I object rather strongly to this categorization. This feels strongly to me like a misunderstanding borne of having only encountered analytic philosophy in rather limited circumstances and having assumed the notion of the “separate magisterium” that the analytic tradition developed as it broke from the rest of Western philosophy.
Many people doing philosophy, myself included, think of it more as the “mother” discipline from which we might specialize into other disciplines once we have the ground well understood enough to cleave off a part of reality for a time being while we work with that small part so as to avoid constantly facing the complete, overwhelming complexity of facing all of reality at once. What is today philosophy is perhaps tomorrow a more narrow field of study, except it seems in those cases where we touch so closely upon fundamental uncertainty that we cannot hope to create a useful abstraction, like physics or chemistry, to let us manipulate some small part of the world accurately without worrying about the rest of it.
Many people doing philosophy, myself included, think of it more as the “mother” discipline from which we might specialize into other disciplines once we have the ground well understood enough to cleave off a part of reality for a time being while we work with that small part so as to avoid constantly facing the complete, overwhelming complexity of facing all of reality at once.
That’s a great summary, yeah. I don’t see any contradiction with what I said.
What is today philosophy is perhaps tomorrow a more narrow field of study, except it seems in those cases where we touch so closely upon fundamental uncertainty that we cannot hope to create a useful abstraction, like physics or chemistry, to let us manipulate some small part of the world accurately without worrying about the rest of it.
You have a way with words :) Yes, specific sciences study small slivers of what we experience, and philosophy ponders the big picture, helping to spawn another sliver to study. Still don’t see how it provides answers, just helps crystallize questions.
Yes, specific sciences study small slivers of what we experience, and philosophy ponders the big picture, helping to spawn another sliver to study. Still don’t see how it provides answers, just helps crystallize questions.
It sounds like a disagreement on whether A contains B means B is an A or B is not an A. That is, whether or not that, say, physics, which is contained within the realm of study we call philosophy, although carefully cordoned off with certain assumptions from the rest of it, is still philosophy or whether philosophy is the stuff that isn’t broken down into a smaller part, because to my way of thinking physics is largely philosophy of the material and so by example we have a case where philosophy provides answers.
I don’t see this as anything related to containment. Just interaction. Good philosophy provides a well-defined problem to investigate for a given science, and, once in a blue moon, an outline of methodology, like Popper did. In turn, the scientific investigation in question can give philosophy some new “big” problems to ponder.
I object rather strongly to this categorization. This feels strongly to me like a misunderstanding borne of having only encountered analytic philosophy in rather limited circumstances and having assumed the notion of the “separate magisterium” that the analytic tradition developed as it broke from the rest of Western philosophy.
Many people doing philosophy, myself included, think of it more as the “mother” discipline from which we might specialize into other disciplines once we have the ground well understood enough to cleave off a part of reality for a time being while we work with that small part so as to avoid constantly facing the complete, overwhelming complexity of facing all of reality at once. What is today philosophy is perhaps tomorrow a more narrow field of study, except it seems in those cases where we touch so closely upon fundamental uncertainty that we cannot hope to create a useful abstraction, like physics or chemistry, to let us manipulate some small part of the world accurately without worrying about the rest of it.
That’s a great summary, yeah. I don’t see any contradiction with what I said.
You have a way with words :) Yes, specific sciences study small slivers of what we experience, and philosophy ponders the big picture, helping to spawn another sliver to study. Still don’t see how it provides answers, just helps crystallize questions.
It sounds like a disagreement on whether A contains B means B is an A or B is not an A. That is, whether or not that, say, physics, which is contained within the realm of study we call philosophy, although carefully cordoned off with certain assumptions from the rest of it, is still philosophy or whether philosophy is the stuff that isn’t broken down into a smaller part, because to my way of thinking physics is largely philosophy of the material and so by example we have a case where philosophy provides answers.
I don’t see this as anything related to containment. Just interaction. Good philosophy provides a well-defined problem to investigate for a given science, and, once in a blue moon, an outline of methodology, like Popper did. In turn, the scientific investigation in question can give philosophy some new “big” problems to ponder.