What counts as doing philosophy thinking or reflecting?

[Ctk]

Interesting questions in the OP, CtK. Are you saying/thinking that in order to be done "correctly", philosophizing must involve either "problem solving", "thinking" or "reflecting" but cannot involve all three or any combination of them? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding your OP?

Regarding "racism":

I would define "racism" as; a form of "discrimination" based upon the criteria of "race".

"Race" is of course often associated with skin color or other physical features of the human body that might be common to a relatively large group of people. In its most fundamental scientific sense, "race" may be defined simply along genetic lines. Of course, theoretically the genetic difference of a single individual could, under the right circumstances, eventually lead to a whole race of people with similar features.

"Discrimination" is essentially unjust and prejudicial treatment of others. [based on definition Googled]

Something is "unjust" if it is morally unfair or wrong. [based on definition Googled]

Something is "prejudicial" if it is based upon assumptions involving potential "future" outcomes. [based on definition Googled]

Therefore I would say that "racism" is a bit more fundamentally the following:

A form of morally unfair or wrong treatment based upon assumptions involving potential future outcomes (discrimination) that is based upon the criteria of skin color or other physical features of the human body that might be common to a relatively large group of people (race).

Of course, as Voice of Time says, "race" is ultimately a human taxonomic construction based upon grouping people according to criteria that are not necessarily congruent with the physical world of objects. Much of what we think and do are examples of things based upon "taxonomic" understandings of the world around us (putting people and things into groups and types).

Hi Gary,
Thank's for your definitions, the race example, was just a concrete example that I was trying to use not for exploring the topic in depth. I put a clarification in the post above.
I think that my question for what counts as doing philosophy is geared more towards the methodology and the ways of reasoning in philosophy (metaphilosophy, hopefully I am using this term correctly) I am really interested in:
1) What distinguish philosophy from history?
2) What valid modes are there for doing philosophy? The reason for this question is that when I was reading, Euthyphro, there is at the socratic method of question and answer, therefore, you go and discard ideas. Similar to formal logic, in which you ask is this statement valid or invalid? Well if it is invalid, I will discard it. Will most people when trying to arrive at conclusions in philosophy propose an idea and then discard it?

[The Voice of Time]

I think that you are misunderstanding my example, what I meant is not exactly the content of the sentence but rather the form. Meaning that, if I am thinking about topic A(racism), then it would lead to a subtopic A.1(races).

There's no reason why it should, and I'm not quite certain what you're getting at here... "thinking" does not imply anything, thinking is a very vague concept so thinking about "topic A" says nothing about what how, what, why and so forth you are doing with topic A when you think. In the simplest terms "thinking" is merely conscious use of ones brain.

It could also be used with other examples, as I am talking about a way of reasoning and if that way is valid and if it can be considered as doing philosophy?

Okay, so you are doing logic then. But that is not what you indicated here:

I suppose the main question in the area is to understand "What is race?" Therefore, it would lead to other questions like " what are the different forms of racism?"

"what is race?" and "what are the different forms of racism" are in fact taxonomical questions (the first one might hint to ontology, but then ontology would have to "forward" it to taxonomy so you get no philosophy out of it), unless of course you don't really mean the questions you are asking, and you're more into for instance "what is race to our society?" or "what should we understand as being race?". The first one is both ontology and social anthropology, the second some mix of ethics and epistemology, where you could but don't necessarily have to forward to taxonomy.

Before I answer your last question, though, I will try to answer your logic question: maybe. It is maybe philosophy, I could say yes, unless you are not really making any effort towards uncovering any depth and more interested in a political gain for instance, that you have incentives that disfigures your argumentative style, or causing a lack thereof. Remember wisdom is the target goal, and if that isn't your goal, then you are not going to be (likely) producing any philosophy, but instead doing a persuasion game... at best you could be a sophist, which is kind of a derogatory term for people practising philosophy-looking ideas and content but not really aiming that way, but more interested in clever techniques in persuasion.

It is safe to presume most people have a strong positive bias against racism though, so most people do not bother with taking racists seriously. Which can be a wise thing in and of itself, as history is full of racist sophists and racist trickery. But for the sake of philosophical integrity, it does mean most people don't have much to offer of deep conversations regarding internal racist topics. My myself among them, I don't really bother with racists as I have never found anything interesting from them.

This leads me to a question, what do you mean by philosophical truths?

Some statement deemed true or not (the later being a truth of "not"-x) in either of the philosophic disciplines. Taxonomy does not provide either a logical, epistemological, ethical, ontological, or otherwise truth about anything, I'd call it a subject of language in fact, and that's in fact what it is: merely picking things and putting it in groups which are given an element of language which we can refer to it by: its name.

[Gary Childress]

1) What distinguish philosophy from history?

I'll take a stab at the answer. I have every faith you will tell me if I'm right or wrong. To be a bit Kantian, I will say that "Philosophy" and "History" are separate most fundamentally as departments of "specialization" in what we human beings often call a "university". The corpus of human knowledge (facts) has become so large that few individuals can know all the facts. But facts are deemed important for various pragmatic reasons.

So we humans go to great ends to preserve all the facts we can. This requires some degree of specialization whereby certain people are in charge of managing certain groups or categories of facts. some facts are "historical" ones, some are "biological" etc. etc.

As stated above groups and categories are largely arbitrary in how they correspond to the world "in-itself". The world usually does not fit so neatly into categories invented by human beings. But we need such categories in order to better manage our record keeping. Otherwise it would be difficult to keep very accurate records of all the facts without some sort of "system" to organize things. For example: without the "Dewey Decimal System" or some sort of organization how would we EVER find ANYTHING in a library?

In the same way universities organize what they call "disciplines". If I want to find out what happened in 1492, then I know I can go to a "historian" to find out some things, a "political scientist" to find out others, etc. etc.

A philosophy department is where people may put the facts together to form a "picture" of the world or where it may be decided what the facts "mean". Or what action should be taken from knowledge of certain facts. Or facts can be assigned different values such as "good" or "bad", etc. But even a specific department for "philosophy" is a bit hard to pin down. Almost every "discipline" has philosophers associated with it. Steven Hawking is a bit of a philosopher who writes on scientific discoveries, for example.

2) What valid modes are there for doing philosophy? The reason for this question is that when I was reading, Euthyphro, there is at the socratic method of question and answer, therefore, you go and discard ideas. Similar to formal logic, in which you ask is this statement valid or invalid? Well if it is invalid, I will discard it. Will most people when trying to arrive at conclusions in philosophy propose an idea and then discard it?

I'm not sure that philosophy is done in "modes". What is a "mode"? What would be an example of a "mode"?

[Ansiktsburk]

None.

Philosophizing is any manner of thinking which aims to make a point inside a discipline of philosophy: such as ontology, epistemology, logic, ethics, and so forth. You can figure out your own methodology to reach conclusions, but it has to strictly be within the disciplines, and to be taken seriously there are corrective rules as to what is a significant question to ask and what is not.

Many enough people for instance have a tendency to think that free thought always qualifies as philosophizing, that merely because you make an opinion or even informed opinion you are philosophizing. It is also important to note that conspiracy theories, and spiritualism, are not part of serious philosophy. Philosophy targets a depth at which some fundamental truth is discovered by the individual, empowering it in its decisions and other thought. Without this fundamental truth empowerment, you end up with a product of thought that has no innate quality to it that would make you "wise", as philosophy in its origin is first and foremost the pursuit of wisdom. You are "selecting" instead of properly developing a philosophy, and that renders there to be no "philosophizing" going on.

Is political philosophy philosophy? If yes:
Then, If I do study strategies on how to organise a computer department, might that count as philosophy? What truths are discovered in political philosophy?

[The Voice of Time]

Is political philosophy philosophy? If yes:
Then, If I do study strategies on how to organise a computer department, might that count as philosophy? What truths are discovered in political philosophy?

Political philosophy is actually misnamed, because it should say "the philosophy of politics", and so deals with the logic, ontology, ethics, epistemology, and so forth, of politics. Politics being the "battle/struggle for resources" in a society.

You can do philosophical study, but it doesn't have to be it. The organization of a computer department itself is no qualifier in any sense, and I wonder why you would think that?

[NielsBohr]

1) What distinguish philosophy from history?
2) What valid modes are there for doing philosophy? The reason for this question is that when I was reading, Euthyphro, there is at the socratic method of question and answer, therefore, you go and discard ideas. Similar to formal logic, in which you ask is this statement valid or invalid? Well if it is invalid, I will discard it. Will most people when trying to arrive at conclusions in philosophy propose an idea and then discard it?

Ctk,

1. • history is only a some records of the main events.
   • Philosophy can be trying in thoughts to re-make the history, but has nothing to do with history in general. Effectively, you can philosophize with or without references. The interest in having references, is to avoid in "re-making the wheel", but can also have an hidden side, as being negatively influenced by argmententation seeming to be strong although they could not be as strong as you believed.
2. • Maieutic method of Socrate does not discard ideas. If you go from the general to the particular, as any research method, you remain in the target. The great interest of this method, is that you avoid to conter your correspondant uselessly, ans moreover, you let him find his own truths.
   • Logic is valid as any other formalism. The way in giving it validity is not only a question of "maths & philosophy" - it is also a question of competences. Next to that, we must admit its limited validity (again, as any other formalism). Second-order predicate are more accurate than the one of first order, but much more difficult to understand. All that being told to you, some consider that logic - as an especially pure formalism (no unity, no time) - talk to us only about itself, what doesn't lead very far...
   • On the other hand, logic should be able to develop any idea which was expressible in natural language (english), what means not all, but nevertheless most of ideas. That doesn't mean that its premises are validated by logic itself, which is only "structured flow", what means that logic matters in connecting the correspondances, not in considering the truth degree of an original (potentially void in sense) proposition.
   • Logic is useful as much as diagrams Jackson-SDL, or Nassi-Schneidermann structograms are about algorithms. Some people are about to use modal logic, which introduce some "maybe" or "potentially" notions, because although natural language cannot be originally totally expressed as mathematics, these people realized that natural language was more valid and more accurate thant the walls of a dry formalism (this fact could be surprising, but - I think - is not). Obviously, it could seem silly to "invent" a - modal - logic, to make a map at the scale 1:1 of the natural language. The main purpose - according to me - is that it let us to write or record our natural thoughts without omission, and maybe to be more clear than long sentences.

All this considered, we must know that some domains of physics - by example - may not be expressed in natural language - I think about quantic physics.
Most probably, it seems as much inexpressible in natural language, as much as it is no more defined for so. The notion of probability is of importance in this domain - but probability is nevertheless nearer of the notion of modality (than of definite truth).

The fact is that logic - modal or strongly defined - is - once again - nearer from the connections of a construction, than of some elementary truth itself.

[HexHammer]

I've been on various philosophy fora and rarely seen any philosophers, on the other han I see endless of cozy chatters!!! A philosophical education too often leads to complete nonsense and babble, as most of the aspects are totally outdated.

What I consider philosophy is coming prepared to a dicussion, not glaringly ignorent about basic things! One needs to read up on scientific stuff.

NEVER sit and expect other people to give all the answers, as they might remember wrong and/or give bad answers. Why one should follow the point I made just above!

One should exclude all the idiots and madmen, who only pollutes the chat with their prolific brain diariah, but at the same time, one would only have conversations/debates with less than a handful of people, so one might get bored and start stooping down to chatting with the stupid and halpless people.

Whip some good sense into people, being overly polite gets humanity nowhere.

[Ansiktsburk]

Is political philosophy philosophy? If yes:
Then, If I do study strategies on how to organise a computer department, might that count as philosophy? What truths are discovered in political philosophy?

Political philosophy is actually misnamed, because it should say "the philosophy of politics", and so deals with the logic, ontology, ethics, epistemology, and so forth, of politics. Politics being the "battle/struggle for resources" in a society.

You can do philosophical study, but it doesn't have to be it. The organization of a computer department itself is no qualifier in any sense, and I wonder why you would think that?

Well, reading "A theory of justice" now, and most of it so far is some postulates, more or less common sense and structured reasoning. I can quite easily follow it. Thing is, you make it all sound very ... ambitious(and frankly, boring). When I read your post about what philosophy is, I saw academical papers filled with modal logic…

(What Rawls suggests is, I guess, really not a "battle" but more the opposite)

Why I brought up the organisation of a computer department, is because it's something I know a little about (25 years), and that is kind of a microcosmos society where you really struggle for resources ("resources" is the word managers uses for human beings). You have different tradeoffs, for instance - how should the testers be organised? If you put them in a separate team, they will develop testing skills well, but the handovers from design to test is awkward. So sometimes you organise testers and designers in teams. And the handovers work smoother but the testers gets alienated and their testing skills are not developed well.

And the way things normally gets organised, is that a big manager says "hey, let's use this organisation model that' everyone is talking about". I would love to see the structural reasoning used in the "theory of justice" or "Sein und Seit" instead of the more ad-hoc manners reorganisations are done now.

And again - what truths are discovered in the philosophy of politics?

[NielsBohr]

When I read your post about what philosophy is, I saw academical papers filled with modal logic…

I wrote about modal logic, well... this was not an academical paper - only a restitution.

(What Rawls suggests is, I guess, really not a "battle" but more the opposite)

Who is Rawls ?

Why I brought up the organisation of a computer department, is because it's something I know a little about (25 years), and that is kind of a microcosmos society where you really struggle for resources ("resources" is the word managers uses for human beings). You have different tradeoffs, for instance - how should the testers be organised? If you put them in a separate team, they will develop testing skills well, but the handovers from design to test is awkward. So sometimes you organise testers and designers in teams. And the handovers work smoother but the testers gets alienated and their testing skills are not developed well.

And the way things normally gets organised, is that a big manager says "hey, let's use this organisation model that' everyone is talking about". I would love to see the structural reasoning used in the "theory of justice" or "Sein und Seit" instead of the more ad-hoc manners reorganisations are done now.

And again - what truths are discovered in the philosophy of politics?

-According to EInstein, politics are more difficult than physics - and I don't think it was ironic; due to the fact that Nature acts most often in a "constant way" (the laws), nevertheless, politics acts one with each others, so I don't think politician themselves discover many truths in it...
-I am very interested about your use of strategies in the technologies policies, can you tell a little more please ?

If you are in England, you surely are about tu use SSADM.
If you are in France, it should be Merise/2 - but a specialist in diverse modeling methods told me that Merise/2 - earlier than SSADM which came a year later - is at most an attempt to make a standardization under this name - mainly, the books taking Merise for themselves, are not "indexed" by an authority (what would be the case of SSADM).

And most probably, in US, they use "UML's method". Unfortunately, UML knows such a success, that most users of this language use blindly the notion of "Object", used at all the sauces.

According to the previous specialist, UML is the deserving successor of both of previous methods. But it is not a methode. I personally cannot understand how such a generic "Object" can be so useful, but I am afraid it is not. The real method under UML is Unified Process - but the most of the programers does not seem to be conscious of that.

-But overall, you should understand - or moreover to make understand to the others - that a most used method is not a question of fashion. The overall interest is to - avoid to re-invent the wheel - and to let the enterprises to share thank to strong, structured norms/standards, favorable to the communication.

[The Voice of Time]

Well, reading "A theory of justice" now, and most of it so far is some postulates, more or less common sense and structured reasoning. I can quite easily follow it. Thing is, you make it all sound very ... ambitious(and frankly, boring). When I read your post about what philosophy is, I saw academical papers filled with modal logic…

I haven't read Rawl's myself, but since he's our ages popular philosopher many people tend to bring him up and so I have a lot of secondary knowledge of him, and to me it seems his famous main argument of the Veil of Ignorance is in fact ethics derived from epistemological groundings, though of course it really is utopian (utopianism being a discipline of its own, in line with other less foundational disciplines like existentialism) since it presumes people actually do or have a reason to reason from that standpoint. I would presume that any philosophically relevant reasoning he does in his work is also in the same way easily enough possible to categorize under one or multiple disciplinary headings.

People don't worry about the discipline they write within when they conduct philosophical reasoning, but if it really is philosophical reasoning it is gonna be within some disciplines. I dunno what "ambitious" or "boring" is supposed to mean, unless you are of that calibre who thinks everything mystical is more interesting than the real. I'm quite the opposite, I very much prefer the real and dislike anything mystical. That's the Wittgensteiner inside of me x)

(What Rawls suggests is, I guess, really not a "battle" but more the opposite)

That's not my definition, it's the text book. My high school teacher told me that (frankly I think it's a bit of a Plato versus Aristotle situation, where the text book has an Aristotelian view of it). I didn't like it either, I thought there was more to it than "struggling", I thought there was no more struggle there than in science for instance where scientists compete for being the representative of scientific truth (much science being dead-ends or insignificant as a representation). In my personal opinion, politics is the "management of resources" in a society, and everybody's got a formula, and they try to sell it to audience, which in a democracy is the people of the country, while in a dictatorship is the appointed authorities with the dictator on top.

But whatever way you look at it, the consequences of politics is always a particular distribution of resources among the society.

Why I brought up the organisation of a computer department, is because it's something I know a little about (25 years), and that is kind of a microcosmos society where you really struggle for resources ("resources" is the word managers uses for human beings). You have different tradeoffs, for instance - how should the testers be organised? If you put them in a separate team, they will develop testing skills well, but the handovers from design to test is awkward. So sometimes you organise testers and designers in teams. And the handovers work smoother but the testers gets alienated and their testing skills are not developed well.

And the way things normally gets organised, is that a big manager says "hey, let's use this organisation model that' everyone is talking about". I would love to see the structural reasoning used in the "theory of justice" or "Sein und Seit" instead of the more ad-hoc manners reorganisations are done now.

The reason I asked is because I don't see why you would think it would have to be, but whatever...

And again - what truths are discovered in the philosophy of politics?

In the philosophy of politics, you build foundations for civilized politics. In a democracy, like my own country of Norway, for instance, logic an rhetoric plays a role in political discussions, where politicians may accuse each other of breaking such laws. It produces ideals to live up to, which while some politicians are corrupt, many still uphold those ideals. It produces goals in democracies, things for that state itself to aspire to, and it influences the political base of parties. It makes it possible to understand how the state works, and how different aspects of it functions.

Every state in the world is founded upon a multitude of truths of political philosophy. We rarely all agree on all of them, but they act as truths and are legitimized by the state apparatus which in turn get its legitimacy either through coercion or by popular support.

One such truth is execution for instance, which is abolished in all European states (except Belarus and Kazakhstan, the first a dictatorship, the second virtually not European) but still exists in America (in fact, some European countries abolished it in periods hundreds of years ago, Denmark is one such example, and there it was even a monarch who issued the abolishment). In America there is a truth that the government can kill people who are deemed dangerous to other people or have inflicted sufficient pain upon somebody, while in Europe this is deemed to be not true, with the exception of immediate self-defence (though some countries, like Norway, have a long tradition of targeting people who are deemed to have killed without an ultimate necessity as well, so even this one is highly contested). Two different moral bases, two different ethics, and the philosophy of politics being at the centre of the discussion. Who has a right to live? Who should be disposed of? Is society better served by letting people live or by killing them? And so forth...

[Ctk]

Thank's for the responses so far guys. I will try to respond, later this week as busy right now, I am studying for exam. Though, It's great to see everyone in this forum is so knowledgeable!

[Ctk]

@The Voice of Time

1) What I am suggesting by thinking was trying to model it around Carl Jung's(and other psychologists) theory of personality types in which a person can be said to be thinking when there is an aim to what they are doing, while what is called as "intuition" would be brainstorming ideas. Again, I do not stand by this theory but rather I wanted to know that if there is a general consensus regarding this way of reasoning that is logical and has an aim. While another which is more of brainstorming, free flowing of ideas in which the a person can contemplate them.

2) When you talk about social anthropology, how would you distinguish it from philosophy? Isn't the difference based on the fact that social anthropology is a social science meaning that you need to go and empirically test your ideas. Like doing research studies with an specific community of people, to answer an specific question. Therefore, can a person philosophize about social anthropology question be said to be doing philosophy or anthropology? Wouldn't this philosophizing be unable to pass as anthropology since the person is not using the methods of anthropology?

3) I found your point of argumentative style interesting. Anyone else could also answer this question. Isn't the way of doing philosophy by using an argumentative style? Meaning that a person interested in philosophy needs to make an statement and support it with reasons as to why this is the case. Wouldn't this be in contrast with other disciplines like history, in which they mainly rely on understanding the facts and then finding the causes. While philosophy would be on a constant state of arguing over ideas?

4) Can you give me a concrete example as to a epistemological or ontological philosophical truth? Is there a body of philosophical knowledge which is considered absolutely true? Aren't most of these ideas constantly up for debate?

[Ctk]

Thank's NielsBohr and Gary for your responses

I have a question for everyone, when I was creating this thread I was thinking on a epistemology class I took, although it was quite simply. I have a major problem with it, which is based on the words used in the class. You can check it in this link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_ ... IB_course) (hopefully it is alright to post wikipedia links)

1) The confusing words used in epistemology
So my main concern is with words such as "justice" "knowledge", "truth" all this words seem very broad and inaccessible to the average person and there seems to be no consensus as to what they mean. In addition, do philosophers or aspiring philosophers actually go in the world thinking I am going to find out what the word "knowledge" means? As a human being I think there is a process of reasoning which goes from the concrete experience to the universal, wouldn't a way of doing philosophy be reflecting on my past experience whenever I have learned(a word that I prefer) a objective fact about the world like multiplication. In my opinion, the process of reasoning needs to be informed either by concrete experience or by basing your view on object like in a story of Medea when she commits and unjust act, and then people can argue about this concept of what justice is in the context of the story. The reason why this epistemology subject bothers me is because they ask questions like "talk about a knowledge issue" and in my opinion that is very decontextualize and difficult to understand, like knowledge issue of what? About who? What does knowledge issue even mean?

In contrast I really liked my greek philosophy class because it provided this ideas with a context, for example, in Euthyphro when Socrates talks about piety, it is easier to understand where Socrates is coming from, since his ideas are grounded on a particular event whenever Euthyphro will forgive his father.

2) What is the difference between abstract thinking and philosophy?
For instance, philosophical problems tend to derived from a particular to a universal(at least from the works, I've read). For example, George Yancy is a Africana philosopher and in his book he talks about concepts like the public sphere and the african american codified self. In other disciplines(unless we count literature) I don't see this kind of thinking in which a person analyses a event and starts attributing concepts to the event he interprets. Is this doing philosophy? Like for instance, Marx says that philosophers interpret reality, is analyzing an specific situation and attributing it universal characteristics a trait of philosophical reflection? Or is it simply abstract thinking?

3) This leads me to my third question, is there a strict demarcation of what counts as doing philosophy?
When I took the epistemology class I had a strict teacher who thought in absolutes, either something was to case and or it wasn't. is this philosophy? For instance, in the context of religion he said either God is real or he is not? Whoever, I ask myself is this philosophy a way of thinking in which there is only one correct answer on the foundations of our understanding or the world. Is God real or not? Is there free will or not? At least in my other class I have come to think of philosophy as not an activity of absolutist thinking but rather the idea of a superstructure a way to interpret reality, which does not necessarily need to impart judgment on if this is true or not but rather to observe and comment on what there is.

[The Voice of Time]

1) What I am suggesting by thinking was trying to model it around Carl Jung's(and other psychologists) theory of personality types in which a person can be said to be thinking when there is an aim to what they are doing, while what is called as "intuition" would be brainstorming ideas. Again, I do not stand by this theory but rather I wanted to know that if there is a general consensus regarding this way of reasoning that is logical and has an aim. While another which is more of brainstorming, free flowing of ideas in which the a person can contemplate them.

Brainstorming has an aim. In fact, every form of thought has an aim, I can't think of something that doesn't. It is to do with intentionality being an automatic mechanism, we just automatically "make" things have an aim. We uncontrollably steer our own thoughts all the time. I think it's very difficult to be able to split it up into different types of thinking, the only thing you can be somewhat certain of is the subject of thinking and which parts of your mind are used in that process... for instance erotic thought is very different from mathematical analysis, but it's hard to make simple divisions except by using the conscious content and the bodily reaction as qualifiers. So you have mathematical and you have erotic thought, but neither of them has more or less an aim. Perhaps mathematics is more procedural at times, but that's about it... no determinate separation except by content and by bodily reaction.

2) When you talk about social anthropology, how would you distinguish it from philosophy? Isn't the difference based on the fact that social anthropology is a social science meaning that you need to go and empirically test your ideas.

Theorizing is not (necessarily) philosophizing if that's what you're getting at, so the difference is more than just empirical tests.

Like doing research studies with an specific community of people, to answer an specific question. Therefore, can a person philosophize about social anthropology question be said to be doing philosophy or anthropology?

If you philosophize you do philosophy. The subject is anthropology. If you make anthropological theories, you are theorizing about anthropology. The division is clear and simple. Philosophizing about a science goes under the Philosophy of Science heading though, and so you would be discussing not subjects "through anthropology", there isn't a chain of connection if I've understood what you're trying to get at, you are philosophizing about the science of anthropology, discussing things like its legitimacy, the ethics of its methodologies, or whether it subscribes to common rules of logic or whether it breaks them, and whether that is good or bad.

Wouldn't this philosophizing be unable to pass as anthropology since the person is not using the methods of anthropology?

Answered above. Philosophizing does not yield anthropological products, though philosophy can lead to anthropological clues, clues that can develop into theories. For instance, let's say you have a society and in it you have a institution who deals with medical aid...

A philosopher might ask, in ontological terms: "What is it to be a recipient of medical aid?", he might go over and ask the people what they think and he might find out that it is such and such, and he will go home, sit in his chair, and he will tell himself: "Well, it is clear that a recipient can feel 'thus' and 'thus' and 'thus' about medical aid, and the recipient will be in 'this' and 'this' and 'this' situation before they receive medical aid, and they are from 'here' and 'here', so it seems clear that a recipient of medical aid is someone who has a combination of these features".

A social anthropologist might ask: "How is it to be recipient of medical aid?", and he will go and stay at the medical institution, inquiring, perceiving, taking notes, until, he comes at the notion of larger picture of how it is to be a recipient of a medical aid. From this picture, he draws a theory of relations, a theory of facts surrounding people's experiences, their reasons, their feelings, their means and abilities, the typicality of the institutional workings and the way it works to service and manages to service. All this the anthropologist then tries to confirm at the best of his or her ability, using tools and methods. At last they have not a sum of reasoning from experience (philosophers also use experience a lot, just not necessarily as the ultimate truth), but a thorough explanation of all significant features of the institution, and how they relate to produce what is by theory deemed to be the case of how it is to be a recipient of medical aid.

See the difference? The type of knowledge you end up with, has a completely different type of usefulness. In one case, you are ascertaining what may be said of a recipient to make it a recipient. In another case, you are exploring the whole experience and picking up on interesting leads inside the whole experience, using it to get back at your original question to complete it with a 360-degrees explanation. At least that's the wunder-science... in reality there's a lot of weak science being produced which makes little difference in total, except perhaps as part of some movement of science (supporting other people's claims or trying to confirm them).

3) I found your point of argumentative style interesting. Anyone else could also answer this question. Isn't the way of doing philosophy by using an argumentative style?

No. See my thread about the crafting of philosophy if you want an example of a process by which you can end up with philosophical products: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12763

Meaning that a person interested in philosophy needs to make an statement and support it with reasons as to why this is the case.

They don't have to. Many people have their own personal philosophies about things. But to be taken seriously in social circles, you have to be able to communicate it, an argumentative style will help you, but you could just state an idea and say "because of this-x". You can present an argument without having any particular "style" per se, or it is a style but a minimalistic one where methodological argumentation is at its minimum in diversity and quantity. A single argument is sometimes enough, if the idea is good enough. While somebody, I guess most people, like "covering up" their tracks, and to do this they have to develop an argumentative style in which to deal with the constant back and forth.

Wouldn't this be in contrast with other disciplines like history, in which they mainly rely on understanding the facts and then finding the causes. While philosophy would be on a constant state of arguing over ideas?

All disciplines argue of ideas, history is absolutely no exception, plenty of arguing there. For instance, both Norway and Denmark claim to be the birthplace of the Viking chieftain who conquered Normandy and spawned the bloodline that later conquered England in the Norman conquest of England. Both parties have good claims, and so it becomes a matter of "choosing" who you'd like to be right. Is English royalty Norwegian or Danish of origin? (I might be missing some change of dynasty in asking this last question, since I don't know the history of England that well, despite Englishmen having produced tons of stories, series and movies about themselves).

4) Can you give me a concrete example as to a epistemological or ontological philosophical truth? Is there a body of philosophical knowledge which is considered absolutely true? Aren't most of these ideas constantly up for debate?

But individuals believe in them, and hold them to be true. Not always constantly, maybe you have a Communist or an Anarchist phase in your life, I had a bit of both some years ago. We are in motion, but when we do believe in them, they take hold on us and we act with those truths as assumption for guiding our actions. And we don't necessarily believe in any body of work, few people do I think (religious people excluded) but in individual assumptions and arguments. We believe in things that are said to us and which we find reasonable or persuasive. The Scientific Method is a quite large field of epistemological truth which people for the most part subscribe to as a body of work, though some details may wary as science is forever improving itself. Ontologically I think everyday life is a big product of our own ontological views of the world... what does it consist of? How is it put together? What are those new things we see all the time? We ask ourselves these things all the time, especially for those who participate in hyper-culture where things change all the time and you have to learn new stuff all the time to keep up.

We gather ontological truths to find good basis' for thinking... an ontological truth isn't necessarily a truth of course, we can be deceived, but that is a spiral of questions which an individual cannot assume to have any control over. You suppose that the means you have at your disposal to ask and get answer is good enough, and you produce a "truth" out of this, helping you to see the world in a more effective manner. You gain some wisdom about how the world is put together, and this wisdom is your friend in surviving and thriving.

[Ginkgo]

Hello,
I am interested in knowing what counts as doing philosophy? Which one of this three methods is the correct one: problem solving, reflecting, or thinking?

1) Problem solving: What I understand by problem solving is solving a word problem. For example, in my algebra class we were asked, "This year 14000 students entered medical school. If the number goes up by 2%. How many will there be next year?" In order to solve, this problem you need to identify the different parts, break it down it down into smaller parts, and apply the percentage formula.

14000(current medical students)+14000(2/100)(percentage formula)=280( new students), then add the new students(280) to the number of current students(14000) and the answer will be 14280(students) next year.

When doing this form of problem solving, it is a impersonal way of solving the problem, you simply look at the problem, identify its parts and then apply the formula. Therefore, there is a procedure to solve this problem. Another example would be drawing the missing leg of a table in a picture. You are looking at a problem and adding what is missing.

2) Reflecting: How I define reflecting would be brainstorming, not discarding ideas and bring my personal experience. For example, when I was reflecting about race in my class of philosophy and race. I was reflecting about the difference between "american hate racism" and "latin america explicit racism" therefore, when I was reflecting of american "hate racism" I was reading about the mobs in the south and how they committed hate crimes. While when I was reflecting on latin american racism I thought about this guy I used to know who would use racial slurs but not being necessarily malicious in his intend. Therefore, I was bringing my personal experience, comparing and contrasting the personal experience with the historical text that I was reading. However, I had no structure in the way I was reflecting, I could simply visualize this guy being racist, or image of the mobs trying to attack someone. What I am trying to get add is that there was no linearity in the way I was thinking about this issues and it was very open ended. I could also repeat the same pictures in my mind and try to find new interpretations.

3) Thinking: What I define as thinking would be a form of reflecting with the aim of making a decision. For example, if I were to decide if I should go to buy juice. I would simply put the premise " Should I buy juice in store A or store B?" Reasons why I should go to store A: 1) It is closer to where I live 2)It sells apple juice, reasons why I should go to store 1)it has a friendlier staff 2) I like the bright lights of the store better. So if I choose the store B because of reason a, then I will discard store A and I will not continue to thinking about it again. This is because I have already made my decision. In contrast, with reflection, even if an idea is wrong, I would still be considering it because I don't have an specific purpose in mind, I am simply going through ideas again and again.

Well this are just some thoughts I have, I might be completely wrong, but I just following what AJ Meyer said on having the right attitude, of asking trying to figure this out.

A.J. Ayer was in the historical tradition of logical positivism. People such as Ayer, Schlick and Carnap were a group of philosophers who basically adopted Wittgenstein's claim that philosophy should be an activity rather than a theory. Philosophers of this tradition attempted to classify philosophical statements into three distinct categories- scientific statements, mathematical statements and meaningless or nonsensical statements. The majority of philosophical statements were regarded as nonsensical in their view.

According to Ayer a proposition will only ever be significant to all and sundry,if it can be shown that a claim is verifiable. In other words, knowing the observations and circumstances required to accept or reject a proposition(s).