This article discusses the role of philosophy as a discipline that explores the fundamental structure of reality, and raises the question of whether we can know the truth through philosophy. It explores why and why it is important for philosophy to explore truth in a different way than the empirical sciences, introducing and philosophically analyzing objections to whether philosophy is a valid methodology for the search for truth.
In order to discuss this, we need to ask the question, “Through what do we know the truth?” This is not a question of epistemology. Answering the question of how we can know truth is closely related to answering the question of what philosophy is. The fact that philosophy is a discipline that explores truth means that it is through philosophy that we can know truth, and answering the question of what philosophy is is answering the question of how we can know truth.
In a sense, we can say that all disciplines search for truth. Physics describes the realm of things that exist in space and time, that is, certain basic and ubiquitous phenomena in the natural world. In other words, physics seeks truth about the physical world. Sociology explains social phenomena and seeks truths about society. So, when we say that philosophy seeks truth, what do we mean by the word “truth”? Here we need to think about the nature of philosophical truth. Truth is more than just factuality in the specific domains of individual disciplines; it has a more fundamental and comprehensive meaning. As we can see from our discussion of individual disciplines, such as physics and sociology, the truths that they seek are truths about particular domains, such as the physical world or society. But philosophy’s inquiry is not limited to a particular domain. Philosophy not only inquires about the nature of things that exist in space and time, like physics, but it also inquires about time and space itself, and it inquires about the nature of causation. However, philosophy is not an empirical science. Philosophy does not only deal with the nature of the physical world, but also discusses things like the nature of abstract beings. In other words, philosophy is a study of the entire underlying structure of reality, and therefore truth in philosophy means the entire underlying structure of reality.
In an everyday sense, we may feel that philosophy is very detached from reality, or we may think that philosophy is a discipline that talks about mystical things and therefore is full of nonsense. In some cases, we may even think that philosophical discussions are just a bunch of nonsense. These doubts about philosophy reflect doubts about its function and doubts about its truth. But we need to ask ourselves whether these doubts are justified. To judge the role and value of philosophy simply by everyday standards is to overlook its complexity and depth. These everyday doubts can be expressed in the following questions
“How is philosophy, metaphysics, possible?”
There are various anti-philosophical positions that ask this question. Answering this question is, in a sense, a very useful basis for answering the question we posed in the first place: “What do we know about truth?”. One of the main reasons to question philosophy’s ability to provide answers about the underlying structure of reality is based on empirical science. Empirical science describes our world through experimentation and observation. We have multiple lines of evidence about the world, and we think we have good reason to believe that what empirical science says is true. Since philosophy is not an empirical science, we may have a sense that philosophical truths are false. Furthermore, we may think that only science provides a proper description of the world, and that nothing outside the methods of science can tell us the truth. If philosophy provides truths about the underlying structure of reality, then on this view philosophy must be a science. This position is called Scientism. Opposition to philosophy from this position comes not only from the sciences, but also from within philosophy itself. Such as naturalized epistemology.
However, if we look closely, we can see that science itself, which is supposed to provide us with truths about our world, is also steeped in philosophical assumptions. When a scientist proposes a theory or conducts an experiment, the model he has in mind needs to be critically examined. What methods of empirical science can be found for such a model? Object A collides with object B, changing B’s motion. Physics describes this phenomenon through experiments and observations. However, the model itself – that A’s collision with B is causally related to the change in B’s motion – cannot be explored empirically. Furthermore, at best, empirical science can only tell us what is true, not what ought to be true or what could be true. Philosophy deals with possibilities. In fact, only if we can limit the range of possibilities can we empirically determine what is real. This is why the empirical sciences depend on philosophy, and why they cannot take on the unique role of determining what is real.
This is where the necessity and importance of philosophy comes in. We turn to philosophical thinking when we want to understand areas that cannot be explained by everyday experience or scientific inquiry. For example, ethical issues, aesthetic judgments, and even reflections on the methodology of science itself fall within the realm of philosophy. In our search for truth, philosophy is like a compass that gives us direction. As we seek to deepen our understanding of the nature of truth, philosophy allows us to ask more comprehensive and fundamental questions.
Naturalized epistemologies claim that human knowledge, including metaphysical knowledge, is a product of our biological nature or evolution as cognitive animals. Therefore, the fundamental structures of truth and reality provided by philosophy are best addressed by the life sciences, such as physiology and evolutionary biology. However, this claim is itself highly metaphysical. The statement that human knowledge is a product of evolution is a statement about a world that cannot be known empirically. Furthermore, there is no difference between the question of how a human being who is a product of evolution can know about the non-empirical structure of reality, and how a human being who is a product of evolution can have knowledge about science. The fact that we cannot explain how metaphysical knowledge is possible for organisms like us does not give us sufficient reason to assume that such knowledge is not possible. If inexplicability means that it is not possible, then we have equally good reason to assume that natural scientific knowledge is not possible for life forms like us.
There are also objections to philosophy for reasons other than science-based intuitions. They object primarily to the idea that philosophical truths are universal because they are the fundamental structure of reality. Cultural or historical relativism holds that philosophy is out of touch with reality because it says something about the fundamental structure of reality. They say that truth is relative to culture and relative to historical time. Different cultures and times have different and incommensurable conceptions of reason and rationality. But such a claim is itself a metaphysical thesis. They are claims about the underlying structure of reality that cannot be revealed through the methods of individual sciences or intellectual disciplines such as cultural anthropology, history, or sociology. In other words, their position transcends the realm of more limited forms of rational inquiry.
In fact, Kant was probably the first philosopher to pose the question, “How is metaphysics possible?” and to ask it. This position, unlike the two above, is entirely philosophical. According to this view, metaphysics cannot tell us anything about objective reality as it exists in itself. However, metaphysics can tell us about the fundamentally necessary features of our thinking about reality. He says that we must regard the objects of our perception as located in space and time and as causally related to each other. But if we are anything, we are both our thinking and a part of reality itself, so it is self-contradictory to refuse to make claims about the nature of reality while simultaneously seeking to make claims about the necessary features of our thinking. Furthermore, to say that we grasp the world through such a structure of thought is to say that we have such a structure of thought, and the structure of thought Kant is talking about is a part of reality. If, as Kant says, we cannot say anything about reality, then what Kant says about our thought structures is also very strange.
It’s not really a stretch to say that philosophy is the study of the fundamental structure of reality. Each discipline has its own domain and object of inquiry. Just as physics explores the physical objects of the physical world and math explores the relationships between mathematical objects, philosophy deals with the structure of reality and philosophical objects. While each of these disciplines has its own domain, philosophy can be as interdisciplinary as physics and math because the scope of its discussion is the overall structure of reality.
Philosophy allows us to have multiple discussions about the real world, as well as discussions about what is possible, and it can contribute to the individual disciplines through a meta-critique of their discussions. To answer the question we posed at the beginning, philosophy allows us to know truths about the fundamental structure of reality.
