Philosophy Notes
This is the first post in a series that I call Philosophy Notes. Each post will be a supplement to my philosophy study guides, designed to help beginning philosophy students read, understand, and think critically about the classic books of philosophy.
What is Philosophy?
When I was a first-year philosophy student, one of my professors was asked a fundamental question by an eager and curious student during the first day of class. Her question was: “What is philosophy?” She found it odd that the professor had spent most of the hour talking about the course syllabus but had not said anything about what the word “philosophy” meant.
The professor responded to the student’s request by saying that he had a definition but he did not usually say anything about the meaning of the word ‘philosophy’ until the end of the course. He said that we would all agree on a definition of philosophy after we had spent several weeks mulling over the problems of philosophy. At that point, it would become clear what was and what was not a philosophical problem.
However, he did say that the English word “philosophy” was derived from the Greek “Filosofia,” (φιλοσοφία), meaning literally, “the love of wisdom.” But (he said) this would hardly do as a definition because “Filosofia” covers not only what we now call philosophy but also what we now call science. Although there is a wide gap between these two broad areas of inquiry, the philosophers of ancient Greek made no distinction between philosophy and science.
This did not satisfy the querulous student. She replied that in all other classes she had taken at the university the professors had no problem offering on the first day of class a clear, understandable definition of the name of their course. “For example,” she went on to say, “My chemistry professor this morning said that ‘chemistry is a science that deals with the composition, structure, and properties of substances and with the transformations that they undergo.’ If a chemistry professor can tell us what chemistry is, why do we have to wait until the end of the course to learn the meaning of the course title? Why is the word ‘philosophy’ such a mystery?”
At that point, the professor smiled and gave in. “Okay. I like students who make objections and back them up with good reasons. And you have a good reason to object.” He went on to say that he would give us a short definition, but he warned us that any definition would have to cover the four major areas of philosophical inquiry: metaphysics, epistemology, logic, and ethics. Since we had no clue what these grand words signified, we would have no way to test his definition until later in the course.
“So here is a common definition of philosophy,” he said: ‘Critical reflection on the justification of basic human beliefs and analysis of basic concepts in terms of which such beliefs are expressed.’[1] In a nutshell, philosophy is conceptual analysis. Philosophers study concepts, or what the early philosophers called ‘ideas’.” For example, metaphysics is the study of such concepts as “being,” “space,” “time,” and “free will.” Epistemology is the study of the concepts “believing,” “knowing,” and “perceiving.” Logic is the study of the concepts “reasoning,” “validity,” and “inference.” Ethics is the study of the concepts “good,” “bad,” “right,” and “wrong.”
The classroom was silent. Finally, a hand went up from a student in the back row. “Is this how philosophy differs from science?” The professor replied that the questions asked by philosophers differ significantly from those asked by scientists. He joked that a symptom of this difference is that there are no philosophy laboratories on campus, philosophers do not take their students on field trips and there are no “breaking news” reports on the front page of newspapers about philosophical discoveries.
Our professor said "What I mean is that philosophers don’t ask and answer empirical questions. Empirical questions are answered by evidence gained from observation and experience. If you want to know how many bachelors (single men) there are in the classroom, you will conduct a poll by asking each man in the classroom whether he is or is not a bachelor. In taking the poll, you assume that everyone understands the question, “Are you a bachelor?”
“What is a bachelor?” is a conceptual question. It is analytic, not empirical. If you want to know whether bachelors are unmarried, the answer is to be found by analyzing the concepts of “bachelor,” and “unmarried.” You would not answer the question “What is a bachelor?” by taking a poll of each bachelor in the room, asking them the question is “Are you unmarried?”
“Are bachelors unmarried?” is what logicians call a closed question because the answer is to be found in the question. Bachelors are unmarried adult males by definition. If you know that a man is a bachelor, then you also know that he is unmarried.
Empirical questions (“How many
bachelors are there in the classroom?”) are open questions because the
answer is to be found only by going outside the question to make
observations and gather relevant data. It is not to be found by analysis of the
concept. You cannot answer an empirical question by analyzing the concepts that
make up the question. An analysis of the
word “bachelor” reveals the meaning of this word, but it does not reveal how many bachelors there are in the classroom nor does it reveal whether bachelors exist at all.
There are better examples relevant to contemporary science that show the bright dividing line between philosophy and science. If you ask a scientist “How many people will die of COVID-19 this winter?” her reply is a prediction partly based on observation of the number of people who are vaccinated and the number of unvaccinated people who are not taking other defensive measures, e.g. social distancing and wearing masks when in public. She will compare the data gained from the results of these observations to the data she has from the experience of the number of people who died of the disease under similar conditions. Her reply will be about the degree of probability not the certainty of the number of people that she believes will die of the disease this winter.
But, as I have already said, philosophical questions are conceptual, not empirical. Conceptual questions are about the meaning of concepts and their logical relationship to other concepts. For example, if you ask a philosopher “Do the people who refuse to be vaccinated do so of their own free will?” the answer depends entirely on how the concept of “free will” is defined. One philosopher might say ‘Yes because in the U.S. most people are not legally required to get a vaccination if they do not want one. Hence, when they go to the clinic to be vaccinated, they do so of their own free will.’
But other philosophers will vehemently deny that “doing (or not doing) something of one’s own free will” means “not being legally required.” They would say that there are forces other than legal forces. These forces are the causal events that occur in the brain as a result of one’s upbringing and later mental development. Every event has a cause, and these mental events formed from birth determine every future choice that a person makes. Those who refuse the vaccine and those who take the vaccine may not be forced by law but they are forced by beliefs they involuntarily have. These beliefs are the causal product of a long train of mental events occurring since birth.
There is another way of explaining the difference between philosophy and science. Scientists can and often do make discoveries about the natural world. The discovery of the coronavirus and later discoveries of the vaccines that prevent infection are good examples.[2] But despite the protests of some scholars, if philosophers make discoveries at all, they are about concepts and their relationship to other concepts. Such discoveries tell us nothing about what science reveals from empirical investigation.
But don’t some philosophical discoveries tell us about the supernatural world, for example, Anselm and Descartes’ proofs of the existence of God and other philosophers’ proofs of the existence of life after death? Didn't Plato argue that the soul is immortal? And haven’t some moral philosophers like Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill made important contributions to solving questions about the justification of rights and obligation? After all, the first part of the definition of ‘philosophy’ quoted earlier said that philosophy is ‘critical reflection on the justification of basic human beliefs.’
I will put aside these rhetorical questions for another time, except to agree that many people think that the answers given to these questions are not only interesting but life-changing. But surely, “God exists” is not a “discovery” until it can be tested and justified. Some vaccines are indeed preventing the spread of COVID-19 because they have been tested. The vaccines work. But what kind of test do we have to prove that God exists or that great aunt Mabel is in heaven? We know what it is like to verify or falsify the statement “The Pfizer vaccine works.” But do we know how to verify or falsify claims about the existence of God, the existence of an afterlife, or the foundations of morals?"
The professor did not attempt to answer these questions until we were near the end of the course. ( I’ll keep you posted.)[3]
[1] Edwards, Paul and Arthur Pap, eds. A Modern Introduction to Philosophy, Third Edition. 1973. New York: The Free Press: p. xiv.
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/about-epidemiology/identifying-source-outbreak.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fcases-updates%2Fabout-epidemiology%2Fidentifying-source-outbreak.html
3 If you do not want to wait for the next blog post on this topic, you can get a free PDF copy of my book Understanding Philosophy: The Smart Student’s Guide to Reading and Writing Philosophy at www.houlgatebooks.com . You can also purchase a low-cost paper copy at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GVJ6GWX
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