philosophy

["Alice Evans" <apyyae@nottingham.ac.uk>]

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** For Your Eyes Only **

my point was that philosophers question assumptions and pursue their answers without referring to physical data. i think this reading fits with brian's argument. to philosophise is to ask questions about the world (including all academic disciplines), as brian said. i pre-emptively expanded on this point by noting that unlike physics which seeks knowledge about the world in an empirical fashion, philosophy does not require such datum.

indeed, as a passing note, i was doing some reading for my dissertation when i chanced upon the following,

"the currency of philosophy is ideas - their meaning and rational fondation - not the nuts and bolts of the legislative prcoess, say, or the mechanics of community organisation".

(tom regan)

this idea seems to fit with my argument (but of course im not taking mr regan as gospel, just thought id share his view with the group)

in addition, i thought i'd look up other opinions on the matter and turned to my old pals at wikipedia who declare that "philosophy is a discipline or field of study involving the investigation, analysis, and development of ideas at a general, abstract, or fundamental level". The latter definition fits in very nicely with my own, i mean, its much more concise, but i think we're saying the same thing. Wikipedia implicitly acknowledges that other disciplines share this process of "analysis" but what defines philosophy is that it develops ideas in the "abstract" sense, without reference to "spatio-temporal data" (as i declared in my last note).

now, obviously me getting two people that seem to kind of agree with my position in no way adds to the validity of my argument but perhaps the fluidity of their language might help ur understanding of mine.

with reference to brian's point, about questioning the underlying assumptions and foundations to other disciplines, well that's inadvertantly admitting that what we do is to turn over ideas, presuming his 'foundations' are metaphorical...


but to my 'attacker', Mr Daniel...

forgive me if i have misunderstood ur argument but i fail to see how you have refuted my conclusion. 

you declare that "anything that is going after knowledge is philosophy" and i kind of have to disagree... but maybe im confused? please expand.

toodle pips

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy



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