What does a philosopher do?

[Robert Charleston <rc3673@student.open.ac.uk>]

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This all comes with the premise that I know I am studying philosophy, but 
always feel horrendously embarrassed when someone introduces themselves to 
me 'a philosopher', rather than someone interested in philosophy, or who 
studies or teaches or lectures on it. Haven't quite figured out why, but I 
think it's got something to do with the concerns below and the idea of 
'self-certifying' yourself as being something like Socrates or Locke...

Anyway, the current philosophers' magazine has an article in it attempting 
to define what qualities you need to be good at philosophy.

As I was reading it, I had the nagging feeling that this may already be 
begging the question of being a philosopher. Their 'seven pillars of 
wisdom' are: maintaining your own vision, good writing, humility, 
understanding the nature of explanation, questioning the nature of 
shibboleths, keeping engaged, and knowing what you don't know.

But these (with perhaps the exception of shibboleths) are *ways* of doing 
something, not the activity itself. Add them together and you could be 
anything from a journalist to a doctor. My question is: What does a 
philosopher do? Is it something different from what other people do? Is it 
a distilled version of what other people do some of the time? Or is it 
just the same as what other people do, but for rather less money?

What do you do when you are doing philosophy? I read papers, scribble 
notes, think hard, try and organise my thoughts into some sort of 
acceptable pattern, and then look for flaws in my argument. This doesn't 
seem to be very different from studying anything from politics to physics. 
Even the usual answers I hear ('we question our own nature') about why 
studying philosophy is different seem to apply equally well to other 
subjects from developmental psychology to yogic meditation.

So maybe it's the content of what we study? But my recent modules have 
covered equality (also covered in politics), genetic determinism (also 
covered by biology), and transcendental metaphysics (also covered by 
religious studies). It's not that we study a different world to everyone 
else, surely?

So maybe it's the angle we take on those subjects? This seems it might 
work in one of two ways. Perhaps we always look at the (rational, logical) 
relations between ideas, rather than empirically researching the things 
those ideas are about. Or perhaps it's that we follow certain rules when 
we consider the world that others don't (modus ponens, validity, 
bivalence, non-contradiction). The former makes us sound like there are 
parts of the world we don't look at (the empirical) and puts me in mind of 
grammaticians and theoretical psychologists. The latter makes the rules 
part of what makes philosophers philosophers, so means they can't question 
the rules or throw them away. Which at least some people generally thought 
of as philosophers have done. So it doesn't seem particularly sufficient 
either.

So I'm left with the horrible alternative that being a philosopher is 
about doing what other people do, but having a sign on the door that says 
'Philosopher at work. Beware: dishevelled hair and exposed premises'.

What do you think? Are there other alternatives - am I looking in the 
wrong place? Or is there just nothing that there is to be a philosopher?

Help!

Rab.


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