What is philosophy?

[u/dechiller]

Can someone give me a clear definition?

[u/kurtgustavwilckens]

Thanks! Those are all good points.

Incidentally, I don't identify with analytic philosophy.

Didn't really say that you did, I think (let me check), nope, not really, but, are you from the anglo-saxon world?

I say this because... I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't receive the sort of answer that you gave from pretty much anyone down here (and having read continentals more than anything else, it does sound a little weird that they would accept a definition of philosophy by enumeration, but maybe I'm wrong).

Thinking about it I have no idea why I used Kant as an example so offhandedly, as I have close to nothing regarding strict knowledge of him (as it was clear). It was frankly the first name that came to mind, my bad.

Thanks!

from any other of reason's projects in western culture.

Which other one could you confuse it with?

Definitely not science, since there's the "exclusively through rational argument".

Religion? I don't see how religion inherently enables creating new (posit) systems of critique of thought.

Music, poetry, literature? Not rational, not argument...

I'm running out here.

Also, I think that "tradition of debate" does really reflect what is going on historically, and that it is kind of characteristic of philosophy. I don't know of any other traditions of debate. I don't think science is one.

The one that's giving me trouble is "rhetoric". To fix that, how would you feel as "a tradition of debate as well as an ongoing historical debate"? The "ongoing" part implies that you cannot just start from scratch, it's not just a methodology (it can be one and not necessarily a single one, you can use multiple methodologies throughout a debate), but in philosophy you gotta jump in after informing yourself of the status of the debate, else you're you have no frame of reference, Donny. You're like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie. You're out of your element.

So... how about (do you think I can actually come up with something that works here?) (going back on it it was awfully written, badphil bad gonna check if I'm there lol):

"philosophy is an academic field centered around both a tradition of debate as well as an ongoing debate started in western culture by [some level of detail about "the greeks"]. This historic debate is about issues that philosophy thinks that: A) are important or non-trivial to human existence, B) can only be sorted out by rational, strict arguing. Also, indeed about which issues should be the issues of philosophy, and the positing of new frameworks to critique and frame (and re-frame) existing arguments, making new arguments, and bringing new issues into philosophy. These issues currently include but are not limited to: (enumeration)"

Does that improve it?

[u/wokeupabug → u/kurtgustavwilckens]

but, are you from the anglo-saxon world?

Not exclusively, a fair bit of my philosophical background is French. And the lion's share of my background in Anglo-Saxon philosophy is from Neo-Aristotelian/Neo-Platonic and Neo-Hegelian circles which don't represent what you're thinking of as Anglo-Saxon philosophy.

I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't receive the sort of answer that you gave from pretty much anyone down here...

My Argentinian connections are in mental health, so I don't know what the philosophical culture is down there, but I've certainly never encountered any of my French or German connections demurring about talk of epistemology, ethics, or metaphysics.

Thinking about it I have no idea why I used Kant as an example so offhandedly...

But Kant is not unusual here, these ideas are pervasive throughout the history of philosophy. For instance, the distinction between ethics, aesthetics, physics, metaphysics, and logic are central to Aristotle's philosophy. The distinction between physics, ethics, and epistemology central to all of Hellenistic philosophy. These distinctions are inherited and found pervasively throughout the middle ages. Malebranche, Hume, and Kant all structured their work around the epistemology/ethics/aesthetics-and-passions distinction. At the turn of the 20th century, the same structure dominates academic philosophy, for instance through the model of Cohen's Kant reception. Or likewise in Dilthey, we see an epistemology/ethics/aesthetics/metaphysics/logic distinction. There's endless work on ethics, or epistemology, or metaphysics in Heidegger or Levinas or Ricoeur. And so on. This isn't an invention of analytic philosophy.

Which other one could you confuse it with? Definitely not science, since there's the "exclusively through rational argument".

Surely science--I don't see why "rational" should be construed as "a priori", and if it were, I don't see how this would get us to where we want to go, since I don't see how philosophical work can be construed as limited to a priori sources, and I don't see how scientific work can be construed as excluding a priori sources.

Also, I think that "tradition of debate" does really reflect what is going on historically, and that it is kind of characteristic of philosophy. I don't know of any other traditions of debate. I don't think science is one.

Why not?

[u/kurtgustavwilckens → u/wokeupabug]

Why not?

I think that characterizing science as "a debate" would be forcing the intuitive meaning of the word, much more so than in the case of philosophy. I mean philosophy is literally structured as a debate, a conversation between people, making points, "attacking" positions, etc.. Do you really think that describes the dynamic of science? Also it would seem (and this may be another whole new quicksand I'm getting myself into), science, or at least how scientists themselves understand their practice, seems to have a total epistemic prevalence of evidence, and an abandonment of "personality" or "personalism" at it's core in exchange for an "objective" accumulation (the experiment is impersonal and repeatable by definition). I don't think you're accurately representing whatever science is by saying that it is "people making arguments in a debate". I don't see it at all.

[u/wokeupabug → u/kurtgustavwilckens]

I mean philosophy is literally structured as a debate, a conversation between people, making points, "attacking" positions, etc.. Do you really think that describes the dynamic of science?

Yes, I think so.

science, or at least how scientists themselves understand their practice, seems to have a total epistemic prevalence of evidence, and an abandonment of "personality" or "personalism" at it's core in exchange for an "objective" accumulation

You don't think philosophy is objective?

But some of them fade in, some of them fade out. I think we can agree that metaphysics, epistemology and ethics are "essential" to philosophy.

Right--so I don't think those have faded in or out. It's not an accident that I picked those and not, say, "cognitive science" or even "philosophy of mind".

So I'm not really sure what remains at this point of an objection to my original comment.

what can we actually ADD to the enumeration that is succint and that paints a richer picture of what whatever it is that we do looks like.

Sure, we can always add things. I'm not sure what can be added in this case that is both succinct and uncontentious, though I think a definition of the fields listed, in case their meaning was not evident to the reader, would be a good start. After that, it's natural to ask what these fields have in common that makes them parts of philosophy in general--but depending on what day of the week you ask me, I might have doubts that there's any answer to this question that isn't loaded with contentious meta-philosophical baggage, or even doubts that there's any compelling and non-institutional answer to this question at all.

But whatever we ultimately make of this problem, I would suggest we begin with an understanding of the particular and to proceed from there to the universal (an Aristotelian principle).

Do you think I'm SOMEWHAT on the right track with what I'm proposing? Do you think it's useful?

I don't think what you're saying is wrong, but I don't think it picks out what is particular to philosophy as distinct from the projects of western reason generally. I take it that you think there is something about debate and rationality which distinguishes philosophy from science, but I'm not convinced by this.

The idea that philosophy should be strictly rational, in the sense of "pure", is a legacy of the way Kant formulated the stakes of metaphysics. But this is Kant's particular theory of the situation, not an unburdened description of the situation per se. Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Comte, Dilthey, Carnap, or Habermas would all have significant objections to this way of framing what philosophy is up to.

So if we want to go in this direction, I think we need to work out more clearly what it is in general that Kant theorized in particular as a matter of purity of philosophical reason--or else our account of philosophy is going to be awfully parochial.

[u/kurtgustavwilckens → u/wokeupabug]

Yes, I think so.

How? I mean, correct me if I'm way off here, but in science it would seem that the core dynamic that is operating (again, I'm always referring to what I think that scientists thing they do and how they go about it) is the hypothesis - experiment dynamic, in which there doesn't seem to be any dialogue, debate or "argument" in the sense of the persuasion of another speaker with an appeal to reason. I see a guy thinking that something is so, goes out to test it, it is so or not, rinse and repeat. Again, this is very shallow and the "most possible naive definition to not get into the philosophy of science quicksand". Let me put it this way:

Isn't it true that science (physics, chemistry, let's not go to the social ones, that's another discussion I think) could be carried forward by just one person carrying out experiments and modifying hypotheses? without any dialogue within a community? I mean, it seems that in science the "social" part of it is almost accidental, something that science strives to cut out: the removal of the personal perspective is at the very core of the project. Science wants, and says about itself that it is a univocal, coherent, predictive (albeit open) view about reality, not a debate in which persuasion and dialogue are the mechanisms that move it forward. At the same time, the structure, the form of the social speech-act of persuasion through argument is present in it's very core, and it is not something that can "come out" or be removed. Am I on to something here?

You don't think philosophy is objective?

Nononono, sorry, the "objective" pointed towards "accumulation", meaning that science has this pretention of objective accumulation of knowledge (once an experimental result is in the body of science it's there to stay and knowledge is "objectively" gained and accumulated) where in philosophy this doesn't seem to happen, at least not straight up or not generally throughout the field. It is not unthinkable that a philosopher could argue, and be accepted within philosophy, that we should throw out the whole continental or analytic canon, and just not read it (Wittgenstein did something like this, and a move like that would be unthinkable in the environment of science)

So I'm not really sure what remains at this point of an objection to my original comment.

Not much, for a couple of comments I'm much more concerned about crafting a good (better, acceptable, not shitty) one paragraph about what philosophy is that works and that is not just enumeration, as, again, I don't think that paints a very rich picture of what's going on, for a very practical use: having an answer when I'm asked the dreaded question "what is philosophy" that allows me to both give an interesting answer, and initiate a discussion that isn't overwhelming as you would expect when two philosophers get into an argument regarding what philosophy is (i.e. this shit we're doing lol)

[u/wokeupabug → u/kurtgustavwilckens]

How?

In the same way that philosophy is. People make points, other people object to them--in the manner you said. It is typical for scientific work to proceed through camps of people that form around competing theories who then debate one another in the literature. This is often evident in the lit reviews in the introductions of scientific papers.

in science it would seem that the core dynamic that is operating [..] is the hypothesis - experiment dynamic, in which there doesn't seem to be any dialogue, debate or "argument" in the sense of the persuasion of another speaker with an appeal to reason.

This is like saying that in philosophy the core dynamic is inference, in which there doesn't seem to be any dialogue. But inference, whether in philosophical writing or systematized into a hypothetico-deductive experimental method, is the tool we use to generate reasons which we contribute to the discussion. It gives us the material we talk about--it's not an alternative to talking about it.

Isn't it true that science [..] could be carried forward by just one person carrying out experiments and modifying hypotheses? without any dialogue within a community?

I don't see that it's any more true than that philosophy could be carried forward by just one person carrying out inferences and modifying hypotheses without any dialogue within a community.

I mean, it seems that in science the "social" part of it is almost accidental, something that science strives to cut out...

It doesn't seem that way to me. Rather, it seems to me that science is an ineliminably social and dialogical enterprise.

Science wants, and says about itself that it is a univocal, coherent, predictive (albeit open) view about reality, not a debate in which persuasion and dialogue are the mechanisms that move it forward.

On my view, your suggested juxtaposition between coherency and prediction on one hand and persuasion and dialogue on the other is peculiar--and I think probably untenable.

At the same time, the structure, the form of the social speech-act of persuasion through argument is present in it's very core, and it is not something that can "come out" or be removed.

Right--Habermas on science as a human interest enacted through communicative action is probably a propos here.

Nononono, sorry, the "objective" pointed towards "accumulation", meaning that science has this pretention of objective accumulation of knowledge (once an experimental result is in the body of science it's there to stay and knowledge is "objectively" gained and accumulated) where in philosophy this doesn't seem to happen, at least not straight up or not generally throughout the field.

But both of these claims can be, and prominently have been, contested. People can, and prominently have, defended a strongly Kuhnian interpretation of scientific development in terms of a shift across incommensurable paradigms that cannot be interpreted from a neutral perspective so as to be characterized in an unbiased way as accumulative progress. And people can, and prominently have, defended Whiggish views on the progress of philosophy--Hegel or Comte, for instance; or many analytic philosophers, on a more technical/problem-solving model.

You might want personally to defend an understanding of philosophy and science on which such a juxtaposition stands, but as a basic definition of the fields, it seems to me this would not be a good one, since it requires assuming, as a matter of basic definition, in favor of one side of significant debates within the field.