Metaphilosophy, Misc

A discussion on PhilPapers.org, initiated by myself, has prompted me to write this sketch.

Metaphysics has done everything to involve God in the world of being. However, in case of considering Reality as being and nothingness, naturally, the metaphysical approach toward the idea of God is losing its grounds. If Reality is being and nothingness, so the idea of God, too, should concern nothingness as well as being.

There is a common belief that non-being and nothingness are identical, a widespread, even general delusion the wrongness of which I will try to demonstrate in this work. And which I consider even more important, that is to define nothingness for further determination of “its” place and role in the reality and especially in human life.

As I tried to show in my earlier works (An Endeavor of New Concept of Being and Non-Being, Non-Being and Nothingness and Reality as Being and Nothingness), the environment in which the human being is finding itself should be characterized by being and nothingness, and any non-metaphysical philosophy must consider such an understanding of Reality as the utmost category which is above being, Universe, etc. In this article, I will try to shed light on the place and role of the (...) human being or the presence or this-being in Reality as being and nothingness. (shrink)

Recent authors hold that the role of historical scholarship within contemporary philosophical practice is to question current assumptions, to expose vestiges or to calibrate intuitions. On these views, historical scholarship is dispensable, since these roles can be achieved by nonhistorical methods. And the value of historical scholarship is contingent, since the need for the role depends on the presence of questionable assumptions, vestiges or comparable intuitions. In this paper I draw an analogy between scientific and philosophical practice, in order to (...) float one role for historical scholarship that is nonreplicable and noncontingent. It has long been acknowledged that cognitive values – features of theories that facilitate understanding, such as ontological parsimony, ideological simplicity, computational ease and fecundity – play a key role within science. The role of some of these values within philosophy also has received attention but left understudied are the values of novelty and conservativeness. These values influence theory choice, the selection of methodology, the setting of research agenda, and the presentation of results; and are best assessed with a historically informed evaluation. This role for historical scholarship is not replicable by nonhistorical methods, and is not contingent on the presence of questionable assumptions, vestiges or comparable intuitions. (shrink)

1 1 Ulrich de Balbian Meta-Philosophy Research Center (Meta-Philosophy) Death of Philosophy Part 2 PART 2 Philosophy subject-matter page2 Different approaches to doing philosophy (Methods) page 164 Metaphysics, Ontology, Epistemology page.

What is it for philosophy to make progress? While various putative forms of philosophical progress have been explored in some depth, this overarching question is rarely addressed explicitly, perhaps because it has been assumed to be intractable or unlikely to have a single, unified answer. In this paper, we aim to show that the question is tractable, that it does admit of a single, unified answer, and that one such answer is plausible. This answer is, roughly, that philosophical progress consists (...) in putting people in a position to increase their understanding, where 'increased understanding' is a matter of better representing the network of dependence relations between phenomena. After identifying four desiderata for an account of philosophical progress, we argue that our account meets the desiderata in a particularly satisfying way. Among other things, the account explains how various other achievements, such as philosophical arguments, counterexamples, and distinctions, may contribute to progress. Finally, we consider the implications of our account for the pressing and contentious question of how much progress has been made in philosophy. (shrink)

Conciliationism is the family of views that rationality requires agents to reduce confidence or suspend belief in p when acknowledged epistemic peers (i.e. agents who are (approximately) equally well-informed and intellectually capable) disagree about p. While Conciliationism is prima facie plausible, some have argued that Conciliationism is not an adequate theory of peer disagreement because it is self-undermining. Responses to this challenge can be put into two mutually exclusive and exhaustive groups: the Solution Responses which deny Conciliationism is self-undermining and (...) attempt to provide arguments which demonstrate this; and the Skeptical Responses which accept that Conciliationism is self-undermining but attempt to mitigate this result by arguing this is either impermanent and/or not very worrisome. I argue that, by Conciliationism’s own lights, both kinds of responses (almost certainly) fail to save Conciliationism from being self-undermining. Thus, Conciliationism is (almost certainly) permanently self-undermining. This result is significant because it demonstrates that Conciliationism is likely hopeless: there is likely nothing that can save Conciliationism from this challenge. I further argue that Conciliationism, like any view, should be abandoned if it is (almost certainly) hopeless. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy there is much focus on conceptual engineering: the enterprise of revising and replacing concepts. In this talk, I focus on a theoretical issue that has not yet received much attention. What principled limits are there to this sort of enterprise? Are there concepts that for principled reasons cannot or should not be revised or replaced? Examples discussed include logical concepts and normative concepts.

There are two ways that philosophy could transform a life to make it substantially more meaningful: on the one hand, philosophical enquiry might reveal other activities that would make life meaningful, enabling a philosopher (or others) to live meaningfully as a result of the enquiry, while, on the other hand, it might be that doing philosophy is in itself one way to make the philosopher's life notably meaningful. I explore the latter path. I argue against views of meaning in life (...) entailing that philosophy could not itself be particularly meaningful or only rarely could be, after which I critically reflect on a variety of respects in which philosophical reflection, either by its own nature or if undertaken in some familiar ways, would plausibly enhance the meaning in the philosopher's life. In particular, I critically discuss views of Bertrand Russell, Joe Mintoff, and Neil Levy that purport to explain how philosophy itself confers meaningfulness, contending that their explanations are not as comprehensive as my own. (shrink)

An autobiographical reflection on some kinds of intellectual moves that tend to be revealing in philosophy. Written mainly for emerging researchers.

What can African sources teach philosophers and related thinkers around the world? In some real ways, both Western philosophers and non-Western advocates of decolonization have failed to appreciate that there is probably a lot to learn from Africa. In my contribution, I explain why neither camp has given African intellectual sources their due and sketch what that would plausibly involve.

“What is energy?” We appreciate it well when it manifests within the limits of our perception and hence we say it is “Everything”. Understanding energy as such can be frustrating because it is like looking for something that lies beyond the limits of our perception.

Burgess (1997), building on Quine (1953), convincingly argued that claims in quantified modal logic cannot be understood as synonymous with or logically equivalent to claims about the analyticity of certain sentences. According to modal normativism, metaphysically necessary claims instead express or convey our actual semantic rules. In this paper, I show how the normativist can use Sidelle’s (1992a, 1995) neglected work on rigidity to account for two important phenomena in quantified modal logic: the necessity of identity and the substitutivity of (...) identicals into modal contexts. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to determine the role of intuitions in Gettier cases. Critics of the Method of Cases argue that arguments developed within this method contains a premise that is justified by its intuitiveness; they also argue that intuitions are unreliable source of evidence. By contrast, Max Deutsch argues that this critique is unsound since intuitions do not serve as evidence for premises. In Gettier cases, an intuitive premise is justified by other arguments called G-Grounds. I propose (...) a different view on the role of intuition in Gettier cases. I introduce a distinction between concept-revision arguments and concept-application arguments. On the basis of this distinction and Craig’s and Spicer’s distinction between intuitions of intension and intuitions of extension, I show that (1) intuitions of extension do not serve as evidence for any G-Grounds; (2) intuitions of intension do play an evidential role for all G-Grounds, but (3) in the case of G-Grounds which are used as concept-application arguments, they are a poor source of evidence, while (4) in the case of G-Grounds used as concept-revision arguments, they could be a reliable source of evidence if they are intuitions of intension of a speaker immersed in philosophical discourse. (shrink)

According to a recent proposal, the epistemic aim of metaphysics as a discipline is to chart the different viable theories of metaphysical objects of inquiry (e.g. causation, persistence). This paper elaborates on and seeks to improve on that proposal in two related ways. First, drawing on an analogy with how-possibly explanation in science, I argue that we can usefully understand this aim of metaphysics as the charting of epistemically possible answers to metaphysical questions. Second, I argue that in order to (...) account for the epistemic goodness of this aim, one should appeal to the epistemic value it has in virtue of providing resources for non-factive understanding of the objects of metaphysical inquiry.**This paper is forthcoming in a special issue of Argumenta on the Epistemology of Metaphysics**. (shrink)

According to a common philosophical intuition, the deep nature of things is hidden from us, and the world as we know it through perception and science is somehow shallow and lacking in reality. For all we knwo, the intuition goes, we could be living in a cave facing shadows, in a dream or even in a computer simulation, This “intuition of unreality” clashes with a strong, but perhaps more naive, intuition to the effect that the world as we know it (...) seems perfectly real. Shadows, dreams, or informational structures appear too unreal to be identical to the world as we know it! This clash between the two intuitions forms the basis of the "problem of reality." At the turn of the nineteenth century psychiatrists encountered patients they referred to as “metaphysician doubters” who constantly questioned the reality of the world. This essay draws on the study of these patients to reject, and indeed diagnose, the intuition of unreality and recent metaphysical doctrines drawing on it, such as structuralism, digitalism, and virtual realism. (shrink)

_The Bloomsbury Guide to Philosophy of Disability_ is a revolutionary collection encompassing the most innovative and insurgent work in philosophy of disability. Edited and anthologized by disabled philosopher Shelley Lynn Tremain, this book challenges how disability has historically been represented and understood in philosophy: it critically undermines the detrimental assumptions that various subfields of philosophy produce; resists the institutionalized ableism of academia to which these assumptions contribute; and boldly articulates new anti-ableist, anti-sexist, anti-racist, queer, anti-capitalist, anti-carceral, and decolonial insights and (...) perspectives that counter these assumptions. -/- This rebellious and groundbreaking book's chapters–most of which have been written by disabled philosophers–are wide-ranging in scope and invite a broad readership. The chapters underscore the eugenic impetus at the heart of bioethics; talk back to the whiteness of work on philosophy and disability with which philosophy of disability is often conflated; and elaborate phenomenological, poststructuralist, and materialist approaches to a variety of phenomena. Topics addressed in the book include: ableism and speciesism; disability, race, and algorithms; race, disability, and reproductive technologies; disability and music; disabled and trans identities and emotions; the apparatus of addiction; and disability, race, and risk. With cutting-edge analyses and engaging prose, the authors of this guide contest the assumptions of Western disability studies through the lens of African philosophy of disability and the developing framework of crip Filipino philosophy; articulate the political and conceptual limits of common constructions of inclusion and accessibility; and foreground the practices of epistemic injustice that neurominoritized people routinely confront in philosophy and society more broadly. -/- A crucial guide to oppositional thinking from an international, intersectional, and inclusive collection of philosophers, this book will advance the emerging field of philosophy of disability and serve as an antidote to the historical exclusion of disabled philosophers from the discipline and profession of philosophy. -/- The Bloomsbury Guide to Philosophy of Disability is essential reading for faculty and students in philosophy, disability studies, political theory, Africana studies, Latinx studies, women's and gender studies, LGBTQ studies, and cultural studies, as well as activists, cultural workers, policymakers, and everyone else concerned with matters of social justice. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the general philosophy of science should learn metaphilosophical lessons from the case of metaphysical underdetermination, as it occurs in non-relativistic quantum mechanics. Section presents the traditional discussion of metaphysical underdetermination regarding the individuality and non-individuality of quantum particles. Section discusses three reactions to it found in the literature: eliminativism about individuality; conservatism about individuality; eliminativism about objects. Section wraps it all up with metametaphysical considerations regarding the epistemology of metaphysics of science.

Questo saggio cerca di mostrare che la filosofia non deve essere obbligatoriamente intesa come una disciplina che discute problemi, cercando sempre nuove soluzioni, ma che resta alla mercé delle correnti di pensiero che in un caso o nell'altro si avvicendano nel corso della storia senza poter mai trovare una conclusione ultima a quei problemi. Nel primo capitolo l'autore ripercorre brevemente alcune delle metodologie della ricerca filosofica che hanno segnato la storia della filosofia mostrandone le virtù e i limiti. Descrive poi (...) come la filosofia può onorevolmente svolgere il compito di disciplina scientifica come le altre ottenendo veri e propri risultati e non posizioni dibattimentali, seppur largamente condivise, di uno o l'altro dei pensatori preminenti in un dato secolo o periodo storico. Nel secondo capitolo l'autore mostra a mo' di gioco alcuni risultati ottenuti nel corso della storia della filosofia da grandi pensatori. Risultati da tenere a mente come possibili esempi del gran numero di risultati ottenuti dalla filosofia ma per un motivo o per un altro dimenticati, sottovalutati o passati di moda. Risultati così solidi da poterne fare teoria. (shrink)

Common-sense philosophers typically maintain that common-sense propositions have a certain kind of epistemic privilege that allows them to evade the threats of skepticism or radical revisionism. Butwhydo they have this special privilege? In response to this question, the “Common-Sense Tradition” contains many different strands of arguments. In this paper, I will develop a strategy that combines two of these strands of arguments. First, the “Dynamic Argument” (or the “starting-point argument”), inspired by Thomas Reid and Charles S. Peirce (but which will (...) be strengthened with the help of Gilbert Harman’s epistemology of belief revision). Second, G.E. Moore’s “greater certainty argument” (interpreted along the lines of Soames’ and Pollock’s construal). This combined strategy, I will argue, is the strong core of Common-Sense Philosophy, and relies on extremely modest and widely held assumptions. (shrink)

This work investigates intuitions' nature, demonstrating how philosophers can best use them in epistemology. First, the author considers several paradigmatic thought experiments in epistemology that depict the appeal to intuition. He then argues that the nature of thought experiment-generated intuitions is not best explained by an a priori Platonism. Second, the book instead develops and argues for a thin conception of epistemic intuitions. The account maintains that intuition is neither a priori nor a posteriori but multi-dimensional. It is an intentional (...) but non-propositional mental state that is also non-conceptual and non-phenomenal in nature. Moreover, this state is individuated by its progenitor, namely, the relevant thought experiment. Third, the author provides an argument for the evidential status of intuitions based on the correct account of the nature of epistemic intuition. The suggestion is the fitting-ness approach: intuition alone has no epistemic status. Rather, intuition has evidentiary value as long as it fits well with other pieces into a whole, namely, the pertinent thought experiment. Finally, the book addresses the key challenges raised by supporters of anti-centrality, according to which philosophers do not regard intuition as central evidence in philosophy. To that end, the author responds to them, showing that they fail to affect the account of intuition developed in this book. This text appeals to students and researchers working in epistemology. (shrink)

Humans are weird creatures. They like life and fear death, even though they know nothing for both. And even though our ignorance for life seems insignificant since we manage to live without knowing what life is, our ignorance of death seems more important since it seems to trouble the depths of our self. But like the fifth axiom of Euclid, the belief in death is nothing more than an arbitrary belief based on things we consider obvious even though no knowledge (...) is. A series of philosophical opinions dating back aeons have laid the foundation of an idea that initially did not even exist: That our existence can end like an evening breeze. The goal of this paper is to list all those philosophical dogmas that have made Humans believe that death exists. And by making this list a memory might resurface from something we used to feel: There is more to life than being…. (shrink)

The assumption that philosophers rely on intuitions to justify their philosophical positions has recently come under substantial criticism. In order to protect philosophy from experimental findings that suggest that intuitions are epistemically problematic, a number of metaphilosophers have argued that intuitions play no substantial epistemic role in philosophy. This paper focuses on attempts to deny intuitions’ epistemic role through exegetical analysis of original thought experiments. Using Deutsch’s particularly well-developed exegesis of Gettier’s 10 coin case as an exemplar of this method, (...) I examine the challenges the strategy faces. I argue that intuition denial fails to provide a satisfactory account of how verdicts of thought experiments are justified. Instead, it commits intuition deniers to the conclusion that the arguments of Gettier, Kripke, Thomson, and others are bad arguments. As a result, rather than defusing challenges to the case method raised by experimental philosophers, intuition denial ultimately leads to the same troubling conclusion – that philosophers hold their positions on bad grounds. (shrink)

I would like to thank Renia Gasparatou, Philip Goff, and Andreas Vrahimis for contributing to the book symposium on For and Against Scientism: Science, Methodology, and the Future of Philosophy (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). I am grateful to James Collier for hosting this book symposium on the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective. In what follows, I will reply to Gasparatou and Vrahimis’s contributions to this book symposium.1 Before I do so, I will summarize what I take to be (...) their main arguments against my conception of scientism. Briefly, my conception of scientism runs along the weak and broad lines of epistemological scientism (Mizrahi 2022a, 12). More specifically, Weak Scientism is the view that scientific knowledge is the best knowledge (or some other epistemic good, such as justified belief) we have. Weak Scientism is a weaker version of epistemological scientism than Strong Scientism, which is the view that scientific knowledge is the only knowledge we have. According to Weak Scientism, while non-scientific disciplines do produce knowledge, scientific disciplines produce knowledge that is superior—both quantitatively (in terms of research output and research impact) and qualitatively (in terms of explanatory, predictive, and instrumental success)—to non-scientific knowledge (Mizrahi 2017, 354; 2022a, 6–7; 2023, 41). (shrink)

Mizrahi (2017a) advances an argument in support of Weak Scientism, which is the view that scientific knowledge is the best (but not the only) knowledge we have, according to which Weak Scientism follows from the premises that scientific knowledge is quantitatively and qualitatively better than non-scientific knowledge. In this paper, I develop a different argument for Weak Scientism. This latter argument for Weak Scientism proceeds from the premise that academic disciplines that make progress are superior to academic disciplines that do (...) not make progress. In other words, other things being equal, it is generally better for an academic discipline to make progress than to make little or no progress, given that an academic discipline that is making little or no progress is an academic discipline that is failing to achieve its epistemic goals. Now, if there is no question among academic philosophers that science makes progress, and significantly so, but there is an open question among academic philosophers as to whether academic philosophy makes progress (and if so, how much), then academic philosophers would have to agree that science is superior to academic philosophy in terms of making progress. I develop this argument in this paper and provide empirical evidence suggesting that the premises would be acceptable to academic philosophers. (shrink)

Drawing on the epistemology of logic literature on anti-exceptionalism about logic, we set out to investigate the following metaphilosophical questions empirically: Is philosophy special? Are its methods (dis)continuous with science? More specifically, we test the following metaphilosophical hypotheses empirically: philosophical deductivism, philosophical inductivism, and philosophical abductivism. Using indicator words to classify arguments by type (namely, deductive, inductive, and abductive arguments), we searched through a large corpus of philosophical texts mined from the JSTOR database (N = 435,703) to find patterns of (...) argumentation. The results of our quantitative, corpus-based study suggest that deductive arguments are significantly more common than abductive arguments and inductive arguments in philosophical texts overall, but they are gradually and steadily giving way to non-deductive (i.e. inductive and abductive) arguments in academic philosophy. (shrink)

The paper proposes a simple method for constructing ontological theories—an ‘ontology generator’. It shows that such a generator manages to produce major existing ontological theories, e.g., Realism, Nominalism, Trope theory, Bundle theory, Perdurantism, Endurantism, Possibilism, Actualism and more. It thus turns out, surprisingly, that all these seemingly unrelated different ontological theories that were designed by thinkers hundreds of years apart, can all be generated using the same simple mechanism. Moreover, this same generator manages to produce entirely novel ontological theories, that (...) fare no worse than existing ones in meeting the same common metaphysical challenges. (shrink)

Discursive pluralism, recently fostered by anti-representationalist views, by stating that not all assertions conform to a descriptive model of language, poses an interesting challenge to representationalism. Although in recent years alethic pluralism has become more and more popular as an interesting way out for this issue, the discussion also hosts other interesting minority approaches in the anti-representationalist camp. In particular, the late stage of contemporary expressivism offers a few relevant insights, going from Price's denunciation of “placement problems” to Brandom's inferentialism. (...) This paper attempts to show how these expressivist ideas combine well together, composing a unitary and metaphysically sober metaphilosophical framework. (shrink)

Plakias has recently argued that there is nothing wrong with publishing defences of philosophical claims which we don't believe and also nothing wrong with concealing our lack of belief, because an author's lack of belief is irrelevant to the merit of a published work. Fleisher has refined this account by limiting the permissibility of publishing without belief to what he calls ‘advocacy role cases’. I argue that such lack of belief is irrelevant only if it is the result of an (...) inexplicable incredulity or the result of a metaphilosophical or epistemic stance that is unrelated to the specific claim. However, in many real-life cases, including Fleisher's advocacy role cases, our doubts regarding the claims we defend arise from reasons that have something to do with the insufficiency of the philosophical evidence supporting the claim, and publishing an unconditional defence of a claim without revealing our doubts is impermissible as it involves withholding philosophically relevant reasons. Plakias has also argued that discouraging philosophers from publishing claims they don't believe would be unfair to junior philosophers with unsettled views. I propose that we should change our academic practices that pressure philosophers to publish articles that pretend to be defences of settled views. (shrink)

This paper, published in 2022 in the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective (SERRC), offers a philosopher-psychologist’s explanation of our species’ deeply rooted resistance to self-knowledge. The article focuses on limitations that come about when people do not possess a group of cognitive and psychological skills and competencies which the author has called “epistemological intelligence.” ¶¶¶¶¶ The paper develops the idea of “one-way concepts,” concepts that can appropriately and informatively be applied to the human species, but which, due to human (...) species pride and exemptionalism, people often refuse to do.¶¶¶¶¶ When people lack the necessary skills and competences, they become resistant to new ways of thinking which can help our species break free from self-limiting and often self-destructive ways patterns of thought and behavior.¶¶¶¶¶ . (shrink)

For Kant, the human cognitive faculty has two sub-faculties: sensibility and the understanding. Each has pure forms which are necessary to us as humans: space and time for sensibility; the categories for the understanding. But Kant is careful to leave open the possibility of there being creatures like us, with both sensibility and understanding, who nevertheless have different pure forms of sensibility. They would be finite rational beings and discursive cognizers. But they would not be human. And this raises a (...) question about the pure forms of the understanding. Does Kant leave open the possibility of discursive cognizers who have different categories? Even if other discursive cognizers might not sense like us, must they at least think like us? We argue that textual and systematic considerations do not determine the answers to these questions and examine whether Kant thinks that the issue cannot be decided. Consideration of his wider views on the nature and limits of our knowledge of mind shows that Kant could indeed remain neutral on the issue but that the exact form his neutrality can take is subject to unexpected constraints. The result would be an important difference between what Kant says about discursive cognizers with other forms of sensibility and what he is in a position to say about discursive cognizers with other forms of understanding. Kantian humility here takes on a distinctive character. (shrink)

The global pandemic caused by the spread of a novel coronavirus in early 2020 did more than transform the first one-and-a-quarter academic year that fell within its duration. It also transformed higher learning in its research and pedagogy. Like many misfortunes, COVID-19 has brought opportunity for growth and change. No doubt, there are many success stories of philosophers rising to the challenges of our time. In this contribution, I relate my own pandemic story, not as one of success, but rather (...) as a humble attempt to grapple with the question of the post-pandemic philosophy curriculum. What is the place of philosophy in the twenty-first-century university? What might "philosophy" mean in a post-pandemic context... (shrink)

Avner Baz argues that the philosophical method of cases presupposes a problematic view of language and linguistic competence, namely what he calls "the atomistic-compositional view". Combining key elements of social pragmatism and contextualism, Baz presents a view of language and linguistic competence, which he takes to be more sensitive to the open-endedness of human language. On this view, there are conditions for the "normal" and "felicitous" use of human words, conditions that Baz thinks are lacking in the context of the (...) philosophical method of cases, and which make the question that philosophers are prone to ask in that context and the answers they give to that question to be pointless. However, in this paper, I argue as follows. First, Baz's conditions for the "normal" and "felicitous" use of human words are in tension with the open-endedness of human language and the use of human words. Second, it is not even clear that those conditions are really missing in the context of the philosophical method of cases. And third, even if we grant that those conditions are missing in that context, this does not licence his damning conclusion on the philosophical method of cases since we are not forced to embrace the view of language and linguistic competence on which that damning conclusion is plausible. This last move is secured by advancing and defending a skill or virtue-based view of language and linguistic competence inspired by the later work of Donald Davidson. (shrink)

This dissertation is based on four backgrounds: (1) the diversity of definitions of philosophy, (2) statements by several thingkers about the death/ending of philosophy, (3) the existence of Hassan Hanafi's writings about the definition, life and death of philosophy, and (4) the limitations of specific studies on philosophy according to Hanafi. On that basis, this dissertation examines philosophy according to Hanafi, by revealing and reviewing his definition of philosophy and his views on when philosophy lives and when philosophy dies. In (...) general, this is metaphilosophical study of Hanafi's philosophy by disclosuring it descriptively and analytically on the one side, and by reviewing it falsificatively, interpretatively and axiologically on the other side. This metaphilosophical study of Hanafi philosophy found several things. First, Hanafi's definition of philosophy is still diverse and needs to be reanalyzed, so it cannot overcome the problem of the diversity of definitions of philosophy. Second, Hanafi's statement about those who kill philosophy and turn on it is inconsistent and falsifiable. Third, philosophy can still live in conditions that are considered to kill it. Fourth, although it has several weaknesses, Hanafi's philosophy is useful in particular for Muslims and researchers about Islam, Arab nations and researchers about Arab, and societies that face internal and external traditions; and also worthwhile in general for philosophy and practitioners of philosophy. Fifth, Hanafi's philosophy can overcome the problem of ongoing discourse about the death/ending of philosophy, because his philosophy can actually bring philosophy to life. (shrink)

We examine the idea that there is a sub-discipline in philosophy of science, phi-losophy in science, whose researchers use philosophical tools to advance solu-tions to scientific problems. Rather, we propose that these tools are standard epistemic, cognitive, or intellectual tools at work in all rational activity, and therefore these researchers engage in scientific or metascientific research.

Nous examinons l’idée selon laquelle il existerait une sous-discipline en phi-losophie des sciences, la philosophie dans les sciences, dont les chercheurs utili-seraient des outils philosophiques pour avancer des solutions à des problèmes scientifiques. Nous proposons plutôt l’idée que ces outils sont des outils épisté-miques, cognitifs ou intellectuels standards, à l’œuvre dans toute activité ration-nelle, et, par conséquent, ces chercheurs se consacrent à la recherche scienti-fique ou métascientifique.

In this paper, I argue that appeals to intuition in Analytic Philosophy are not compelling arguments because intuitions are not the sort of thing that has the power to rationally persuade other professional analytic philosophers. This conclusion follows from reasonable premises about the goal of Analytic Philosophy, which is rational persuasion by means of arguments, and the requirement that evidence for and/or against philosophical theses used by professional analytic philosophers be public (or transparent) in order to have the power to (...) rationally persuade other professional analytic philosophers. Since intuitions are not public (or transparent) evidence, it follows that appeals to intuition are not compelling arguments for and/or against philosophical theses because they lack the power to rationally persuade other professional analytic philosophers. (shrink)

While the empirical evidence pointing to a gender gap in professional, academic philosophy in the English-speaking world is widely accepted, explanations of this gap are less so. In this paper, we aim to make a modest contribution to the literature on the gender gap in academic philosophy by taking a quantitative, corpus-based empirical approach. Since some philosophers have suggested that it may be the argumentative, “logic-chopping,” and “paradox-mongering” nature of academic philosophy that explains the underrepresentation of women in the discipline, (...) our research questions are the following: Do men and women philosophers make different types of arguments in their published works? If so, which ones and with what frequency? Using data mining and text analysis methods, we study a large corpus of philosophical texts mined from the JSTOR database in order to answer these questions empirically. Using indicator words to classify arguments by type, we search through our corpus to find patterns of argumentation. Overall, the results of our empirical study suggest that women philosophers make deductive, inductive, and abductive arguments in their published works just as much as male philosophers do, with no statistically significant differences in the proportions of those arguments relative to each philosopher’s body of work. (shrink)

In this paper, we set out to investigate the following question: if science relies heavily on induction, does philosophy of science rely heavily on induction as well? Using data mining and text analysis methods, we study a large corpus of philosophical texts mined from the JSTOR database (n = 14,199) in order to answer this question empirically. If philosophy of science relies heavily on induction, just as science supposedly does, then we would expect to find significantly more inductive arguments than (...) deductive arguments and abductive arguments in the published works of philosophers of science. Using indicator words to classify arguments by type (namely, deductive, inductive, and abductive arguments), we search through our corpus to find patterns of argumentation. Overall, the results of our study suggest that philosophers of science do rely on inductive inference. But induction may not be as foundational to philosophy of science as it is thought to be for science, given that philosophers of science make significantly more deductive arguments than inductive arguments. Interestingly, our results also suggest that philosophers of science do not rely on abductive arguments all that much, even though philosophers of science consider abduction to be a cornerstone of scientific methodology. (shrink)

Reflective equilibrium —the idea that we have to justify our judgments and principles through a process of mutual adjustment—is taken to be a central method in philosophy. Nonetheless, conceptions of RE often stay sketchy, and there is a striking lack of explicit and traceable applications of it. This paper presents an explicit case study for the application of an elaborate RE conception. RE is used to reconstruct the arguments from Thomson’s paper “Turning the Trolley” for why a bystander must not (...) divert a runaway trolley from five workmen onto one. Analyzing Thomson’s resulting position with the RE-criteria has two main results: Firstly, the adjustment of one of her commitments can be defended. Secondly, no justified position in RE was reached. With respect to RE as a method, the main results from this application are: There is at least one conception of RE that is sufficiently specified to be applicable; the RE criteria put real constraints on the process of justification; and an explicit application of RE has benefits in terms of clarity while at the same time providing guidance for how the justificatory process could be continued. (shrink)

Phenomenology has been described as a “non-argumentocentric” way of doing philosophy, reflecting that the philosophical focus is on generating adequate descriptions of experience. But it should not be described as an argument-free zone, regardless of whether this is intended as a descriptive claim about the work of the “usual suspects” or a normative claim about how phenomenology ought to be properly practiced. If phenomenology is always at least partly in the business of arguments, then it is worth giving further attention (...) to the role and form of phenomenological argumentation, how it interacts with its more strictly descriptive component, and the status of phenomenological claims regarding conditions for various kinds of experience. I contend that different versions of phenomenological reasoning encroach upon argument forms that are commonly thought to be antithetical to phenomenology, notably abductive reasoning, understood in terms of its role in both hypothesis generation and in terms of justification. This paper identifies two main steps to making this case. The first step takes seriously the consequences of the intrinsically dialectical aspect of phenomenology in intersection with other modes of philosophy, the natural attitude, and non-philosophy. The second step focuses on transcendental reflection and arguments about the conditions/structures they contain. Together, these two steps aim to rescue phenomenology from the objection that it has an “ostrich epistemology” with regard to the ostensible purity of description, the intuition of essences, or the “conditions” ascertained through transcendental reflection. (shrink)

Shamik Dasgupta has argued that realists about natural properties (and laws, grounding, etc.) cannot account for their epistemic value. For "properties are cheap": in addition to natural properties and any value the realist might attach to them, there are also "shmatural" properties (standing to natural properties like charge and mass as Goodman's grue and bleen stand to green and blue) and a corresponding "shmvalue" of theorizing in terms of them. Dasgupta's challenge is one of objectivity: the existence of the "shmamiked" (...) network of concepts threatens the objectivity of facts stated using the unshmamiked network. But the challenge can be repelled given a proper understanding of objectivity itself. (shrink)

Sebastian Sunday-Grève and Timothy Williamson discuss the relationship between curiosity and common sense.

In this chapter we examine Moti Mizrahi’s claim that philosophers’ opposition of scientism is founded on their worry that scientism poses “a threat to the soul or essence of philosophy as an a priori discipline”. We find Mizrahi’s methodology for testing this thesis wanting. We offer an alternative hypothesis for the increased resistance of scientism: the antipathy started as a reaction to the New Atheist movement. We also consider two varieties of weak scientism, narrow and broad, and argue that narrow (...) versions of scientism draw unnatural and unfounded distinctions within science. Mizrahi belongs somewhere between these two types, but he commits the same mistakes as proponents of the narrow variety. We demonstrate that Mizrahi’s defence of weak scientism is problematic, once again, due to methodological reasons. As an alternative, we propose that weak scientism should be based on epistemic opportunism. Epistemic opportunism explains the success of science with scientists’ willingness to adopt any methods that demonstrably work. We also show how opportunistic scientism can avoid charges of triviality. (shrink)

I argue that recognizing a distinct doxastic attitude called endorsement, along with the epistemic norms governing it, solves the self-undermining problem for conciliationism about disagreement. I provide a novel account of how the self-undermining problem works by pointing out the auxiliary assumptions the objection relies on. These assumptions include commitment to certain epistemic principles linking belief in a theory to following prescriptions of that theory. I then argue that we have independent reason to recognize the attitude of endorsement. Endorsement is (...) the attitude of resilient and committed advocacy which is appropriate for researchers to have toward their own theory. Recognizing the importance of endorsement, and of its resiliency, gives us reason to deny the epistemic principles that serve as auxiliary assumptions in the self-undermining objection. This defuses the objection, and provides additional support for the theory of endorsement. (shrink)

This chapter tells the story of how the philosophy of language, as it exists now, grew out of work in the history of analytic philosophy. I pay particular attention to the history of semantics, to debates about propositional content, and to the origins of contemporary pragmatics and speech-act theory. I identify an overarching narrative: Many of the ideas that are now used to understand natural language on its own terms were originally developed not for this purpose, but as methodological tools (...) for diverse philosophical ends. (shrink)

In a reply to Mizrahi (2019), Bryant (2020) raises several methodological concerns regarding my attempt to test hypotheses about the observation that academic philosophers tend to find “scientism” threatening empirically using quantitative, corpus based methods. Chief among her methodological concerns is that numbers of philosophical publications that mention “scientism” are a “poor proxy for scholarly sentiment” (Bryant 2020, 31). In reply, I conduct a sentiment analysis that is designed to find out whether academic philosophers have negative, positive, or neutral sentiments (...) toward “scientism.” The results of this analysis suggest that, for the most part, articles on “scientism” written by academic philosophers tend to contain mostly negative rather than positive (or neutral) sentiments about “scientism.”. (shrink)

Philosophy is often divided into two traditions: analytic and continental philosophy. Characterizing the analytic-continental divide, however, is no easy task. Some philosophers explain the divide in terms of the place of argument in these traditions. This raises the following questions: Is analytic philosophy rife with arguments while continental philosophy is devoid of arguments? Or can different types of arguments be found in analytic and continental philosophy? This paper presents the results of an empirical study of a large corpus of philosophical (...) texts mined from the JSTOR database (n = 53,260) designed to find patterns of argumentation by type. Overall, the results suggest that there are no significant differences between the types of arguments advanced in analytic and continental philosophy journal articles. The findings, therefore, provide no empirical support to the hypothesis that the divide between analytic and continental philosophy has to do with the place of argument in these traditions. (shrink)