A philosophy should be..

I'm reading a variable, but generally interesting book called "The Great Philosophers" (really it's a collection of essays by numerous experts). I've *done* Socrates, Plato, Descartes, Sponiza (skim read him), and part of Berkley. Add to this an introduction to Kant I read a while back, Sohpie's World and various other bits and bobs. I started thinking about what makes a philosophy?

Kant says that a philosophy must be practical. Or to put it another way: useful. I wonder what 'useful' means..

As noted in the book Sophie's World, there is a glut of publications aimed at 'self-help', which fall short of philosophy (or psychology) but their existance suggests a desire to 'improve' the average person's lot. Clearly this is an important aspect to a philosophy (agreeing with Kant).

Many philosophies are built into or upon political movements or religions. Invariably these are supposed to 'improve' society as a whole.

Most philosophies, including modern physics, focus on mathematical and experimentational results to explain the way the universe works.

Very well, next in my current reading matter I noted two interesting themes:

I noted that Descartes and Plato seem to be inspecting the physical tools upon whose feedback we base our philosophies: our senses. Modern physics certainly seems to attempt to remove these inaccuracies of human-ness.

Berkeley seems to start on the inspection of the computational device we use to formulate our philosophies: the human brain. I suppose you could say 'cogito ergo sum' is Descartes' attempt to look at this same device.

So, a philosophy should usefully marry physical, psychological and social aspects to improve our lot. It should include the physical and mental mechanisms of human-ness in it's unification. It should build a basis for the GUT in the physical sciences, a better understanding of the human mind and provide a method for the compassionate operation of a society.

Right, should be done by teatime then!