Is philosophy a science? If it is not a science now, could it ever become one?
Doubtful. Hard to test philosophy in action. It’s waaaay too subjective.
Science tries to be objective in its research. Whether or not that is a losing battle would constitute another discussion.
Philosophy, at its core, recognizes subjectivity. Some fields even embrace subjectivity. This would work against philosophy being a science in the sctrict sense of the “hard sciences” (e.g. Biology, Chemistry, Physics).
But, in the loose sense of “science” (i.e. that which includes the “social sciences”), then yes it is and always will be because “science” in this sense is simply a seeking of knowledge.
So, it depends on how you define “science.” 
Sorry guys but 99.999% of philosophers, the exception being a few fluffier modern philosophers, will report that philosophy rejects the notion of subjectivity.
Whether it is a science or not, that is a rather large question.
99.99%? Really? Vattimo, Zizek, Pascal, Badiou, Lacan, Deleuze, Jaspers, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kant, Hegel, Wittgenstein, Hume, and Descartes (to name a few) seem to think it at least involves subjectivity. Care for quotes?
I was being facetious with my figure of 99.9999 but I’m sure you are also being facetious in suggesting that each of those figures think philosophy does not reject the notion of subjectivity. Remember we’re talking about the nature of philosophy (is it a science?) not whether or not philosophers refer to subjectivity. It’s one thing to say a philosopher refers to the subjectivity of experience, but quite another to say that same philosopher considers philosophy to be subjective.
Well, considering that since Kant, the Enlightenment has been about the subject and based on subjectivism…
And then Descartes’s cogito ergo sum seems to me to show that even early Modernism based philosophy on the subject until it culminates in Hume who basically rejects all knowledge of a priori truths.
Then of course, the phenomenology and existentialism of Heidegger and Kierkegaard also place great importance on the subject (for Heidegger, his whole spiel is based on and stems from Dasein and the Horizon of knowledge, levelling out in the Clearing of Truth).
Sorry that i didn’t catch your sarcasm as i’m new here and haven’t gotten to know the language games played here.
Hume rejects the subject - for him the self is nothing but a bunch of logically distinct moments, so he isn’t a subjectivist…
I wasn’t being sarcastic, just jocular. Obviously the figure 99.999 was made up on the spot, but the point remains that the overwhelming majority consider philosophy to reject the notion of subjectivity. Here’s what the ‘notion of subjectivity’ is:
Reading your post here I understand that you and I are referring to something different by the term subjective. The poster above you says ‘It’s waaay too subjective’. I then thought you were using subjective in the same sense as him. Obviously not.
But, he also states that everything is done “out of custom (or habit)”, which points to a sense of subjectivity more so than objectivity.
That definition of subjective is a bit different. You are then right to say that most philosophers are not “relativists”. i was thinking of the two along these lines: link
To further my statement earlier, the majority of philosophy accepts to some extent subjectivity, and, as a result, deny the possibility of “pure” objectivity. Science, on the other hand, strives to deny subjectivity. Therefore, the two are currently incompatible with each other. That is, philosophy at some level denies full access to the a priori (whether it be Kant’s noumenal and the 12 Categories, Hegel’s Absolute Knowledge, or the reality beyond Dasein’s horizon [if it “really” exists] in Heidegger). Science attempts to gain this full access (at least with regards to “physical reality”). The two have different aims.
Philosophy requires a subject. Science denies it.
Yes I understand and agree. I think the semantic issue may be one of British English vs. American English, as although I am aware of the definitions in the link you provided, for some reason my professors still switch back and forth between the two definitions but use the same word. Mind you, one of them is Canadian…
Very true. Yet, don’t count me as British. i’ve never left the Northwestern quadrant of the globe.
No no, fear not. I’m counting myself as British.
Ha! Hence the:
Location: Oxford, UK
Sure, but there are so many other options than merely catchall groupings like subjectivity vs. objectivity…
That’s very true, but since the subject here is centering on those two, it would be more likely to find Hume in the subjectivist camp than the objectivist one.
Okay, so there’s a falling out and a bunch from the subjectivist camp set up a new camp called the skeptics, with their own passwords and handshakes. Hume is now in the new camp.
Also one could make an argument for Hume being an objectivist inasmuch as he’d never deny the ‘truth’ of any given moment, any given empirical event that actually happened.
Would we want philosophy to be a science? I prefer, for various reasons, that philosophy is general granted ‘other than scientific’ status…
Philosophy is ‘above’ and ‘below’ science. It’s fundamental to the sciences, as Kuhn, Popper et al have demonstrated.
Okay, you prefer a spatial metaphor. Essentially we agree…