Metaphilosophy: A What and A Why (original) (raw)
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On the domain of metaphilosophy
This article argues for four interrelated claims: (i) Metaphilosophy is not one sub-discipline of philosophy, nor is it restricted to questions of methodology. Rather, metaphilosophical inquiry encompasses the general background conditions of philosophical practice. (ii) These background conditions are of various sorts, not only those routinely considered " philosophical " but also those considered biographical, historical, and sociological. Accordingly, we should be wary of the customary distinction between what is proper (internal) and merely contingent (external) to philosophy. (iii) " What is philosophy? " is best understood as a practical question concerning how members of different philosophical sub-communities identify what is pertinent to their respective activities and self-conceptions. (iv) Given (i)-(iii), understanding what philosophy is requires us to take more seriously the social-institutional dimension of contemporary philosophical practice.
“Philosophy Comes to Life: Elaborating an Idea of Feminist Philosophy”
Feminist Philosophies of Life, 2016
Through close readings of Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir, over the course of this paper I explain how a philosophy that comes to life moves away from “proper” philosophy and consequently is out-of-place and potentially disruptive. I elaborate this especially in the context of doing feminist philosophy. As feminist philosophers that come to life we stumble not just over small or large details of a theory, rather we stumble upon and stumble over one another’s lives. As an example of such an enlivened feminist philosophy that is out-of-place, I refer to the rich and productive work done by Gloria Anzaldúa, “feminist visionary spiritual activist poet-philosopher fiction writer” in order to trouble “philosophy proper.” I argue that an enlivened philosophy might indeed not be philosophy done properly. Anzaldúa’s marginal philosophy helps understand a philosophy that comes to life as a philosophy that is continually painfully and joyfully “in collusion, in coalition, in collision” with the different worlds it inhabits and the lives that are lived there. Philosophy that comes to life, I conclude, is the right way to do, think, enact, and live philosophy.
Metaphilosophy as First Philosophy
2010
This paper describes and evaluates two different ways of doing philosophy: a "reflexive" approach that sees metaphilosophical inquiry as fundamental, and a "non-reflexive" approach that sees metaphilosophy as dispensable. It examines arguments that have been advanced for these approaches by Gilbert Ryle, Jerry Fodor, and Richard Rorty, and claims that none of these arguments are
Metaphilosophy (Oxford Bibliographies Online)
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, say, epistemology or the philosophy of art. However, in the last couple of decades there has been a great deal of metaphilosophical work on issues concerning the methodology of philosophy in the analytic tradition. This entry focuses on that work
The unexamined philosophy is not worth doing: An introduction to New Directions in Metaphilosophy
Metaphilosophy, 2022
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.
Hypatia, 2013
Against the view that the physical sciences should be the privileged source of reliable knowledge within the academy in general, and in philosophy in particular, this essay argues that an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge-production, one that includes social and psychological assessment as well as narrative analysis, can better capture the diverse range of human epistemic activities as they occur in their natural settings. Postpositivist epistemologies, including Lorraine Code's social naturalism, Satya Mohanty's and Paula Moya's postpositivist literary and pedagogical projects, and Linda Alcoff's dialogical template for knowledge form the basis of a revised naturalized epistemology that is more accountable to a socially engaged inquiry. This revised naturalism shifts orientation from the idealized setting of the laboratory and its a priori conditions for knowledge to localized settings, where knowledge emerges out of diverse contextualized interpretations of the natural and social world that interlocutors produce as they dialogue with one another. Mayra Montero's neocolonial narrative thematizes the spatial shift of scientific activity, showing how epistemic authority, aligned with North American interests and regional identity, is established, withheld from others, and contested. The emergence of subaltern struggles in the last half of the twentieth century has generated the rise of resistance narratives on a global scale. Through the telling of stories, those classified as "other" disseminate perspectives that challenge prevailing worldviews on well-known events as well as raise awareness of the social problems facing marginalized communities (Stone-Mediatore 2003, 1). Narrative has also been characterized as a form of political expression fueled by epistemological concerns. Through the characters' struggles to know, the reader learns how people acquire and use knowledge to set strategic priorities. Seyla Benhabib conceives of narrative as an account of the self that all people construct. Although the norms informing our accounts correlate with "expectable and understandable biographies and identities in
Review essay , 2021
Review Essay of Cressida J. Heyes, Anaesthetics of Existence: Essays on Experience at the Edge Gopal Guru and Sundar Sarukkai, Experience, Caste, and the Everyday Social Megan Burke, When Time Warps: The Lived Experience of Gender, Race, and Sexual Violence
Metasemiotics and practical epistemology
Abstract. This paper is a response to debates on Foucault’s articulations of power and regimes of truth, particularly in the recent work of Derek Hook. It is also a response to the specific issue of Latour’s ‘crisis of objectivity’. It deals with the issues of objectivity, subjectivity, subjects, discourses and communities of practice, and develops the concept of ‘meta- semiotics’ to help explore and analyse some of the articulations of power and knowledge, particularly in modernism. This should help us to achieve the goals of Latour’s ‘political ecology’, or what we call a ‘practical epistemology’, which allows us to escape from being trapped in the reification of objectivity that characterized modernism, without rejecting the considerable advances that modernism has made. Key Words: ecologies of practice, epistemology, Internet, meta-semiotics, money, objectivity, power, science, subjectivity
Apophatic Inquiry: Living the Questions Themselves
International Journal of Qualitative Methods
In qualitative research, the importance of knowledge production is illustrated by the confidence in logos, that still flags. Although there is significant attention for approaches that are inclusive to the body, affect and non-rational dimensions, these approaches still aim to generate understandings by the appropriation of knowledge. This paper critiques that view and proposes another view of inquiry that centers the praxis of living the questions instead. Here, research is seen as a gradual unfolding of a process. The quest that belongs with this view of research is concerned with how to make space for life phenomena to emerge. We frame this as apophatic inquiry, a non-methodology, as it is not a matter of applying activities in a set of steps. For apophatic inquiry, a process of unknowing and wonder is imperative. The paper discusses how to foster a triadic inter-beingness in a research praxis that fosters the calling forth of and reflection on phenomena. For that, the researcher...