is the right thing to do? (Ethics), and 3. What should we believe? (Values) The latter is not about blind Faith, but about the science of Probability. Philosophy is not a practical method for influencing Nature, or other people, but only for self-control. So it’s purpose is merely to correct your own worldview, your vision of reality.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page16.html
For me, philosophy is an activity that helps increase my awareness of how my mind works, especially why I believe what I believe and how I know what I know.
"A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing."
:up: He (or maybe Mark Twain) might have inspired
(Metaphysics is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there.
Theology is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there, and shouting "I found it!")
whereas
If that's true, then philosophy is the instructions for using the flashlight.
It helps me to think of it as a historical subject. We try to understand the world and ourselves. When we arrived at the scene, when the first human beings acquired the capacity to articulate thought, we tried to comprehend what was happening.
At first we told stories. Stories usually related with dietes associated with the creation of the Earth, the rivers, the sea. Gods moved the winds and sacrifices guaranteed good fortunes. Thunder was the anger of the Gods.
At some point, we gathered in large enough numbers to refine our thinking into more precise and accurate accounts of the world, not relying on myths, but on observing the world closely.
By these means, we achieved considerable success in mathematics and parts of astronomy. But many questions pertaining to us and the world remained problematic:
How can we step on the same river twice? How can we reach a target if there are an infinite number of events separating an apple from an arrow? How do we speak of one entity being the same person if they've gone crazy? How can thought arise from matter? And so on.
Fast forward thousands of years and we get science, based on observing the world under the guidance of an explanatory theory. We reduce the entities analyzed and focus on select things to study, putting aside phenomena that interfere with a theory.
We couldn't, after all, fire a canon ball around the Earth's surface. But given certain conditions (removing friction, for instance) we find out that the same force that causes an apple to fall causes the movement of the moons and planets.
But after all this, questions still remain. Important questions and hard ones. What is a self? Do we have free will? Is the world independent of me or a product of our way of ordering the world? What is a good life? How can matter produce thought? What is causation? How many things are there in the world? And so on.
Philosophy, then, is the rational enquiry into very hard question, on topics we have barely been able to make progress in for thousands of years.
The confusion on what philosophy is likely stems from the fact that some of the best philosophers in history, were also scientists. If you asked Hume, are you a scientist or a philosopher he could not say. Same with Descartes and Kant and Leibniz and Locke and many others. To them, there was no distinction.
For the Greeks even less so.
At least that's how I think of the topic.
The realization: There really is no reason why we can't, shouldn't, invent/create worlds, presently only mental ones seem possible, with their own set of rules/laws; one could even build a world sans any laws/rules at all. The possibilities are endless you see. One could then simply decide to live one's life in the world one has made thus. You might want to, as a primer, look at :point: logical nihilism.
10 years learning about philosophy - and you've learned what and from where ?
And asking why the hell do I want to find a black cat in a dark room ?
Yeah, I was going to ask this but got sidetracked.
Yes, I am still gathering the pieces of what philosophy truly is. I've studied dozens of thinkers and philosophies, but primarily from an intellectual perspective, not so much a wisdom perspective.
With all of that said, to me, philosophy is about understanding truth. And getting excited when you find out that you've been wrong in your thinking for decades. Perhaps philosophy (for me) is primarily an exercise in different thinking patterns.
It sure would be interesting to involve biofeedback with philosophical training.
Philosophy seems always to be whatever's left. That can be hopeful: philosophy as a sort of minor leagues or a training ground for what will eventually become science. Or it can mean that the stubborn bits are just muddles that of course cannot be made into science. To many, too many for my taste, it means philosophy is about the Big Questions, questions science cannot help you with, because they're so, you know, Big.
It's Schrodinger's cat. We need to check to see if it is alive, dead, or both.
It's neither.
Quoting Amity
Or asking whether or not I am the black cat I'm trying to find in a dark room?
And why is this important, again?
Yes. Thanks for the clarification.
Yeah, that happens. I note that my question was not answered by @Bret Bernhoft.
Why do you ask ?
Exactly.
What do you think is the difference?
Quoting Bret Bernhoft
Please say more. I have no knowledge of biofeedback.
Quoting Bret Bernhoft
I thought philosophy was about ideas. What are thinking patterns? Are you talking about habitual patterns of approaching life/problems that might require... adjustment?
Philosophy: Abstract speculation, with an emphasis on not contradicting axiomatic intuitions.
Science: Concrete speculation, with an emphasis on not contradicting sense experience.
That I like. I might have used axiomatic principles, but I didn’t come up with it, so.....
I think it sounds better: an emphasis on not contradicting axiomatic principles.
Science: Examining reality
Philosophy: Examining thought.
Spirituality: Examining the examiner
Science: Examining intersubjectivity
Philosophy: Examining beliefs
Spirituality: Examining the unexaminable
I've been touched by phenomenology recently and am curious about it.
:up:
Absolutely.
In a trivial sense, philosophy is the mother of the sciences. Which is true, out of philosophy came physics, biology, chemistry and everything else. Needless to say Leibniz knew physics quite well for his day, Schopenhauer wasn't horrible in biology and Priestley, who discovered oxygen, contributed a lot to metaphysics, though his work is criminally neglected.
Those are just the names that I came up with now, I'm sure you can think of many other examples. So in a traceable sense, philosophy is the most successful of all fields of enquiry.
But as "science" got its name from Whewell and was developed by others, philosophy at around the mid-18th century pretty much got left with the very hard questions.
It's a bit of a contingency that the name "philosophy" is now associated with "unanswerable questions", as these questions were very much what interested many of the classical scientists.
But to be fair, philosophers still contribute to linguistics, neuroscience and psychology. So there's still overlap.
NB: "Spirituality", I think, falls liminally between religion and art (defined above) as a subjective, or wholly solitary, encounter with – (oceanic?) presence of – an ineffable mystery (Buber, Laozi) or feeling of safety (Witty). "The spirit" – Numinous? Dao? Thou? Brahman? Sunyata / Void (of "swirling atoms")? Natura naturans? Music ("expression of the will")? I don't know; only the last actually moves me to ecstasy (ek-stasis), though usually when I least expect it. Anyway, I exclude "spirituality" from my others sketches, however, because it is, IMO, a passive "experience" (most often, in most cases, one is struck by "the spirit") whereas philosophy, science, art & religion are only ever active endeavors, or practices.
Do you have a way of accounting for the numinous?
Quoting 180 Proof
I've not thought of it this way before but I find this useful. I've often viewed spirituality as being a more needful experience. I can't think of a better word.
When you are not satisfied by previous statements and ask that the conversation happen on your terms.
That presumes some familiarity with the matter as commonly discussed but a dissatisfaction at the same time.
It is a very old thing.
Is it always 'your terms'?
Maybe not. But how will you tell the difference? We only have our experience of ourselves to go on.
So the idea of personal verification is spoken more from a position of poverty than some kind of vision of triumph.
At its worst philosophy is the overestimation of the power of language, manifesting in form of rhetoric concerned with creating certainty in symbols and doubt in the world. At its best it tries to settle matters of justice and conduct.
I did not mean to say that living with "ones own terms" excluded what is shared amongst us.
As the only one you know who can observe what you know, the privacy is not an argument for or against any way to explain the world.
This is a really good question. As philosophy has so many shades, this list surely is to be continued:
- The preoccupation with the world without knowing what one is talking about
- The expression of such abysmal boredom that she has to invent her own subject
- The only sience not good for /anything/
- The exploration of possibilities that get never relevant
- The honest search for the nature of absolutely nothing
‘Philosophy is not a particular body of knowledge; it is the vigilance which does not let us forget the source of all knowledge’.
That sounds pretty reasonable to me, in terms of defining what philosophy is; it's perennial. As that's at least one quintessential word to use if investigating the "source of all knowledge". This might then be similar to the pursuits of both Ancient and Modern Mystery Traditions.
:up:
That's a pretty good sketch.
one of them mentions Kant.
Well, that's true. On the other hand, it is a legitimate question to ask, does physics touch the noumena? In other words, does physics tell us about the world "in itself"? Perhaps. Our knowledge of physics has advanced drastically since Kant.
But Russell, who knew physics and mathematics very well, stated that physics tells us about the structural properties of the world, leaving the intrinsic nature of atoms (and quarks, fields, etc.) unknown.
But, point taken.
Who said that?
Philosophy is theory; drawing up theories based on evidence, but with less proof than what science needs to verify an event as science-discovered.
The theory of relativity is a perfect example. Einstein started with an assumption that the speed of light is the maximum attainable speed in the world. He then manipulated theoretical knowledge to describe the nature of matter as it approaches the speed of light. He was purely theorizing, and his theory involved math. He pointed at what could show that his theory is true, but he did not find this evidence. Other people found physical evidence that could neatly be explained by the Relativity theory. That's when his theory became science, scientific knowledge.
Another example would be the allegory of images on cave walls by Plato/Socrates in the Republic. The images and the conclusions drawn from the phenomena lead Socrates create the ideas of Forms and Ideals, things that are perfect, never change, last forever, and EXIST. This has not been shown to be a scientific fact, but Socrates pointed at the proof: we simply must discover the existing Forms.
The Relativity theory is science, but it started as philosophy. The theory of Ideals and Forms are philosophy, waiting to become science.
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Philosophy deals mainly or only in subjects that can not be scientifically decided. One branch is tautologies: math, logic. The other branch applies to phenomena in our physical world, and it is what pre-science is. Theories that may be true, but no additional evidence exists to make them true aside from the original assumptions or premises the theory is based on. For instance, the existence of a creator, omniscient god. The theory is infallible; God created the world, and he knows all that happens there. That's the entire theory of a creator god. It is true, inasmuch it can't be proven wrong. But no additional evidence exists that was discovered after the theory had been created, such as "you will see Jesus return and judge all souls, living and dead." God belief is a very neat and compact theory, it is believable, but it is faith-based because it can't be shown yet that it is scientific.
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Other unsolvable questions exist in philosophy: the classic ones deal with beauty, morals, and other elusive things, that can't be decided by logic or by evidence one way or another. What is beautiful to one person may be not to another; and neither is wrong or right, yet both will agree that beauty exist. So then what is beauty? The debate rages on.
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One unsolvable question was "what is ethics, what makes an action moral or immoral or amoral." This question has been solved, in a philosophical manner, which unifies the ethics field and creates a useful tool to explain it; however, it is still not science, hard evidence has not been found to show it is true, outside the realm of thoughts, observations and experiments that have helped create the ethics-solving theory.
This theory may or may not be true, but I haven't read yet a refuting theory against which it can't be defended using arguments. In other words, no valid criticism exists in response to it.
The text of the theory can be found in two links on this website. One link is a long-hand explanation, with some repetition and some explanations that are too detailed to the trained philosophers' eyes; the other link points at a skeletonized description of ethics, in a very short but idea-dense text.
The long text can be found here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10744/ethics-explained-to-smooth-out-all-wrinkles-in-current-debates-neo-darwinist-approach
The short, idea-rich text which is void of detailed explanation and of examples, can be found here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10903/shortened-version-of-theory-of-morality-some-objected-to-the-conversational-style-of-my-paper
I agree; being so "needful", in fact, I think "the spirit" motivates – the muses move – people to philosophize, empirically research and conjecture, create and perform works of art, or worship mysteries (with/without magic aka "sacrifice (i.e. make sacred) in the name of ...") This "needful experience" corresponds to Kierkegaard's angst (dread) in my mind; or maybe Jaspers' transcendence (encompassing), or Zapffe's absurd (tragically overdeveloped brain).
'Investigation' here could mean a variety of things including inner thought, logical analysis and/or scholarly/historical work on philosophers/philosophies.
What makes something 'philosophical' depends upon the context the term is used in. Colloquially we use this to mean something like an ethic or moral code, or a practical way of dealing with day-to-day problems (as in 'My philosophy of life is ...').
In other respects I think it is better to view something philosophical as being more about the 'what' question whereas something scientific would look more at the 'how' question. This is not to say these don't sometimes overlap and feed off of each other.
Philosophy is the battle against "intrinsic natures", that are the hypostatized progeny of the scientific and commonsense inquiry into extrinsic natures. Philosophy, is, in other words both descriptive and corrective.
Apart from that it's thinking how best to live, and examining one's life to see just where the failures lie.
Apart from that it's just finkin; for finkin's sake, otherwise known as conceptual art, or mental masturbation.
Everything to some people, nothing to others and somewhere in between to the wise.
I could go on: but should I ?
Battle against? You can say that, sure. Some like to distinguish between intrinsic nature and extrinsic nature, though I'm skeptical that we ever get to intrinsic natures. Perhaps we graze the surface of these things, or the structural properties of phenomena.
Yes, those questions of what if a good life and what should I do and all that is part of the tradition going back thousands of years. These questions don't have easy answers, or we wouldn't be asking them still.
It's also mental masturbation, which I don't object to, nor do I think you do either.
I can understand it being everything to some, meaningless verbal quibbles to others. But I don't know about the wise.
As far as I'm concerned, go on as long as you wish. I don't see any problems with it. Though I'm unclear at what you're getting at.
'Struggle against' if that's more to your liking.
Quoting Manuel
Interesting question: are the structural properties of things intrinsic or extrinsic? To me 'intrinsic' implies 'changeless'.
Quoting Manuel
Right, all forms of masturbation have their place, and are not to be scoffed at.
Quoting Manuel
Nothing fancy, I was just suggesting that something like a middle path is more balanced.
Quoting Manuel
Just throwing up some random ideas in the vomitorium.
:vomit: ergo sum ...