Philosophy and philosophers

This post is about the definition of “philosophy” and “philosopher”.

Philosophy

A concept is like the mental version of a word. The difference is that a word can be interpreted in various meanings, like, “bachelor” can mean either an unmarried man, or can mean someone with a bachelor’s degree. But a concept is in your mind, so it is the same as one of the meanings. In this case, we could say that the word “bachelor” can represent two concepts.

If we wanted to talk scientifically about bachelors, we should decide which of the meanings of the word we’re talking about. So we could decide to say “bachelor” only to mean an unmarried man. Once we define a specific meaning in which we want to use a word, then it’s called a “term”.

A theory is a collection of terms and rules for how to use them, and knowledge that we decide to put in those terms. So for instance, physics is a theory that uses the terms “mass”, “force”, “acceleration”, and so on.

Philosophy is a theory about the terms that are used in all other theories and usually not defined by them, like “mind”, “matter”, “change”, etc. And “the philosophy of” a particular theory focuses on the philosophical terms relevant to it, as you might see with “the philosophy of physics” and so on.

Philosophers

The broadest possible sense of “philosopher” might include every human being. Common usage is not far from this; it includes anyone with some “philosophy” title, maybe even a mere philosophy graduate.

I like to say “philosopher” like “artist”. An artist is someone who produces art; similarly, a philosopher is someone who produces philosophy. So philosophy teachers, and historians of philosophy, are not necessarily philosophers. This has nothing to do with academic credentials, which is historically appropriate.

I also think the truest sense would include only those with a complete system. Philosophy only began when Plato united rational inquiry into nature and morals. Someone who does less than this may be contributing to philosophy, but not really doing philosophy.