Some Concrete Definitions of Philosophy

Found myself last night at a local religious group trying to explain what philosophy in contemporary times is.

I had a cock and bull (facadesup) story that I've written about Leibniz before: the full extent of Leibniz's writings have not been assessed; and this is important because Leibniz created calculus and binary code.

The student I was talking to then said, "But how come you call that philosophy and not history?"

Which is completely legitimate.

I then had to tell him about embryonic sciences, such as how astronomy started, and I had to mention ethics, and philosophy of history instead of history of philosophy (complete with the digression I'm putting in these parentheses whereupon I mention Hegel and the questioners of if history is going anywhere teleologically (did I really say teleologically? yes)) and all of the sudden it didn't seem like I was so confident about philosophy anyway.

I did mention that philosophy sort of acts like the referee of the sciences, and that the study of knowledge itself had an important (?) breakthrough with Edmund Gettier's Knowledge is not Justified True Belief paper.

But I wasn't convinced, and this wasn't so concrete.


Some concrete aspects of philosophy in contemporary times:


1) Philosophy is the necessary sister to any science or art: in this way, Philosophy is simply intense consideration of its sister

re: ethical consideration of stem-cell research, utilitarian and metaphysical theories behind political science, regimented theories of political science

2) Embryonic sciences: by which we mean we designate a way of unsystemized though so that maybe later we can systemize it. This is as simple as chasing down digressions (alchemy a la Newton, and pseudoscience a la CG Jung); and as complex as forming a new scientific system (mathematics a la Russell and White; and whatever it is that Noam Chomsky really does).

3) Philosophy is good for metaphysical questions we don't want answered by religion.


4) Philosophy is good for ontology and the study of definition. Philosophy can get stuff running efficiently.


5*) (fivestar?) Philosophy is also good for necessary skepticism. This relates to 3) in that we should not always be satisfied. I don't know why, and maybe that's a philosophical question in itself, but sometimes questions have to be pursued.


But necessary skepticism leads people like me to be shaky when we give even our most basic answers.


One time, when I was describing my concept of God to about 100 Jewish people, I started yelling passionately about Skepticism (about wrestling with God). To my credit I was trying to imitate Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior. I don't know if it helped the speech at all. I doubt (am skeptical) that anyone got it.

And another time, which is where we started this post, I said how sure I was that I knew what philosophy is in contemporary times that I didn't sound sure at all.


On Thursday of this week I was reminded about another one of the cutting edges of philosophy in contemporary times, which I will post in another post immediately after this one.