Topics Philosophy

Question I think of philosophers as people who describe and debate in order to reach defensible positions concerning ethics, truth, etc. But what is uniquely philosophical about such practices? Philosophers identify fallacies, but so do logicians. Philosophers are trained in intellectual movements, but so are historians. As Rorty put it, where is the fach in philosophy? Is philosophy more about excellence in argumentation than content?

Accepted:
February 29, 2016

Comments

I myself would answer "Yes"

I myself would answer "Yes" to your final question. I think you've put your finger on what distinguishes good philosophers from good practitioners of other disciplines: the desire and the ability to attain the highest standards of argumentative attentiveness and rigor regardless of the topic at hand.

We can rely on good mathematicians, physicists, and biologists (for example) to be careful and rigorous about math, physics, and biology. But get them outside their scientific specialties, and the results are very much hit-or-miss, with a lot of miss: Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Lawrence Krauss, Jerry Coyne, and Bill Nye on the nature and value of philosophy; Sam Harris on free will and on the ability of science to resolve ethical questions; Coyne on free will; Richard Dawkins on free will and on the sorites paradox; Krauss on why there's something rather than nothing. Those are examples of sloppy argumentation that come readily to mind from just my own reading.

It's not scientists who end up identifying and correcting these mistakes. It's philosophers, such as David Albert on Krauss and Alvin Plantinga on Harris.

I'd say that's enough of a Fach to distinguish philosophy from other disciplines.