Let’s get our ontology correct. She used philosophical tools to approach philosophical problems, and wrote essays on the results in philosophical terminology. That makes her a philosopher. If her results were incorrect, at worst she’s an incorrect philosopher like so many others throughout history who moved philosophy into “less wrong” territory.
The same is true of Buddhism, and Christianity too: in addition to being religions, they’re philosophies, making ontological and ethical statements and explaining how those were reached. And atheism, while a philosophical viewpoint, also has had religious social structures built around it, such as taboos against self-coding as religious.
Exploring the philosophical “realm” and “mining” new seams of gold ore (or fools’ gold) is what makes one a philosopher, whether one comes in with a pickaxe and mule like the ’49′ers or a bulldozer and dynamite like the industrial strip-miners.
Let’s get our ontology correct. She used philosophical tools to approach philosophical problems, and wrote essays on the results in philosophical terminology. That makes her a philosopher. If her results were incorrect, at worst she’s an incorrect philosopher like so many others throughout history who moved philosophy into “less wrong” territory.
The same is true of Buddhism, and Christianity too: in addition to being religions, they’re philosophies, making ontological and ethical statements and explaining how those were reached. And atheism, while a philosophical viewpoint, also has had religious social structures built around it, such as taboos against self-coding as religious.
Exploring the philosophical “realm” and “mining” new seams of gold ore (or fools’ gold) is what makes one a philosopher, whether one comes in with a pickaxe and mule like the ’49′ers or a bulldozer and dynamite like the industrial strip-miners.