Problem is, the word “philosophy” is ambiguous: do the two “philosophies” in your inquiry refer to the same thing?

For “philosophy” may refer to a specific intellectual discipline, Plato&Aristotle, etc, or it can mean “a way of thinking” about something, “an attitude, disposition, belief regarding”, etc.

It may also refer to a way of life: Socrates, Diogenes, etc.

Reflection or speculation, but with a bit of pomp and ceremony. :cool:

Philosophy is information about the philosophers consciousness. At its simplest consciousness is mind activity, but a better way to understand it is as an evolving process of self organization. So, philosophy would be information about a philosophers evolving process of self organization. The form the self organization takes is endlessly variable and open ended - it has no upper limit. :starstruck:

My philosophy on philosophy is that it’s interesting to play with but don’t take it too seriously.

Whatever your philosophy is on the general subject of philosophy.

Philosophy of philosophy is meta-philosophy which could branch out to the topics of meta-metaphysics meta-ontology meta-epistemology meta-ethics meta-aesthetics, where one or more of these might make sense to some philosophers but not to others.

so, then, what is your philosophy on philosophy?

The technical term is "meta".

I'm a metaphysical pluralist in the strongest sense. And I don't mean the usual metaontology confused synonymously with metaphysics, where the debate is often about the existence of things such as fictional beings or abstract entities or numbers.

My philosoophy on philosophy: it's a lot of fun, until it is not. I do it whille I enjoy it, and I don't pursue things that I don't enjoy philosophising about.

Metaphilosophy is the philosophy of philosophy, which is to say the philosophical examination of philosophy itself. It is the study of questions about the definition of philosophy and its demarcation from other fields; whether and how progress is made in philosophy; how philosophy is to be done; what it takes to do philosophy; who is to do philosophy; and why it matters to do philosophy. — The Metaphilosophy of Analytic Pragmatism

Short version of mine (long version at the link above):

Philosophy is not religion, nor sophistry, nor science, nor ethics, nor math, nor art. Philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom, where wisdom is the ability to discern the true from the false, the good from the bad; or at least the more true from the less true, the better from the worse; the ability, in short, to discern superior answers from inferior answers to any given question.

Philosophical progress is made by devising useful methods of answering questions about what is real or what is moral, and consequently the related issues of the meaning of such questions, and the importance of those questions.

The best method of philosophy is to analyze concepts in light of the practical use we want to put them to, asking why do we need to know the answer to some question, in order to get at what we really want from an answer to that question, and so what an answer to it should look like, and how to go about identifying one.

The faculty needed to do philosophy is just sapience, i.e. self-awareness and self-control, the ability to have opinions about your opinions, to be aware of what you are thinking, to assess whether you are thinking the correct things, and if you deem that you are not, to cause yourself to think differently

Philosophy is to be done by everyone, as individuals and generalists, but it's also good for there to be organized professional academic bodies of philosophers who specialize in particular sub-fields, so long as some generalists still keep abreast of the developments in those specialties and tie things back into a cohesive whole, and so long as that academic world of philosophy still connects with the common individuals and doesn't fall into its own navel.

And the use of philosophy is twofold, one intrinsic and one extrinsic. For its intrinsic value, it's like mental martial arts, improving mental health and fitness and preparing one to defend against "attacks" from false claims, fallacies, etc. For its extrinsic value, philosophy is the keystone of the entire structure of human endeavors, bridging the abstract fields of language, art, and math, to the practical fields of science, engineering, technology, economics, entrepreneurship, business, and the trades, a la:

Since when is social science a physical science? And your division of mathematics is naive.

Since when is social science a physical science? — jgill

Inasmuch as it aims to be a descriptive science and per physicalism everything descriptively real is physical.

And your division of mathematics is naive. — jgill

It’s an adaptation of the Quadrivium’s “arithmetic”, “geometry”, “music”, and “astronomy”, as it interprets those as meaning “number in itself”, “number in space”, “number in time”, and “number in space and time”. But I’d like to hear what you think is wrong with that.

It’s an adaptation of the Quadrivium’s . . . — Pfhorrest

"A medieval university curriculum involving the “mathematical arts” of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music." (Wiki)

Generally, social science is not considered a physical science. Look it up.

And your diagram accords philosophy an enviable position among virtually all human activities. At a time in the past that might have had merit, but I don't see it these days. Sorry, but it seems conceited and way out of proportion. And the mathematical world now is far too complicated to be encapsulated so trivially in your diagram.

But I am not a philosopher, and others hereabouts will have opinions supporting your views I suspect. That's OK.

"A medieval university curriculum involving the “mathematical arts” of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music." (Wiki) — jgill

In modern applications of the liberal arts as curriculum in colleges or universities, the quadrivium may be considered to be the study of number and its relationship to space or time: arithmetic was pure number, geometry was number in space, music was number in time, and astronomy was number in space and time. [...] The term continues to be used by the Classical education movement [...] — Wiki on Quadrivium, modern usage section

Generally, social science is not considered a physical science. Look it up. — jgill

Generally, "social science" is not one thing, so it's not "a" anything. There are many social sciences. And they fit perfectly into the structure of this diagram. (Physics, chemistry, biology, psychology is the familiar stack; astronomy/space sciences, geology/earth sciences, ecology/life sciences, and sociology/social sciences is the parallel stack of systems versions of all those). Rename the two lower wings "descriptive sciences" and "prescriptive sciences" if that makes you happier, I don't care.

And your diagram accords philosophy an enviable position among virtually all human activities. At a time in the past that might have had merit, but I don't see it these days. Sorry, but it seems conceited and way out of proportion. — jgill

The relations between abstract things don't change over time, so whatever merit it ever has at one time, it has at all times. This isn't a diagram of how much emphasis any particular human society contingently puts on the different subjects, but of the inherent relationships between the different subjects. Abstract ones at the top, practical ones at the bottom, etc. If you wanted to distort it to reflect how much emphasis the modern western world puts on them, all the abstract stuff at the top would be shrunk way down, and the trades section at the bottom would be blown way up. But that's not the function of this image.

And the mathematical world now is far too complicated to be encapsulated so trivially in your diagram. — jgill

If you didn't notice, in addition to being an application of the quadrivium, it's also a mirror of the arts side, which has musical arts (broadly characterized as art in time), visual arts (broadly characterized as art in space), and performance arts (broadly characterized as art in time and space, including all of dance, theater, film, video, animation, and so on), as well as the linguistic arts, parallel to each of those non-linguistic arts, such as poetry (characterized as being about things like rhyme and meter, figuratively "music in words"), prose (characterized as being about vivid descriptions, figuratively "pictures in words"), and storytelling (figuratively "movies in words").

And of course down in the foundational corner, design, as in the design of things like the interfaces people use and spaces people occupy, which I hold to be the non-linguistic parallel of rhetoric itself (of which "communication" as a field is an outgrowth), being all about using style and presentation to draw people's attention in the direction the designer wants it drawn, to make some things seem obvious and intuitive while hiding other things away where they won't be noticed, and so guide people's behavior, just as rhetoric emphasizes some aspects of some parts of some ideas while deemphasizing others, and so guides people's feelings about those ideas.

My philosophy on philosophy is that it can be used as a tool in certain areas of life. It is also fun and exciting, but, at the same time, be taken too seriously if not checked.

Thank you for answering my question.

This isn't a diagram of how much emphasis any particular human society contingently puts on the different subjects, but of the inherent relationships between the different subjects — Pfhorrest

I can see a path from construction to geometry and back again in your diagram. But the image of the diagram infers (to me) philosophy is the bedrock of all activities. Is this your message? Or, if you mean to imply that philosophical conversations occur in all activities perhaps philosophy doesn't even belong in the illustration since it is pervasive. Communication, reflection, speculation - these bring people together from various disciplines rather than formal philosophy.

A social science is normally not considered a physical science. Oxford Dictionary on physical sciences: "the sciences concerned with the study of inanimate natural objects, including physics, chemistry, astronomy, and related subjects." If you didn't have ethical sciences I would say just "sciences".

You are welcome. Thanks for posting.