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1. Introduction
Philosophy is unrivalled among academic disciplines in terms of its many
and deep connections with the subject matter of other disciplines. This is
not just a matter of the applicability of philosophical concepts and
methods to other subjects. When you probe into almost any eld of learning, interesting problems of a philosophical nature tend to emerge. In
spite of this, philosophers take less part in interdisciplinary research than
do researchers in most other elds. The relationship between philosophy
and other disciplines is underdeveloped, probably due largely to historical
burdens.
In this article I attempt to clarify how philosophy relates, and should
relate, to other disciplines. In sections 2 and 3, I discuss philosophys
place among the sciences and other knowledge disciplines. Section 4 is
devoted to the delimitation of philosophy, and section 5 to the consequences of its losses of subject matter to other disciplines. Section 6 is
devoted to how social changes and progress in other disciplines inuence
philosophy, section 7 to philosophys role in interdisciplinary co-operations, and section 8 to applied philosophy. In section 9, I draw some
general conclusions on the social usefulness of philosophy.
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2. Is Philosophy Science?
There is considerable disagreement concerning the relationship between
philosophy and science. It is a common view among philosophers that
philosophy is not a branch of science, but another type of activity, quite
distinct from science. Among those who see a close connection between
philosophy and science, there are at least three views on the nature of that
connection.
According to one view, philosophical treatments of a subject are, at
least in typical cases, an early phase in the scientic study of that subject.
Philosophy is then regarded as a form of protoscience, out of which
science can be developed. Hence, William James dened philosophy as
a collective name for questions that have not yet been answered to the
satisfaction of all by whom they have been asked (James 1979, 23).
A second view treats philosophy in toto as one of the disciplines of
science. This viewpoint was held by C. J. Ducasse, who identied
philosophy as the science whose subject matter consists of spontaneous
particular appraisalsFand whatever turns out to be implicit in them
(Ducasse 1941, 237).
A third standpoint considers some but not all forms of philosophy as
science. One of the most outspoken proponents of this view was Hans
Reichenbach. He distinguished between speculative and scientic
philosophy, also called old and new philosophy. Contrary to
speculative philosophy, scientic philosophy leaves the explanation of
the universe entirely to the scientist; it constructs the theory of knowledge
by the analysis of the results of science and is aware of the fact that neither
the physics of the universe nor that of the atom can be understood in
terms of concepts derived from everyday life. Furthermore, in its
legitimate elds of inquiry, scientic philosophy uses a method of
analysis designed after the pattern of scientic inquiry, with which it
can arrive by logical analysis at conclusions as precise, as elaborate, and
as reliable as the results of the science of our time. Whereas the
speculative philosopher believes that philosophical certainty is possible,
the scientic philosopher has given up such illusions and knows that
probable knowledge is a basis solid enough to answer all questions that
can reasonably be asked (Reichenbach 1954, 303, 305, 325).
It is a deeply troubling aspect of these discussions that the term
science is in itself vague. Its demarcation depends not only on
epistemological principles but also on historical contingencies. Originally,
the word science was used to denote any form of systematic knowledge,
practical or theoretical. In the nineteenth century, the meaning of the
term was restricted to certain forms of academic knowledge, mainly those
studying nature (Layton 1976). Today, science refers primarily to
studies of natural phenomena and individual human behaviour. Some
of the disciplines that study human societies are called scientic whereas
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own way for similar reasons. As James noted, As fast as questions got
accurately answered, the answers were called scientic, and what men
call philosophy to-day is but the residuum of questions still unanswered (James 1979, 12; see Rescher 1978, 22223).
Thirdly, there have been occasions when practitioners of other
disciplines have, more or less independently, taken up issues and methods
that traditionally belonged to philosophy. The clearest example of this is
computer science. Already in 1979 Arthur W. Burks wrote: There are
many research areas of computer science which overlap philosophy,
either in the problems guiding inquiry or the answers produced. I think
that these areas will have a profound impact on philosophy in the next
twenty years (Burks 1979, 1). Since Burks wrote this, computer scientists
have investigated the structures of concepts and thought processes and
have made signicant advances, not least in the study of non-deductive
reasoning. In a period when formalized philosophy has often failed to
attract the enthusiasm of a new generation of philosophers, parts of it
have been revivedFand to some extent reinventedFunder the auspices
of another discipline.
Burks believed that philosophy would lose some of its traditional
subject matter to computer science. There are signs that this may now be
happening. Although not a direct outgrowth from philosophy, computer
science may very well join the long row of disciplines that have taken over
issues from philosophy.
It is often taken for granted that such losses in subject area are
regrettable from the viewpoint of philosophy. But this is not necessarily
so. By and large, philosophy has received much more from other
disciplines than it has lost to them. From the natural sciences, philosophy
has received new perspectives on space and time, matter, life, mind,
andFnot leastFthe place of the human species in the order of things.
We have only just begun to see the inuences of computer science on
philosophy (Bynum and Moor 2000).
Of course, the metaphor of losses and gains in territory is deeply
misleading. The disciplines are not ghting over a xed territory, and
there is no zero-sum game going on among them. To the contrary, they all
benet from each others successes. This applies not least to philosophy.
Game theory and decision theory have provided moral philosophy with
more precise formulations of age-old issues, and at the same time they
have supplied new fascinating problems for ethical analysis. Modern
philosophy of mind would not have been possible without the advances of
psychology and the neurosciences. Linguistics has provided similar
services to the philosophy of language. Set theory, quantum mechanics,
and evolutionary biology are other examples of new disciplines that have
enriched philosophy with new subject matter and new insights. In
summary, no discipline has gained more than philosophy from the
advances of other disciplines.
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6. A Changing Territory
Philosophy is often seen as dealing with eternal issues that have
remained the same since antiquity. On a very basic level, this is true.
We are still concerned with the nature of knowledge, with the proper
understanding of beauty, with the distinction between valid and invalid
arguments, and with the delimitation between right and wrongful actions.
But this is not different from many other disciplines. On a similar basic
level, mechanics is still concerned with understanding the movements of
objects, and astronomy with the nature and movement of extraterrestrial
bodies.
When we go beyond that basic level, the subject matter of philosophy
turns out to be liable to change as much as that of other disciplines. As
already mentioned, developments in other disciplines continuously provide us with new philosophical issues and with new perspectives on old
ones. Furthermore, since much of philosophy is concerned with social
relations, it is deeply inuenced by changes in human societies. Seen over
a longer period, the combined effects of developments in human society
and in human knowledge have thoroughly changed the range of philosophical issues. New philosophical problems and problem areas have
been created. Some of the old ones have been elucidated in new ways
whereas others have become obsolete. It is easy to give examples of
developments in the previous century that had a deep inuence on
philosophy: the emergence of democracy, the Holocaust, nuclear weapons, computers, environmental pollution, neurobiology, biotechnology,
and so on.
Many philosophers, however, have a far from untroubled attitude to
these developments. In the natural sciences, scientists are drawn to the
elds where the most promising new discoveries are made, and in the
social sciences new social developments attract the attention of researchers. In philosophy, there is much less interest in new subject matter.
A possible explanation may be that many philosophers prefer to see their
discipline as concerned with eternal truths, and therefore in some sense
independent of empirical facts. The idea seems to be that whereas the
empirical sciences deal with synthetic truths, philosophy is devoted to an
analytic realm in which empirical facts have no relevance.
This view of the boundary of philosophy is in itself philosophically
problematic. At least since Quines 1951 article Two Dogmas of
Empiricism it should be clear that the chances are small of drawing a
sharp and uncontroversial line between the analytic and the synthetic
domains. If there is an area for philosophical inquiry that is protected
from the inuence of fallible empirical knowledge, then that area is small
and probably excludes a large proportion of the problems that we have
traditionally called philosophical. However, some philosophers still act as
if the boundary was uncontestable. To mention just one example,
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concrete issue and then apply it to such concrete issues without revising or
amending it (Beauchamp 1984). It is, for instance, not advisable to
approach bioethics armed with a moral theory and a strong conviction
that it will solve all the problems that come up. Many of the problems
that emerge from ethical studies of biomedical practice have at most weak
connections to the choice between ethical theories, such as different
variants of deontology or utilitarianism (Heyd 1996; Kymlicka 1993;
Toulmin 1981). Bioethics is an innovation-rich discipline that has
produced new insights on personhood, consent, and other issues that
are pertinent in all branches of ethics. It is not obvious today in which
direction the most important inuence operates between bioethics and
basic or general moral philosophy.
There is, however, another sense in which the term applied philosophy may be relevant. To see that, let us return to the comparison
between it and applied mathematics, and consider a physicist who uses
differential equations to solve a problem in mechanics. We then have
(1) a basic mathematical theory, with no reference whatsoever to nonmathematical reality, (2) a mathematical model of the movements of
bodies, expressed in terms of that basic mathematical theory, and (3) a
physical reality, typically a class of experimental situations. The term
applied can be used to refer to the relation between (1) and (2); the
model is an application of the basic mathematical theory. The same term
can also be used to refer to the relation between (2) and (3); the
mathematical model is applied to the physical problem.
Consider now the chain consisting of (1 0 ) basic ethical theory, (2 0 )
bioethics, and (3 0 ) the ethical problems encountered in medicine and
biological research. As we have seen, the relation between (1 0 ) and (2 0 )
is quite different from that between (1) and (2), and should not be
described as one of application. On the other hand, the relationship
between (2 0 ) and (3 0 ) is more similar to that between (2) and (3), at least in
the sense that it too can be described as an application. Hence bioethics is
applied ethics in the sense of ethica applicanda (ethics to be applied)
rather than in the sense of ethica applicata (ethics that has been
applied). However, in this sense of applied it would seem to be a
reasonable requirement of any ethical theory that it is applied, or is at
least capable of being applied.
9. The Social Usefulness of Philosophy
The skills and methodologies developed in philosophy are useful both in
other academic disciplines and in society generally. Philosophers can
contribute to complex discussions, for instance, by clarifying the meanings of central terms, by separating normative from empirical issues,
and by distinguishing between linguistic and substantial differences
among discussants. These and other philosophical abilities are valuable,
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References
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Bynum, Terrell Ward, and James H. Moor. 2000. The Digital Phoenix:
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Ducasse, C. J. 1941. Philosophy as a Science: Its Matter and Its Method.
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Heyd, David. 1996. Experimenting with Embryos: Can Philosophy
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James, William. 1979. Some Problems of Philosophy. Volume 7 of The
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