CuSithBell comments on Less Wrong Rationality and Mainstream Philosophy - Less Wrong

106 Post author: lukeprog 20 March 2011 08:28PM

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Comment author: Vladimir_M 24 March 2011 03:25:51AM *  0 points [-]

I don't know whether it's true that science used to be considered a subtopic of philosophy ("natural philosophy"), but it seems entirely plausible that it was all philosophy but that at some point there was a terminological exodus, when physicists stopped calling themselves philosophers.

That is exactly true. The old term for what we nowadays call "natural science" was "natural philosophy." There are still relics of this old terminology, most notably that in English the title "doctor of philosophy" (or the Latin version thereof) is still used by physicists and other natural scientists. The "terminological exodus" you refer to happened only in the 19th century.

Comment author: CuSithBell 24 March 2011 03:39:11AM 3 points [-]

This is still happening, right? I once had a professor who suggested that philosophy is basically the process of creating new fields and removing them from philosophy - thence logic, mathematics, physics, and more recently linguistics.

Comment author: rabidchicken 24 March 2011 03:57:57AM 1 point [-]

Thats an interesting definition of philosophy, but I think philosophy does far more than that.

Comment author: CuSithBell 24 March 2011 04:00:01AM 2 points [-]

That's true, I may have overstated his suggestion - the actual context was "why has philosophy made so little progress over the past several thousand years?" ("Because every time a philosophical question is settled, it stops being a philosophical question.")

Comment author: Will_Sawin 24 March 2011 03:24:06PM 0 points [-]

This provides a defense of the claim that luke was attacking earlier on the thread, that

"It's totally reasonable to expect philosophy to provide several interesting/useful results [in one or a few broad subject areas] and then suddenly stop."

Comment author: CuSithBell 24 March 2011 03:56:05PM 0 points [-]

Possibly, yes, but I'd expect philosophy to stop working on a field only after it's recognized as its own (non-philosophy) area (if then) - which, for example, morality is not.

Comment author: Marius 24 March 2011 04:33:38PM 0 points [-]

Is theology a branch of philosophy?

Comment author: CuSithBell 24 March 2011 04:54:31PM 0 points [-]

Errr... it seems to me that theology in many ways acts like philosophy, with the addition of stuff like exegesis and apologetics... but any particular religion's theology is distinct from the set of things we'd call "philosophy" as a monolithic institution. This is far from my area of expertise, however!

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