Everyone knows that science goes through occasional crisis periods where it is forced to reconsider its basic concepts, but philosophy must do this constantly. Harman says that philosophy is “nothing but a perpetual crisis and a new beginning”. Does the history of philosophy undergro paradigm shifts in the Kunhian sense much more rapidly than science?
Another question: What is the nature of philosophy as a field?
Do we accumulate, or uncover knowledge such as in the hard sciences?
Do we create knowledge? In the sense that philosophers think up novel approaches for viewing the world?
Or is philosophy not a field at all, but more of an activity, that releases us from the confines ordinary language normally puts us in?
This bothers me very much so any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated!
Kant put forward a mode of exploration called critique, in which you meticulously trace the prerequisite conditions, limitations, effects and consequences of an object, while remaining agnostic about its truth-value. Personally, I like the idea of philosophy as a continuous, self-reflective critique of both the concepts we use and the methods for critiquing such concepts. But there is not really much I can say to persuade people that this is the only way to do philosophy, nor would that be productive, if I could, as it would possibly diminish exploration.
Thanks for this post! I’ve been wondering the same thing, but have been unable to phrase it so eloquently.
That said, my preliminary thoughts on the matter are that, unlike science and math, philosophy does not “measure” anything. Of course, measurement alone does not bring us to any knowledge about the world- in order for that to happen we need philosophy… deductive or inductive reasoning, logic, language, ect.
I’m not really sure what philosophy (in the general sense) is… let alone what happens when it is studied as an independent field.
let alone what happens when it is studied as an independent field.