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It is often said, or at least assumed, that philosophy is subjective while (empirical) science is objective. At the very least, many who have even been exposed to a few philosophy courses still tend to believe that there is something like this difference between the two disciplines. Of course, there’s no doubt that there are differences between the two. However, I think the differences are exaggerated in much of society.
Allow me to attempt to provide some reasons to think otherwise. My strategy has two main parts: (1) I argue that many people have misconceptions about how philosophy works and that science does not always work the way the average person seems to tend to think it does; (2) this then leads to the idea that philosophy and science are not so different after all.
(Note: Throughout this post I am talking about academic philosophy that is practiced in universities across the world, not “philosophy” in the sense of any old forming of views about things.)
Understanding the Issue
So what does one mean by saying “Philosophy is subjective, but science is objective”? The intuitive idea, as many people are nowadays fond of saying, is that philosophy just involves “opinion” while science gives us “facts.” I think this is poor terminology. What people mean, I think, is that philosophy gives us only mere opinion. For some reason, people now tend to think that calling something an “opinion” is derogatory. But any facts that are believed are opinions as well. Take any fact, such as the fact that the earth is not flat. I believe this, as do many others. It’s my opinion that the earth is not flat. It just so happens that my opinion, my belief, is correct. I believe something that is true.
But, bad terminology aside, the idea is clear: philosophy gives us only mere opinions, but not enough to determine which opinions are correct. A better way to put the complaint, perhaps, is that science gives us knowledge, philosophy doesn’t.
But why should we think this?
Is Philosophy Truth-Seeking?
One way to fail to generate a body of knowledge is for a discipline to fail to be truth-seeking at all. Some disciplines do seem to be in this category. For example, some disciplines are geared toward teaching skills more than facts. Other disciplines are in the grips of post-modernistic thinking, and so hold that there simply aren’t any real “objective” truths or pieces of knowledge to acquire.
But philosophy is clearly a truth-seeking discipline. This is because those who practice the discipline ultimately get to decide this, and most philosophers—I think it is uncontroversial to say—take their discipline to be one that seeks truth. It doesn’t take much to be a truth-seeking discipline. Those in the discipline just need to try to find the truth about things, try to gain knowledge. And philosophers are certainly trying.
Sub-Conclusion: Philosophy, like science, is a truth-seeking discipline.
Does Philosophy Advance Us Toward the Truth?
However, one might claim that, while philosophy seeks truth, it doesn’t ever get us there (or at least that it hardly ever does). That is, another way to fail to generate a body of knowledge is to fail to acquire it, despite one’s efforts.
But in philosophy we do give arguments for or against certain claims and evaluate them using the same standards of reasoning employed in any other truth-seeking discipline. Surely one must admit that philosophy gives us some evidence for certain claims. But, one might retort, “Philosophy doesn’t answer any questions definitively; we are never certain of who is right and who is wrong.” This may be true for the most part, but I don’t think there is any reason to think that science is so different.
Take a look at science. I certainly agree that science generates knowledge. However, some seem to think that science does this by providing a process of determining which claims are true that gives us certainty of their truth. This of course is not really correct. Science gives us good evidence for or against certain claims. It’s not a magical machine with a power button we press to generate knowledge. As with any truth-seeking discipline, acquiring knowledge in science is hard work, and in the end we still fall short of the kind of certainty we can arguably achieve from, say, a mathematical proof (consider a proof of the Pythagorean theorem).
One might still claim that, unlike philosophy, we settle questions in science.
Again, I think this is a misconception. Are issues about, say, space and time closed in science? Is even the issue about whether margarine or butter is better for humans to consume settled? How about the issue of whether Pluto is planet? That should be easy enough, right? It is surely a misconception of science to think that such issues are so easily settled once and for all. What scientists do is gather evidence and render justified conclusions, often yielding knowledge of facts. (I’m not claiming that questions cannot ever be settled once and for all by science or any other discipline or method of inquiry. Rather, I’m trying to dispel a certain implausible set of beliefs about science. In short, I’m not being skeptical, just humble and realistic.)
So, again, why is philosophy supposed to be so different? In philosophy we don’t tend to settle questions once and for all either, but surely we also get good evidence, reasons, or justification for certain claims and can rule out others. I think once we reject scientism, but still take seriously that science is in the business of yielding knowledge by yielding good evidence for or against certain claims, we see that philosophy is not so different. It’s not that science uses reason or reasoning and philosophy doesn’t. Both disciplines use reasoning, just usually different sorts. The method of investigation is often different in philosophy, but both are methods of figuring out what’s true. We need to keep in mind that finding out what’s true is not easy, whether in science, philosophy, or any other discipline. And it’s a mistake to think that we somehow find the truth so much easier in science.
Sub-Conclusion: Both philosophy and science advance us toward the truth (i.e. yield knowledge).
Conclusion
Many are still content with locating the difference between the disciplines in the idea that science does a much better job at providing justified conclusions. In other words, one might still claim that science gets us closer to the truth than philosophy.
I still think this is not quite right. But frankly I don’t see the need to fight this sort of battle, at least not at this point. If I’ve shown what I’ve tried to show so far (namely, the two sub-conclusions I’ve stated), then I think I’ve alr
eady dispelled the myth that philosophy is subjective while science is objective. And that’s all I’ve set out to show.
Conclusion: It is not a difference between philosophy and science that philosophy is subjective while science is objective.
So What’s the Difference?
There are, of course, significant differences between the two disciplines. The differences are just not as great as many think. The differences are primarily in the issues they address. While I think they certainly overlap sometimes, philosophy deals with different aspects of the world than does science. (I think they ultimately both study the same subject matter, namely reality, just different aspects of it.) However, I won’t belabor this point, since most people admit this sort of difference.
Afterthoughts
I think we should be pushing this sort of argument to the public more. I tend to mention something like this to my students at the end of the term, allowing them to chime in about what they think. I would hope that being exposed to some academic philosophy would mitigate the tendency to believe that philosophy is subjective, but many students do still seem unaffected by my spiel. So I’m not sure if it’s entirely effective, but I think it’s on the right track toward curing one of the major problems with philosophy’s poor public image nowadays, at least in the United States (other places, like Australia, are another story).
Ultimately, I think the belief that philosophy is subjective is driven largely by two factors: (1) a lack of acquaintance with what philosophy actual is, and (2) the prevalence of a sort of scientism in current American culture. I do think having some philosophy in high school, like critical thinking, would be highly beneficial for both the students and the image of philosophy. (It seems to be going well in Australia.)
18/09/2008 at 4:53 am Permalink
I don’t think that the problem with philosophy is that it’s subjective. I think that the problem with philosophy is that Wittgenstein was right; when dealing with philosophy, you’re only dealing with “language games.” Let’s take an example: are the mind and brain the same? A good case could be made for either answer. They are considered the same in the sense that we often refer to them as being the same. For example, “depression *is* a chemical imbalance in the brain.” Further, all mind processes could probably be reduced to processes in the brain. Therefore, an argument could be made that when we speak of processes in the mind, we are essentially speaking of brain processes. (I.e., they are the same.)
On the other hand, there is something qualitatively different between neurons firing and the experience you have as a result of this. One is an objective process, the other is a subjective experience. Therefore, you could argue that they are different.
This situation is pretty much par for the course for most philosophical problems. In other words, when we are dealing with concepts like “mind” or “knowledge”, we’re dealing with something open-ended and ambiguous. And there is no exact answer as to whether the mind is different from the brain, for example, because their relationship is poorly defined in our language. If we had made a firm conceptual distinction between mind and brain, then there would be no philosophical problem. Therefore, I don’t think that philosophy is dealing with the subjective as much as it’s dealing with the ambiguous aspects of our conceptual language. That doesn’t make it objective either, as there are no philosophical facts. It’s simply different.
18/09/2008 at 5:58 am Permalink
Hi, Anonymous. Thanks for the comment.
I’m a big fan of Wittgenstein, actually. I think it’s quite controversial whether he actually thought that philosophy was all just a bunch of language games or was problematic in the way you think it is. I think he thought that philosophy is often practiced that way, but that good philosophy had a place: to “cure” us of these confusions.
But, regardless of interpretations of Wittgenstein, I think this sort of point of view is not quite correct anyway. Certainly many issues can be resolved by getting clear about our language and what we mean. However, I think philosophy does deal with certain issues that are substantive and aren’t mere games. As I’ve tried to emphasize, even if some problems are really tough and there are no obvious solutions right now (as you say about the mind-body problem), that doesn’t mean there aren’t answers or objective facts of the matter. Things aren’t really so different in science either. There are tough problems there too that don’t have clear solutions.
So, I think there is a fact of the matter whether the mind is the brain. It’s just a really tough problem. Maybe we are confused and there really is no problem about the mind and body. But then show us the arguments for that. Just pointing out that it’s tough isn’t enough. Colin McGinn provides an actual argument that we will never solve the problem. I don’t know that it works, but you should shoot for something like that.
But I of course don’t have the space here to defend all of this. Maybe I’ll post something on it later.
19/02/2009 at 1:03 am Permalink
“[…]Those in the discipline just need to try to find the truth about things, try to gain knowledge. And philosophers are certainly trying.
Sub-Conclusion: Philosophy, like science, is a truth-seeking discipline.”
Okay, while these statements all are technically correct, they fail to mention an important aspect: facts (or knowledge thereof) =/= truth. While it is correct that philosophy is ‘truth-seeking’, in the sense that it tries (unsuccessfully, in my oppinion) to gain understanding, some knowledge even, that knowledge is extremely limited by the knowledge and affirmation or rejection of truths in a society that they have have attained.
Without the knowledge attributed to the scientific advancement, philosophy would remain in a very primitive, arguably unsophisticated state. Take the “brain vs. mind” debate, popularized by a philosopher pioneer. Consider everything that you know, off the top of your ahead, about a human brain: what it consists of, how it functions, as well as the terminology associated with these things and processes. As noted, physical properties of firing of neurons (objective) =/= interpretation of these impulses (as by a human being, or other specifically sentient life-form).. Sort of similar to sense vs. perception, but that’s a tangental discussion. The point to this paragraph: Philosophy needs science, whereas science does not need philosophyy. If we didn’t have an understanding of neurons, for instance, then one would lack an analogy (or at least not accurate comparison) between what we term ‘brain’ vs. ‘mind’. I’m not trying to sound pompous, just stating it as I see it.
Furthermore, I challenge anyone to argue that philosophy is more or equally useful as science. Science seeks answers to (for the most part) questions that are pragmatic in nature (i.e. How do we create more efficient energy source or improve upon existing ones?). Philosophy, on the other hand, well.. once one arrives at his or her ‘truth’ (a word so popular by ‘philosphers’), what does he or she intend to do with it, besides hold it to his\her self? Well I suppose that person could share it with others. And that’s all well and good.. But what does it accomplish?
Another point I wanted to bring up… Hell, I don't even remember. I lost my train of thought ^_<.
19/02/2009 at 6:16 am Permalink
Hi, Victor. Thanks for the comment.
You quote my first sub-conclusion and criticize it because you think it doesn’t establish that philosophy yields knowledge. Of course that’s true, but I wasn’t trying to establish that with that first sub-conclusion. I was trying to do that with my second sub-conclusion:
“Sub-Conclusion [2]: Both philosophy and science advance us toward the truth (i.e. yield knowledge).”
So you should be directing your criticism at the arguments I give for that second sub-conclusion.
You do, however, attempt to justify your claim that philosophy doesn’t really yield knowledge. But it’s unclear how you’re trying to argue. You seem to think that philosophy would be lost without science. Well, depending on what you mean by that, that’s probably true. But it goes both ways. Just as philosophers who study the mind need to pay attention to empirical work on the brain, scientists would be lost in their study of the mind if they didn’t think at all about what the mind is. You act as if scientists can just study whatever they want without knowing what they’re studying. Take consciousness, for example. This is a difficult concept to get a grip on. So many scientists are currently interested in what philosophers have to say about it (because philosophers have been thinking a lot about the concept itself as opposed to experiments on the brain). Alternatively, scientists are starting to do the philosophy part themselves by thinking really hard about what the hell our concept of consciousness is. Similar things go on in other areas too.
The picture of philosophy and science you paint is as if physicists could go around doing physics without knowing much about what causation, tables, chairs, moving, falling, speed, acceleration, are. These are all normal non-technical concepts that the physicist must use. Roughly, the philosophers job is to make sure we’re clear on these things. Perhaps you are just thinking that philosophy is all about smoking weed and rambling on about “deep” questions. Of course that doesn’t yield us knowledge. But professional, academic philosophers think really hard, clearly, and critically about tough issues. And their work isn’t all that different from the scientist’s. Perhaps you have a conception of science, as I think many incorrectly do, that it is a big machine where you input a question and the answer gets easily churned out. If you’ve ever seen some science at work, you’ll know that it takes a lot of thinking about really tough questions. And many times there is lots of controversy, interpretation of data, inferences to be drawn, critical discussion, and so on. This is not so different from what philosophers do.
Science and philosophy aren’t two things that are at odds with each other. They are just disciplines in which smart people think really hard about tough questions. The differences are largely just in their methods and subject matter. Scientists tend to study empirical things and employ the appropriate empirical methods, while philosophers tend to study more conceptual, non-empirical things and employ the appropriate conceptual methods. And it’s not very clear that there is much of a sharp boundary to draw here. Think of Einstein. His theory of relativity was established largely from thought experiments (a tool often used in philosophy). The point is that philosophy and science are not so different—at least not by one being “subjective” while the other “objective.” That’s all I meant to establish. It’s a fairly weak claim, actually. Disagreement with it results, I think, largely from either not knowing what philosophy is or not knowing what science is.
You close by claiming that philosophy isn’t useful. By this I assume you mean that it doesn’t allow us to, for example, make advances in technology and whatnot. Or are you suggesting that philosophy isn’t even valuable? I was never trying to argue that philosophy is useful in the sense of helping us to build flatter flat-screen TVs and so on. But I do think philosophy is valuable, at least because it yields us knowledge of the world around us. Much of science is the same way. Much of science, that is, doesn’t help us to cure cancer. Rather, much of science is valuable simply because it yields us knowledge of the world around us. I just read an article about a grad student who lost all his data for his dissertation that was on collecting feces from some rare animal so that he could write about its diet. Is that useful in the sense of “useful” you intend to use? My point of course is that collecting this poop can be useful, just like philosophy, even if it doesn’t allow us to save anyone’s life or to make cooler gadgets. It’s valuable because it enriches people’s lives in a way different from curing diseases or making cool gadgets.