| Is philosophy an art or a science, and what is its importance?
Posted: 1/30/2008 2:17:55 PM | To ask questions? To give answers? To pose new challanges on previous or outdated beliefs? To bump heads with fellow intellectuals? Sharing or exchanging of ideas? Expression?
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Is philosophy an Art or a science?
What's your answer to this question? I'm new here, and I'm just curious. | |
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| Is philosophy an art or a science, and what is its importance?
Posted: 1/30/2008 2:42:37 PM | I wouldnt class it as a science as its based more heavily on opinion rather than fact. From what I understand the only facts are those postulated by other philosophers (Plato, Carl Jung etc.) So I guess its more of an Art.
I didnt used to rate philosophy much but Its good to getting the grey matter into action. Im more of a thinker and a doer rather than just a thinker that does nothing hahaha. | |
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| Is philosophy an art or a science, and what is its importance?
Posted: 1/30/2008 8:31:58 PM | My view of philosophy consists of the categorization of ideas and logic testing of those categorizations and ideas. It seems to make little difference if it is approached as either art or science since both will give interesting novel ideas.
Being a pragmatic person, I prefer my philosophy to be useful to me, but I can appreciate an elegant but pointless argument also. There will always be more questions than answers, and hopefully there will always be curious people to look for some of the answers. | |
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| Is philosophy an art or a science, and what is its importance?
Posted: 1/31/2008 5:36:26 AM | I guess this is a fairly open-ended question, and it depends on your definition of 'art' and 'science.' 'Art' can mean a number of things, from the creation of aesthetic objects to a practical trade or craft. 'Science' can mean knowledge, or a means of gaining knowledge, or a subject with precise discourse, or it can mean modern empirical sciences such as astronomy, biology, chemistry, and physics.
I think philosophy resembles art and science in different ways. Philosophy resembles art in the sense it involves intuition and creativity. Dealing with philosophical systems, concepts and arguments (or making up new ones) I think for great philosophers, engages the same creative powers of genius which also create great works of art or scientific theories about the cosmos. Philosophy resembles science in that it is highly logical and values clarity and precision and coherence like scientific theories, but unlike science the theories in philosophy usually aren't stated in terms of mathematical equations but instead in the form of logical argument. I think nevertheless, for the philosopher great philosophical arguments made out of precise logical forms have the same beauty to the mind as mathematical structures do for the mathematician, or elegant and powerful scientific theories have for the scientist.
I might also say that reading the work of Descartes or Plato or Liebniz is sort of like music in a way, but in a way one can't quite articulate. | |
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MRJSD
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Joined: 1/26/2008
Msg: 8 | |
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| Is philosophy an art or a science, and what is its importance?
Posted: 1/31/2008 9:05:18 AM | I think philosophy is a good way to discuss topics that cannot be proven empirically.
Actually, I'd say that thats pretty much the only difference btwn philosophy and science. In science, all evidence must be empirical.
To ask questions? To give answers? To pose new challanges on previous or outdated beliefs? To bump heads with fellow intellectuals? Sharing or exchanging of ideas? Expression?
Yep useful for all of those. | |
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| Is philosophy an art or a science, and what is its importance?
Posted: 1/31/2008 3:38:24 PM | I see two possabilities:
1) Philosophy is what you take in school if you can't do anything else, like be a plumber or a watchmaker.
2) At it's most advanced all biology is really chemistry, similarly so all chemistry is really physics, all physics is math and math at its highest levels is philosophy. Therefore everything is philosophy by deductive reasoning. But, it doesn't help with real issues like "should I have beef vindaloo or szechwan shrimp for dinner?"
I'm leaning towards the vindaloo frankly. | |
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| Is philosophy an art or a science, and what is its importance?
Posted: 1/31/2008 9:46:09 PM |
Is philosophy an Art or a science?
It's neither, its about ideas and concepts which can really touch on any category.
The importance is that the ideas brought into society through philosophy shapes that society. Without philosophy, there may not be art, science, literature, ethics, etc.
Ideas start everything. A good idea will stand up to peer review and scrutiny. If you have an opinion that can provide a new perspective its like opening a door to even more ideas.
So basically yes to everything you said but much more. Philosophy is what helps everyone make sense of everything. | |
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| Is philosophy an art or a science, and what is its importance?
Posted: 2/1/2008 6:34:14 PM | I like the approach taken by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in their 1994 book, "What is pHilosophY?" (Columbia University Press).
Their basic answer is that philosophy concerns itself with the construction of concepts; and in this, philosophy is primarily interested in establishing that quality we call 'consistency'.
Art, they propose, concerns itself with "percepts": with matters which deal most directly with perception.
Science, by contrast, is focused upon "functives": practical descriptions of how things work, of what makes things function.
So: art, science, and philosophy are three distinct and separable fields. Each can indeed contribute to the others; but each is in its own right identifiable as a coherent field of inquiry and endeavor. However: because philosophy concerns itself with concepts in general, and with the quality of consistency in particular; it tends to be integral to the construction of any theoretical structures within both art and science. | |
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| Is philosophy an art or a science, and what is its importance?
Posted: 2/2/2008 9:08:06 PM | Theorhetically speaking,
Philosophy is based on logic.
Logic is the basis for Math
Math is a science.
Therefore - Philosophy is science.
My first semester Calculus professor taught philosophy/logic for the first 4 weeks of class. We didn't see a single mathematic problem till week 5.
You will often see Philosophy and logic combined in college courses and catagorized in the Math dept. or Natural Sciences. | |
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| Is philosophy an art or a science, and what is its importance?
Posted: 2/3/2008 2:32:40 PM | I must disagree most strenuously, for philosophy most certainly is not based upon logic.
Over and beyond everything else, philosophy must answer to 'what is'; and there is no logic at all in why one thing should be and another should not.
Reducing philosophy to the logic of the proposition strips it of the reality of being, and of becoming, which is its life breath. Many have tried to reduce philosophy to simple logic but it is never that simply because philosophy itself embraces the chaos which is the real, and from this tries to pull just a little bit of consistency. At the very heart of philosophy, you will invariably find the hard questions that deal with temporality: with being and becoming. It is here that logic just can't function adequately (as a concept, logic fails the basic philosophic test of applicability); because, in time, everything that is varies from itself. Now how can logic, which is based upon propositional identity, even try to provide and adequate grasp of this?
Concepts, you see, are variable: they have endo-consistencies related to their production, and exo-consistencies related to their application, but they do not have stable identities and they do not have variable identities: they have a differential quality that is indistinct due to the immanent nature of the elements of which they are composed. Logic demands distinct variable, and so is already an inadequate tool for the tasks which philosophy would need to demand of it. | |
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| Is philosophy an art or a science, and what is its importance?
Posted: 2/3/2008 6:47:45 PM |
Logic demands distinct variable, and so is already an inadequate tool for the tasks which philosophy would need to demand of it.
I had a hard time following TaichiJohn's post up to the point of this quote. Then it became very clear that since logic dictates that logic cannot be used for philosophical musings, then by definition, all the previous logic must be illogical. ;>) | |
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| Is philosophy an art or a science, and what is its importance?
Posted: 2/3/2008 7:24:20 PM | The philosophers of old ( aristotle, plato, democritus, euclides, pythagores, hippocrates, to name a few) laid the basis for the rational thinking of modern science, as well as many of its principle.
Hence why science is born out of philosophy. | |
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| Is philosophy an art or a science, and what is its importance?
Posted: 2/3/2008 10:27:26 PM | As the mackerel is a fish, yet, not all fish are mackerel; so too logic may be philosophical without philosophy itself being determined in its entirety by logic.
Star Trek fans will recall how the ever logical Vulcan, Mr. Spock, despaired of the emotive characteristics of humans; and in this precisely we can see how logic fails to grasp a very basic human trait: we all vary from ourselves without being other and we do this most noticeably through our emotions. Happy Captain Kirk and sad Captain Kirk are not two different people (okay, maybe they were in an episode or two) but, it is illogical for them to be the same... so, how could that be - what's up with that?
Or a bit more concretely: as Michael Foucault demonstrated, a concept - a 'word' - denoting an officially designated condition may remain the same over a long period of time; but, the texture of the official documentation which defines that word will shift as new treatments, diagnosis, or other institutional responses are developed. In other words, the endo-consistency of the concept may well stay the same but the exo-consistency will shift; and through this external shifting of relations, the nature of that imperceptible fusion which unites the internal components of the concept will vary without the components themselves actually changing. This is something we deal with all of the time; but, it is not something we deal with logically because in logic we can not affirm "A" and "not A" simultaneously and still produce true/meaningful statements within the boundaries of what logic deems to be acceptable. | |
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| Is philosophy an art or a science, and what is its importance?
Posted: 2/4/2008 5:19:17 PM |
Reducing philosophy to the logic of the proposition strips it of the reality of being, and of becoming, which is its life breath. Many have tried to reduce philosophy to simple logic but it is never that simply because philosophy itself embraces the chaos which is the real, and from this tries to pull just a little bit of consistency. At the very heart of philosophy, you will invariably find the hard questions that deal with temporality: with being and becoming. It is here that logic just can't function adequately (as a concept, logic fails the basic philosophic test of applicability); because, in time, everything that is varies from itself. Now how can logic, which is based upon propositional identity, even try to provide and adequate grasp of this?
Concepts, you see, are variable: they have endo-consistencies related to their production, and exo-consistencies related to their application, but they do not have stable identities and they do not have variable identities: they have a differential quality that is indistinct due to the immanent nature of the elements of which they are composed. Logic demands distinct variable, and so is already an inadequate tool for the tasks which philosophy would need to demand of it.
This is mumbo-jumbo. | |
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| Is philosophy an art or a science, and what is its importance?
Posted: 2/5/2008 1:42:48 AM | If you think that then perhaps you should not be spending your time in a thread concerned with the nature of philosophy, because as far as I can tell this a very accurate and well formed description of philosophy and one of it's parts, logic.
I for one am curious to hear more of Taichijohn's explanations of philosophy. I cannot find any and am interested to know more about how he comes to define philosophy. | |
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