If “science” is used for awareness...

If “science” is used for awareness, in an unqualified sense, or if it is used for a group of related propositions, it becomes more general than philosophy, for it would then include particular propositions and the conventional sciences. If it is used in the sense of real universal propositions, it becomes equivalent to philosophy in its ancient sense.

If it is used in the sense of empirical propositions, it becomes more specific than philosophy in the ancient sense, and it contradicts the modern meaning of philosophy (i.e., the set of nonempirical propositions). Likewise, metaphysics is a part of philosophy in the ancient sense, and is equivalent to it in one of its modern meanings.

It should be noted that the contrast between science and philosophy in the modern sense, as is intended by the positivists and those similar to them, is used to denigrate the value of philosophical problems and to deny the nobility and station of reason and the value of intellectual understanding, while this is not correct.

In discussions of epistemology it will be made clear that the value of intellectual understanding is not merely no less than that of sensory and experiential knowledge, but is even of an even higher level than these. Even the value of experiential knowledge itself will be found to be due to the value of intellectual understanding and philosophical propositions.

Therefore, the restriction of the term science for empirical knowledge and the term philosophy to that which is non-empirical is acceptable if merely a matter of terminology, but one must not misuse the contrast between these terms to pretend that the problems of philosophy and metaphysics are just idle speculation.

Likewise, the label “scientific” does not establish any advantage for any sort of philosophical tendency, and basically, this label is like a patch which does not match the fabric of philosophy, and it can be considered a sign of the ignorance and demagoguery of those who affix it.

The claim that the principles of a philosophy such as those of dialectical materialism are obtained from empirical laws is wrong, for the laws of no science are generalizable to any other science, let alone to all of existence. For example, the laws of psychology and biology cannot be generalized to physics or chemistry or mathematics, and vice versa. The laws of these sciences have no use outside their own realms.