Abstract

Historians of philosophy are required to report the ideas of schools other than those to which they themselves subscribe. What criteria should they use? Certainly not those specific to their schools alone. I propose that whatever those criteria are, they embody some intuitive, less specific, concept of intellectual progress. I further contend that the logic of questions and answers provides a satisfactory tool for handling this preliminary intuitive concept of intellectual progress. ;I present a general condition which I surmise the logic of questions and answers puts on the preliminary intuitive concept of intellectual progress. It is this. Progress occurs when and only when a question is criticised . When that question is replaced by one immune to that criticism further progress is invited. ;Recent history of language philosophy serves me as an example. An intuitive notion of progress is illustrated through a recent history of language philosophy. Some questions used by the narrators of that history are evaluated, where the move from one question to another is based on the criticism of the former one to which the latter question is immune