The only thought attached here is that it doesn’t seem fitting that the answer is, ‘Whatever science can’t answer.’
Thank you, Joshua Millard, for a great question.
Your question has surely haunted all remotely self-aware philosophers at some point in their careers. Remarkably (or perhaps unremarkably, if you have followed philosophy for some time), there is no consensus on the topic. Still, philosophers go on doing their thing apparently unconcerned that no one really knows what their thing is. Let us continue in that tradition.
You ask for the ‘proper domain for philosophy’. Does this refer to the domain into which philosophy should fit, or to the domain philosophy covers? The former is a simple matter of categorisation: Is philosophy a social science, full-blooded science, or something else? The answer to this may be of interest, but I think you intend the latter. In modular theory, a proper domain is the set of information a module was evolved to process. Metaphorically, then, the proper domain of philosophy is the set of objects of philosophical interest; just as the proper domain of cardiology is the heart, the proper domain of philosophy is some set of objects or problems. You note that it is unsatisfactory to answer that philosophy is just concerned with whatever science can’t answer. Indeed, and in general, these definitions by exclusion are unsatisfactory.
Instead, we can consider two possibilities. First, that the proper domain of philosophy is concepts. Many philosophers take themselves to analyse concepts, traditionally with the aim of finding the necessary and sufficient conditions of their application. For instance, we may try to analyse the concept ‘bachelor’ by noting that the concept applies to all and only unmarried men. Unfortunately, history does not look kindly on this style of philosophy. After all these years of philosophising, we are no closer to providing application conditions for any concept! Again, consider ‘bachelor’: Is a priest a bachelor? How about a man living alone enjoying the fruits of a single life, despite having married years ago for visa reasons? Not a bachelor? This difficulty suggests that concepts ought not to be the proper domain for philosophy, assuming we wish to make any progress.
Some philosophers have thought that they are looking for knowledge of metaphysical possibility or necessity; that is, whatever could be the case in possible worlds, and what must be the case. For instance, we might ask whether knowledge has some essential property which does not change in any possible world. We are not so much interested in when our concepts apply, but in what knowledge really is. This domain contains the metaphysical properties of all things, the essential nature of objects.
In my view, this project also fails to get off the ground. The methodology is essentially the same as conceptual analysis, and we have seen how that has faired. For what it is worth, I think philosophy ought to be an exercise in developing new technical concepts, ones which have some use in scientific discovery or ordinary clarification. We give up the search for metaphysical truth and instead develop powerful tools for thinking.
What do you think? What is philosophy’s proper domain? Let us know in the comments.
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Image: Diogenes Sitting in his Tub, by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1860)
I did a BA in Philosophy and Literature at the University of Warwick, an MPhil in Philosophy at Warwick and am about to start a PhD in Philosophy at… Warwick. My primary research interests are the philosophy of cognitive science, philosophy of mind and the ontology of concepts (basically I want to know what concepts are). Immanuel Kant is the source of much inspiration for me. My views on cognition are overtly Kantian and I’m pretty sure he solved the whole idealism thing with transcendental idealism, the only sensible position one can take.