Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 97 (3):724-750 (2018)
Authors |
|
Abstract |
Philosophical analysis was the central preoccupation of 20th-century analytic philosophy. In the contemporary methodological debate, however, it faces a number of pressing external and internal challenges. While external challenges, like those from experimental philosophy or semantic externalism, have been extensively discussed, internal challenges to philosophical analysis have received much less attention. One especially vexing internal challenge is that the success conditions of philosophical analysis are deeply unclear. According to the standard textbook view, a philosophical analysis aims at a strict biconditional that captures the necessary and sufficient conditions for membership in the relevant category. The textbook view arguably identifies a necessary condition on successful philosophical analyses, but understood as a sufficient condition it is untenable, as I will argue in this paper. To this end, I first uncover eight conditions of adequacy on successful philosophical analyses, some of which have rarely been spelled out in detail. As we shall see, even sophisticated alternatives to the textbook view fail to accommodate some of these conditions. I then propose the concept grounding view as a more promising account of philosophical analysis. According to this view, successful philosophical analyses require necessary biconditionals that are constrained by grounding relations among the concepts involved. Apart from providing a satisfactory account of philosophical analysis in its own right, the concept grounding view is also able to meet the challenge that the success conditions of philosophical analysis are problematically unclear.
|
Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) |
Categories | (categorize this paper) |
DOI | 10.1111/phpr.12378 |
Options |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Download options
References found in this work BETA
Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction.Gideon Rosen - 2010 - In Bob Hale & Aviv Hoffmann (eds.), Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology. Oxford University Press. pp. 109-135.
No Work for a Theory of Grounding.Jessica M. Wilson - 2014 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 57 (5-6):535-579.
View all 92 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Metafísica para Juristas.Samuele Chilovi - 2022 - In D. Lagier & G. Lariguet (eds.), Filosofía. Una Introducción para Juristas. Madrid: Trotta.
Merely Partial Definition and the Analysis of Knowledge.Samuel Z. Elgin - 2018 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 7):1481-1505.
View all 9 citations / Add more citations
Similar books and articles
The Problem of Necessary and Sufficient Conditions and Conceptual Analysis.Michael J. Shaffer - 2015 - Metaphilosophy 46 (4-5):555-563.
Rationalities of Practice: Philosophical Review on Higher Education Assessment.Ke-yi Xu, Jun Zhao & Jin Pan - 2005 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 35 (2):132-136.
Thought Experiments and Philosophical Analysis: An Examination of the Method of Counterexample and the Legitimacy of Appeals to Pre-Theoretical Intuitions.Michelle Marie Rotert - 1992 - Dissertation, The University of Iowa
Drei Gefahren philosophischer Begriffsanalysen von Verantwortung.Frieder Vogelmann - 2016 - Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 64 (2):273-286.
A Puzzle About Partial Grounding.Michael J. Clark - 2015 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 4 (3):189-197.
On the Ambiguity of Concept Use in Psychology: Is the Concept “Concept” a Useful Concept?Kathleen L. Slaney & Timothy P. Racine - 2011 - Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 31 (2):73.
Complete Analysis and Clarificatory Analysis in Wittgenstein's Tractatus.Dawn M. Phillips - 2007 - In Michael Beaney (ed.), The Analytic Turn: Analysis in Early Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology. Routledge. pp. 164.
The Logical Vs. The Ontological Understanding of Conditions.Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson - 2008 - Metaphysica 9 (2):129-137.
The Twinkling of an Eye: Kierkegaard and Heidegger on the Possibility of Faith.Matthew I. Burch - 2009 - American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 83 (2):219-238.
Truthmaking and Grounding.Aaron M. Griffith - 2014 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 57 (2):196-215.
Concept Formation and Concept Grounding.Jörgen Sjögren & Christian Bennet - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (3):827-839.
From Nature to Grounding.Mark Jago - 2018 - In Ricki Leigh Bliss & Graham Priest (eds.), Reality and its Structure. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 199-216.
Analytics
Added to PP index
2017-04-25
Total views
135 ( #85,295 of 2,498,492 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
7 ( #102,413 of 2,498,492 )
2017-04-25
Total views
135 ( #85,295 of 2,498,492 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
7 ( #102,413 of 2,498,492 )
How can I increase my downloads?
Downloads