10 ms·

> Secondly, remember that broadly the point of philosophy is to make things not philosophy. In extremely simplistic historical terms, once natural philosophy be

> Secondly, remember that broadly the point of philosophy is to make things not philosophy. In extremely simplistic historical terms, once natural philosophy becomes rigorous it becomes science, once philosophy of language became rigorous it became linguistics, and today we're seeing philosophy of mind turn to neuroscience. This is absolutely not correct, and elucidates little but the prejudices of the answerer. Philosophy of language has /not/ become linguistics, philosophy of mind has /not/ become neuroscience, and only a subset of natural philosophy has become natural science. The philosophical questions discussed by Socrates have elided the grasp of both dogmatic rigor and empiricism for twenty-four hundred years, and there seems to be absolutely no reason to expect this to change. The answerer has either no actual grasp of the history or content of philosophy, or has simply decided, apparently by fiat, to discard all but the most narrow positivism-flavored slice as nonsense.

darklajid 10y ago
You seem to have a certain grasp on that subject or at least feel very strong about it. Unfortunately your post didn't correct any (perceived) mistake, it was mostly a longer way to write "That's not true". Would you be so kind and expand that reply a bit, so that I might find pointers/key words to look up myself?
- dcre 10y ago
  All that's required to show that philosophy's aim is not to eliminate itself are a few examples of philosophical questions that are not reducible to scientific ones. Naturally the author of the quoted post could still argue that those examples are in fact reducible. They'd be wrong, but I'm sure they could attempt an argument. That's philosophy. Here are some articles from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the mentioned topics that should point you in the right direction to start thinking for yourself about whether these questions are reducible to the empirical sciences: Natural philosophy Aristotle's natural philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-natphil/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-natphil/ Hume (look at the section on causation): https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/ Philosophy of language Wittgenstein: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ Names: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/names/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/names/ Philosophy of mind Aristotle's psychology: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-psychology/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-psychology/ Kant's account of reason: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-reason/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-reason/
  - dcre 10y ago
    Shorter version: What is change? How do we know what we know? What is the relationship between speech and the thing spoken of? What is the relationship between knowledge and the thing known?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- 4e8riufc4m9rvif 10y ago
  I have a beginner level interest in philosophy of mind. I can attempt to add some information on how "...and today we're seeing philosophy of mind turn to neuroscience." is very wrong. Neuroscience studies various structures and mechanisms of nervous system and brain. Even when they seemingly discuss 'consciousness', they tend to simply mean 'awareness'. I think most are generally familiar with other aspects of neuroscience. In phil. of mind there are categories of consciousness or lack thereof, though Phenomenal Consciousness is more popular area of study (experiential side of consciousness). One of the key subject in Philosophy of mind try to show whether mind can possibly be physical (ex readable article: http://organizations.utep.edu/Portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf http://organizations.utep.edu/Portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf), can mind be described computationally? (ex paper: http://consc.net/papers/rock.html http://consc.net/papers/rock.html) Phi. of mind also studies accesses of consciousness, study methods on how to go about studying contents of consciousness etc. I've talked to neuroscientist who despise philosophers talking about conciseness and claim their ideas are silly or can be ignored. There has also been cases where big name neuroscientist proposed silly ideas about mind that philosophers wouldn't begin to consider. In short they study different things.
  - naasking 10y ago
    > Neuroscience studies various structures and mechanisms of nervous system and brain. Even when they seemingly discuss 'consciousness', they tend to simply mean 'awareness'. You should give neuroscientists more credit! Some of them are aware of the philosophical problems surrounding subjectivity, and have tried to tackle them [1]. That's one of my favoured scientific theories on the source of subjectivity. I can also sympathize with the disdain with whic some neuroscientists view some philosophers of mind. They've debated some completely ridiculous theories of mind in order to rationalize human importance. These consciousness debates are following the arc of vitalism, which the science of biology eventually simply replaced, and I expect these neuroscientists see it as a waste of time for similar reasons. [1] http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00500/full http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00...
    - md224 10y ago
- yk 10y ago
  To some extend the difference between a science of X and philosophy of X is, that scientists try to answer the question and philosophers try to understand the question. For example, "How does a particle move under constant force." A physicist is content with just describing the movement of the particle, a philosopher will start thinking about questions like, "What is a force?" and "What is a particle?" and go on to question if these are in some sense necessary categories etc.
dmreedy 10y ago
I'm not sure I follow what you're railing against here. You're absolutely correct that none of the disciplines you've listed have been completely solved yet, and that they likely won't be any time soon. But I'm not sure it's fair to say they are not all actively fed by and deeply integrated with the work done in their precursor philsophical fields. This is particularly noticeable in more abstract fields like mathematics and computation where often times, empiricism can't be a driving factor because there's no empirical ground to stand on. If your point is, "There's still Philosophy left in these spaces", that seems to me to be like arguing that men cannot have evolved from apes, because there's still apes around.
- bykovich 10y ago
  No, my point is that none of these disciplines have been remotely subsumed by their "rigorous" counterparts, because their subject matter is fundamentally different. All of these "rigorous" fields are, of course, fed by philosophy -- but they are not in a position to turn around and solve philosophy. For example, linguistics -- understood as the science of language -- will never be able to, say, tell us what the connection is between the word and the world. How would it? And for all the promise of neuroscience, it is not one inch closer to telling us why there is a seeming difference between what physically occurs in a brain during an experience and what that experience is /like/. There is certainly overlap between rigorous methodologies and philosophy. But the goal of philosophy is not to rigorize its way out of existence.
  - mannykannot 10y ago
    What's your take on this? http://lesswrong.com/lw/q1/bells_theorem_no_epr_reality/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/q1/bells_theorem_no_epr_reality/
  - abecedarius 10y ago
    What is the goal? Is there progress that isn't either turning a problem into not-philosophy or, as one of the OP comments put it, preventing bad philosophy from muddying the conceptual waters? (The latter still counts as net value to the world if the bad philosophy in question is believed by people without being told by bad philosophers. Maybe that happens a lot -- I'm not sure.)
falcor84 10y ago
Being a bit crude, I'd say that natural philosophy became natural science, philosophy of language became linguistics, and philosophy of mind became neuroscience in the same sense that primates "became" humans. The old ones still exist, but we generally don't particularly care about what they have to say anymore.
- dcre 10y ago
  Maybe you don't.
  - TheseDays888 10y ago
    Yes, yes, subjective experience. Did you notice the constraint: > we generally don't particularly care about what they have to say anymore. It's a human perspective way of saying it's not relevant to much the active work, but it still is being worked.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >The old ones still exist, but we generally don't particularly care about what they have to say anymore. Who is "we"? Americans? Because continental europeans very much care.
  - obstinate 10y ago
    I would be surprised if that were true for more than the tiniest fraction of continental Europeans. By "care," I mean, "will notice or be affected by any output of ongoing philosophical study." Of course educated people, even us benighted Americans, still care about our old favorite philosophers from centuries past.
    - Sharlin 10y ago
      It's not like "normal people" ever cared about philosophy either, however one defines "care".
    - coldtea 10y ago
bryanrasmussen 10y ago
Does the philosophy say anything about the meaning of the words 'broadly' and 'simplistic' because with those two modifiers in place this can be argued as the tendency of philosophy (but then most things can be argued so who cares). That certain philosophical questions posed by Socrates have remained philosophical in nature does not make the claim invalid, just as the fact that many of the writings of Aristotle dealt with subjects that are no longer in the purview of philosophy does not conclusively prove the claim. I guess I would have to say if anything invalidates the claim it is just that they have not exactly established what it means to have a point, nor shown that philosophy in a unified state has such a point that covers the whole. I personally do not believe it has a point, but then I don't believe any of things that are being argued as outgrowths of philosophy have points either.
Chris2048 10y ago
> philosophy of mind has /not/ become neuroscience Instead it remains stuck in the past, refusing modern understanding. Much of the subset of natural philosophy that didn't become natural science is the stuff that didn't make the cut - i.e the junk. > The answerer has either no actual grasp of the history or content of philosophy, or has simply decided, apparently by fiat, to discard all but the most narrow positivism-flavored slice as nonsense. Yeah yeah, and if you don't believe in god, you don't understand the bible well enough. Same old story.
- 4e8riufc4m9rvif 10y ago
  Phil. of mind and neuroscience has different subject of study, in most cases, beyond the basics, they can just ignore each other. I think you might have a very bad misunderstanding of what philosophy is.
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    > beyond the basics, they can just ignore each other To re-iterate, philosophy of mind chooses to ignore neuroscience. Again, more "you don't understand", but no substance.
    - ecrukjfxdiuu 10y ago
      See from earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=13758915&goto=threads%3Fid%3D4e8riufc4m9rvif%2313758915 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=13758915&goto=threads%... If not helpful, you may choose to look it up on Internet on specifics of topic of study, not sure what sort of substance would suffice. If you want to look at a sort of caricatured version of this science-vs-philosphy-misunderstanding discussion, you may choose to watch this: https://youtu.be/9tH3AnYyAI8 https://youtu.be/9tH3AnYyAI8
      - Chris2048 10y ago
        > consciousness > whether mind can possibly be physical I re-iterate my comparison to religion, theistic philosopher reason similarly about the soul/god/etc. philosophical junk. There's a reason "neuroscientists despise philosophers talking about conciseness". > silly ideas about mind that philosophers wouldn't begin to consider What authority do philosophers have to label anything silly? > they study different things Reminds me of the claims made about religion vs science, that science can only study the 'physical', where religion is needed to explore the 'spiritual'.
TheseDays888 10y ago
They qualify this to an extent: > broadly the point of philosophy > In extremely simplistic historical terms It doesn't mean that all areas have been proven, or that they all will be. It is often that topics of philosophy have generated real outcomes, it may very well seem that philosophy -> real world outcome. And consider the forum. It's not as if this is a university course in philosophy. You seem to have found one thing to nitpick and ignored the rest of the response. Respectfully, I suggest you hang the ax back up, and stop pushing the pedal on the stone.
eruditely 10y ago
More entry level nonsense, pure empiricism was undone by the problem of induction. Philosophy has generated several theories of probability, your "science" is contributing towards ruin risk with advocacy of GMO's and via Taleb && NESCI I know GMO's are not safe. Your "science" has done little progress without industry following a profit motive, of which science owes it's progress to industry and also much of it's credit. "Universities are good at claiming credit, and little else."
justin66 10y ago
> elided the grasp Huh?
- igravious 10y ago
  They mean eluded
jamesrcole 10y ago
> Philosophy of language has /not/ become linguistics, philosophy of mind has /not/ become neuroscience, and only a subset of natural philosophy has become natural science. They didn't say Philosophy of X has become Science of X, they said When a component of Philosophy of X becomes rigorous it becomes part of Science of X.
- twblalock 10y ago
  The parent comment included a verbatim quote from the page. It's what they said.
  - jamesrcole 10y ago
    The quote fits what I said
unityByFreedom 10y ago
Philosophy can be seen as the hypothesis phase of the scientific method. Not sure why that's so controversial. Good scientists make guesses and work to prove or disprove them.
- SCHiM 10y ago
  It's not controversial, it's just not what philosophy is I think. Far be it from me to be able to give a precise (much less consise) definition of what it is exactly, but it's not merely the hypothetical phase when doing science. Immediately metaphysics comes to mind as a philosophical field that is 'unscientific' in the sense that sometimes(mostly?) advances are not made by empirical measurements in an axiomatic system, but by convoluted and extreme thought-experiments with 0 experimental underpinnings. Another example is pointed out above, in the philosophy of mind, about the fundamental difference between seeing an experience happen (for example with a brain scan/direct measurement of neurons) and actually experiencing something. That is not something that you can easily touch with science/surveys/brainscans/etc.
- tikhonj 10y ago
  I don't think that's fair, any more than it would be fair to say mathematics is the hypothesis phase either. Mathematics might be used to build scientific theories, but mathematics itself is self-contained and doesn't need to reference the physical world at all. The goals of mathematics, the methods mathematicians use and the results they produce are largely orthogonal to the physical world. This might be less true for areas of applied math, but that just shows how the boundaries of any field are fuzzy. The same for philosophy: most of it deals with questions—and, subsequently, arguments and answers—that are fundamentally distinct from science. There are certain areas classically part of philosophy that have become the subject of physics or psychology or the social sciences, but these parts do not characterize philosophy as a whole.
wbl 10y ago
Or he has read Wittgenstein and believes him. Why do philosophers act surprised when some of their number are taken seriously?
- bykovich 10y ago
  The Tractatus? Wittgenstein didn't believe that.

darklajid 10y ago

You seem to have a certain grasp on that subject or at least feel very strong about it. Unfortunately your post didn't correct any (perceived) mistake, it was mostly a longer way to write "That's not true". Would you be so kind and expand that reply a bit, so that I might find pointers/key words to look up myself?

dcre 10y ago
All that's required to show that philosophy's aim is not to eliminate itself are a few examples of philosophical questions that are not reducible to scientific ones. Naturally the author of the quoted post could still argue that those examples are in fact reducible. They'd be wrong, but I'm sure they could attempt an argument. That's philosophy. Here are some articles from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the mentioned topics that should point you in the right direction to start thinking for yourself about whether these questions are reducible to the empirical sciences: Natural philosophy Aristotle's natural philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-natphil/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-natphil/ Hume (look at the section on causation): https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/ Philosophy of language Wittgenstein: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ Names: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/names/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/names/ Philosophy of mind Aristotle's psychology: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-psychology/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-psychology/ Kant's account of reason: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-reason/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-reason/
- dcre 10y ago
  Shorter version: What is change? How do we know what we know? What is the relationship between speech and the thing spoken of? What is the relationship between knowledge and the thing known?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
4e8riufc4m9rvif 10y ago
I have a beginner level interest in philosophy of mind. I can attempt to add some information on how "...and today we're seeing philosophy of mind turn to neuroscience." is very wrong. Neuroscience studies various structures and mechanisms of nervous system and brain. Even when they seemingly discuss 'consciousness', they tend to simply mean 'awareness'. I think most are generally familiar with other aspects of neuroscience. In phil. of mind there are categories of consciousness or lack thereof, though Phenomenal Consciousness is more popular area of study (experiential side of consciousness). One of the key subject in Philosophy of mind try to show whether mind can possibly be physical (ex readable article: http://organizations.utep.edu/Portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf http://organizations.utep.edu/Portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf), can mind be described computationally? (ex paper: http://consc.net/papers/rock.html http://consc.net/papers/rock.html) Phi. of mind also studies accesses of consciousness, study methods on how to go about studying contents of consciousness etc. I've talked to neuroscientist who despise philosophers talking about conciseness and claim their ideas are silly or can be ignored. There has also been cases where big name neuroscientist proposed silly ideas about mind that philosophers wouldn't begin to consider. In short they study different things.
- naasking 10y ago
  > Neuroscience studies various structures and mechanisms of nervous system and brain. Even when they seemingly discuss 'consciousness', they tend to simply mean 'awareness'. You should give neuroscientists more credit! Some of them are aware of the philosophical problems surrounding subjectivity, and have tried to tackle them [1]. That's one of my favoured scientific theories on the source of subjectivity. I can also sympathize with the disdain with whic some neuroscientists view some philosophers of mind. They've debated some completely ridiculous theories of mind in order to rationalize human importance. These consciousness debates are following the arc of vitalism, which the science of biology eventually simply replaced, and I expect these neuroscientists see it as a waste of time for similar reasons. [1] http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00500/full http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00...
  - md224 10y ago
yk 10y ago
To some extend the difference between a science of X and philosophy of X is, that scientists try to answer the question and philosophers try to understand the question. For example, "How does a particle move under constant force." A physicist is content with just describing the movement of the particle, a philosopher will start thinking about questions like, "What is a force?" and "What is a particle?" and go on to question if these are in some sense necessary categories etc.

dmreedy 10y ago

I'm not sure I follow what you're railing against here. You're absolutely correct that none of the disciplines you've listed have been completely solved yet, and that they likely won't be any time soon. But I'm not sure it's fair to say they are not all actively fed by and deeply integrated with the work done in their precursor philsophical fields. This is particularly noticeable in more abstract fields like mathematics and computation where often times, empiricism can't be a driving factor because there's no empirical ground to stand on. If your point is, "There's still Philosophy left in these spaces", that seems to me to be like arguing that men cannot have evolved from apes, because there's still apes around.

bykovich 10y ago
No, my point is that none of these disciplines have been remotely subsumed by their "rigorous" counterparts, because their subject matter is fundamentally different. All of these "rigorous" fields are, of course, fed by philosophy -- but they are not in a position to turn around and solve philosophy. For example, linguistics -- understood as the science of language -- will never be able to, say, tell us what the connection is between the word and the world. How would it? And for all the promise of neuroscience, it is not one inch closer to telling us why there is a seeming difference between what physically occurs in a brain during an experience and what that experience is /like/. There is certainly overlap between rigorous methodologies and philosophy. But the goal of philosophy is not to rigorize its way out of existence.
- mannykannot 10y ago
  What's your take on this? http://lesswrong.com/lw/q1/bells_theorem_no_epr_reality/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/q1/bells_theorem_no_epr_reality/
- abecedarius 10y ago
  What is the goal? Is there progress that isn't either turning a problem into not-philosophy or, as one of the OP comments put it, preventing bad philosophy from muddying the conceptual waters? (The latter still counts as net value to the world if the bad philosophy in question is believed by people without being told by bad philosophers. Maybe that happens a lot -- I'm not sure.)

falcor84 10y ago

Being a bit crude, I'd say that natural philosophy became natural science, philosophy of language became linguistics, and philosophy of mind became neuroscience in the same sense that primates "became" humans. The old ones still exist, but we generally don't particularly care about what they have to say anymore.

dcre 10y ago
Maybe you don't.
- TheseDays888 10y ago
  Yes, yes, subjective experience. Did you notice the constraint: > we generally don't particularly care about what they have to say anymore. It's a human perspective way of saying it's not relevant to much the active work, but it still is being worked.
coldtea 10y ago
>The old ones still exist, but we generally don't particularly care about what they have to say anymore. Who is "we"? Americans? Because continental europeans very much care.
- obstinate 10y ago
  I would be surprised if that were true for more than the tiniest fraction of continental Europeans. By "care," I mean, "will notice or be affected by any output of ongoing philosophical study." Of course educated people, even us benighted Americans, still care about our old favorite philosophers from centuries past.
  - Sharlin 10y ago
    It's not like "normal people" ever cared about philosophy either, however one defines "care".
  - coldtea 10y ago

bryanrasmussen 10y ago

Does the philosophy say anything about the meaning of the words 'broadly' and 'simplistic' because with those two modifiers in place this can be argued as the tendency of philosophy (but then most things can be argued so who cares). That certain philosophical questions posed by Socrates have remained philosophical in nature does not make the claim invalid, just as the fact that many of the writings of Aristotle dealt with subjects that are no longer in the purview of philosophy does not conclusively prove the claim. I guess I would have to say if anything invalidates the claim it is just that they have not exactly established what it means to have a point, nor shown that philosophy in a unified state has such a point that covers the whole. I personally do not believe it has a point, but then I don't believe any of things that are being argued as outgrowths of philosophy have points either.

Chris2048 10y ago

> philosophy of mind has /not/ become neuroscience Instead it remains stuck in the past, refusing modern understanding. Much of the subset of natural philosophy that didn't become natural science is the stuff that didn't make the cut - i.e the junk. > The answerer has either no actual grasp of the history or content of philosophy, or has simply decided, apparently by fiat, to discard all but the most narrow positivism-flavored slice as nonsense. Yeah yeah, and if you don't believe in god, you don't understand the bible well enough. Same old story.

4e8riufc4m9rvif 10y ago
Phil. of mind and neuroscience has different subject of study, in most cases, beyond the basics, they can just ignore each other. I think you might have a very bad misunderstanding of what philosophy is.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  > beyond the basics, they can just ignore each other To re-iterate, philosophy of mind chooses to ignore neuroscience. Again, more "you don't understand", but no substance.
  - ecrukjfxdiuu 10y ago
    See from earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=13758915&goto=threads%3Fid%3D4e8riufc4m9rvif%2313758915 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=13758915&goto=threads%... If not helpful, you may choose to look it up on Internet on specifics of topic of study, not sure what sort of substance would suffice. If you want to look at a sort of caricatured version of this science-vs-philosphy-misunderstanding discussion, you may choose to watch this: https://youtu.be/9tH3AnYyAI8 https://youtu.be/9tH3AnYyAI8
    - Chris2048 10y ago
      > consciousness > whether mind can possibly be physical I re-iterate my comparison to religion, theistic philosopher reason similarly about the soul/god/etc. philosophical junk. There's a reason "neuroscientists despise philosophers talking about conciseness". > silly ideas about mind that philosophers wouldn't begin to consider What authority do philosophers have to label anything silly? > they study different things Reminds me of the claims made about religion vs science, that science can only study the 'physical', where religion is needed to explore the 'spiritual'.

TheseDays888 10y ago

They qualify this to an extent: > broadly the point of philosophy > In extremely simplistic historical terms It doesn't mean that all areas have been proven, or that they all will be. It is often that topics of philosophy have generated real outcomes, it may very well seem that philosophy -> real world outcome. And consider the forum. It's not as if this is a university course in philosophy. You seem to have found one thing to nitpick and ignored the rest of the response. Respectfully, I suggest you hang the ax back up, and stop pushing the pedal on the stone.

eruditely 10y ago

More entry level nonsense, pure empiricism was undone by the problem of induction. Philosophy has generated several theories of probability, your "science" is contributing towards ruin risk with advocacy of GMO's and via Taleb && NESCI I know GMO's are not safe. Your "science" has done little progress without industry following a profit motive, of which science owes it's progress to industry and also much of it's credit. "Universities are good at claiming credit, and little else."

justin66 10y ago

> elided the grasp Huh?

igravious 10y ago
They mean eluded

jamesrcole 10y ago

> Philosophy of language has /not/ become linguistics, philosophy of mind has /not/ become neuroscience, and only a subset of natural philosophy has become natural science. They didn't say Philosophy of X has become Science of X, they said When a component of Philosophy of X becomes rigorous it becomes part of Science of X.

twblalock 10y ago
The parent comment included a verbatim quote from the page. It's what they said.
- jamesrcole 10y ago
  The quote fits what I said

unityByFreedom 10y ago

Philosophy can be seen as the hypothesis phase of the scientific method. Not sure why that's so controversial. Good scientists make guesses and work to prove or disprove them.

SCHiM 10y ago
It's not controversial, it's just not what philosophy is I think. Far be it from me to be able to give a precise (much less consise) definition of what it is exactly, but it's not merely the hypothetical phase when doing science. Immediately metaphysics comes to mind as a philosophical field that is 'unscientific' in the sense that sometimes(mostly?) advances are not made by empirical measurements in an axiomatic system, but by convoluted and extreme thought-experiments with 0 experimental underpinnings. Another example is pointed out above, in the philosophy of mind, about the fundamental difference between seeing an experience happen (for example with a brain scan/direct measurement of neurons) and actually experiencing something. That is not something that you can easily touch with science/surveys/brainscans/etc.
tikhonj 10y ago
I don't think that's fair, any more than it would be fair to say mathematics is the hypothesis phase either. Mathematics might be used to build scientific theories, but mathematics itself is self-contained and doesn't need to reference the physical world at all. The goals of mathematics, the methods mathematicians use and the results they produce are largely orthogonal to the physical world. This might be less true for areas of applied math, but that just shows how the boundaries of any field are fuzzy. The same for philosophy: most of it deals with questions—and, subsequently, arguments and answers—that are fundamentally distinct from science. There are certain areas classically part of philosophy that have become the subject of physics or psychology or the social sciences, but these parts do not characterize philosophy as a whole.

wbl 10y ago

Or he has read Wittgenstein and believes him. Why do philosophers act surprised when some of their number are taken seriously?

bykovich 10y ago
The Tractatus? Wittgenstein didn't believe that.