It was suggested by someone in my "why are we here" thread that I should start a thread about "general philosophy" stuff that interests me, so I thought I would do that, starting with this.

I have observed a kind of structure, a set of symmetries and parallels, in the sub-fields of philosophy itself, that I haven't really seen explicitly called out anywhere, especially not all together like this. I think taking note of this structure can be useful in resolving some existing philosophical problems and guiding future research.

There are three dimensions to this structure.

The first is the descriptive vs prescriptive axis. This one seems pretty well observed by others. The very first Intro to Philosophy class I ever took was structured around this axis: the first half of the class was about metaphysics, epistemology, etc, and the second half of the class was on ethics, political philosophy, etc. The major program I graduated from had two... I forget what they called them, some kind of sub-majors or something... one that they called "core philosophy" that focused again on metaphysics, epistemology, etc, and another called something like "justice and ethics" that focused on ethics, political philosophy, etc. That pair of foci is what got me interested in philosophy to begin with, since my prior interests were basically in the physical sciences and certain social sciences like economics and political science, and finding a field that had sub-fields that seemed to underlay both of those piqued my interest. Noticing that two-fold nature of philosophy is what got me looking into the structure of the field as a whole, looking for symmetries between the two sides, whenever I learned something new about a descriptive topic wondering "what's the prescriptive analogue of this?" and vice versa.

The second axis I can't think of a good name for. "Beings" vs "doings" maybe, though that sounds dumb. Basically, it's the axis along which ontology and epistemology are oriented. Ontology is about things, epistemology is about a process; "objects" and "methods" is another pair of terms I sometimes use for this axis. I'm finding it hard to describe this axis without first describing the next, third axis, but for right now I'll just say that I think dividing up ethics into two fields along this axis can help resolve the conflict between utilitarianism and deontological ethics: something like utilitarianism gives an answer to the moral equivalent of ontology, about what things are good, what makes a state of affairs morally valuable, while something like deontological ethics gives an answer to the moral equivalent of epistemology, about what processes or methods for pursuing good states of affairs are justified. In the same way that epistemology can't just be solved by saying "believe whatever kinds of things are real according to this ontology, then you have knowledge"; it's important to suss out exactly which of that kind of thing is real by those standards.

The third axis we might call the abstract vs practical axis, or the pro-phi vs pop-phi axis maybe, since popular philosophy seems to focus more on the "practical" side and professional philosophy more on the "abstract" side. On the practical/popular side are things like philosophy of mind and will, political philosophy, and philosophy of religion. On the abstract/professional side are things like ontology, epistemology, and ethics. Even further in the abstract direction are things like philosophy of art, philosophy of math, and especially philosophy of language. In the other direction, even further in the practical direction, are fields I'm unaware of names of, but basically "existential" or "absurdist" topics about "the meaning of life", but also things like how to be an enlightened and empowered person, and how to spread that to others, both for their own personal development but also for the bolstering of social institutions that depend on an enlightened and empowered populace, like the institutions of scientific peer-review, or an anarchic government.


Put all of these things together, and I visualize a literally three-dimensional structure made of cubes each representing a philosophical field. I'll try to describe it. Picture first a 2x2 grid, with the horizontal axis being the descriptive-prescriptive one, and the vertical axis being the objects-methods one. In the top left is ontology. In the bottom left is epistemology. In the top right is half of ethics, the half for which something like utilitarianism gives an answer, which I like to call "teleology", since "teleological ethics" is sometimes used as a name for that kind of ethical theory. In the bottom right is the other half of ethics, "deontology", for obvious reasons.

Below them in the third dimension, picture another 2x2 grid, same axes. Below ontology, about the objects of reality, is philosophy of mind, about the subjects of reality. Below "teleology", about the objects (as in aims or goals) of morality, is philosophy of will, about the subjects of morality (since moral agency and responsibility is why freedom of will matters to anyone). Below epistemology is a field I don't know a good name for, but it's basically about education and its relationship to religions, about freedom of thought vs authoritarian dogma, etc; it's the descriptive analogue of political philosophy, which is just to the right of it, below "deontology", which connects to that in hopefully obvious ways.

Above all of that in the third dimension, picture two more cubes, one situated on the border between ontology and epistemology, another situated on the border between "teleology" and "deontology". Then picture a third cube above them in the third dimension, on their border. That highest cube in the third dimension is philosophy of language. The other two below it to either side are philosophy of mathematics on the left, and philosophy of art on the right. They connect to philosophy of language via logic (about the content and structure of communication) in the former case and rhetoric (about the packaging and delivery of communication) in the latter case. Philosophy of mathematics has obvious connections to ontology, and logic has obvious connections to epistemology. And philosophy of art / aesthetics is already usually grouped together with all of ethics under the banner of axiology, having to do with all kinds of value.

Lastly, below all of that in the third dimension, the same kind of three-cube arrangement but inverted. The lowest cube is whatever you call that field that existentialism and absurdism are working in, about the meaning of life. I also put philosophy of action down here. The other two cubes connecting to that are the other unnamed fields I described above, about enlightenment and empowerment. Both of these have connections to meaningfulness of life, but enlightenment also has connections to the topics of mind and education/religion, while empowerment has connections to the topics of will and politics.


I find that noting these parallels and structures is very useful in thinking about how to approach different topics, by comparing them to their parallels; and it seems like at least some historical philosophers have at least implicitly thought along these lines too. John Stuart Mill, for example, has both an ontology and a "teleology" that follow the same approach: an objectivist phenomenalism, a radically empirical realism (reality isn't just in the mind but it's made of nothing more than observables) on the one hand, and a radically hedonic altruism (utilitarianism) on the other hand. Kant, meanwhile, was both anti-confirmationist in his epistemology, and of course anti-consequentialist in his deontology, parallel approaches to the parallel subjects. I agree with both of them in those respective domains.

Furthermore, I observe that in philosophy of mind, we've begun (with Ned Block et al) to think in terms of two different senses of "consciousness", differentiating the spooky metaphysical topic of phenomenal "consciousness" from the straightforward functional topic of access "consciousness". Parallel to that, in philosophy of will, we have the spooky metaphysical kind of "free will" that incompatibilists are concerned about, and the straightforward functional kind of "free will" that contemporary compatibilists like Frankfurt and Wolff are concerned about. I at least see the answers to questions on both sides of that parallel as the same: both phenomenal "consciousness" and incompatibilist "free will" are everywhere, even an electron has them, and that makes them boring and unimportant; it's the specific reflexive functions of the mind and the will that constitute access consciousness and compatibilist free will that are interesting and important.

On a parallel along a different axis, the "objects" vs "methods" axis, I think there are similar answers to be had to questions about the institutions of education and governance as those I just recounted about the mind and the will. "Mind" and "will" are in one trivial sense distributed universally, but it's not until things form specific structures with specific functions that they really begin to manifest in the way we usually mean them. Likewise, as a supporter of both freethought and philosophical anarchism, I see both epistemic and deontic authority as widely distributed throughout society in a sense that makes them basically trivial and nonexistent, nobody really has any significant authority of either kind inherent in them, but they've all got equal tiny amounts of it, and when those people form the right kinds of social structures they can create institutions that do in effect have some semblance of authority in the sense we usually mean it, educational and governmental institutions, yet not religions and states. We have very successful irreligious educational institutions in the world today, and I think that noting the structures of those and transposing them to the other side of the descriptive-prescriptive axis could yield equally successful stateless governance institutions.


I don't know how to end this post, so I'll just comment that this kind of structure is basically what my book exists to illustrate, showing rather than telling, but I thought maybe people might find it more interesting if I just told like this.