@kennethamy,
kennethamy wrote:I thought that what is, is science, and science often answers why is too. For instance, why does water freeze at 0 degrees centigrade? And, of course, we all of us know quite a lot of things: that Mars is the fourth planet, Earth is between Mars and Venus; that France is in Europe; and that the velocity of light is much greater than the velocity of sound; and that germs are responsible for the spread of most disease. And a lot more than that too.
Philosophy has a different job from science. Philosophy seeks understand of the essential concepts science uses and which we use in ordinary life. Concepts like, knowledge, causation, understanding, explanation, right and wrong, and true and false. And others too.
That's why one contemporary philosopher put it this way: science is talk about the world, and philosophy is talk about talk. That pretty much sums it up.
No. There is no difference between philosophy and science. What we think of as science has come to deal more with all those qualities of the world that we can sense, and so measure, like optics, mechanics, chemistry, physics. Philosophy seems now to deal with intangibles, emotions, ideas without objects, sign meaning syntax, consciousness. But it is all philosophy. As a measure of learning and excellence it is a PHD that is awarded, no mean feat, making one a doctor of philosophy.
Philosophy is not just talk about talk. It is far more than that. Much of what we live in is a world without sensation, that defies objective measurement. Yet, ideas like justice that cannot be desolved, nor extracted, nor weighed, that we see evidence of without a single whole example of- must still be considered, determined, defined, and refined if we are ever to have them in the correct proportion in our lives. Does it matter that a freedom cannot be produced? It matters if a person has no freedom in their life. We have to give these ideas substance to weigh them one against the other. We have to see their want and their plenty in time rather than in substance. We have to find something like a cloud chamber that revealed the paths of alpha and beta particles, with the understanding that the process is mental, made of insight, and understanding.
Trying to draw a line between philosophy and science is like trying to draw a line between chemistry and nuclear physics. It is impossible because where one leaves off the other begins. You cannot say here is chemistry, and here is physics; or here is science and here is philosophy. Each is the same thing, and like all things humans find value in: each is a form of relationship. What people know of science continually affect the human condition, and the human condition is the general focus of philosophy. What is philosophy to God, if there is God? Nothing. It affects only people, and the understanding people possess.