哲学是什么？What is philosophy

Question

如题所述

Answer 1

哲学是一门特殊的学问，是与通常局限于某种具体对象的知识体系不同的学问。在汉语中，“哲”是聪明的意思，在希腊文中则意味着爱智慧，所以，按照字义解释，哲学是一种使人聪明、启发智慧的学问。然而，这并不足以表明哲学的实质。哲学作为一门学问，是同人们的世界观、知识观等联系在一起的，是人们世界观、人生观、知识观等的理论表现形态。因此，辩证唯物主义对哲学定义是理论化、系统化了的世界观，或者说，是人们世界观的理论体系。哲学大体上可分为本体论和知识论
When people ask me what philosophy is, I usually get extremely
uncomfortable and want to go hide.

I. One reason it's hard to say what philosophy is

Here is one reason why it is difficult to offer a short, pithy description of
what philosophy is. In ancient Greece, the term "philosophy" was used extremely
broadly. Consider, for instance, the writings of Aristotle (384 - 322 B.C.).
These include not only all the topics we now think of as philosophical (for
example logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, social and political
philosophy, and aesthetics) but also a great many subjects that we would not now
regard as part of philosophy (notably biology and physics). One, perhaps
biased, way to look at the history of philosophy is to see it as a history in
which one scientific discipline after another branches off from philosophy:
physics in the seventeenth century, biology in the nineteenth, psychology around
the beginning of the twentieth, linguistics in the mid-twentieth century, and so
on. Philosophy as we now understand it is roughly what is left of the
collection of things Aristotle was interested in after the various sciences
branch off!

II. Some Areas of Philosophy

Here is a quick inventory of some philosophical topics, some of the issues
that are still thought of as philosophical more than two thousand years after
Aristotle.

A. Epistemology

"Epistemology" means "theory of knowledge" (from episteme, knowledge, and
logos, which can mean reason or rational investigation, among other things).
Epistemology considers questions such as: what is knowledge? How do we acquire
knowledge? How much knowledge do we have?

B. Metaphysics

Etymology isn't all that helpful here. We know what "physics" means (from
"physis" or nature). "Meta" can mean "above," and maybe that's not a bad way of
thinking of what metaphysics is: a set of issues that are "above" physics in the
sense that they are more abstract or general. But historically the term seems to
originate with the editors who collected and organized Aristotle's writings.
"Meta" can also mean "after," and apparently they used the term "metaphysics" as
a title for the material they put after Aristotle's book on physics, meaning
just "after the physics."

To put it as cosmically as possible, a metaphysical issue is a highly general
or abstract issue about the nature of reality. A main subdivision of
metaphysics is ontology, which concerns what sorts of things exist. Ontological
issues include whether God exists, whether numbers exist, whether nonphysical
minds exist. In addition to ontology, there are other general issues about the
nature of reality, including whether human beings do or do not have free
will.

C. Value Theory (Axiology)

"Value theory" is a label for issues about, well, values. It includes ethics,
which is concerned with moral and ethical values, and aesthetics, which is
concerned with artistic value.

III. One attempt at a definition

In one way this understates the unity of philosophy, however. For if we look
at what remains, we see, not only great diversity, but also some resemblances
among the subjects that remain. Most notably, philosophy concerns issues which
for one reason or another have not lent themselves to scientific
investigation. In some cases this may only be that we haven't developed the
right scientific techniques. For instance, issues in cosmology (such as whether
the universe has a beginning in time and whether it is infinite in extent) used
to be regarded as philosophical because there didn't seem to be any way to
settle them empirically; now, however, they are thought of more as belonging to
physics, and empirically supported answers have been offered. In other cases,
however, such as ethics, it seems plausible that the issues are not even in
principle empirical ones.

We can use this insight to construct an attempt at a definition of
philosophy. Beware: this is not a standard definition of philosophy, and
probably would not meet with wide agreement! It is just my own attempt, perhaps
idiosyncratic, to indicate the kinds of issues with which philosophy is
concerned. I invite you to attempt to construct your own definition!

So here it is:

Philosophy is:
(a) the attempt to acquire knowledge
(b) by
rational means
(c) about topics that do not seem amenable to empirical
investigation.

Condition (a) distinguishes philosophy from creative disciplines such as
literature or music. Condition (b) distinguishes philosophy from mysticism and
some varieties of religion. Condition (c) distinguishes philosophy from the
empirical sciences.

IV. Is this definition adequate?

There are two questions to ask about any definition: does it include all the
cases it should, and does it exclude all the cases it should? Let us consider
first whether the definition includes everything it should. Condition (a) may
rule out some writings that are often treated as philosophy. For instance, it
rules out activism, writing or speech whose goal is to effect change rather than
to acquire knowledge. But Marx famously wrote, "The philosophers have attempted
to understand the world. The point, however, is to change it." And some other
philosophers may have had goals other than knowledge. Kierkegaard seems to have
as a goal to help his readers become religious. Still, both of these writers
also were concerned with acquiring knowledge, and I would argue that it is only
this aspect of their writing that is philosophical.

Condition (b) is rather vague. It is intended to rule out attempts to gain
knowledge about reality by mystical insight rather than by rational inquiry.
This may rule out some Eastern thought (though certainly much of Asian
philosophy is eminently rational).

Condition (c) certainly rules out some topics that have traditionally been
thought of as part of philosophy, such as whether the universe is deterministic,
whether it has a beginning in time, whether it is infinite in extent, and so on.
In my opinion this is as it should be: these issues, although they were once
thought to be suitable topics for philosophy, have turned out to be part of
physics. However, it is an interesting question whether condition (c) rules out
some topics that are still widely held to be part of philosophy -- for instance,
whether there is a nonphysical mind, and whether people have free will. I am
inclined to think that, while philosophy can contribute to these issues by
clarifying the issues and the concepts involved, the issues are ultimately
empirical and not philosophical.

So overall, although these conditions rule out some writings that have been
called philosophical, I don't think they leave out anything that should properly
be thought of as part of philosophy.

The second question is whether these conditions exclude what they should.
That is, are there issues or writings that are not philosophical that
nevertheless satisfy these conditions?

At the moment I can only think of one example that might be a problem here,
but it's a very significant one, namely mathematics. Mathematics is not an
empirical discipline (well, this would not be universally accepted, but I think
it's the most common view). But it is certainly an attempt to acquire knowledge
by rational means. So it looks as though my definition includes at least one
subject it shouldn't. Perhaps the definition should be revised? (For instance,
by replacing "empirical" by "scientific"?) On the other hand, the boundary
between mathematics and philosophy is anything but clear. Plato thought of
mathematics as the paradigm of philosophy, and there is a large overlap between
logic, usually thought of as part of philosophy, and mathematics.

Why are philosophical issues not amenable to straightforward empirical
investigation? The answer may be different in different areas of philosophy.

In aesthetics and
ethics, the reason seems to be that the issues concern
(to put it crudely) values rather than facts, and so are normative rather than
empirical. Empirical investigation may reveal what ethical beliefs have been
held in different time periods or cultures, but if we ask, not what ethical
beliefs people have held, but rather which ones are true, we do not seem to be
asking an empirical question.
In other areas of philosophy the issues may be conceptual rather than
empirical. That is, some philosophical issues concern the relations between our
ideas rather than empirical facts about the world.
Epistemology asks what the nature of knowledge is; an
answer to the question will tell us something about our concept of knowledge
rather than something directly about the world. (This isn't epistemology's only
question though; another epistemological concern is what it is for a belief to
be justified or rational. Here we seem to have another example of a question
that is not straightforwardly empirical because it is normative.)
In still other areas, the issues may actually be empirical in some sense,
but they are so deep or general that empirical evidence, although relevant, can
be used only indirectly. Issues in metaphysics (for
example, the "mind-body problem") may be like this.