to what extent can philosophy be considered as science?

Question

Can Philosophy be regarded as science, since both fields are really broad.

Answer 1

I consider myself a philosopher, and I have great respect for science. Given this I would never try to argue that the two intersect. There are a few reasons for this:

Philosophy doesn't use the scientific method. No hypothesis testing, no experiments, etc.

Philosophy doesn't seek to discover or establish laws, it seeks to discover or establish truth.

Philosophy isn't necessarily systematically arranged. It certainly can be, but it doesn't have to be. You can have philosophy without systematic arrangement. The same can't be said for science. Systematic arrangment is a necessary condition for science, but not for philosophy, thus the two can't be the same.

The closest it comes is if you use the "knowledge as facts or principles" definition of science, but even this is problematic. You can certainly discover principles with philosophy, but facts require a level of objectiveness that philosophy just might not be capable of.

If the places where science and philosophy differ, it's my opinion that the lack of the use of the scientific method really draws the line. Even the social sciences (political science, sociology, for example) have seen the necessity of the scientific method, and have started to use it. Philosophy has not.

I must qualify all of this: I'm not looking to make a value judgement. The fact that philosophy is not a science has zero effect on its usefulness, it simply means that science and philosophy are two different things. Science doesn't intrinsically mean "good" and not science doesn't intrinsically mean "bad." They're just different.

I would assert that philosophy is bigger than science. It can encompass all things - morality, religion, ethics, even science itself (there is a whole academic field on the philosophy of science). To me, philosophy is the consideration of all things, science takes these things and considers them individually and breaks them apart for study.

Answer 2

They both involve the systematic search for truth and encourage a rigorous kind of thinking about the world. And they share a common origin; instead of having philosophers and scientists, we used to have mostly "philosophers" who were a combination of both (like, say, Aritstotle). But philosophy and science today are clearly separate disciplines. Science is based on physical experimentation; if there isn't an experiment involved, then what you have probably isn't science. There's some gray area about things like astronomy, and other fields where rigorous sorts of observation are used instead of experimentation, but for the most part, science is a discipline defined by the process of inductively reasoning from experimental data. Philosophy is not.

If you throw mathematics into the lot, this becomes still more complicated. A lot of important math has been done by philosophers; look at Leibniz, for example. In the last century, philosophers (like Wittgenstein) basically created formal logic as we now know it. Bertrand Russel worked on set theory. It should be noted, as well, that mathematics is not an experimental discipline (except for the naturally exceptional case of proof by exhaustion).

Linguistics, too, has significant overlap with some types of analytic philosophy. And also to mathematics -- computational linguistics is an interesting (if arbitrary and confounding) field.

Psychology and philosophy have also historically overlapped -- Freud, Jung, and Lacan, all psychologists, are much more important to critical theorists than they are to psychologists. With the advent of behavioral psychology, which is a more explicitly scientifically discipline, psychology and philosophy are drifting apart again.

At any rate, I've gone on long enough. Suffice it to say that philosophy is an incredibly broad field which informs and is informed by any number of other fields. When we can't or don't have inductively-derived data in any field, philosophy is sometimes what fills the gap. Are the brain and the mind the same thing? Ask a philosopher, not a neuroscientist, because there is no experiment that can tell you the answer. All we can do is think very clearly and rationally about the question -- and that is what philosophers are there for. It's not science, but that doesn't mean it's not useful.

Answer 3

There's no unified philsophy nor unified science. The two domains intersect and require each other. And even then its always discontinuous philosophies meeting disparate sciences. There are no robust reductions of one to the other or even one type to a glimmering category.

Science doesn't always use the scientific method: for instance, choosing which theory to use, given more than one theory which predict the same data, there's often institutional disputes, but no empirical testing. Some sciences can't even use the scientific method because we cannot observe all the implications of the view, as in any theoretical physics...

Philsophy, likewise, doesn't omit the scientific method. The use and reliance on thought experiment demonstrates this. Instead of searching the empirical world for actual data that conflicts with a thought experiment, a philosopher looks for possible counterexamples. Hypothesis, evidence (in the form of possibilia), conclusion.

Not to mention the amount of empirical studies that philosophy relies on-- for example, look at the literature for personal identity. Without brain bissection as an empirical fact, none of the wild conclusions follow. Or look at Neural Plasticity as a scientifically documented phenomenon, and then look at the discussions generated in the philosophy of mind.

Answer 4

The rational counterpart or anti-thesis to Science is Art and the Synthesis is Philosophy. Art is skill a certain knowing, while science is mere love of understanding and philosophy is love of wisdom. In essence Science is void of intuition and volition, art is random and it is Philosophy that can explain the practical merits of either in a neutral fashion. Hence given a argument Art and Science take turns playing prosecutor and Defense but in the end Philosophy is always the Judge!

Note how Plato asserts the highest Government role to Philosophers and the second role to Artists not Science, but warns that the reason is Artists are the most dangerous!

Answer 5

Philosophy is actually a kind of science; it is a general science which is interested in everything (mainly) and which pushes minds to think in order to find answers to all the questions.

Answer 6

I would say that the two are linked as they both emphasize reason and the search for truth. Philosophy is mroe on the metaphysical level, while science deals with the physical realm. I think they both use similar thoguht processes and ideals of truth to arrive at thier conclussions.

Answer 7

Well I think that Yahoo Answers got it right when they put this section under Arts & Humanities. Science looks more at hard realities whereas the Humanities are more concered with the intangible aspects of what it means to be human, just like philosophy looks at the intangible parts of knowledge.

Answer 8

Philosophy is the most rigorous of sciences - it is the mathematics of knowledge. It examines the truth, the knowableness and the means by which we can be certain of everything we think we know. It is the height of science.

Answer 9

The be conscious technology means wisdom and records of what's fairly real and conclusions that are based upon unquestionably evidence and logical reasoning. To the quantity a philosophy adheres to those concepts in its attention of actuality, it could rightfully be seen a technology.

Answer 10

Everything starts with philosphy. People do things a certain way based on their philosphy toward it. I would'nt call philosophy a science more so than a way of life.