A Definition of Philosophy

Colin McGinn, via his blog, recently offered an intriguing definition of philosophy.

He said it is "the study of logical reality."

What did he mean by that? Well ... the idea was to put the question "what is philosophy" within a family of other such questions, which have known answers, and then to locate philosophy as a member of that family.

So: what is physics? the study of physical reality.

What is psychology? the study of mental reality.

What is history? The study of historical reality.

And so forth. If philosophy belongs in this family, then philosophy is the study of some [aspect of?] reality. If we say that it is the study of logical reality we say that it is at core about (McGinn's words here), "All the relations of entailment, consistency, and inconsistency that exist." Entailment in particular has to be understood in a capacious sense to make this work as a definition.

One of McGinn's examples of how his definition may shed light on actual philosophizing involves determinism, moral responsibility, and a nest of issues about their connection: something we have discussed often in this blog.

As McGinn says, one of the common arguments in the field is that responsibility entails determinism. Another school of thought, though, contends that determinism is inconsistent with responsibility. Yet another argument is that the two are compatible but there is no entailment. By understanding philosophy in this way, as the study of logical reality, we can understand how philosophical arguments are distinct from the arguments of lawyers or psychologists about what may seem to be the same subject.

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