What does "doing philosophy" mean to you?

Greetings, Sculptor

Please inform me as to what my “fundamental error” is.

As I understand it, philosophy and science are two distinct fields, altho I grant that many scientists are also philosophers. Most, though, are not. Hartman did both, but he was primarily a philosopher during the last thirty years of his life…
{Also he was, earlier in his life, a law-court clerk, a professional photographer, a businessman representing the Disney Corporation, a rocket engineer, and the creator of what is now known as the very-widely-used 401K Plan for companies to incentivize their employees and boost morale at work. [More info on him at Wiki, and at Who’s Who, and at Who Knows What. An Institute was set up in his honor that is still active today.}

I got interested in philosophy at a young age, when I realized that if I asked ‘why?’ about anything, I would arrive at the frontiers of human knowledge in just a few iterations. So I started to feel like humans’ feeling of familiarity with reality is just the thinnest of facades over the depths of the unknown.

I like it.

But it does sound very 20th century ‘linguistic’ to me, illustrative of the kind of view that hopes to differentiate philosophy from science, assigning philosophy the task of conceptual clarification. There was this fear that science was going to replace philosophy and render it a mere historical curiosity unless something new could be found for philosophers to do.

As for me, I’m less concerned than they were to keep philosophy separate from science, I guess.

I’m more inclined to think that if we keep asking ‘why?’ about science, whether about science as a whole or about particular scientific questions, we will arrive very quickly at a host of logical, metaphysical and methodological assumptions that can’t themselves be justified by science.

To me, doing philosophy is creating new philosophy.

I very much agree. You are doing some fine posts. :slight_smile:

Referring to my original post, Yazata said “I like it.” Then pood wrote “I very much agree” responding to what Yazata had posted when he gave his impression of my definitions. I thank you all for participating in our discussion.

Yes, I do hold that it is valuable to make a distinction between Philosophy and Science. What I mean by “science” is spelled out on pp. 20-25 here:
wadeharvey.myqol.com/wadeharvey/ … Course.pdf
The title of the chapter is: "What is Science?

As you will note, the two fields of inquiry are distinctly different. {For one thing, philosophers tend to ask ‘Why?’ more than scientists do. The latter tend to ask “What?” and “How?” more frequently" as they pursue their research.} Please correct me if I am wrong about that assertion.

A classic question in introductory philosophy is: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, did it make a sound? This obviously hinges upon the definition intended for the word “sound.” Yet people may chase words around in a long discussion without it ever occurring to them to define that word! To do so, to define it, would solve the problem, it seems to me. Also, to pin down what “one” refers to here: are other animals than humans excluded from hearing sounds? Concept clarification is called-for here.

Scientists work within a frame-of-reference. They are very concerned with solving problems. Are philosophers so much concerned with problem-solving? Maybe. You tell me.

That seems to be a part of it – a neglected one for sure – but it’s certainly not all of it and it’s also not the main part of it.

How about questions such as “Why do people perceive certain things as beautiful?” Would you consider that to be a philosophical question? If so, it shall be relevant to note that answering that question might require answering a question about language (e.g. “What does it mean to say that something is beautiful?”) but that answering that question alone won’t answer the former.

I don’t think enough credit is being given to the huge field that philosophy actually is. Philosophy isn’t merely about questions or even their answers. Isn’t philosophy greatly about the methods of doing things?

It seems to me that establishing any -

  • professional practice,
  • sociological ideal,
  • economic strategy,
  • religion,
  • political ideology,
  • science methodology,
  • truth seeking method,
  • battle tactic,
  • litigation strategy,
  • ontological understanding,
  • law architecture,
  • ethics theory,
  • population influence,
  • method of living,
  • and general method of accomplishment for anything
  • is what philosophizing is.

Once a method is established (a “philosophy”) - that method becomes a field within the higher umbrella of philosophy distinguished by name (such as “science”, “Buddhism”, “Christianity”, “Satanism”, “Engineering”, “Judicial review”, “capitalism”, “communism”, and a million others) .

Once a method is established it becomes intrusive and corruptive to continue philosophizing beyond the scope of the method (which is why religions don’t like philosophizers continuing to question what they have deemed settled).

Teaching or clarifying already established understandings certainly plays into it all - but that isn’t philosophizing but rather maintaining prior philosophy methods and understandings.

For me, philosophy is simple.

If the only other option is we don’t exist, the argument is true.

Yes, philosophy is a vast field. But also, it’s about finding answers to questions. The only question is what kind of questions. “Who is Elon Musk married to?” is clearly not a philosophical question. “What constitues a proper argument?” is. Well, at least until someone invents a new category for it, and a narrow one (e.g. logic), and declares it no longer has anything to do with philosophy.

Philosophy merely means “love of wisdom” which is why I think the title of this forum is a pleonasm (it translates to “I Love Love of Wusdom”) but a suitable once since it describes its members pretty well. But I digress.

Philosophy Is a place where every kind of way of thinking that isn’t common goes. It’s a place where fields of study are born. Ethics, aesthetics, psychology, sociology, physics, biology, economics, logic, mathematics, epistemology, etc.

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Sculptor said - and I agree – “Philosophy is unpacking academic assumptions, common myths and delusions …an attempt at undermining the delusions.” Yes; by clarifying the concepts which are involved.

Wendy Darling expressed the view that Logic is the study of reasoning: it seeks to find the principles and criteria of inference and demonstration. …and to answer the question, What is a good argument? He then proceeds to give us an example which falls within Ontology. [I am tempted to give him my version of that example, to discuss the issues with him, but I will save that Ontological discussion for later.] Aristotle, in one of the classes in his Academy, codified an early form of Logic, which had in it a Law of Excluded Middle. Since then there have been many other logics formulated, including some recent work done by Alonzo Church on a new Theory of Types. All these add to our understanding of the process of inference, thus clarifying that concept.

Magnus Anderson presents what he thinks is a couter-argument to my explanation of ‘doing philosophy,’ namely, “Why do people perceive certain things as beautiful? My response: After an analysis is done of the cconcepts “beautiful” and “perceive” what he is actually asking is: Why do people value? {I say this because – according to my analysis and understanding – to call a thing ‘beautiful’ is to value it highly [i.e. to Intrinsically-value it.]

My answer to that underlying question is: We are valuing creatures from birth and for the duration of our lives. We can’t help putting a value on things and events.
This also is known as judging, evaluating, appraising, assessing, weighing, prizing, measuring, sizing things up, condemning, approving of, liking, praising, etc., etc. There are many more words for this process, as it is so basic to our lives.

Comments? Questions about anything said so far? How and in what way do you do Philosophy?

Well, I don’t think that what I’m really asking is “Why do people value?” That’s a different question (and an easier one to answer.)

And while I do agree that to say that something is beautiful is to say that it is of value, it’s not really an answer to my question.

The actual question that I’m asking is “What causes people to perceive certain things as beautiful and how?” In other words, I’m asking “What algorithm do humans use to judge any given thing as either beautiful or not beautiful?” Conceptual analysis is necessary but it’s not sufficient to answer this question. You need to analyze more than just language.

Perceived beauty may lead one to reconsider Plato, his Theory of Forms/Ideas, wherein the perfect form exists in its essence “elsewhere.” The knowledge of perfection is ingrained into our psyche somehow, but what makes the easiest sense is that we, all humans, have already been exposed to all perfection “elsewhere” even before we were born, so our knowledge of beauty, perfection, is first hand, tastes aside. Or sure, science says symmetry, proportion, without flaws, but that still doesn’t answer why we recognize the value in beauty in and of itself. Is beauty familiar? Is ugliness not familiar, and that is why it impacts us so, we can’t help but stare in dismay?

Philosophers have a capacity to be able to consider more than one perspective on a topic. In contrast with the general population, the philosophically-minded can reflect on a subject, and can see many perspectives at once. Technically-speaking, this capacity is cslled Divergent Thinking.

It seems that most people – the non-philosophers – manage to conceive only one perspective: they think along narrow lines. They do not engage in reflection, nor do they consider many possibilities. Their habits of mind are described by psychologists as Convergent Thinking.

Hence, for example, when I echo the bold claim made by John Stuart Mill, as well as, more recently, by Robert S. Hartman, that Ethics can be, for several good reasons, a science, the philosophically-minded person is willing to study up on the papers listed below …and as a result learn how such a drastic claim can be upheld.

Greetings, Magnus

Once, years ago, a contact I had who taught classes in the Philosophy Dept. at Syracuse University, showed me a paper he had written in which he applied Integral Calculus to a sort of statistical analysis of the data. The data consisted of the results where 50 people had judged a specific work of art aesthetically. Some found it to be “Beautiful;” others didn’t. Since it was not my chief interest at the time, I loaned my copy of the paper to someone who showed a keen interest. I never saw the paper again, as it wasn’t returned. That paper was the only research I am aware of that came close to offering some kind of “algorithm” for judging “beauty.”

What concerns me here, though, is that you and I may be talking around each other in our understanding of the term “concept.” To me, it certainly is NOT a matter of “just language.” It is more. It has, as a part of it, an extension. [size=63][To assume otherwise gives rise to a set of difficult problems having to do with: how is the concept then related to its extension? ][/size] Hence I shall in the following [which also appeared as the first page in a book I scribbled, entitled ETHICS: A College Course] offer the definition I employ (which I learned from Dr. Robert Hartman) when I use the term …to avoid any misunderstanding:

WHAT IS A CONCEPT?

One of the main activities of philosophers is to analyze and clarify concepts. My The assumption here is is that every concept has an intension and an extension.
The extension (except for a null class) has members. The members possess properties detectable by the five senses. These properties can be named; the collection of such property names is a set of attributes. (Some exceptional concepts, such as fictions; have the intension numerically-identical with the extension. E.g., unicorn, tooth fairy, etc.
[size=83]{Mathematicians will recognize the following examples of these exceptional concepts: E.g., tensor, hyperspace, conjugate complex number; etc.}[/size]

The term “attribute” shall mean “name of a property.” The intension is a description and often a connotation accompanies it. Descriptions consist of definitions - which are finite descriptions - and expositions.

Thus every concept has these components: a name (sign, label, designator); a meaning; and a class of application.
In order to draw mathematical-type deductions, set-theory will be utilized. Then these deductions can be consistently interpreted in terms of the data of ethics.

To review – and this understanding results in far less philosophical problems than to assume otherwise – the intension of a concept is a set of attributes (property names) that describe members of the class of application of that concept. These class members are also known as “referents,” or examples of the concept.
For instance, “ball” is a name or designator of a concept whose meaning is, say, “round, bouncy toy” and whose application consists of all the balls that are now, that ever have been, and that ever will be. Each ball is a referent of that concept. The attributes here were “round”, “bouncy,” and “toy.”

I hope this helps!

What about you, Readers? Where do you stand on any of the issues raised? And how do you “do Philosophy”?

What Magnus, as well as observr, speaks of as “establishing a method” is what I called ‘clarifying a concept – to the point where a new science is born.’ Recall that in the o.p. I claimed that Philosophy is the “Mother of Sciences”! They are just saying this in a different way. Thus what he regards as “finding answers to questions” and “creating new categories” …all of that is the clarifying of concepts so that they become more crisp, exact and correlated; hence made into a new discipline, a science. [To avoid any misunderstandings, in my previous post, just above, Iexplicated exactly what I mean by a “concept." It is not just a matter of language. YThere you noted that a concept contains within it the extension (its referents) along with the intension (its meaniang or description).]

All the –isms that he cites are philosophies. Engineering I define as: applied science. Engineers are artists and designers; they take a conclusion of, say, Physics, and they find a creative way to apply that conclusion, preferably into something useful.

When a new science emerges, we will always have “Philosophy of (that) Science” …as long as any vagueness remains in the ideas and concepts of the scientists in that new field.

Where do you stand on any matter that has been brought up? What does it mean to you “’to do philosophy ?

Philosophy means being attracted to a place where knowledge can be acquired in addition to eroticism (cf. Plato).

Philosophy has become senile, if it is not already in its last breaths.

Maybe thinking without philosophy even works better.

What do you think?

Philosophy to me is simple:

Prove an argument so that if it’s false, it’s impossible for existence to exist; it’s impossible for you to read the argument.

That’s how I do philosophy.

Yes and it’s not what you think , but how you learn to think and how through learning acquire the tools needed to use skill of thinking about how philosophy works.

I guess that you - and a great many others - have missed the whole point in philosophy.

I think the whole point of philosophy is to figure out the best way to do - to accomplish - something. No matter what you might choose to try to do - there will be a best way to get it done from wherever you started - and that is called “the philosophy” of it - “the love of the wisdom concerning it”.

Science is merely one method - one way - of discovering what is not true to consistency and reality.

There is a philosophy for getting people to listen
There is a philosophy for getting to the actual truth.
There is a philosophy for establishing the most fruitful ethics.
There is a philosophy for accomplishing - anything that is accomplishable.

Philosophizing - is the effort to find that philosophy.

That’s my opinion anyway.

In scientific Ethics we make a distinction between Efficiency and Effectiveness.

Efficiency is defined as: getting something done with the least expenditure of energy, cost, materials, effort, time, bother, etc.

In contrast, Effectiveness – also spoken of as “efficacy” by some Psychologists – is defined, in this new paradigm for Ethics, as:
Intrinsically-valuing the people you encounter along the way to your goal. This entails being considerate, authentic, deferential, compassionate, responsible, ready to be of service, expressing love if you can, or at least being respectful, empathic, kind, transparent as to your motives, being willing to be held accountable for your performance …or some combination of all of the above.

It also entails using means compatible with the end you have in view on the assumption that your have a worthwhile, moral end in view.
You still 'get something done; yet you are aware of how Effectiveness is the best way.

Yes, Ethicists prefer that things be efficiently done, but they consider it even-more valuable to get things done effectively as well as efficiently :exclamation:

What do you, Readers, think about all this? Where do you stand?