Many philosophers claim to employ intuitions in their philosophical arguments. Others contest that no such intuitions are used frequently or at all in philosophy. This article suggests and defends a conception of intuitions as part of the philosophical method: intuitions are special types of philosophical assumptions to which we are invited to assent, often as premises in argument, that may serve an independent function in philosophical argument and that are not formed through a purely inferential process. (...) A series of philosophical case studies shows that intuitions in these arguments contain the relevant features. The view has implications for philosophical method, offering a compromise between opponents on the divisive debate of the merits of experimental philosophy: experimental philosophy provides an especially useful role in philosophical assumption analysis. (shrink)

Inducing aspect-experiences – the sudden seeing of something anew, as when a face suddenly strikes us as familiar – can be used as a philosophical method. In seeing aspects, I argue, we let ourselves experience what it would be like to conceptualize something in a particular way, apart from any conceptual routine. We can use that experience to examine our ways of conceptualizing things, and re-evaluate the ways we make sense of them. I claim that we are not always (...) passive with regard to these experiences, and explain how we can actively induce them. I distinguish this method from other standard Wittgensteinian philosophical methods. (shrink)

Philosophical methodology is the central focus of pragmatism’s founding documents. The early works of Peirce, James, and Dewey examine methodological questions such as ‘how do we make philosophical ideas clear?’, ‘what is the best method for fixing belief?’ and ‘how do we know whether a philosophical question is answerable?’. Thus, many consider pragmatism inherently methodological – as a metaphilosophy, a view about how philosophy should or must be done (e.g. Talisse 2017). Any summary of pragmatist methods (...) is therefore a summary of pragmatism itself. Given such an impossibly broad remit, this chapter does only three things. First, it provides four broad claims common to pragmatist approaches to philosophical methodology, claims reflecting its underlying theory of inquiry. Second, it briefly examines three core pragmatist methods – for conceptual clarification, for fixing belief, and for settling or dissolving philosophical disputes. Third, it briefly describes differences between the Classical figures regarding each method. This is merely a brief sketch – the reader should consider all entries in this volume relevant to pragmatism qua philosophical method. (shrink)

On the basis of an examination of Kant's, Maimon's and Schelling's metaphilosophies, this book investigates how, starting from Kant's diagnosis of a "groping metaphysics", a philosophical research program, whose goal is to elucidate the nature and method of philosophy itself, develops. What unites theirprojects is the thesis that philosophy must begin with an investigation of its own nature, and that this investigation, because of its special object, must be accompanied by a reflection on its method. To this end, their (...) methods are discussed on the assumption that these methods arise from a particular engagement with the theories and practices of the 18th century sciences. Finally, this discussion provides the basis for showing in what ways philosophical experiments, fictions, or models offer methodological solutions to the problem of developing a scientific metaphysics. (shrink)

While many of Elizabeth Anscombe’s philosophical views are well-known (e.g. her views on practical knowledge or consequentialism), little has been written on her philosophical method, i.e., on her way of doing philosophy. This is unfortunate, for two reasons: First, the failure to understand Anscombe’s method is a major stumbling block for many of her readers. Second, and more importantly, we can still learn a lot from Anscombe’s way of doing philosophy: Her view differs considerably from current alternatives in (...) metaphilosophy. Here we want to begin to fill this lacuna. (shrink)

Different human practices require various methods to carry them out successfully. Philosophy, an activity with 2500 years of history, must also have its own method, which demarcates a philosopher from a lay person. This thesis embarks on a project of philosophical method—conceptual tuning. How to do philosophy belongs to the category of metaphilosophy or philosophy of philosophy. Boxers usually do not care about the conceptual question ‘What is boxing?’ and biologists barely ask ‘What is Biology?’. For them, this (...) kind of question is a higher order question which concerns the nature of the thing in itself. It is an external question for most disciplines. But for philosophy, the question concerning the nature of philosophy is an internal question. Self-awareness is a sine qua non of doing philosophy.With such a long history and so many traditions, the method of doing philosophy must be miscellaneous. My thesis attempts to contribute to the discussion of philosophical methodology by proposing a method I shall call conceptual tuning. Conceptual tuning is grounded in the philosophical method of conceptual engineering, advocates of which endeavor to improve our concepts. According to the method of conceptual engineering, philosophical problems stem from defects in our understanding of concepts, and it is the philosopher’s task to fix them. While most conceptual engineering approaches only narrowly focus on the perspective of ‘repairing’ or ‘fixing’, conceptual tuning calls for attention to the ‘expressive’ perspective. In other words, we should put this method in the broad framework of the practice of asking for and giving reasons. In this thesis, I also attempt to explain some previous conceptual methods under the title of conceptual tuning, such as Brandomian method, ordinary language philosophy, and the traditional conceptual analyses. (shrink)

While many of Elizabeth Anscombe’s philosophical views are well-known (e.g. her views on practical knowledge or consequentialism), little has been written on her philosophical method, i.e., on her way of doing philosophy. This is unfortunate, for two reasons: First, the failure to understand Anscombe’s method is a major stumbling block for many of her readers. Second, and more importantly, we can still learn a lot from Anscombe’s way of doing philosophy: Her view differs considerably from current alternatives in (...) metaphilosophy. Here we want to begin to fill this lacuna. -/- REPRINT IN: John Haldane (ed.) (2019): The Life and Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe. (St. Andrews Studies in Philosophy.) Imprint Academic: Exeter: 42-61. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy is one of the most exciting and controversial philosophical movements today. This book explores how it is reshaping thought about philosophical method. Experimental philosophy imports experimental methods and findings from psychology into philosophy. These fresh resources can be used to develop and defend both armchair methods and naturalist approaches, on an empirical basis. This outstanding collection brings together leading proponents of this new meta-philosophical naturalism, from within and beyond experimental philosophy. They explore how the empirical (...) study of philosophically relevant intuition and cognition transforms traditional philosophical approaches and facilitates fresh ones. Part One examines important uses of traditional "armchair" methods which are not threatened by experimental work and develops empirically informed accounts of such methods that can potentially stand up to experimental scrutiny. Part Two analyses different uses and rationales of experimental methods in several areas of philosophy and addresses the key methodological challenges to experimental philosophy: Do its experiments target the intuitions that matter in philosophy? And how can they support conclusions about the rights and wrongs of philosophical views? Essential reading for students of experimental philosophy and metaphilosophy, _Experimental Philosophy, Rationalism, and Naturalism_ will also interest students and researchers in related areas such as epistemology and the philosophies of language, perception, mind and action, science and psychology. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s comparison of philosophical methods to therapies has been interpreted in highly different ways. I identify the illness, the patient, the therapist and the ideal of health in Wittgenstein’s philosophical methods and answer four closely related questions concerning them that have often been wrongly answered by commentators. The results of this paper are, first, some answers to crucial questions: philosophers are not literally ill, patients of philosophical therapies are not always philosophers, not all philosophers qualify as therapists, (...) the therapies are not necessarily to be thought of as psychological therapies and the ideal of health does not consist in the end of philosophy. Second, the paper shows that the comparison has had a misleading effect, because properties of therapies have been illegitimately projected onto the philosophical methods advanced by Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Wittgenstein wrote: 'Working in philosophy … is really more a working on oneself. On one's own interpretation. On one's own way of seeing things.' In what sense, for Wittgenstein, is work in philosophy 'work on oneself'? This paper will be devoted to answering this question, and to delineating the moral aspects of this work.

Both Plato and Kant devote much attention and care to deliberating about their method of philosophizing. And, interestingly, both seek to expand and explain their view of philosophical method by one selfsame strategy: explaining the contrast between rational procedure in mathematics and in philosophy. Plato and Kant agree on a fundamental point of philosophical method that is at odds with the mathematico-demonstrative methodology of philosophy found in Spinoza and present in Christian Wolff. Both reject the axiomatic approach with (...) its insistence on fundamental truths postulated from the outset. Both alike insist that philosophizing—unlike mathematics—is an exercise in theorizing where the questions of basicness and foundations come into view only after the inquiry has gone on for a long, long time—and certainly not at its start. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to consider the phenomenon of philosophical “turn” in the framework of descriptive metaphilosophy. Using the example of analytical, linguis­tic, pragmatic and ontological turns, an attempt is made to highlight the characteristic fea­tures of “turns”. The author shows that the analytical turn is associated with the develop­ment of methods of philosophy, primarily with the diversification of the concept of analy­sis itself. Consideration of the linguistic turn leads to the position that its characterization as (...) a change in the subject of philosophy is not quite adequate – in fact, it is a change in the methods of philosophical analysis, which leads to the emergence of new problem areas not only in philosophy, but also in linguistics. The pragmatic turn is characterized by emphasizing the role of pragmatism in overcoming the existing opposition of analytic and continental philosophy through the use of both logical and, for example, axiological methods or the “pragmatic principle”. The ontological turn, characteristic of anthropol­ogy, the philosophy of technology, as well as for “general” philosophy, is associated with a change in the methods of analysis in the direction of solving the problem of seeing “things in a new way” and how “they really are”. The analysis in the case of an ontologi­cal turn is aimed not so much at “multiculturalism” as at “multi-naturalism”, at taking into account the active role of the subject and building the research models capable of taking this into account. The final position of the author is that according to which a “turn” is a change in research methods that leads to the formation of a new subject area and the formulation of new problems. They, in turn, stimulate the next “turn” and the de­velopment of new methods and methodologies. (shrink)

Recent Anglophone scholarship has successfully shown that Nietzsche's thought makes important contributions to a wide range of contemporary philosophical debates. In so doing, however, scholarship has lost sight of another important feature of Nietzsche's project, namely his desire to challenge the very conception of philosophy that has been used to assess his merits as a philosopher. In other words, contemporary scholarship has overlooked Nietzsche's contributions to metaphilosophy, i.e. debates around the nature, methods, and aims of philosophy. This important (...) new collection of essays brings together an international group of distinguished scholars to explore and discuss these contributions and debates. It will appeal to anyone interested in metaphilosophy, Nietzsche studies, German studies, or intellectual history. (shrink)

In this article I will discuss various aspects of Hegel’s radical critique of metaphilosophy. This critique announces a clear-cut departure from the widely held conviction in the philosophic tradition that in order to gain a firm foundation for science, a preliminary examination of the capacity and nature of knowledge is required. Hegel’s position is that such a propaedeutic is impossible. In the first part of this article, I will show how Hegel’s position can be illuminated in terms of his (...) criticism of Kant’s philosophic methodology and in terms of a comparison with Plato’s solution to the Meno paradox. In the second part, I will ask the question whether Hegel’s own philosophic method is consistent with his criticism of metaphilosophy. This question arises most clearly when we reflect on Hegel’s frequent claim that in order for the philosopher to write the science of knowledge, he or she needs “only to watch” or “merely to look on” at the way consciousness develops its knowledge of objects. We must consider whether such a “language of spectatorship,” as we might call it, does not contradict the evident conclusion of Hegel’s critique of metaphilosophy, viz., that the philosopher cannot attain a distanced perspective from knowledge without at the same time abandoning knowledge. (shrink)

In this edited volume, Paul Loeb and Matthew Meyer have assembled thirteen contributors to address the topic of Nietzsche and metaphilosophy. We know that Nietzsche was preoccupied with questions about the nature and tasks of philosophy from the very beginning of his intellectual career, notably in his lectures on the pre-Platonic philosophers, and that these questions assume a central role in the writings of his late period, notably BGE.The volume is divided into four main parts. The first part is (...) entitled "Evolving Metaphilosophies" and features three chapters: Marco Brusotti on metaphilosophy and natural history in Nietzsche, Matthew Meyer on the dialectics of Nietzsche's metaphilosophies, and Antoine Panaïoti... (shrink)

This volume brings together well-established Nietzsche scholars working within diverse philosophical and stylistic frameworks to address the question of how Nietzsche understands philosophy. Specifically, Loeb and Meyer aim to investigate Nietzsche's answers to the following three questions: "What should philosophy be? How should philosophy be done? Why, or to what end, should philosophy be practiced?". The question of what philosophy means for Nietzsche is arguably central to a great deal of existing secondary literature, from French interpreters of the 1960s (...) and 1970s to the numerous contemporary volumes that take Nietzsche's style seriously as illuminating, rather than obfuscating, his philosophical... (shrink)

Often philosophers have reason to ask fundamental questions about the aims, methods, nature, or value of their own discipline. When philosophers systematically examine such questions, the resulting work is sometimes referred to as “metaphilosophy.” Metaphilosophy, it should be said, is not a well-established, or clearly demarcated, field of philosophical inquiry like epistemology or the philosophy of art. However, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries there has been a great deal of metaphilosophical work on issues concerning (...) the methodology of philosophy in the analytic tradition. This article focuses on that work. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes the relation between brain sciences and philosophy of mind, in order to clarify in what ways philosophy can contribute to neuroscience and neuroscience can contribute to philosophy. Especially since the 1980s and the emergence of “neurophilosophy”, more and more philosophers have been bringing home morals from neuroscience to settle philosophical issues. I mention examples from the problem of consciousness, philosophy of perception and the problem of free will, and I argue that such attempts are not successful (...) in trying to settle questions like whether psychology can be reduced to neuroscience, whether we see the external world directly in perception, or whether we have free will. The failure results from an ability of the philosophical questions to evade the data. What makes these questions persisting philosophical questions is precisely that there is no way to settle them through empirical evidence, as they are conceptual questions and their solution lies in conceptual analysis. (shrink)

The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology offers clear and comprehensive coverage of the main methodological debates and approaches within philosophy. The chapters in this volume approach the question of how to do philosophy from a wide range of perspectives, including conceptual analysis, critical theory, deconstruction, experimental philosophy, hermeneutics, Kantianism, methodological naturalism, phenomenology, and pragmatism. They explore general conceptions of philosophy, centred on the question of what the point of philosophising might be; the method of conceptual analysis and its recent (...) naturalistic critics and competitors; perspectives from continental philosophy; and also a variety of methodological views that belong neither to the mainstream of analytic philosophy, nor to continental philosophy as commonly conceived. Together they will enable readers to grasp an unusually wide range of approaches to methodological debates in philosophy. (shrink)

In his later works Nietzsche repeatedly underscores the importance of philosophical methods. In Beyond Good and Evil, for example, he takes issue with the ‘awkw.

What is philosophy? How should we do it? Why should we bother to? These are the kinds of questions addressed by metaphilosophy - the philosophical study of the nature of philosophy itself. Students of philosophy today are faced with a confusing and daunting array of philosophical methods, approaches and styles and also deep divisions such as the notorious rift between analytic and Continental philosophy. This book takes readers through a full range of approaches - analytic versus Continental, (...) scientistic versus humanistic, 'pure' versus applied - enabling them to locate and understand these different ways of doing philosophy. Clearly and accessibly written, it will stimulate reflection on philosophical practice and will be invaluable for students of philosophy and other philosophically inclined readers. (shrink)

Meta-philosophical investigation of the nature, aims, methods of philosophy. Original, creative-thinking vs derivative , secondary thinking. Exploration of the limits of the philosophical discourse by subject-matter or fields shared with other disciplines eg logic, thinking, cognition, arguments, etc. Inter-disciplinary topics and issues can lead philosophers to become involved in other disciplines and thereby destroy the philosophical discourse and philosophizing.

This article discusses the essence and form of various types of metatheory, paying special attention to metaphilosophy. It suggests the idea of the metatheoretical model—a completely new approach in philosophical discussion—and considers this concept with regard to the Platonic model and the Rhodian model. These models permit two different systems of metatheoretical construction. The paradigms of modern science allow the formation of metatheories that help further the development of logical, mathematical, and similar sciences. The Rhodian model allows the (...) discovery of methods that are helpful in building certain types of theory, as well as suggesting and examining theories that have special metatheoretical features and revealing their common features and differences with regard to other theories. The article discusses the complicated problem of the interrelation between philosophy and metaphilosophy and shows that metaphilosophy is also philosophy, not in the sense that metaphilosophy is a special part of philosophy but rather in the sense that metaphilosophy is a special kind of functioning of philosophy itself. (shrink)

Recently there has been an increasing interest in metaphilosphy. The aim of philosophy has been examined. The development of philosophy has also been scrutinised. With the development of new approaches and methods, new problems arise. This collection revisits some of the metaphilosophical issues, including philosophical progress and the aim of philosophy. It sheds new light on some old approaches, such as naturalism and ordinary language philosophy. It also explores new philosophical methods (e.g., digital philosophy of science, conceptual engineering, (...) and the practice-based approach to logic) and their prospects. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss a prehistory of the recent metaphilosophical research and provide an overview of its most important areas. I review the ways of understanding of philosophy by the authors of the Early Modernity and contemporary continental philosophers and outline a trajectory of metaphilosophical discussions in analytic philosophy of 20th century. I try to show that the recent surge of metaphilosophy research in it could be explained by a search for a new identity of analytic philosophy after (...) wide disappointment in the “linguistic turn,” as well as after criticism of Quine and his followers of various aspects of the common method of conceptual analysis, and expansion of the field of inquiry. I argue that contemporary analytic philosophy is much closer to the classical and modern tradition than to the early analytic philosophy. And the most important question for contemporary metaphilosophers seems to be a question about possible substitutes of an old-fashioned conceptual analysis. Some authors propose to get rid of armchair methods at all and follow experimental line of research. This, however, could be destructive to the philosophy as a separate discipline. That’s why it is important to pay utmost attention to those philosophers who try to save armchair philosophy. As Timothy Williamson is one of the most interesting authors working in this vein, I asses his role in the recent metaphilosophical research. I give a brief review of his book “Doing Philosophy” (2018) and draw attention to the fact that its main ideas are briefly expressed in his paper “Armchair Philosophy”, published in this issue of the journal. I claim that the importance of Timothy Williamson’s work is best explained by its role in realizing that philosophers now have to make a hard choice between dissolving philosophical methodology in methods of experimental sciences and trying to find way of justification of armchair philosophy. (shrink)

This report deals with one of the most popular trends in modern scientific theoretical thinking, that of building meta-conceptions of existing theories. All these meta-conceptions follow the method of building meta-mathematics for formalized mathematical calculi. The essence and forms of various types of metatheories are discussed. The author of this report has suggested the idea of metatheoretical models – Platonic and Rhodesian models of metatheories – a completely new approach in philosophical publications on the subject. These models allow separating (...) two different sets of metatheoretical constructions taking into account the level of formalization of object-theories. The Rhodesian model allows finding out those methods that are helpful in building certain type theories as well as suggesting and examining theories that have special metatheoretical features and revealing their common features and differences in regard of other theories. The paper discusses the complicated problem of metaphilosophy in the light of the Platonic and Rhodian models. The general conclusion is that philosophy is its own metaphilosophy. (shrink)

In this article, a new, idealizing-hermeneutic methodological approach to developing a theory of philosophical arguments is presented and carried out. The basis for this is a theory of ideal philosophical theory types developed from the analysis of historical examples. According to this theory, the following ideal types of theory exist in philosophy: 1. descriptive-nomological, 2. idealizing-hermeneutic, 3. technical-constructive, 4. ontic-practical. These types of theories are characterized in particular by what their basic types of theses are. The main task (...) of this article is then to determine the types of arguments that are suitable for justifying these types of theses. Surprisingly, practical arguments play a key role here. (shrink)

Philosophy lost its traditional subject-matter when other disciplines became socio-culturally and epistemologically differentiated. It does not have its unique methods as doing philosophy resembles the features, stages and steps of theorizing and will be present in any significant research, the writing of articles, books, dissertations, etc. Attempts to usurp philosophy and philosophical methods by the new science of Habermas and followers of Critical Theory and other Continental approaches attempt to do philosphy by using terms and ideas from philosophy (eg (...) ontology, epistemology, methodology, transcendentals, pre-suppostions, assumptions etc). These are not uniquely philosophical terms but nowadays they are employed by all disciplines, articles, books etc (all these things have ontologies, epistemologies, do theorizing, etc). (shrink)

Abstract -/- The philosophical discourse has a number of in-built values,‭ ‬norms and attitudes that create for this discipline.‭ ‬Creative-thinking and Intuition are discussed.‭ ‬Then some of the limits of the discourse are identified,‭ ‬some of them concern the methods of philosophizing.‭ ‬The positive aspects of the so-called Socratic Method and those of the Philosophical Investigations as Explorative Methods‭ (‬and metaphysics‭?) ‬are compared with those identified by Strawson as Speculative and Descriptive Metaphysics. -/- It is suggested that the (...) future of Philosophy lies in Theorizing.‭ ‬It is essential to view in the Appendix the articles concerning the Socratic Methods and the nature and processes of‭ (‬Philosophy as‭) ‬Theorizing.‭ -/- https://www.academia.edu/31692986/Intra-Philosophical_Norms_and_other_Limits. (shrink)

The book presents a detailed examination of many key aspects of philosophizing, ranging from the mission of philosophy, its method, its dialectic, and its epistemology. It conveys to the reader, student and scholar alike, a clear account of the aspirations and potential of the discipline. Readers will come away with a clearer understanding of the promise and challenges of philosophizing.

There is a growing interest in both Kant’s conception of philosophy and contemporary metaphilosophy, understood as philosophical inquiry into philosophy, its aims, purpose, subjects, structure, practice and methods. Kant has not contributed to metaphilosophy qua contemporary discipline, but his direct analyses of what philosophy is and how it is to be done can be identified with general subjects and problems constituting the research field of metaphilosophy. Several aspects of Kant’s conception of philosophy and its metaphilosophical value (...) are the subject of current debates, such as the taxonomy of philosophy, relation between empirical and non-empirical philosophy, relation between philosophy and its history, conceptual analysis, deductive reasoning and philosophical disagreement. (shrink)

This article examines the philosophical role of illness. It briefly surveys the philosophical role accorded to illness in the history of philosophy and explains why illness merits such a role. It suggests that illness modifies, and thus sheds light on, normal experience, revealing its ordinary and therefore overlooked structure. Illness also provides an opportunity for reflection by performing a kind of suspension (epoché) of previously held beliefs, including tacit beliefs. The article argues that these characteristics warrant a (...) class='Hi'>philosophical role for illness. While the performance of most philosophical procedures is volitional and theoretical, however, illness is uninvited and threatening, throwing the ill person into anxiety and uncertainty. As such it can be viewed as a radical philosophical motivation that can profoundly alter our outlook. The article suggests that illness can change the ways in which we philosophise: it may shape philosophical methods and concerns and change one's sense of salience and conception of philosophy. (shrink)

First Published in 1964, Studies in Metaphilosophy presents and develop the hypothesis about the nature of metaphysical theories. Each study is a fresh attempt to improve our understanding of what a philosophical theory is and what its supporting arguments come to. Author argues that philosophical theories are nothing more substantial than linguistic chimeras and has the important function of pointing up the need for the examination of the whole subject. The volume discusses important themes like concept analysis, (...) systematic doubt, the method of deduction from fact, logical necessitation, the nature of philosophical analysis, the nature of value, the metaphysical concept of space, Moore and philosophical analysis, the hidden structure of philosophical theories, and the relevance of psychoanalysis to philosophy. This volume will be an essential source for scholars and researchers of philosophy, logic, and metaphysics. (shrink)

The companion piece to this article, “Situating Moral Justification,” challenges the idea that moral epistemology's mission is to establish a single, all‐purpose reasoning strategy for moral justification because no reasoning practice can be expected to deliver authoritative moral conclusions in all social contexts. The present article argues that rethinking the mission of moral epistemology requires rethinking its method as well. Philosophers cannot learn which reasoning practices are suitable to use in particular contexts exclusively by exploring logical relations among concepts. Instead, (...) in order to understand which reasoning practices are capable of justifying moral claims in different types of contexts, we need to study empirically the relationships between reasoning practices and the contexts in which they are used. The article proposes that philosophers investigate case studies of real‐world moral disputes in which people lack shared cultural assumptions and/or are unequal in social power. It motivates and explains the proposed case study method and illustrates the philosophical value of this method through a case study. (shrink)

The paper discusses several problems of metaphilosophy that were explored in the philosophical literature in Russia. Metaphilosophy tries to understand what is philosophy, what problems philosophers are dealing with, which methods they employ in their investigations, the nature of philosophical statements and so on. Philosophers in Russia tended to think of philosophy as a special type of worldview that exists together with the ordinary worldview and religious worldview. The author defines worldview as a collection of basic (...) beliefs about the surrounding world, society, human being, the relations existing between individuals and society, about values and ideals. It is underscored that a worldview is always somebody’s worldview (it belongs either to an individual or a social group). The worldview problems explored by philosophers remain the same throughout thousands of years; what changes is how they are stated in different times. Every human being faces these problems if she has realized herself as an autonomous being and the reality splits for her into the I and the non-I. All philosophical problems revolve around three basic questions: what is the non-I (i.e. nature and society)? - this is the ontological question; what is I? (the anthropological question); what relations exist between the I and the non-I (the epistemological, axiological, ethical and other questions). The author also explores several stages of a philosophical investigation: an internal dissatisfaction with existing solutions, a search for a new perspective (meaning, idea, interpretation), development of the found solution. The author points at a number of characteristics that make philosophy different from science: philosophical statements and conceptions cannot be verified or refuted by experience, they are not universal. It is argued that the notion of truth in its classical interpretation cannot be applied to philosophical statements because the latter cannot be true or false. The author concludes that philosophical statements or conceptions express the subjective opinion of a given philosopher about the world and the human being. An obvious evidence for this is the existing pluralism of philosophical systems, schools, and trends. (shrink)

The companion piece to this article, “Situating Moral Justification,” challenges the idea that moral epistemology's mission is to establish a single, all-purpose reasoning strategy for moral justification because no reasoning practice can be expected to deliver authoritative moral conclusions in all social contexts. The present article argues that rethinking the mission of moral epistemology requires rethinking its method as well. Philosophers cannot learn which reasoning practices are suitable to use in particular contexts exclusively by exploring logical relations among concepts. Instead, (...) in order to understand which reasoning practices are capable of justifying moral claims in different types of contexts, we need to study empirically the relationships between reasoning practices and the contexts in which they are used. The article proposes that philosophers investigate case studies of real-world moral disputes in which people lack shared cultural assumptions and/or are unequal in social power. It motivates and explains the proposed case study method and illustrates the philosophical value of this method through a case study. (shrink)

In this meta-philosophical study I commence with an investigation of Wisdom. I then continue with an exploration of the institutionalization of the subject and the professionalization of those involved in it. This I contrast with original and creative philosophizing. In then sows that philosophizing resembles and attempts to do theorizing. The 9 questions, etc of the Socratic Method and details of the Philosophical Toolkit occur throughout different stages of theorizing as one level and one dimension of it. Linked (...) books are FREE for download. -/- 1 Seeking, development and realization of wisdom 4 2 Institutionalization, Professionalization of ‘philosophy’ 5 3 Original and Creative Thinking Philosophizing 37 4 Philosophizing resembles Theorizing 38 (i) Socratic Method 41 (ii) Philosophical Toolkit 145 -/- . (shrink)

Recent metaphilosophical debates have focused on the methods/epistemology of philosophy, and the structure of the discipline. The paper reports the results of an exploratory study examining the relationship between personality and both kinds of metaphilosophical view. The findings reported are No important link between personality and attitudes to intuitions, Apparent differences between experts and non-experts as to which subfields are considered central, Only limited evidence that perceptions of centrality are related to personality in minor ways. Although no dramatic relationships between (...) personality and metaphilosophical view are found, the results nonetheless prompt some reflection about the role played by judgements about the centrality of subfields within the discipline. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider two different attempts to make an end run around the experimentalist challenge to the armchair use of intuitions: one due to Max Deutsch and Herman Cappelen, contending that philosophers do not appeal to intuitions, but rather to arguments, in canonical philosophical texts; the other due to Joshua Knobe, arguing that intuitions are so stable that there is in fact no empirical basis for the experimentalist challenge in the first place. We show that a closer (...) attention to philosophical practices reveal, in turn, that we cannot make sense of these philosophical texts as arguments all the way down; and that our methods are so sensitive to error that even a modest amount of instability is enough to raise deep methodological concerns. (shrink)

Methodological tools for doing philosophy that take into account the historical context of the phenomenon under consideration are arguably better suited for examining questions of race and gender than acontextual or ahistorical methodological tools. Accordingly, Rebecca Tuvel’s “defense” of so-called transracialism arguably veers off track to the extent that it relies on acontextual and ahistorical tools. While Tuvel argues, largely relying on such tools, that so-called transracialism is both metaphysically possible and ethically permissible, from a perspective that factors in context (...) and history, so-called transracialism is arguably neither. Nonetheless, Tuvel’s ethical call to the effect that an individual right to racial self-definition should be acknowledged has its appeal. However, the lesson to be learned from the Tuvel affair arguably has less to do with the metaphysical or ethical status of so-called transracialism than with changes that arguably need to be made in the way mainstream/analytic professional philosophy goes about its business, particularly with regard to non-ideal topics like race and gender. (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)

The word “intuition” is one frequently used in philosophy. It is often assumed that the way in which philosophers use the word, and others like it, is very distinctive. This claim has been subjected to little empirical scrutiny, however. This article presents the first steps in a qualitative analysis of the use of intuition talk in the academy. It presents the findings of two preliminary empirical studies. The first study examines the use of intuition talk in spoken academic English. The (...) second examines the use of intuition talk in written academic English. It considers what these studies tell us about the distinctiveness of philosophical language and methods and considers some implications for evaluative and ameliorative methodology. (shrink)

The question “What is philosophy?” is difficult to answer because it seems to presuppose answers to long‐standing and controversial philosophical questions. As answers to these questions affect one’s metaphilosophy, apparently irresolvable philosophical disagreements are then converted into deadlock concerning the nature of the discipline. As this problem is unique to philosophy, however, this difficulty itself reveals something of philosophy’s essential nature. As, under analysis, it turns out to arise from a definite way of posing problems, philosophy can (...) initially be defined by a particular mode of problematisation. This essay establishes this argument and proposes a method for developing this insight into a fully realised, socio‐historical metaphilosophy. This involves stages of (a) hermeneutical analysis and (b) historical contextualisation, both of which increase the account’s empirical adequacy. A conclusion discusses the extent to which philosophy is on trial here and argues that questioning the future of philosophy is not inherently philistine. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy has focused attention on the role that intuitive responses to philosophical cases play in philosophical argumentation. The method of appealing to such cases has been dubbed the “method of cases,” and, in recent work, Edouard Machery has both defended its prevalence and uniformity in philosophical practice, and criticized its epistemic value. In this paper, I argue that there is no single method of cases, but rather a set of methods of cases. To defend this claim, (...) I distinguish and articulate these different methods and argue that they better explain several paradigmatic appeals to cases. This result not only challenges the homogeneity of the method of cases; it also stocks our methodological toolbox with additional interpretive tools which help us to not only better understand philosophical arguments, but to better understand the significance of experimental work. (shrink)