Are philosophy and science converging?
Anglo-American philosophy went through a period in the 20th century where it called itself analytic philosophy and made a very sharp distinction between what philosophers do, which is study conceptual issues, and what scientists do, which is study empirical issues. But in the last generation or so, it’s become clear that it’s not really possible to make that sharp a distinction. Our concepts evolve in light of new knowledge. And so the most exciting work that’s being done in philosophy right now is by philosophers who are consciously taking on more developments in science and asking, should this not make a difference to the way we have traditionally been talking about things. For instance, talking about the nature of the human person. We certainly have in our cultural heritage a concept of people being composed of a body and a soul, but science shows us that we don’t need a soul to explain all of the things that human beings do. And so we simply have to change our traditional conceptua
