Advances in Philosophy

[Artoo]

Interesting chat with a mate who is a professional philosopher. He pointed out that, as advances are made in certain areas of philosophy and a body of received wisdom accumulates, then that area tends to split away and become a distinct field of study. Physics and logic are good examples. Of course, that leaves all the unanswered questions behind.

[emballantine]

I was just gonna say what Artoo said. The thing with philosophy is that it has spawned so many other fields of study, and has done so continuously throughout history. As fear says, "why don't we just accept the answers the ancients came up with?" Now wouldn't that be really silly? If not for philosophy there would not be religion (to which fear holds so dearly), there would not be medicine, there would not be mathematics, there would not be psychology, and on and on and on. As for advances in philosophy, there are always advances. New theories, ideas, new areas to explore. Whether one agrees with these theories or not does not invalidate them as being advances in philosophy. And, again as artoo said, as philosophy makes great strides in one area, that area tends to break away. But yes, the basis of philosophy is a bunch of people who asked "why?" or "how?" and then went out in search of answers to these questions. One area of philosophy that I find fascinating, that fortunately has less to do with religion than "the existence of god" field is the idea of free will vs fate/destiny. Along with this is the idea of mind and body...are they one or are they separate? These two ideas in philosophy are very relevant to our modern society. Much more relevant in our day than the question of the existence of a higher power. Perhaps because if we can answer these two questions than there is our answer to the "god question." Fate or destiny implies a higher power. A mind that is separate from the body (ie. a spirit, soul, or something other than chemicals and atoms and neurons etc) then implies some sort of higher power...or at least something metaphysical. In these two fields of philosophy you get psychology and neurology as well as a number of other areas of study. psychology and neurology are two fields that have made great strides in the last two hundred years. And when you're talking about a study that's been in existence for thousands and thousands of years (quite possibly since the first human existed), two hundred years is a very short amount of time.