What Is Philosophy? – Continued (Column 156)

With God's help

In the previous column I proposed a definition of philosophy and philosophical inquiry. Here I will complete several additional aspects of the discussion, and afterward I will try to examine several definitions that have been proposed for philosophy, and point to their relation to my analysis.

On Philosophy and Science: Elaborating the Picture from the Previous Column

At the beginning of the previous column I argued that philosophy is on a level parallel to science in terms of its degree of generality. Science can be defined as a systematic and empirical-sensory way of collecting factual information and explaining it by means of logical and statistical modes of processing. Science is indeed divided into several subfields, such as physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, etc. (the humanities will be discussed below), each of which deals with different content, but in principle all of them adopt a similar method: collecting facts by means of sensory observation (of course, sometimes mediated by instruments), and then analyzing and generalizing them into general laws and theories. The theories also use concepts and theoretical entities, ones we have not observed, but they help explain our observations. For example: the electron, a force field and potential, various kinds of elementary particles, and so on. All of these are entities that we do not observe directly, but rather in the phenomena that are explained by positing their existence.

The same is true, in parallel, of philosophy. According to my proposal, this is a way of observing and analyzing the world through cognizing thought (and not through the senses), what I called our intuition. And again, the task is to collect "facts," analyze them, and arrive at general conclusions that also include theoretical entities. For example, the principle of causality, the existence of God—which is a theoretical entity—insights into the nature of time, art, and morality, and the like. I would only note that the intuitions themselves are also phenomena in the world, and therefore there are parts of philosophy that deal with analyzing and understanding the intuitive tools themselves. Intuition looks at itself (more on this in the next column). Philosophy too, like science, is divided into several subfields, and in the previous column I dealt with three of them: metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. There are other areas of content, almost all of them connected to these three, and in addition there are also two more methodological fields, epistemology and logic, which are cross-disciplinary areas that deal with analyzing our thinking itself (both intuitive and rigorous).

Between Science and Its Philosophy

In the comments on the previous column, remarks were made about the relation I described between philosophy and science, and several writers argued that philosophy precedes science. This priority is both in the logical sense—since it is what gives science its validity (the philosophy of science)—and in the chronological sense—since fields that once belonged to philosophy have now passed into the domain of science (such as free will, the nature of time and space, and more).[1] As I wrote in my reply—I completely agree, and here I will try to explain why.

It seems to me that the root of the matter lies in the fact that philosophy itself contains a branch called the philosophy of science, and that itself hints at a different and unequal relation between them. It follows from this that philosophy stands higher in the hierarchy than science. I will now elaborate.

The philosophy of science can be divided into two main parts: scientific methodology (a part that is mainly common to all scientific fields) and the meaning of scientific findings (which deals with each scientific field separately). Scientific methodology deals with the question of how data are collected, what counts as relevant data, what the validity of a scientific theory and generalization is, how a scientific paradigm is changed, what assumptions underlie the scientific method, the status of observation and its relation to theory, types of theories (phenomenological and essential), and the like. The second part, which deals with the meaning of scientific findings, touches on specific findings from physics, psychology, or biology, and asks about their meaning. This part is less important for our purposes here.[2]

This first part itself is divided into two kinds of treatment that it is very important to distinguish between: the descriptive kind and the normative kind. The descriptive treatment of the methodology of science deals with the question of how scientists work. It is called "descriptive" here because it does not say what is right and what is wrong, but describes what is actually done: how a scientist works and how the scientific community functions. These descriptions are then analyzed and generalizations are made from them (about how the scientific community operates), exactly as I described above. This is the "scientific" part of the philosophy of science, since in principle it is empirical work like any other scientific field, except that the facts being investigated here are the modes of conduct of scientists. The normative kind, by contrast, relates critically to scientists' activity. It tries to determine how one ought to act, that is, to guide the scientist and point out mistakes.

In practice, however, this almost never happens that way. Scientists do not bother to relate to the philosophy of science as guidance for their work (most are not familiar with it at all), and so in practice philosophy always trails after science and almost always justifies it. The reason for this is that good scientists have good intuitions about how one ought to proceed even without conceptualizing and explicitly defining for themselves their modes of operation.[3] But practical conduct does not necessarily mean that the relation between science and its philosophy is not as I described. Philosophy conceptualizes and defines the activity of science, and clarifies what is right and what is not and what it is based on. At the foundation of science there are very many implicit assumptions, and its philosophy deals with them. Even if in practice this is done afterward and not beforehand (de facto and not de jure), still the essential and logical relation is that philosophy precedes science.

Another Look at the Relations Between Philosophy and Science

This description shows that philosophy does not really stand parallel to science, as I wrote in the previous column (only as a point of departure for clarifying the discussion), but before it. It is what deals with the question of what gives science its validity and how it ought to operate. How do we know that observations can be trusted, or that the generalizations made on the basis of observations can be trusted? Without these principles science has no validity at all. It is important to understand that even if this seems self-evident to someone, and therefore he does not engage in the philosophy of science (as noted, most scientists are like this), he still implicitly assumes the philosophical premise that sensory observation is reliable and correctly reflects the world, and that his ways of proceeding are valid and correct. These are quite a few philosophical assumptions without which science has no validity. The question of how important it is to deal with this and who is troubled by it is secondary to our discussion. This philosophical foundation is simply there, and science sits upon it whether we recognize it or not.

In another formulation I would put it this way. We saw that science deals with collecting sensory information and analyzing it, whereas philosophy does the same with intuitive information. But intuition is what gives validity to the senses. Who says my senses are reliable? Why assume that what I see reflects the truth? This is true all the more regarding my modes of analysis and generalization from observational facts. This is based on philosophy, that is, on intuition. Therefore philosophy logically precedes science, and stands before it in the hierarchy. The assumptions at the foundation of science are of course not the result of empirical observation (otherwise they themselves would be part of science), and therefore by definition they are products of intuition (unless you are a skeptic who thinks these are claims about us as human beings and not about the world). One might say that the conclusions of philosophy are the assumptions of science (I mean mainly the first kind of the philosophy of science, which includes broad parts of philosophy in general). By analogy to the common saying that where philosophy ends, faith begins, one may say that where science ends, philosophy begins (when one looks in the reverse direction, of course: philosophy is the more fundamental).

An Illustration: the "Cogito" Argument

This can be illustrated by a brief discussion of the question of materialism. It is commonly thought that the existence of matter is obvious, since we observe it with the senses, whereas the existence of mind is speculation and a matter of dispute (between materialists and dualists). The fact is that the debate over the existence of mind is waged with full force and materialism keeps gaining more and more supporters (quite undeservedly, it should be said), whereas undermining the existence of matter (idealism) is perceived as a philosophical hallucination that is not really interesting. Matter would thus seem to precede mind.

But on second thought it is clear that this is nonsense. The existence of mind cannot be challenged, whereas the existence of matter certainly can be disputed. Descartes' "cogito" principle derives my own existence by means of a conceptual argument (see about conceptual arguments in the first notebook): "I think, therefore I am." This argument proves the existence of the thinking mind and not the existence of the body, of course (for the body does not think). In other words, a person cannot deny his own existence, for otherwise it is not clear who is doing the denying.[4] Without entering into hair-splitting and the question of the cogito's validity (see briefly in the prologue to my book The Sciences of Freedom), one thing said there is certainly true: the claim that the body exists comes later than the claim that mind exists. Only after we have reached the conclusion that the thinking and cognizing mind exists can we speak of the existence of the body, and even that not necessarily (this is the result of observation and not of an a priori and necessary conceptual argument), for it is the mind that cognizes the body.

If we move to the relations between matter and mind, the claim is very similar. The claim that matter exists is made by the mind that recognizes it, since every insight and act of cognition is an event that takes place in mind and not in matter. Therefore a claim about the existence of matter implicitly presupposes the existence of the cognizing and thinking mind. Its existence is more certain and clearer than matter's. This is an expression of the precedence of philosophy, which deals with intuition, over science, which deals with material facts apprehended by the senses. Without grounding the receiving system, the inputs received from it have no validity.

The Connection to the Humanities

It is no accident that the humanities have so far dropped out of the discussion. I mentioned the natural sciences and the human sciences, because with regard to them there is a clear feeling that the scientific description proposed above is indeed valid. But in the humanities, such as literature and poetry, and especially philosophy, which also belongs to them, it seems that we are dealing with something different. In one of the comments the claim was already raised (in Leibowitz's name) that in the humanities there is no room for observation of anything, since the human spirit is not accessible to observation. It exists on its own subjective plane. The following questions now arise: what is the relation of the humanities to the philosophy-science axis I have described so far? And of course, in what sense does philosophy as defined here really belong to them?

As a first step, it is important to note a distinction that greatly confuses those who engage in the humanities, and I mean the distinction between creation and research about it (I discussed this in detail in my article in Makor Rishon, Academic Research and the Prohibition of Touching). No one would think of publishing a poem in a journal devoted to the study of poetry. There the distinction between the creation itself (=the poem) and its study is clear. The same applies to a story and the study of literature. But in philosophy there is almost no distinction between philosophers and scholars of philosophy.[5]

Why is this distinction so important for our purposes? The humanities engage in empirical research into the human spirit, that is, its products. One can sort and classify works of literature and poetry, as well as philosophical doctrines. One can discuss their meaning, the differences, the disputes, and the various approaches, just as in any other empirical science. So observations are made in the humanities too, except that the objects of observation are not natural objects but creations of the human spirit (hence the name "humanities"). Within this research, hypotheses are raised and theories are built, and this too is entirely parallel to research in the natural sciences. Of course, within the generalizations and analysis, intellectual steps are taken that are not purely empirical, exactly as in the natural sciences. Moreover, concepts and theoretical entities are defined here as well, where the concepts are attached to the empirical findings themselves (poetic genres, different linguistic manifestations, the use of different means of expression—metaphor, metonymy, etc., etc.) and the theoretical entities have a more speculative dimension because they are not products of direct observation. In the case of the humanities, the theoretical entities are usually phenomena in the human psyche and spirit, such as moods, different motivations, and the like. These indeed are not objects of observation, but neither are the electron and the gravitational field. These are entities whose value lies in the fact that they explain the observable phenomena.

Therefore there is no principled difference between the humanities and the natural sciences.[6] What is important, however, is to distinguish between the study of philosophy, poetry, and literature (poetics), and the creation itself. The creation of a poem and a story, as well as of philosophy, is a genre different from science. In the previous column I explained that philosophy is intuitive observation of the world (including the human spirit within it), and in the columns on poetry (107–113) I explained that poetry and literature are indirect means of communication intended for messages that are difficult, or impossible, to convey in informative prose.

If we now return to our subject, we must distinguish between philosophy and the study of philosophy. The study of philosophy is a scientific field like any other. It concerns empirical observation of thinkers and philosophical doctrines and their analysis (just like the observations in the humanities in general, as described above). But philosophical creation, by contrast, is an intuitive gaze at the world. Of course, within the study of philosophy itself, which is empirical in essence, a philosophical dimension may also appear. This happens when a scholar of philosophy suddenly focuses on a new phenomenon in philosophy and exposes another conceptual dimension by means of his intuition. In such a case he is in fact making an intuitive observation of his own, that is, acting as a philosopher and not as a scholar of philosophy. The boundary is not always sharp, but it is clear that it has two sides and clear that there are two such fields. It is also clear that neither of them challenges the map I have drawn here: one belongs to the domain of empirical science, since it deals with sensory observations, and the other belongs to intuitive observations, that is, to philosophy.

A Look at the Wikipedia Entry

Now that I have completed the definition in general terms, let us look a bit critically at the definitions proposed for philosophy in its Wikipedia entry. Under the heading "Characteristics of Philosophy and Its Definitions" it says there as follows:

There is no absolute agreement regarding the definition of the concept "philosophy." Nor is it clear to everyone what part of the world it contemplates.

In the previous column I clarified exactly these points, especially what it contemplates and how. I also showed there that it is impossible to propose another definition for it, unless one empties philosophy of content (that is, turns it either into delusion or into science).

Immediately afterward, several of the accepted definitions are offered there. I do not think they exclude one another, and one can certainly view their combination as an accepted definition of philosophy. A brief look shows that all of them can be grounded in my proposal, which also explains what all these have in common, but throughout the way the concepts and definitions have to be refined so as to exclude sciences and delusions.

1. Clarifying Concepts

The most accepted definition is that philosophy clarifies concepts. The scientist uses concepts, whereas the philosopher clarifies them. Human beings seek justice, whereas the philosopher asks "What is justice?" Peter Strawson defines this as "mapping the world of concepts" (in his work 'Analysis and Metaphysics').

First, one must distinguish between concepts (which belong to the logical-metaphysical realm) and terms (which belong to the linguistic plane). The clarification in question may deal with either of the two. Clarifying terms is a lexicographical matter and at bottom an empirical one, since we examine how people use one term or another. But the more significant enterprise is clarifying concepts, such as an attempt to define the concept of democracy (and not the linguistic term). What does it really include and what does it not? Why do this set of characteristics (free elections, human and civil rights, separation of powers, etc.) combine to create a unified concept, and why precisely these and not others?

The question now arises: on what basis do we clarify concepts? How do we know what is included in democracy? Looking at countries that are called democratic is not enough, because some of them may not be fully democratic. After all, the perspective here is critical, and we are not prepared to accept every state that defines itself as such as a democratic state. Therefore there is no escape from seeing this as observation of the ideas, that is, the use of intuition. In this sense, this enterprise can certainly be assigned to the definition of philosophy I proposed.

2. Investigating the Limits of Knowledge

Kant defined the task of philosophy as "the investigation of the limits of reason." Willard Quine argued that "philosophy seeks the contours of the world." G. E. Moore defined the task of philosophy as "a general description of the entire universe" (in his work 'Some Main Problems of Philosophy').

And again the question is how we manage to define the limits of reason and the contours of the world (not to mention a "general description" of it). If this is a matter of actual empirical observation, then once again we have returned to science. If it is a matter of cognitive limits, then plainly this is psychology. Therefore it is quite clear that here too we are dealing with intuitive observations of ourselves, of the world, and especially of the possible relations between us and it.

3. "A Mistake About the Object" and Linguistic Analysis

Soren Kierkegaard[7] claimed that the philosopher believes he is investigating the world while in truth he is investigating concepts. A metaphor he used is that of a person who sees a sign reading "Shoe repair done here," and when he enters the store he discovers that the sign is what is for sale. In analytic philosophy, Wittgenstein's ideas were continued, and the additional claim was made that not only are concepts the real object, but philosophical problems also involve errors in concepts. The philosopher's task is not only to investigate the concepts used by the problem, but also to correct them.

In any case, once again we are dealing with correcting concepts, but what is really meant is synchronizing terms in the manner of analytic philosophy. This deals mainly with language and terminology and with our ways of using them. Therefore, at bottom, this is a field that is mainly scientific. Wittgenstein is characterized by the fact that he is essentially doing scientific work of observations about our thinking and about its modes of operation. Yet anyone familiar with analytic philosophy knows that analyticity is a thin veneer for claims that contain not a few assumptions, and these are nothing but intuitive observations (except that they are made unconsciously and without admitting it).

4. Simultaneous Engagement with the Concept and the Object

George Collingwood, in his book 'The Idea of History,' argued that philosophical inquiry is characterized by the fact that it investigates the object of the concept and the concept simultaneously. "Philosophy deals with the object to the same extent that it deals with thought." For example, the psychologist asks how people manage the concept of 'truth'; the philosopher asks at the same time what truth itself is, that is, he simultaneously places himself also in the role of the bearer of the concept.

Here there is already an insight very close to what I have described so far. Although it seems to me that his intention is not only the relation between the linguistic term and the concept (=the cognition it describes), but also the relation between those two and the concept itself in the world (the idea). If we return to the concept of a democratic state, the claim is that there is an idea of democracy, there is our conception of that idea, and of course there is also the linguistic term "democratic state." The difference between the first two aspects is that the concept in the world is what it is. The Platonic idea does not depend on philosophical analysis and inquiry, and of course it is also not changed by our added understanding. It was there as it was even before we recognized it, and it remains there that way all the time. By contrast, our conception of it, that is, the meaning it receives in our cognition, can be mistaken or partial, meaning not fully corresponding to the idea. Philosophical discussion can advance it and create a better fit between it and the idea itself. Again, this is very similar to the analytic conception that sees philosophy as the clarification and synchronization of concepts (cleaning up language), since implicitly, as I argued above, they too are in fact engaged in intuitive observation of the ideas and in correcting concepts, and not only in terminology. But Collingwood expresses awareness of the essence of this process, and in fact describes here the mechanism of intuitive observation.

A Note on the Lack of Progress in Philosophy

In the next passage, immediately after these definitions, the above entry says:

Among the familiar properties of philosophy one may count reflexivity (that is, self-observation), non-empirical character (that is, the fact that a philosophical problem cannot be decided by observing reality), its engagement with general topics, and the fact that its central problems have not received an agreed-upon solution for thousands of years.

Here I must make several comments. First, engagement with philosophy itself (reflexivity) is also philosophy (more on this in the next column). We have no other tool by means of which our intuition can be known except intuition itself. The insight regarding its non-empirical character is also important, except that it somewhat contradicts some of the claims we saw above (and certainly the tendency of experimental philosophy). The same is true regarding the engagement with general topics, since as we have seen philosophy is the infrastructure of every other kind of inquiry (including science). But the claim that its problems do not receive agreed-upon solutions, which stands at the center of several harsh critiques of philosophy (Whitehead already wrote that all modern philosophy is nothing but a footnote to Plato)[8], is not accurate.

Thus, for example, Kant's claims—such as the distinction between phenomena and noumena, or the division of judgments into analytic-synthetic and a priori-a posteriori—are, in my opinion, philosophical facts (in fact, the distinction between phenomena and noumena is almost a scientific fact, or at least a necessary conclusion from scientific findings). Anyone who disagrees with this is simply missing something. A great many of the disputes in philosophy stem from careless, or simply unsynchronized, use of concepts. People are talking about different things, and so an appearance of disagreement is created. In many cases, and regarding quite a few foundational ideas, there is agreement, and in my opinion philosophy certainly does progress. The bad name it has acquired, as though it merely churns water and on every question there are a million opinions and approaches, stems from its being non-empirical and therefore supposedly subjective. But this is a false appearance. In a considerable portion of the issues there is agreement and the disagreements are illusory, and of course there is also progress. If indeed there were no agreement on any issue at the philosophical level, we would have to conclude that science, too, does not progress. After all, it is based on philosophy. Moreover, in many cases philosophy assists scientific progress, and scientific progress in turn advances philosophy. But this topic already requires analysis and discussion of its own, and this is not the place for it.

Summary

So what have we had here? We saw several considerations that led us to a general definition of philosophy. By means of them we explained several definitions that have been proposed for it, and we saw that the definition proposed here unifies them all and also leads to much greater sharpening and precision. It is worth noting that, as in the definition of poetry (columns 107-113), here too we begin with a diverse collection of phenomena and try to reach a common and fundamental basis for all of them, while in the end some of them remain outside (things that seem at first glance like philosophy but really are not: science, delusion, or an empty word-mill). This in itself points to a non-empirical component in this analysis, since the "facts" from which we began receive an interpretation that in turn renders some of them irrelevant. We do not cling to the facts. This is characteristic of complex processes of definition and analysis, and I discussed it there in detail.[9]

It will now be interesting to examine whether the discussion we have conducted here is itself a philosophical discussion. The observation of philosophy here was carried out on two levels: a descriptive-scientific one (what people regard as philosophy), and an essential-conceptual analysis (by means of a distinguishing comparison with science and avoidance of delusions). The result is an intuitive observation of philosophy that leads to clarification of the concept (and not only the term). But from the content of the definition it emerges that in fact what we have here is an intuitive observation of intuition itself. We saw that there is no escaping this, since intuition is the most fundamental plane of every discussion of every kind, and therefore observation of it itself must also be carried out within that framework.

Ron Aharoni, in his book The Cat That Isn't There, attributes to this loop all of philosophy's maladies, in all its issues, down to the last one. In his view, observing the instrument of observation expresses a confusion between the observing subject and the object observed, and this confusion knocks all of philosophy flat and turns it into one great piece of nonsense. I will address this deadly and sharp critique in the next column (which will of course be dedicated to Yishai, how could it not?!).

[1] At present they are trying to develop a branch in philosophy called experimental philosophy (experimental philosophy) with the aim of transferring more and more philosophical fields into the domain of science (and, not surprisingly in my opinion, there are quite a few foundational failures there).

[2] I have already pointed out in the past that this part is rather neglected. Usually, when people study the philosophy of science, they deal only with methodology and not with this part, and in my opinion the reason is that this part requires scientific expertise and not only philosophical expertise. Therefore the number of people who can say intelligent things on this topic is small (they are supposed to be well versed both in philosophy and in the scientific field under discussion). Hence there is little engagement with it, and a significant part of that engagement is flawed and superficial. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons for the many failures that appear in discussions of free will (in relation to neuroscience) and of God (in relation to evolution), since they deal with the philosophical meaning of the findings of neuroscience or evolution, an enterprise that plainly belongs to the second part. Such failures can also be seen in the field of experimental philosophy mentioned in the previous note.

[3] Just as those engaged in Jewish law have almost no reflections on their own modes of operation. They simply work intuitively, and afterward scholars can come and describe and critique their modes of operation.

[4] This is precisely the problem with the Hasidic conception that the divine contraction (tzimtzum) is not to be taken literally (that is, God did not really contract, and we and the world do not really exist. The question is: who is making this very claim? Alternatively, if we are only an illusion, in whose mind or consciousness does this illusion take place?)

[5] Incidentally, this is also the case in the realm of Jewish law (though slightly less blurred).

[6] I can already foresee the objections that will raise the contradiction between what I say here and the talk about the humanities and the social sciences as "junk sciences" (as opposed to the natural sciences). So let me say in advance that there is no contradiction at all. This methodology is indeed used in the humanities too; the problem is that the phenomena are too complex and the concepts are too vague, and therefore one does not succeed in reaching the precise theoretical level required in real science (which creates an opening for endless quantities of nonsense). But the principled description here is certainly correct.

[7] I have not checked, but it seems to me that there is a mistake here and that Wittgenstein, not Kierkegaard, is intended.

[8] A witty remark, and grotesquely exaggerated of course.

[9] See, for example, column 108 in the discussion of emotional intelligence.