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Sometimes, in the midst of a discussion with some of my philosophy-type friends, one friend will hand-wave dismissively at something I say as "merely an empirical matter". What is so mere about philosophical discussions surrounding empirical matters?
Accepted:
January 22, 2006

Comments

Richard Heck
January 23, 2006 (changed January 23, 2006) Permalink

Nothing, in my view. But there are approaches to philosophy that regard any question on which empirical facts might bear as somehow not really philosophical. This conception of philosophy is, it should be said, very much a recent invention. Certainly Aristotle did not make this kind of division between philosophy and the "merely empirical". Nor did Descartes, or Leibniz, or Hume, or Kant. It's an interesting question where and why it originates.

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