Metaphilosophy, Miscellaneous

There is a salient contrast in how theoretical representations are regarded. Some are regarded as revealing the nature of what they represent, as in familiar cases of theoretical identification in physical chemistry where water is represented as hydrogen hydroxide and gold is represented as the element with atomic number 79. Other theoretical representations are regarded as serving other explanatory aims without being taken individually to reveal the nature of what they represent, as in the representation of gold as a standard (...) for pre-20th century monetary systems in economics or the representation of the meaning of an English sentence as a function from possible worlds to truth values in truth-conditional semantics. Call the first attitude towards a theoretical representation *realist* and the second attitude *instrumentalist*. Philosophical explanation purports to reveal the nature of whatever falls within its purview, so it would appear that a realist attitude towards its representations is a natural default. I offer reasons for skepticism about such default realism that emerge from attending to several case studies of philosophical explanation and drawing a general metaphilosophical moral from the foregoing discussion. (shrink)

Academic Placement Data and Analysis (APDA), a project funded by the American Philosophical Association (APA) and headed by Carolyn Dicey Jennings (UC Merced), aims “to make information on academic job placement useful to prospective graduate students in philosophy.” The project has just been updated to include new data, which Professor Jennings describes in a post at New APPS. She also announces a new interactive data tool with which one can sift through and sort information. (from Daily Nous).

The first research report of the APDA project. Findings include that "gender is a significant predictor of type of placement (i.e. permanent versus temporary). The intercept tells us that the odds for male participants to have a permanent academic placement within the first two years after graduation are statistically significant at .37, p < 0.001 when year of graduation is held constant. The odds for female participants to have a permanent academic placement are 1.85, p < 0.001 when graduation year (...) is held constant. In terms of differences, the odds of having a permanent (versus temporary) academic placement are 85% greater for females as compared to males.". (shrink)

Part of a special issue, Ontologies of Living Beings, guest-edited by A. M. Ferner and Thomas Pradeu.

All that remains of Western Philosophy is the History of Ideas. 1 Ulrich de Balbian Meta-Philosophy Research Center ( Meta-Philosophy) Death of Philosophy Part 1 (essays on philosophy, it subject-matter, methods, omtology, metaphysics, episetemology, art, religion and other topics).

Recently, researchers have begun to empirically investigate the gender gap in philosophy and provide potential explanations for the underrepresentation of women in philosophy relative to their representation in other disciplines. This empirical research as well as research on the gender gap in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics fields has shed light on a priori, armchair explanations of the gender gap. For example, implicit bias and stereotype threat may contribute much less to the philosophy gender gap than previously thought. However, new (...) candidate contributing factors have emerged. Drawing on the theoretical resources concerning fixed mindsets in response to difficult tasks, a new theory suggests that practitioners in various fields, including philosophy, hold the belief that success in their fields requires natural brilliance. Further, the extent to which members of a field hold that belief predicts the diversity of the members of that field. Initial findings suggest that among the set of students who hold these beliefs, women are disproportionately disinterested in continuing in philosophy. Other hypotheses seem plausible, such as the idea that lay people hold gendered schemas about philosophy, but require more empirical support to be partial explanations. Future empirical research should focus on these plausible hypotheses, replications of previous findings, and investigating the effects of intersectionality within the gender gap. (shrink)

This article argues for four interrelated claims: 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. 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 and merely contingent to philosophy. “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. Given –, understanding what philosophy is requires us to take more seriously the social-institutional dimension of contemporary philosophical practice. (shrink)

According to Eli Hirsch many ontological disputes are verbal because, in these disputes, each side is most charitably interpreted as speaking the truth in its own language. In this thesis I argue that the ontological disputes Hirsch targets can’t be verbal. The problem with Hirsch’s proposal is that these ontological disputes are explicable in terms of ancillary disagreements about the explanatory value of intrinsic properties. If Hirsch believes that the ancillary disagreements are nonverbal, I argue, then he should interpret ontological (...) disputes as being nonverbal as well. Alternatively, in order for Hirsch to interpret the ancillary disagreements as being verbal, he must reject an assumption implicit in ontologists’ existence assertions. In this case, he ought to interpret ontologists’ positive existence assertions as false. Either way, there is no plausible way to interpret the disputes Hirsch targets as being verbal. (shrink)

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)

Nicholas Rescher unites two facets of metaphilosophy to show that the historical perspective and forward-thinking normative, or systematic, approach are, together, an integral component of philosophy itself.

In this article I argue that new light can be shed on the analytic/Continental divide by looking at the controversy on the nature of philosophy in late 19 th -century/early-20 th -century Germany. The controversy is between those thinkers who understand philosophy primarily as a worldview [Weltanschauung] and those who insist that it should be understood as a science [Wissenschaft]. The positions of the two main representatives of the two camps, Wilhelm Dilthey and Heinrich Rickert, are presented and assessed. Their (...) mutual disagreement on what philosophy ought to be reflects in a striking way some of the major tensions existing between the analytic and the Continental camps today. At the end of the article I formulate a historical hypothesis about how the Wissenschaft/Weltanschauung controversy petrified into the analytic/Continental divide. (shrink)

From a certain simplistic and inaccurate, although regrettably popular, perspective philosophy, at least for the past few decades, is available only in two main flavours – analytic and continental. Some self-identified members of both camps are apt to endorse uncharitable caricatures of what the others are up to. Among the many lines of criticism that can be directed against this false dichotomy, I wish to focus on discussion of a broadly naturalistic orientation that rejects many of the commitments both of (...) paradigmatic analytic philosophy and paradigmatic continental philosophy. For the committed naturalist, the enterprise of philosophy is continuous with that of systematic empirical enquiry into the workings of the world . From a naturalistic perspective many of the standard moves of analytic philosophy, such as testing a proposal against ‘intuitions’, are as preposterous as the claims of ‘continental’ and ‘analytic’ philosophers sometimes appear to one another. (shrink)

This paper articulates a dilemma posed by philosophical counseling literature that presupposes diagnostic recognition. In addition, guests often bring self-ascribed mental health diagnoses from their previous experience, and requests the philosophical counselor to de-diagnose or otherwise reinterpret their problems. Although philosophical counselors can do this, we cannot skirt philosophical diagnosis. The paper’s thesis is that it behooves philosophical counselors to differentiate these types of diagnosis and to know when we are doing one or the other, including the utilization of diagnostic (...) recognition. Anecdotes from the author’s philosophical counseling sessions are included to illustrate the discussion. The paper concludes that the space of philosophical diagnosis is neither incommensurate with, nor incompatible with clinical diagnosis. On the contrary, the space of philosophical diagnosis ought to harbor the possibility of clinical diagnostic recognition. The philosophical counselor’s repertoire of diagnostic intuitions should cultivate the intuitive recognition of clinical prototypes. (shrink)

A collection of six essays, including three previously unpublished papers entitled, "Methods of Philosophy," "The Nature of Value," and "The Metaphysical Concept of Space." The target in each case is the whole of technical philosophy; the thesis to be defended is the claim that its separate divisions represent no more than "linguistically contrived intellectual illusions." Along the way, it is argued that the traditional retreat from speculative metaphysics to philosophical analysis is to no avail, for it is claimed that since (...) all philosophy is of a piece, all its parts and methods stand or fall together. We are offered, therefore, the following dual thesis which is both surprising and unique: Philosophy is an ordered whole in structure and method, but the products of philosophical reflection embody nothing more than snares, delusions, and unproductive disputation.—C. V. (shrink)

A study in philosophical methodology aimed at providing a clear view of the scope and limits of philosophical inquiry.

Demonstrates that the divisions between analytic and continental philosophy are being replaced by a transcontinental desire to address common problems in a common idiom.

In 2007, a debate took place between Hungarian representatives of the analytic and continental schools of philosophy. Boldizsár Eszes and János T?zsér concluded their article about the history of analytic philosophy by the claim that the only possible method of philosophising is analytic. Answering on behalf of continental philosophers, Tibor Schwendtner approached the topic from the points of view of the sociology of knowledge and academic politics. Tamás Ullmann also defended continental philosophy, emphasizing that it is not vague or unscientific. (...) István Faragó-Szabó, in opposition to the continental position, represented a third, independent point of view. In their answer to Scwendtner, Eszes and T?zsér reject his charges, providing extensive evidence against them. (shrink)

I examine what I shall call meta-philosophy: a philosophical examination into what philosophy is, can be, should be, something of what it has been, what the point (if any) of it is and what, if anything, it can contribute to our understanding of and the making sense of our lives, including our lives individually and together, and of the social order in which we live.

Philosophers readily talk about merely verbal disputes, usually without much or any explicit reflection on what these are, and a good deal of methodological significance is attached to discovering whether a dispute is merely verbal or not. Currently, metaphilosophical advances are being made towards a clearer understanding of what exactly it takes for something to be a merely verbal dispute. This paper engages with this growing literature, pointing out some problems with existing approaches, and develops a new proposal which builds (...) on their strengths. (shrink)

Questions of style are often deemed of marginal importance in philosophy, as well as in metaphilosophical debates concerning the analytic/Continental divide. I take issue with this common tendency by showing how style – suitably conceived not merely as a way of writing, but as a form of expression intimately linked to a form of life – occupies a central role in philosophy. After providing an analysis of the concept of style, I take a fresh look at the analytic/Continental division by (...) examining the various stylistic differences between philosophers on each side. Despite these differences, I argue, both sides of the divide suffer from a common stylistic deficiency, and if this deficiency were rectified the gulf separating the two traditions may not appear as insurmountable as it presently does. To show this, I draw principally from the philosophy of religion, a field that has recently experienced a renewal in both the analytic and Continental traditions. (shrink)

The fate of concepts which comprise the philosophical knowledge of our epoch, an epoch in which the information explosion, including scientific information, has become a universal conditioning factor, unfolds in various ways. Some of these concepts are inscribed in a basic way in the categorial apparatus of philosophy. Others, having failed the tests of time and philosophical and methodological practice, lose their significance for philosophy and drop out of the conceptual apparatus as easily as they entered. Among the various new (...) concepts in contemporary philosophy, that of "metaphilosophy" occupies a special place. (shrink)

On being released from her black-and-white room into a colorful world it would seem Mary learns something new (the Knowledge Argument). On being released from his B-theory room into an A-theory world it would seem Mark learns something new (the Temporal Knowledge Argument). These thought experiments are parallel to each other and can inform each other.

A game in which each player is at liberty to change the rules whenever he wishes can neither be won nor lost.

Abstract: This brief article describes the circumstances that led to the creation of the journal Metaphilosophy in autumn 1968. A year after I had left graduate school, an unfortunate accident left me flat on my back for several weeks with nothing to do while recuperating from eye surgery. Bored, I decided to do something constructive, so I created a scholarly journal devoted to articles about the nature of philosophy, or how the different schools or branches of philosophy relate to each (...) other, or how philosophy relates to other disciplines. I made up the word “metaphilosophy” to describe such content, and I decided to call the journal by that name. With help from my wife, from my best friend, and from my undergraduate philosophy mentor, the journal Metaphilosophy was launched. (shrink)