Philosophy Matters

Abstract

Philosophy is the attempt to answer general questions about the nature of knowledge, reality, and values. Natural philosophy draws heavily on neuroscience and psychology to develop interconnected theories of knowledge, reality, morality, justice, meaning, and the arts. It uses a procedure that identifies the most important philosophical issues as questions, considers a range of available answers to these questions, evaluates these answers based on coherence with scientific knowledge and other defensible philosophical doctrines, and reaches philosophical conclusions by accepting some answers and rejecting others based on explanatory coherence with evidence and on emotional coherence with human goals. Philosophy differs from science in being more general, ranging across all of the sciences, and in being more normative, concerned with how the world can be made better.