Philosophical theory
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"In relation to their philosophical systems, most philosophers are like a man who builds an enormous castle and lives in a shack close by." -- Soren Kierkegaard |
![The Canard Digérateur, or Digesting Duck, was an automaton in the form of duck, created by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1739. Voltaire wrote that "without [...] the duck of Vaucanson, you have nothing to remind you of the glory of France." ("Sans...le canard de Vaucanson vous n'auriez rien qui fit ressouvenir de la gloire de la France.") This is often misquoted as "Without the shitting duck, we would have nothing to remind us of the glory of France."](/Image:Duck_of_Vaucanson.jpg)
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In the general sense, a philosophical position<ref name="dot">Dictionary of Theories, Jennifer Bothamley</ref> is a position that explains or accounts for a general philosophy or specific branch of philosophy.The use of the term theory here is a statement of colloquial English and not reflective of the term theory. <ref name="Lacey">Template:Cite book</ref> While any sort of thesis or opinion may be termed a position, in analytic philosophy it is thought best to reserve the word "theory" for systematic, comprehensive attempts to solve problems.<ref name="Sparkes">Template:Cite book</ref>
The elementary theorems that comprise a philosophical position consist of statements which are believed to be true by the thinkers who accept them, and which may or may not be empirical. The sciences have a very clear idea of what a theory is; however in the arts such as philosophy, the definition is more hazy.<ref name="dot"/> Philosophical positions are not necessarily scientific theories, although they may consist of both empirical and non-empirical statements.
In essence, the collective statements of all philosophical movements, schools of thought, and belief systems consist of philosophical positions. Also included among philosophical positions are many principles, hypotheses, rules, paradoxes, laws, as well as 'ologies, 'isms, 'sis's, and effects.<ref name="dot"/>
Some examples of philosophical positions include:
- Metatheory; positions about the formation and content of theorems, such as Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem.
- Political theory; positions that underlie a political philosophy, such as John Rawls' theory of justice.
- Ethical theory and meta-ethics; positions about the nature and purpose of ethical statements,<ref>Richard T. Garner and Bernard Rosen, Moral Philosophy: A Systematic Introduction to Normative Ethics and Meta-ethics. (Macmillan, 1967)</ref> such as the ethical theory of Immanuel Kant.
- Critical theory; in its narrow sense, a Western European body of Frankfurt School Marxist thought that aims at criticizing and transforming, rather than merely explaining, social structures.<ref>See generally, Max Horkheimer, Traditional and Critical Theory (1937)</ref> In a broader sense, "critical theory" relates to a wide variety of political, literary, and philosophical positions that take at least some of their inspiration from the Frankfurt School and its dialectic, and that typically contest the possibility of objectivity or aloofness from political positions and privileges.<ref>"Critical theory" at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</ref>
Philosophical positions may also take the form of a life stance, religion, world view, or ideology.
A scientific theory however, is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. To become a scientific theory there are also specific requirements including that they can make predictions, are well supported by many fields of science, are consistent with preexisting theories, and they can be modified to account for new evidence.
See also
