Philosophy

Does Philosophy have a truth claiming capability? And if so are the truth claims of Philosophy somehow unique?

Comments

Interesting. Much of philosophy does consist in making and assessing claims about what is and what ought to be the case (is there a God? is there free will? what is justice? do we human beings have moral obligations to future generations or nonhuman animals or...? and so on). And in seeking answers to such inquiry philosophers may draw on science, history, literature, logic, phenomenology and so on. Though philosophy also consists of inquiry into the very concept of truth, the limits of inquiry, and the challenge of skepticism. I suggest that the truth claims you find in philosophy are, in one sense, not unique and are like the truth claims you find in other domains. One philosopher (a theist) may claim there is a God, while an atheist philosopher claims there is no God; this is not unlike a historian claiming that Marco Polo visited China and another historian claiming that is false. But philosophy does seem to take on unique sorts of questions. Some of these concern the underpinnings of different forms of inquiry. So, it is one thing to engage in physics, and another to engage in the philosophy of physics. In philosophy one takes up questions about the tools employed in different disciplines (a philosopher asks questions like: what are laws of nature? what is the nature of causation?) and the relationship between disciplines (what is the relationship of physics, chemistry, and biology?). Philosophers may also be unique in raising the question of what is the nature of truth itself. Of course, theologians, artists and so on may raise the question about what is truth, but if they do so in a way that truly involves constructing and comparing different theories of truth, then these theologians, artists and so on. are practicing philosophy.

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