Précis of The Crisis of Method in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy (OUP, 2017 (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Crisis of Method in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2017
The book presents a critique of what has come to be called “the method of cases”—theorizing on the basis of the “application” of words to cases—as well as of the recent debates between “armchair” and “experimental” philosophers concerning that method. It argues that the method of cases as commonly practiced by both armchair and experimental philosophers is underwritten by a “representationalist” conception of language that is philosophically challengeable and empirically poorly supported—a conception on which the primary function of language is to record and communicate “classifications” or “categorizations” of worldly “items,” or “cases”, where what, if any, classifications a word (or expression) is fit to record and communicate, is taken to be determinable apart from any consideration of how it normally and ordinarily functions in discourse. The first part of the book shows that both defenders of the method (Williamson, Cappelen, Jackson, Nagel, and others) and those who have been...
An Argument for Methodological Continuity
Though more and more naturalist philosophers are seeing a closer tie between philosophy and the sciences, the traditional and still dominant view in some corners of the discipline is that significant portions of philosophy are incompatible with methodological or scientific naturalism. Much of philosophy is still considered "armchair" and a priori, while the sciences-perhaps with the exception of mathematics-are empirical and experimental. This paper argues that this is not the right view, and that the methodology of philosophy is not importantly different from the sciences in most senses. I hold that the methodology of even traditional metaphysics is methodologically continuous with the sciences. I show this first via a thought experiment, and then by isolating six central and salient aspects of scientific inquiry generally, then showing that there are structural analogues in philosophical inquiry. I also respond to a common and important objection concerning the role of intuition in philosophical methodology.
Philosophical methods under scrutiny: introduction to the special issue philosophical methods
Synthese, 2018
This special issue (short: S.I.) is dedicated to the study of philosophical methodology. Until recently, the debate about philosophical methods in analytic philosophy primarily focused on the method of conceptual analysis, linguistic intuitions, thought experiments, and empirical methods. The result of an analysis of a concept is typically taken to be an explicit definition that consists of a list of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for its fulfillment. Yet, such a list is only a result of a conceptual analysis if it is true by virtue of the meaning of its parts and if this truth can be recognized a priori with the aid of linguistic intuitions (e.g., Grice 1958). We can test definitions by conducting thought experiments that enact the specified conditions (e.g., Mach 1973; Jackson 1998, ch. 2; Nimtz 2012). This method of conceptual clarification has been criticized in several respects. For instance, Willard van Orman Quine challenged one of its presuppositions, namely the analytic/synthetic distinction (Quine 1951). Hilary Kornblith argued that its aim of specifying individually necessary and jointly sufficient condition cannot be reached (Kornblith 2007; see also Chalmers and Jackson 2001). Longstanding debates about concepts like knowledge are thus rather a gimmick than fruitful philosophical work (Kornblith 2014). Lynne Rudder Baker aimed to show that empirical considerations are involved in seemingly a priori analyses (Rudder Baker 2001), and it has been debated whether conceptual analysis is knowledge expanding (for this debate see, e.g., Balcerak Jackson and Balcerak Jackson 2012; Balcerak Jackson 2013). In recent years, it has also been argued that conceptual analysis should not be carried out by individual philosophers. Instead, folk intuitions need to be elicited by means of quantitative research. Such arguments B Insa Lawler
2021
In his short essay “...A reply to Tommy Curry” (Bloniasz, 2021) , Patrick Bloniasz undertakes the effort of critique upon the chapter of Curry’s book Man-not, titled “In the Fiat of Dreams” (Curry, 2017). I propose his Reply brings to light a strange but significant divide that arises in the estimation of philosophical knowledge. While this divide has been coined for the past century to be between two approaches upon or schools of philosophy, i.e. the analytical and the continental, this division has failed historically to be explained sufficiently. Recognizing the impetus behind such a distinction, I will present a new philosophical clarity in this matter over three parts. In Part One of my Comment, I open with the example of Patrick Bloniasz’s essay On Idealistic Ethics, Nihilism, and the Analyticity of ‘Black Maleness’: A Reply to Tommy Curry. I submit that the Reply allows for an opportunity to overtly discern a significant difference supposed in those names (analytical and continental) without default to a vague category of associated labeling. I find Bloniasz’s Reply within and as evidence of a perpetuated polemical systemic insolvency characterized by a particular method for conceptualization of reason. This method, I submit, amounts to a force of assertion for what we routinely know as systemic oppression, the issue that Curry addresses. In parts Two and Three, I propose to resolve the insolvency apparent through the dissection of Part One by a concept I call the Two Routes. Overall, I endeavor to be explicit where other philosophers have been perhaps too vague, and to be troublesome where other philosophers may have been hedging their bets to be comfortable.
A Critique of Methodology in Philosophy
Sapientia Journal of Philosophy, 2020
In this paper, we have elected to reflect on the question of what is the method of doing philosophy. This critique proceeds from a preliminary discourse on the various methods that have been deployed in doing philosophy in the past to a discourse on Bochenski's thought on what should be the method of contemporary thought. The paper, found out that such methods as the phenomenological, analytical, dialectical, hermeneutical methods amongst others have been used in doing philosophy, past and present. We have argued in this paper that while it is true that real progress in philosophy can only be guaranteed by an adequate method that is grounded in logic and semantics, there is no single universally accepted method of doing philosophy. Arising from our analysis of Bochenski's thought and insights from an intercultural perspective, the paper concludes that an authentic philosophical method is that which rest on phenomenological analysis, proceeds through analysis and must be guided logic. Such a method must also be complementary and not confrontational.
Application of the Doctrine of Method in the critical examination of reason
2012
Em 1762, Kant formula um metodo da filosofia que e distinto do metodo matematico. Com isso, ele distancia-se do pensamento metodologico de Leibniz e de Wolff. No presente artigo formularemos, primeiro, os preceitos deste metodo. Depois mostraremos que estes preceitos do metodo de 1762 se encontram, de modo explicito ou implicito, na doutrina do metodo da Critica da razao pura . Finalmente, tentaremos demonstrar que a argumentacao da Critica guia-se exatamente por esses preceitos metodologicos. Como o mais importante destes preceitos metodologicos diz que a definicao nao pode estar no inicio, senao no final da investigacao filosofica, e de se esperar que, no final da argumentacao da Critica da razao pura , se encontrara uma definicao da filosofia da razao pura, ou, pelo menos, uma explicacao bastante completa da mesma. Essa expectativa cumpre-se, e isso nos obriga a alterar, em muitos pontos, nossa interpretacao da Critica e do tratamento dado nela a metafisica.