Ask HN: What Is Modern Philosophy? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What Is Modern Philosophy?

4 pointstoombowoombo8 comments

Based on the fact that philosophy means "love of wisdom", I would consider that all modern-day domains of science could be placed under philosophy.

The quantum studies have strong philosophical underlying to them, in my opinion. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge (which could cover a large part of advanced math) seems to be also philosophical.

Nonetheless, if I'm looking into articles/books/content about modern philosophy, I don't really find the current scientific ideas there.

So my question is: What is modern philosophy, if it's not science?

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I don't know much about "modern philosophy" but traditionally philosophy has focused on questions that are beyond or "prior to" scientific questions. For example modern science (which used to be called Natural Philosophy) is based on empiricism. The question of the extent to which empiricism is a valid means of gaining knowledge is a philosophical question, as is the question "what is knowledge". Both belong to the philosophical specialty of epistemology, which means the study of knowledge.

Another major area is the philosophy of mind which includes questions such as "what is consciousness" and "does consciousness arise from matter".

> traditionally philosophy has focused on questions that are beyond or "prior to" scientific questions

Yes. As soon as a branch of enquiry has some sort of empirical methods and evidence, it ceases to be philosophy and becomes science. Philosophy is left with the 'hard' questions.

I don't think you'll find much love between the two nowadays. Modern science likes to make allusions to being the "truth" or at least based on some logical rigor. Back in the day you had someone like Godel be buddies with all the greats of science despite his critical takes. I can't imagine this happening today.

> So my question is: What is modern philosophy, if it's not science?

Science looks for predictable facts.

Philosophy looks for ways to live will.

They're as different as chalk and cheese.

However, people do science, so, they're gonna have philosophical opinions. But you can do science without philosophy and contrawise.

Or do you mean the ontology behind science? Asking where knowledge comes from?

Why were they so intertwined early on?

The early stoic schools had whole subsections of them essentially devoted to math/science.

> Why were they so intertwined early on?

Curiosity?

Because knowledge starts low resolution and then slowly becomes higher resolution?

Science is epistemologically limited: I won't go into depth, but instead suggest you read Nietzsche for your answers.

No serious science can exist without philosophical foundations to it.

The whole modern materialistic scientific world view emerged from Aristotle "metaphysics" which is pure philosophy. To some extent at least.

So the more correct question is — what is modern science if not an applied side of philosophy?

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