Why Philosophy is Philosophy:
A study on the definition and distinction of the discipline
Anupam Debashis Roy
Howard University
"You should not raise questions about God,because you can never have the answer"-he said, confidently, as if he was not confused at all about this idea of perpetual confusion that he so boldly projects. I said nothing because I know that religious people get angry when you question their fundamental beliefs and I had no time to waste to deal with some futile disgruntlement. I was indulged in a deeper thought. Why would there be an eternal question of God’s existence if there was no answer to it? If universe is posing a question,it is only natural that it would want us to at least try to find the answer to it.To my judgement that was my first philosophic endeavor. It was not religion and not science and it was distinct from traditional thought. It was philosophy because it deals with one of the central questions of life in a ‘hyper general way’.
But the author of ‘Thinking it through’, Kwame Anthony Appiah, might disagree and try to classify my primitive philosophic thoughts as Folk philosophy. (Appiah, 2003, p. 339). A somewhat funky name to describe the disorganized thoughts of non-academics who don’t do philosophy in a systematic way(Appiah, 2003, p. 339). But a just a few paragraphs later the writer introduces a new symbol for the same kind of thought and names it Traditional Thought(Appiah, 2003, p. 339) but fails to provide any kind of fine lining between Folk Philosophy and Traditional Thought. He seems to have no problem in letting the traditional thinkers use the term philosophy in their unsystematic line of thought but he again discerns their works from what he calls Formal Philosophy.
Soon we see that Folk Philosophy and Traditional Thought has merged into one single body and he is criticizing both of them for not being able to justify their convictions. He says that a formal philosopher is different from a folk philosopher and/or traditional thinker because he could provide valid arguments to support his thoughts. But again,he defines Philosophy as a general and systematic account of our thought and experience, one that is developed critically, in the light of evidence and argument(Appiah, 2003, p. 378). Therein lies the contradiction of his argument of merging traditional thought and philosophy together because if Folk Philosophy is Philosophy,then it must be supported by valid arguments.
In my judgement,it is wrong to discern folk philosophy or traditional thought from formal philosophy because both are basically the same thing. The thinkers of the beginning never thought if their thought would be called folk philosophy or formal philosophy but they did philosophy anyway and did it quite well. If any broad conceptual concept backed by valid argument is philosophy-then everybody can be a philosopher. Even common people who writer falsely discards as traditional thinkers. Philosophy,no matter who does it,is a pure cognitive analysis of the basic questions of existence in a broad and interdisciplinary manner and backs it up with valid arguments which conceptual and/or empirical.
I do think that Philosophy requires empirical evidence too. In my judgement, it is not only wrong to think that anything that requires physical data is not Philosophy but it is misleading. It is just an easy way out for distinguishing science from Philosophy. The assumption is unmindful of the fact that Science or Natural Science was born from the very womb of Philosophy and much of the early scientists are more famous for their Philosophic works. Author Kwambe does concur with this statement of mine by stating ‘...this(based on the use of empirical data) way of making the distinction between philosophy and science seems to me to be too simple. Much theoretical physics is very difficult to connect in any straightforward way with empirical evidence, and much philosophy of mind depends on facts about how our human minds happen to be constituted. It will not do, either, to say that the use of empirical evidence in science involves experiments, while in philosophy it does not. For thought experiments play an important role in both science and philosophy, and many branches of the sciences—cosmology, for example—have to proceed with very few, if any, experiments, just because experiments would be so hard to arrange.’ (Appiah, 2003, p. 364)
But the way of distinction the author has chosen is not too strong either. He says that, although Philosophy and Science both require empirical data, the data for Science is collected more systematically than Science(Appiah, 2003, p. 364). He proves the weakness of his argument in the very next sentence where he says this difference is also a matter of degree as some Philosophy,like that of language requires meticulous collection of data about the subject matter. This clever example serves only to prove how confused the author is about the use of data in Philosophy and Science and falls back to square one with the mistaken academics who he so passionately discredited in the previous paragraph. He differed from them only in the question of degree which is not that much different at all.
In my judgement, the question of distinguishing science from philosophy is much like asking the difference between a tree and its branch. Do they look alike?They do. Do they have the same characteristics?They do. Do they use the same source of nutrition? They do. Do they have the same function? They do. What is the difference? One is a more specialized version of the other. They have almost same characteristics and the smaller one has some additional usage. You can use the branch to beat Donald Trump with and you could use a smaller branch to pick your nose. But the tree cannot do that,it is more concerned with creating oxygen so that the whole world can live.
Philosophy is more like a tree,it is more concerned about the central questions of life when natural science is trying to ask distinct narrow question about physical world.
Science asks the How of the world when Philosophy asks the Why? This is the basic and most probably the only real difference between Science and Philosophy.
This concept is named Division of Labor by Dr.Appiah and he says that this institution has been productive(Appiah, 2003, p. 365). He also concurs that the two disciplines are intertwined and overlaps in a manner that it is hard to distinguish where one ends and another begins.
This vague contrast between Philosophy and Science is a complete antithesis of the relationship between Philosophy and Religion. I strongly belief that contradicting religion is one of the factors that gave birth to formal philosophy. Because the very basis of the disciplines are antonyms of each other. Religion thrives on belief beyond reason when Philosophy seeks for reason beyond belief. As Dr.Appiah says, ‘The urge to give arguments and evidence for what you believe, and to make your beliefs consistent with each other so that they form a system, is one of the marks of formal philosophy.’(Appiah, 2003, p. 343)
Dr.Appiah has been very successful in discerning Religion from Philosophy in his discussions in pages 360-364. He says that philosophy is free of the bounding rituals that Religion has. One can do philosophy lying on top of his lover but Religion is a wholly different thing. Though some subfields of Philosophy like metaphysics and theology do tend to ask questions related to God,they do it in a less formal way.
But it is not particularly illogical to look for dissimilarites even when the difference is so obvious. Because sometimes Religion does try to solve Philosophical problems and (rarely) give very good answers to them. I would even argue that every Religion started off as a Philosophy. And it was a happy marriage when the concept of ‘faith’ rooted in and everybody started to believe that in order to be religious,you must stop asking questions about your creed if you are a true believer. That is the death of Philosophy. Where there is no question,there is no urge to find an answer. Where there is no urge to find an answer,there is no Philosophy.
Which brings us back to my personal first meeting with Philosophy. I endeavored to ask a question where religion discouraged me to ask. It told that I should better belief what the holy book said and follow the rituals that the holy book said I should follow. But I understood that only because my ancestors told me it was holy and true does not mean that it is. It’s holiness is a matter of scrutiny and reasoning too. Nothing is true until I am satisfied of its truthfulness.
And I was to be satisfied only by rational arguments supported by quantifiable empirical or conceptual data.
That is when I started my journey in Philosophy.
And I welcome you to the never ending intellectual adventure too.
References
Appiah, A. (2003). Thinking it through: An introduction to contemporary philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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