On philosophy: Disagreement, skepticism, and normativity

Abstract

The question about the nature of philosophy is lively contested nowadays. The problem emerges from Kant’s account on philosophy in his Critic of Pure Reason that requires labor division among philosophy and science aims. Some contemporary philosophers reject the kantian account on philosophy and claim that philosophy place is among the empirical sciences. This scenario has created a tension between accounts on philosophy that reject the status of philosophy as a science and accounts on philosophy that maintain the status of philosophy as a science. This scenario makes the question about the nature of philosophy relevant. My main thesis is that philosophy is not about attaining philosophical knowledge about the world but the assessing and creating of systems of rules that I call philosophical laws. To support this, I adopt an alternative approach to cope with the inquiry about the nature of philosophy. I reject the ‘what is x?’ question because is an ill-formed question. I argue that one should start with the question ‘what is the role of philosophical propositions?’. Subsequently, I will identify two prevalent views on the cognitive role of philosophy: weak cognitivism and strong cognitivism. The first one accepts ontological naturalism but rejects methodological naturalism, the latter accepts ontological naturalism and methodological naturalism. However, I will show that weak cognitivism is more akin with our philosophical practice. Yet, I will argue against the idea that philosophical propositions have a cognitive role since the particular conditions of philosophical disagreement yield a skeptical verdict about the cognitive role of philosophical propositions. Finally, I will posit an alternative to the cognitive role of philosophical propositions that keeps our philosophical practice of exchanging reasons by means of arguing that aporetic philosophical propositions requires us to create philosophical laws.