Iris Murdoch in an interview with Bryan Magee concerning the subjects of philosophy and literature claimed that philosophy cannot be considered as a science and that philosophy is merely a reflection on concepts. Now to suggest that philosophy is no more than a reflection on concepts is to tell us nothing about philosophy. It must be pointed out that philosophy does not exist merely as thoughts and can be considered to be ideas, concepts and notions that refer to and apply to objective reality. A philosophical truth is the same as a scientific truth especially if it is a truth of natural philosophy. In exact science one demonstrates truths by experiment, whereas in philosophy one describes truth in a general manner in regard to how it connects to reality (experience) and other truths. When Pythagoras mentioned that many things in nature can be figured out by using mathematics; he made a philosophical insight, this insight only becomes scientific through repeated demonstration. The philosophical insight of Pythagoras that I just mentioned did not exist merely as a reflection of thoughts and as concepts as Iris Murdoch claims philosophy only exists as, but actually applied to reality objectively and demonstrably as well as having practical applications. When a philosopher sais that there are 5,280 feet in a british mile and that there are 26,400 feet in five miles, then he or she is not only just reflecting on concepts, but is describing actual truths that connect to other truths that are demonstrable, therefore philosophers deal in scientific truths and demonstrable truths and not merely in pure mental concepts that are divorced from objective reality. What starts off as philosophical insights end up being called scientific facts after the fact due to repeated demonstration and experiment. Some scientific facts have been discovered by a purely scientific method, but the scientific method was developed by natural philosophers. Philosophers mostly use words to convey their ideas concerning the truth of reality; now words refer to the world and so do concepts. Concepts and words do have a value in their own right because it is our primary method of communicating our ideas, whereas mathematics as well as diagrams are secondary in this regard. Philosopher means "lover of wisdom" and "wisdom" means truth learned from experience. Philosophy as I have rightly mentioned deals in the truths that are learned from experience and so the concepts and truths of philosophy come from experience and don't exist only in the mind alone but do correspond to reality and experience. Philosophy by its very nature is empirical and objective.
A philosopher must be able to demonstrate his or her concepts, insights, inferences and hypotheses in the real world by example for them to become proper theories.
Truth is when our knowledge and ideas correspond to objective facts and things in the real world and its processes; so one can say that it is subjective opinions that makes philosophy circular and unproductive and seem as though it is merely a reflection on uncorroborated concepts and opinions. For philosophers to be taken more seriously requires that they can all agree to certain types of axioms and general truths because this is the only way that philosophy can become more scientific and universal in its application to our lives generally. Without corroboration and agreement between philosophers as to the axioms and laws of truths then philosophy will always remain undeveloped and subjective.
If philosophy is to be more scientific and certain it has to exist as pure reason and also as pure empirical reason and so therefore it must be objective, empirical, demonstrable, self-evident and consistent. Philosophy it must be pointed out can never be made into an exact science like physics or astronomy and this is because philosophy is a dynamic and living thing, whereas exact science concerns what is mostly mechanistic, rigid, predictable and determined. Philosophy will never be able to be more than just a general and loose science based upon reason and its application to circumstances that we find ourselves in and this is because it would be too mechanistic and rigid if it was treated as an exact science. People evolve and are dynamic and so philosophy has to be able to adapt to their needs and insights as a living thing. Even though philosophy is not an exact science, it can be considered to be a general science especially the logical type of philosophy that incorporates scientific knowledge as part of its content. Philosophers also have scientific hypotheses that they propound. If knowledge does not have an application or use it then fails to be right or wrong and so there is no criteria for truth. To lay down a foundation of truth, clarity, coherence and certainty should be the main aim of a philosophical method and from this foundation one builds, because philosophy is the glue that binds and connects all knowledge of truths together. The subject of psychology is generally regarded to be a type of general science by most people, but yet philosophy has always in the past escaped this classification by most people even though it is capable of being regarded as just as much of a general science as psychology is. Earlier in this essay I mentioned and defined truth in the sense of truth as correspondence and I also mentioned that it cannot exist without us assessing and being aware of it, But also you get objective truths that exists as facts which exist independently of our desire to know them which our truth as correspondence is based upon. Some people think that truth is a socially constructed pursuit, but this is not so, the desire for truth is a very primal need and is pursued by many people in isolation. When mentioning truth one cannot forget subjective truths also. Subjective truths exist as general facts that occur in our lives subjectively and in our personal experiences generally and are sometimes responsible for the things that we invent and so on. It is our values, feelings and desires that are responsible for some of our subjective experiences. If philosophy is to progress it has to show a gradual development and consistency and there has to be a cumulative and co-operative advance in its findings. The advances that are made by philosophy have to occur from generation to generation. Philosophy up until today has been held back by religion, the sophists, the positivists, the subjectivists, the perspectivists, the postmodernists, the ignorant and the downright stupid! Some people even claim that philosophy does not have any subject matter of its own, as though science, and ethics, and logic, and psychology and so many other subjects were not developed by philosophy, when in fact, we know that they were! Philosophers like to converge upon true statements and descriptions of reality because the need to remove doubt and uncertainty from their minds concerning reality is overwhelming. The knowledge of the truths of things that is attained by philosophy gives definite actions and all practical uses of knowledge a utility that is not attained by uncertainty, doubt and falsity. The knowability and demonstrability of universal, particular, objective and subjective truths enables people not only to discover new things about the nature of reality, but it enables people to be clear about what they think and feel is important; in this way you always know where you stand in matters in regard to others and their own point of view. To have the right of free speech is important in this world, because it is the intelligent, clear, rational, ethical and open minded people that will save this world from war, needless suffering and stupidity. One of the things that makes philosophers different to scientists is the fact that scientists are more unrealistically ambitious than philosophers; scientists attempt to create grand unification theories, scientists like the idea of having singular overarching visions or descriptions of reality that attempts to describe everything as a unified whole. Philosophers enjoy describing reality and they also like to make attempted explanations of phenomenon in the form of a hypothesis. Philosophers in general tend to think of their own knowledge of nature and reality as a fragmentary collection of truths that interrelate and connect somehow. To a philosopher reality can only be understood as a collection of truths that have been observed from different perspectives and then assembled as a means to make sense of them. The progress of history may not be a specific type of story as in Hegel's account of it, but history in its course forward does attain a gradual progress nonetheless which aims towards greater freedom for people, greater knowledge, better living conditions for people, more rights for people, scientific advancements, etc. Anyone with a certain amount of intelligence can tell that progress is a real thing and also a good thing and this is so even though the postmodernists reject this as a fact. In his notebooks, Leonardo da Vinci mentions that no human investigation may claim to be a true science if it has not passed through mathematical demonstrations. The most effective way to make one's philosophy or any other similar study into a true science requires that the investigator is able to use statistical analysis and other forms of demographic information as part of their examination, which as we know are mathematical in nature; also he or she must be able to combine this with a logical analysis and methodology based upon common sense and other forms of scientific knowledge and theorizing, it is only with this type of rigour can philosophy ever truly be called a science.
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