What is Philosophy?
When people ask me what philosophy
is, I usually get extremely uncomfortable and want to go hide.
I. One reason it's hard to say what
philosophy is
Here is one reason why it is
difficult to offer a short, pithy description of what philosophy is. In ancient
Greece, the term "philosophy" was used extremely broadly.
Consider, for instance, the writings of Aristotle (384 - 322 B.C.). These
include not only all the topics we now think of as philosophical (for example
logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, social and political philosophy, and
aesthetics) but also a great many subjects that we would not now regard as part
of philosophy (notably biology and physics). One, perhaps biased, way to
look at the history of philosophy is to see it as a history in which one
scientific discipline after another branches off from philosophy: physics
in the seventeenth century, biology in the nineteenth, psychology around the
beginning of the twentieth, linguistics in the mid-twentieth century, and so
on. Philosophy as we now understand it is roughly what is left of the
collection of things Aristotle was interested in after the various sciences
branch off!
II. Some Areas of Philosophy
Here is a quick inventory of some
philosophical topics, some of the issues that are still thought of as
philosophical more than two thousand years after Aristotle.
A.
Epistemology
"Epistemology" means
"theory of knowledge" (from episteme, knowledge, and logos, which can
mean reason or rational investigation, among other things). Epistemology
considers questions such as: what is knowledge? How do we acquire knowledge?
How much knowledge do we have?
B.
Metaphysics
Etymology isn't all that helpful
here. We know what "physics" means (from "physis" or
nature). "Meta" can mean "above," and maybe that's not a
bad way of thinking of what metaphysics is: a set of issues that are
"above" physics in the sense that they are more abstract or general.
But historically the term seems to originate with the editors who collected and
organized Aristotle's writings. "Meta" can also mean
"after," and apparently they used the term "metaphysics" as
a title for the material they put after Aristotle's book on physics, meaning
just "after the physics."
To put it as cosmically as possible,
a metaphysical issue is a highly general or abstract issue about the
nature of reality. A main subdivision of metaphysics is ontology, which
concerns what sorts of things exist. Ontological issues include whether God
exists, whether numbers exist, whether nonphysical minds exist. In addition to
ontology, there are other general issues about the nature of reality, including
whether human beings do or do not have free will.
C.
Value Theory (Axiology)
"Value theory" is a label
for issues about, well, values. It includes ethics, which is concerned with
moral and ethical values, and aesthetics, which is concerned with artistic
value.
III. One attempt at a definition
In one way this understates the
unity of philosophy, however. For if we look at what remains, we see, not
only great diversity, but also some resemblances among the subjects that
remain. Most notably, philosophy concerns issues which for one reason or
another have not lent themselves to scientific investigation. In some
cases this may only be that we haven't developed the right scientific
techniques. For instance, issues in cosmology (such as whether the universe has
a beginning in time and whether it is infinite in extent) used to be regarded
as philosophical because there didn't seem to be any way to settle them
empirically; now, however, they are thought of more as belonging to physics,
and empirically supported answers have been offered. In other cases, however,
such as ethics, it seems plausible that the issues are not even in principle
empirical ones.
We can use this insight to construct
an attempt at a definition of philosophy. Beware: this is not a standard
definition of philosophy, and probably would not meet with wide agreement! It
is just my own attempt, perhaps idiosyncratic, to indicate the kinds of issues
with which philosophy is concerned. I invite you to attempt to construct your
own definition!
So here it is:
Philosophy is:
(a) the attempt to acquire knowledge
(b) by rational means
(c) about topics that do not seem amenable to empirical
investigation.
Condition (a) distinguishes
philosophy from creative disciplines such as literature or music. Condition (b)
distinguishes philosophy from mysticism and some varieties of religion.
Condition (c) distinguishes philosophy from the empirical sciences.
IV. Is this definition adequate?
There are two questions to ask about
any definition: does it include all the cases it should, and does it exclude
all the cases it should? Let us consider first whether the definition includes
everything it should. Condition (a) may rule out some writings that are often
treated as philosophy. For instance, it rules out activism, writing or speech
whose goal is to effect change rather than to acquire knowledge. But Marx
famously wrote, "The philosophers have attempted to understand the world.
The point, however, is to change it." And some other philosophers may have
had goals other than knowledge. Kierkegaard seems to have as a goal to help his
readers become religious. Still, both of these writers also were concerned with
acquiring knowledge, and I would argue that it is only this aspect of their
writing that is philosophical.
Condition (b) is rather vague. It is
intended to rule out attempts to gain knowledge about reality by mystical
insight rather than by rational inquiry. This may rule out some Eastern thought
(though certainly much of Asian philosophy is eminently rational).
Condition (c) certainly rules out
some topics that have traditionally been thought of as part of philosophy, such
as whether the universe is deterministic, whether it has a beginning in time,
whether it is infinite in extent, and so on. In my opinion this is as it should
be: these issues, although they were once thought to be suitable topics for
philosophy, have turned out to be part of physics. However, it is an
interesting question whether condition (c) rules out some topics that are still
widely held to be part of philosophy -- for instance, whether there is a
nonphysical mind, and whether people have free will. I am inclined to think
that, while philosophy can contribute to these issues by clarifying the issues
and the concepts involved, the issues are ultimately empirical and not
philosophical.
So overall, although these
conditions rule out some writings that have been called philosophical, I don't
think they leave out anything that should properly be thought of as part of
philosophy.
The second question is whether these
conditions exclude what they should. That is, are there issues or writings that
are not philosophical that nevertheless satisfy these conditions?
At the moment I can only think of
one example that might be a problem here, but it's a very significant one,
namely mathematics. Mathematics is not an empirical discipline (well, this
would not be universally accepted, but I think it's the most common view). But
it is certainly an attempt to acquire knowledge by rational means. So it looks
as though my definition includes at least one subject it shouldn't. Perhaps the
definition should be revised? (For instance, by replacing "empirical"
by "scientific"?) On the other hand, the boundary between mathematics
and philosophy is anything but clear. Plato thought of mathematics as the
paradigm of philosophy, and there is a large overlap between logic, usually
thought of as part of philosophy, and mathematics.
Why are philosophical issues not
amenable to straightforward empirical investigation? The answer may be
different in different areas of philosophy.
- In aesthetics and ethics,
the reason seems to be that the issues concern (to put it crudely) values
rather than facts, and so are normative rather than empirical.
Empirical investigation may reveal what ethical beliefs have been held in
different time periods or cultures, but if we ask, not what ethical
beliefs people have held, but rather which ones are true, we do not seem
to be asking an empirical question.
- In other areas of philosophy the issues may be
conceptual rather than empirical. That is, some philosophical issues
concern the relations between our ideas rather than empirical facts about
the world. Epistemology asks what the nature of knowledge
is; an answer to the question will tell us something about our concept of
knowledge rather than something directly about the world. (This isn't
epistemology's only question though; another epistemological concern is
what it is for a belief to be justified or rational. Here we seem to
have another example of a question that is not straightforwardly empirical
because it is normative.)
- In still other areas, the issues may actually be empirical
in some sense, but they are so deep or general that empirical evidence,
although relevant, can be used only indirectly. Issues in metaphysics
(for example, the "mind-body problem") may be like this.
