Another view of Philosophy, which I believe Russell also subscribed to (but I can’t seem to find a reference for presently) is that philosophy was the ‘mother discipline’. It was generative. You developed your branch of Philosophy until you got your ontology and methodology sorted out, and then you stopped calling what you were doing philosophy. (This has the amusing side-effect of making anything philosophers say wrong by definition—sometimes useful, but always wrong.)
The Natural Sciences, Psychology, Logic, Mathematics, Linguistics—they all got their start this way.
That’s how Philosophy used to work. Nowadays, I think the people who can do that type of “mucking around with complex questions of ontology and methodology” thinking have largely moved on to other disciplines. If we define Philosophy as this messily complex discipline-generating process, it no longer happens in the discipline we call “Philosophy”.[1]
That said—while I would personally enjoy the “intro to philosophy” syllabus Luke proposes, I think it’s a stretch to label the course a philosophy course, much less [The One And True] Intro To Philosophy. It’s cool and a great idea, but the continuity with many models (be they aspirational or descriptive) of Philosophy is fairly tenuous, and without a lot of continuity I think it’d be hard to push into established departments.[2]
If we’re speaking more modestly, that philosophers should be steeped in modern science and logic and that when they’re not, what they do is often worse than useless, I can certainly agree with that.
[1] E.g., Axiology.
[2] Why not call it “introduction to scientific epistemology”?
Another view of Philosophy, which I believe Russell also subscribed to (but I can’t seem to find a reference for presently) is that philosophy was the ‘mother discipline’. It was generative. You developed your branch of Philosophy until you got your ontology and methodology sorted out, and then you stopped calling what you were doing philosophy. (This has the amusing side-effect of making anything philosophers say wrong by definition—sometimes useful, but always wrong.)
The Natural Sciences, Psychology, Logic, Mathematics, Linguistics—they all got their start this way.
That’s how Philosophy used to work. Nowadays, I think the people who can do that type of “mucking around with complex questions of ontology and methodology” thinking have largely moved on to other disciplines. If we define Philosophy as this messily complex discipline-generating process, it no longer happens in the discipline we call “Philosophy”.[1]
That said—while I would personally enjoy the “intro to philosophy” syllabus Luke proposes, I think it’s a stretch to label the course a philosophy course, much less [The One And True] Intro To Philosophy. It’s cool and a great idea, but the continuity with many models (be they aspirational or descriptive) of Philosophy is fairly tenuous, and without a lot of continuity I think it’d be hard to push into established departments.[2]
If we’re speaking more modestly, that philosophers should be steeped in modern science and logic and that when they’re not, what they do is often worse than useless, I can certainly agree with that.
[1] E.g., Axiology.
[2] Why not call it “introduction to scientific epistemology”?