I'm putting together a list of worthwhile discussions of the question 'What is philosophy?' What should be on it? In particular I'm interested in the question of what sort of subject matter various parts of the field have in common, if any.

How did philosophy help science throughout the history of science (especially modern science)? As far as I know many assumptions of the modern scientists are actually theories once developed by great philosophers.Can anybody specify some of those assumptions?

Since 1976, a growing body of work has argued that we urgently need to bring about a revolution in academic inquiry so that the basic aim becomes wisdom and not just knowledge - wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, wisdom thus including knowledge, understanding and technological know-how, but much else besides.  What we have at present, academic inquiry devoted, in the first instance, to the pursuit of knowledge is, it is argued, profoundly and damagingly irrational.  The generation of our current global problems, and our current incapacity to tackle them intelligently, effectively and humanely, is in part due to the long-standing structural irrationality of our institutions of learning.

The revolution we require would change every branch and aspect of academic inquiry. A basic intellectual task of academic inquiry would be to articulate our problems of living (personal, social and global) and propose and critically assess possible so ... (read more)

Are any of you interested in an "open source" philosophical project something rather like the <Bourbaki Group>, but initially limited to describing and mapping important philosophical problems and their inter-relations? As a first approximation, the guidelines might be as follows.

1.) Initially, at least, "philosophy" would include whatever serious thinkers who call themselves "philosophers" have said or implied it is. (Obviously, this would be an incoherent mix, including views that reject the possibly of philosophy. )

2.) Similarly, anything (including differences about what philosophy is and whether it is possible) would count as a philosophical "problem" if any such persons thinks (has thought) it is. Of course, something would still count as a important "problem" even if it is thought by some to have been solved or not to be a legitimate problem at all.

3.) The project would be descriptive and analytic, not evaluative or historical.

4.) The idea of would be:(a) to collect a (presumab ... (read more)

In this paper I described three fundamentally different kinds of classes; but the idea of ‘natural kinds’ never crossed my mind.  (That shows how long ago it was.)
I guess I now should say something like, “The extension of a ‘natural kind’ K is governed by the (usually hidden) features that are responsible for such and such observable distinguishing features in these (pointing) paradigmatic Ks.”

That would give us an important, and interesting fourth kind of class. Right?