Introduction
Philosophy consists of attitudes toward life or ways of life and inquiries in such regard, and they come in a great variety, of course. Philosophical tradition displays a regular bias in favor of the life of contemplation and equanimity.
There was an effort to displace these values with a new tradition - nineteenth-century Romanticism - that emulated the heroes and despots of old and likewise glorified the life of achievements, especially great ones, military and political. The rise of brutal regimes that pride themselves on such achievements has somewhat attenuated the popularity of this enduring and sadistic tradition but, alas, not to the point of extinction.Philosophical inquiries traditionally center on a small set of questions that presumably signify the choice of an attitude toward life or away of life. Socrates, the father of Western philosophy, asserted his philosophy of life in his famous slogan: “the unexamined life is not worth living.” His way of life was devoted to preaching this idea by challenging people to examine their own life: he moved throughout the day from one place where people gathered to another, challenging the opinions of anyone who would accept his challenge.
Here are examples of questions that raise discussions that tradition considers philosophical. What are things made of? What kinds of things are there in the world? Is the soul immortal? How can we avoid errors when we seek explanations (of physical or mental events)? What are the right principles of the right moral conduct? What is the best political regime? Such questions sally forth in quest for the very best, even though we know that the very best is unattainable because we are not divine. But the quest for the idea of the best is the quest for criteria; to find what we would deem the best is to find a criterion forjudging some action or thing as the best - or even some action or thing as better than some other action or thing, which is very useful.
Like all intellectual activities, philosophy is, in part, the search for good ideas - that is, for ideas, theories, and general truths that have intellectual value.
Philosophy thus shares this search with religion (or theology), mathematics, and science in an effort to explain the world around us and adjust as best as possible. In this respect, philosophical, mathematical, and scientific research are partners in a venture, moving along in different regions of the territory that they share - whether in cooperation, in a division of labor, or at times in serious competition, whatever the case may be. People engaged in any kind of research show no interest in a detailed catalogue of discrete points of information that would fill a telephone directory, no matter how practical and useful. Useful things may be most uninteresting; the more accurate they are, the more useful, but even the most accurate are at times merely useful. Rather, researchers seek theories - that is, general statements (statements that begin with the word all) that explain known phenomena and results, however puzzling and fascinating. These observations are themselves general or particular, and their explanations then belong to the generalizing and the historical sciences, respectively. Of course, some people invest much effort in collections of all sorts, from butterflies to stamps. Many people admit that these collections can be fascinating, and researchers may find them useful, but they are scarcely scientific unless they are accompanied by theoretical considerations. Thus, the difficult and interesting question imposes itself on butterfly collectors: What is a butterfly?Opinions keep changing. Agendas keep changing, too, but less rapidly. This is true of both philosophical and scientific inquiries; however, notoriously philosophical agendas are much slower to change. Some people suggest that they never change, so they refer to the agenda of philosophy as a hardy perennial. They exaggerate. We can easily detect change even regarding the philosophical question about our intellectual agenda: What is it and what should it be? In the Middle Ages, theology was at the top of the philosophical agenda and then exited almost entirely in the seventeenth century.
To the end of the eighteenth century, what was then called natural philosophy and what we now consider science (e.g., physics, biology) was considered an integral part of philosophy. Later, some of the research was gradually recognized as independent studies. Physics and chemistry came into their own first; biology and mathematics followed suit. In the twentieth century, science became identical to empirical science,[2] with physics as its paradigm; thus, modernist philosophers expelled mathematics from the field of science (and perhaps kicked upstairs to the field of logic): questions concerning science ceased to affect it. “To the extent that the statements of mathematics represent reality,” said Einstein in a memorable dictum, “they are not certain, and to the extent that they are certain, they do not represent reality.” These changes were completed by the middle of the nineteenth century. The question was soon raised: Why? And this question still engages many philosophers today, filling the philosophical literature. Medicine gained scientific recognition only in the early twentieth century, impacted more by Louis Pasteur’s discovery than anything else. Mental illness entered science through the back door, as medicine. Psychology proper (especially studies of perception, learning, and child development) was left behind and became a major part of the impoverished field of philosophy. Some still view it this way, considering what they call “philosophical psychology” or the “philosophy of the mind” to be a major philosophical preoccupation. Psychology itself already has a part that is generally viewed as scientific, particularly perception theory - or at least some parts of it. The rest of psychology, including psychopathology and learning theory, is still in the process of becoming a science or gaining scientific recognition. Some psychologists claim that in the psychological research they carry out, they follow procedures known as scientific and that this elevates their research to the status of a science; therefore, their field should be recognized as such. Many psychological discussions still appear in the philosophical literature, including the discussion of the question: Does psychology deserve the status of a science and, if so, which of its theories belong to science proper and why? Some psychological research is obviously not scientific, or not yet.In this sense, perhaps philosophy is the research into questions that have not (yet) developed into sciences. And perhaps it is the hothouse of domains of interests and research destined to go out into the world and gain scientific status. This was the idea that the great philosopher Bertrand Russell advocated early in the twentieth century (in his rightly celebrated introductory The Problems of Philosophy). He did not say, however, what examination a field or a theory should pass in order to graduate as a science proper, so we do not know if, in his view, philosophy itself might one day pass the same test. He did want this: he said his life ambition was to contribute to the process of philosophy becoming scientific. He pointed out that one condition for a theory to be scientific is accessibility - at the very least, a theory must be on public display and clear before it can be declared scientific. Russell raised the level of clarity of philosophy to such a height that those whom he influenced speak and write much more clearly than was the rule before his time. We hope that, at least in this respect, he has influenced us as well, that he has taught us how to be a little clearer than we would otherwise be. It is not easy to express oneself clearly, least of all in philosophy.
Russell wanted both science and philosophy to be as free as possible of obscure language and mystical ideas. He appreciated every case of a science being liberated from the yoke of philosophy; this is a liberation movement of sorts. Apart from obscure language and mysticism, what is this yoke from which science should free itself? We discuss this question later in this book. For the time being, however, let us make do with the mention of just one important idea about the difference between science and philosophy, one that has gained common recognition. Philosophical discussions may raise doubts about any statement, no matter how obvious it seems. Scientific discussions are more limited: they take much for granted. For example, all discussions about any theory of chemistry leave no room for doubt about the existence of matter or water; one who is doubtful should move to the seminars of the philosophy department. This, to repeat, is common wisdom. Being philosophers, we permit ourselves to doubt that it is true. Is it? If yes, why? If not, why is it so popular despite its being erroneous? We return to these questions in due course as well.