Talk:Philosophy

Descriptive/normative ??

 * "Much of Western philosophy... identifies as analytic (going from the smallest to the largest), descriptive/normative and objective."

So, is it either descriptive or normative, but not both? Does "Western philosophy" identify as having a major axis from descriptive to normative? Did whoever wrote that think "normative" and "descriptive" mean similar things? More clarity, less turbidity, please. FWIW, here is where it got put into the article. I'd fix it myself, but it's too compact and opaquely coded for me to parse. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 14:09, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Nomenclature
If sciences are "natural philosophy", does that mean philosophy is "unnatural science"? I would so go into a field named "unnatural science"! CorruptUser (talk) 22:37, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Hellz yes. FuzzyCatTomato (talk/stalk) 22:51, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Badphilosophy
Doesn't like the Bertrand Russel classification. 21:36, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Mind
Is philosophy of mind not a branch of metaphysics? Cornucopia (talk) 07:59, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

On "fundamental problems"
This isn't necessarily the case, and appears to adopt a "first philosophy" view, as stemming from the caricature of philosophy that is sometimes presented according to Descartes. The very important 20th century philosopher Willard Quine rejects this view, and sees philosophy as a branch of science (so, also, science as a branch of the same mode of thinking that motivates philosophy). Indeed, he explicitly rejects "first philosophy" and claims that thinking of all kinds starts "in the middle", i.e. between conflicting propositions, and works on the basis of assessing which propositions fit best into our epistemological criteria. Much of modern philosophy, especially, but not limited to, naturalistic philosophy, works on this basis, and regards "fundamental problems" as something of a red herring. I'm not going to edit the article by myself because this website generally sucks on philosophical subjects, but I thought I'd let you guys know. (Great job nailing Carl "I'm definitely not a fascist" Benjamin though)