Where are our Philosophers?

Philosophers were the first humans to organise rational thinking into structured disciplines aimed at understanding the world and the mind.

Philosophers used rational thought rather than belief or doctrine, as the means to understanding the most important issues of humanity.

The earliest philosophers noticed the power and value of the intellectual mind in understanding the world, especially the value and benefits of analysis, critique, doubt, logical deduction and induction and at the beginning of philosophy, to understand the nature of matter and being.

They noticed the relation between words, meaning and being. They noticed the abuse of assumption.

They studied language use. They concentrated on how conclusions are derived. They examined thought processes and their role in acquiring empirical and deduced and assumed knowledge.

Philosophers divided their rational efforts into studying logic and language, morality, knowledge, existence, being, reason, politics, justice, and the physical world.

They created subjects into discrete disciplines they called Ethics, Epistemology, Ontology, Metaphysics, Logic, Politics, Language, the Mind, Jurisprudence and the physcial sciences of Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Biology and Physiology.

They started this organised study and teaching 2,500 years ago in Ancient Greece, Babylonia. Rome and other parts of the civilised world.

Philosophy is an intellectual activity that looks to refine intellectual activity, especially that natural activity that results in proclaimed knowledge, truth and statements people make that have a moral, truth and empirical value. No statement was immune to philosophy.

Philosophy invented and refined the physical sciences, called Natural Philosophy, and places of higher education and study such as the Academy, the Lyceum, culminating in the university. Philosophy dominated the thinking world for at least 2,500 years.

So, where is philosophy today?

Philosophy is a rational activity that applies to every subject of interest and wonder. There is nothing to which philosophy does not apply. It is ultimately the pursuit and love of wisdom. Philos = love, Sophia = wisdom.

Pythagoras coined the common use of the term Philosopher in this respect.

Philosophy as a critical activity, analyses the statements of other people and can identify the errors or limitations of these statements. If a person makes a conclusion based on premises, a philosopher can identify if the conclusion does not follow from the premises.

If a person makes a claim to know something, a philosopher can identify that the claim can or cannot be known.

Think about it... When you say you Know something, what do you mean? How did you come to know this thing? What do you mean, I know X?

Do you mean, you are aware of a thought? Do you mean something exists? Do you mean you saw something? Do you mean you have reached a conclusion of deduction or induction? It is clear that what we call knowledge can mean many different things. Philosophers will try to divide what you say you know from what you do know, and what you don't know.

Philosophers can, as Bryan MaGee said, clear the rubbish of thinking out of the way of our path to truth.

Philosophy can refine your thinking, so that you approach truth by the most direct path.

So why are philosophers so silent today when so much of what they are interested in is being debated?

Philosophers, like scientists, do not care about your feelings. Like scientists, philosophers care about the truth. Philosophers even argue about the nature of truth. Coherent truth and contingent truth.

Philosophers could have so much value to add to today's important issues: gender identity, religion, human rights, any issue that uses reason and claims of knowledge to reach its conclusions or statements of fact or morality.

Where are they?

This not to say that only professional philosophers can address the isssues above. Not true. Anyone can intentionally or naturally do philosophy; and they do. Philosophers have refined what we all do naturally.

I could build a house. I could have a go at removing a mole. I could teach my kids economics. But why would I do all this, when there are experts out there that do it for a living, who have years of experience, success rates, and more knowledge and skill than I have?

We don't have to leave all these important issues to experts. But we should seek the benefit of hearing what they have to say.

Philosophers are not scientists. Scientists use specific methods to make statements about the observable, measurable world that meet a highly valued criteria for being closer to the truth, but...

Scientists are only interested in the physical world. This is a world of phenomena that can be measured and known objectively. The tests of scientific knowledge depend on other people observing the same phenomena and reaching the same conclusion if and only if the physical aspects are agreed.

What if we talk about the non physical world? The mind. Thoughts, feelings, memories, mental experience? Being, consciousness, morality?

Science has nothing to say about the non physical world.

So who does?

The religious? Ideologists? The average person?

And philosophers.

The absence of philosophers in current public pedestrian and political debate is hardly even noticed by most. Philosophers are all but forgotten. Even their legacy is valued without reference to them.

Philosophy has always been a mysterious perhaps elite subject. It has the reputation of being above all our heads. It is impractical. It is unreachable. It is a hobby of intellectually superior people.

What people don't realise is that they are conducting philosophy as a mental activity all the time themselves.

Philosophers can make a huge impact in the negative criticism game, that almost everyone engages in with an opponent to their view or belief.

Philosophers have become skilled at pointing out inconsistencies, bad logic, false claims to knowledge, poor use of language. Philosophers demand definition, clarity of meaning, more information, they demand consistency and internal coherence. They see the flaws in our reasoning. This is all required before a debate can even begin to continue.

Philosophy starts at the first statement. The discourse cannot proceed before analysis of the first statement. This is the stage of discourse where language is clarified, meaning is agreed, assumptions are revealed and all relevant information is on the table. If the statement is a question, it is first confirmed as a valid or invalid question, or even a relevant question.

From there, discourse will proceed. The role of philosophy then is to analyse any statements of fact, claims to knowledge, and the logic of deducting or unducting conclusions.

The role of philosophy in any intellectual discourse on any subject is to make clear and valid whatever is said by parties in the discourse.

Particular attention is paid to agreed and consistent and coherent terminology, valid logical reasoning and assumptions or claims to knowledge.

None of this is the purpose of scientific method. All of this is relevant to scientific method, but it is not the aim to which science strives. Philosophy is the first step for a scientist to make before proceeding into the activities of conducting and expressing science.

Even after this first step, the scientific expressions will be analysed by the philosopher.

Example, scientists will conclude often that evidence is necessary before a claim is confirmed.

What is evidence? What is proof?

How exactly is a fossil evidence of the age of the planet or the evolution of a species? What rational process leads one to the other? A scientist will argue the course of reasoning to connect the two, but that is not a scientific activity, it is a philosophical activity.

Scientists assume many axioms, such as the value of repeated results in experiment, peer review, and inductive reasoning. Scientists assume these axioms are enough to reach sound conclusions.

Scientists assume the axiom of the uniformity of nature. What happens in one case must happen in all cases. What happened a billion years ago will predict what happens in a billion years. Scientists assume a consistency of physical properties and behaviours through space-time.

Philosophers challenge assumptions and axioms, which is part of their value in analysing science.

Philosophy challenges scientific method and its expressions.

There are many subjects of great importance to humanity that lie outside the boundaries self-imposed by science. Morality, thought, the mind, justice, love, memory, happiness, all things in our human experience that are not physical by nature and therefore cannot be quantified, measured or observed, cannot therefore be treated by experiement and induction to evaluate their expressions.

So philosophy not only challenges the methods and axioms of science, but also the limitations of their application.

Psychology and sociology, and their offspring, politics and economics, all attempt to acheive knowledge and understanding by the same principles science attempts knowledge and understanding of the physical world. They use experiment, evidence and inductive reasoning to study the mind.

The sciences have a completely different role from philosophy.

Science says things and philosophy tells us what can and cannot be said.

Science uses tools to achieve a result. Philosophy evaluates the tools. Especially, logic and language and meaning and the nature of the mind that produces them.

Many things are outside the domain of science. There is nothing outside the domain of philosophy.

Not all of us are scientists, but all of us philosophise.