Here are crucial data for any theory of the self, self-consciousness or the structure of experience. We discuss the fundamental structure of both indexical reference, especially first-term reference, and quasi-indexical reference, used in attributing first-person reference to others. Chisholm's ingenious account of direct awareness of self is tested against the two sets of data. It satisfies neither. Chisholm's definitions raise serious questions both about philosophical methodology and about the underlying ontology of individuation, identity, and predication. Chisholm's adverbial account of (...) non-physical contents of consciousness is also examined; several questions are raised about the possible success of the linguistic technique of ontological reduction by hyphenation and creation of grammatical devices. (shrink)

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)

I do not believe that it is in general a good thing for philosophers to concern themselves with philosophical method. But in these remarks I discuss an exception, which arises in the interpretation of Wittgenstein. What Wittgenstein does in his Philosophical Investigations cannot be properly understood except in the context of appreciating his explicitly methodological remarks, in which he in effect disclaims any intention to say anything that might be open to dispute. I try to explain how that (...) can be consistent with helpfulness in dealing with philosophical puzzlements. (shrink)

This paper is the introduction to the Special Issue “Philosophical Methods”. The Special Issue will be published by Synthese.

The problems of referential opacity in psychological contexts require a solution, of which three types are indicated, that contains a profound theory of predication, identity, and individuation. a radical theory, not in the spirit of the current fashions, is outlined. it is called the guise-consubstantiation, conflation, and consociation theory. this theory was first expounded in "thinking and the structure of the world," "philosophia" (1974) and "critica" (1972). the present paper is an introduction to this essay, motivated by two criticisms of (...) romane clark in "not every object of thought has being," "nous" (1978). it is shown that clark's arguments rest on equivocations, one involving the data and the theory, and the other within the theory itself. thus, a discussion of philosophical method turns out to be crucial, and an analysis of expression 'true of' is offered. (shrink)

Is philosophy a unique discipline, or are its methods more like those of other sciences than many philosophers think? Timothy Williamson explains clearly and concisely how contemporary philosophers think and work, and reflects on their powers and limitations.

We consider an approach to some philosophical problems that I call the Method of Conceptual Articulation: to recognize that a question may lack any determinate answer, and to re-engineer concepts so that the question acquires a definite answer in such a way as to serve the epistemic motivations behind the question. As a case study we examine “Galileo’s Paradox”, that the perfect square numbers seem to be at once as numerous as the whole numbers, by one-to-one correspondence, and yet (...) less numerous, being a proper subset. I argue that Cantor resolved this paradox by a method at least close to that proposed—not by discovering the true nature of cardinal number, but by articulating several useful and appealing extensions of number to the infinite. Galileo was right to suggest that the concept of relative size did not apply to the infinite, for the concept he possessed did not. Nor was Bolzano simply wrong to reject Hume’s Principle (that one-to-one correspondence implies equal number) in the infinitary case, in favor of Euclid’s Common Notion 5 (that the whole is greater than the part), for the concept of cardinal number (in the sense of “number of elements”) was not clearly defined for infinite collections. Order extension theorems now suggest that a theory of cardinality upholding Euclid’s principle instead of Hume’s is possible. Cantor’s refinements of number are not the only ones possible, and they appear to have been shaped by motivations and fruitfulness, for they evolved in discernible stages correlated with emerging applications and results. Galileo, Bolzano, and Cantor shared interests in the particulate analysis of the continuum and in physical applications. Cantor’s concepts proved fruitful for those pursuits. Finally, Gödel was mistaken to claim that Cantor’s concept of cardinality is forced on us; though Gödel gives an intuitively compelling argument, he ignores the fact that Euclid’s Common Notion is also intuitively compelling, and we are therefore forced to make a choice. The success of Cantor’s concept of cardinality lies not in its truth (for concepts are not true or false), nor its uniqueness (for it is not the only extension of number possible), but in its intuitive appeal, and most of all, its usefulness to the understanding. (shrink)

In this article, I propose that illness is philosophically revealing and can be used to explore human experience. I suggest that illness is a limit case of embodied experience. By pushing embodied experience to its limit, illness sheds light on normal experience, revealing its ordinary and thus overlooked structure. Illness produces a distancing effect, which allows us to observe normal human behavior and cognition via their pathological counterpart. I suggest that these characteristics warrant illness a philosophical role that has (...) not been articulated. Illness can be used as a philosophical tool for the study of normally tacit aspects of human existence. I argue that illness itself can be integral to philosophical method, insofar as it facilitates a distancing from everyday practices. This method relies on pathological or limit cases to illuminate normally overlooked aspects of human perception and action. I offer Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the case of Schneider as an example of this method. (shrink)

The main purpose of this paper is to argue, against the formalist or hypothetico-deductivist approach now dominant, that God or substance is for Spinoza a discovery, or indeed a kind of revelation. In both TdlE and Ethics, Spinoza affirms substance as the outcome of a search for salvation. He could not have held that a postulate or presupposition, even if thought necessary, can save man through abstract entailment. Indeed, salvation depends on “the quality of the object to which we cling (...) with love”, the object being “the eternal and infinite thing”. (shrink)

_An Introduction to Philosophical Methods_ is the first book to survey the various methods that philosophers use to support their views. Rigorous yet accessible, the book introduces and illustrates the methodological considerations that are involved in current philosophical debates. Where there is controversy, the book presents the case for each side, but highlights where the key difficulties with them lie. While eminently student-friendly, the book makes an important contribution to the debate regarding the acceptability of the various (...) philosophical methods, and so it will also be of interest to more experienced philosophers. (shrink)

My discussion suggests that one of Richard Peters’ main contributions to the philosophy of education was in expounding and stressing the need for a particular view of the subject, essentially conceptual analysis. The paper proceeds to defend this view and Peters’ specific account of education against the charges that his work relies simply on preferred definitions and that it is unwarrantably prescriptive. The practical value of this kind of philosophy is then further assessed, while in the final section attention is (...) drawn to Peters’ commitment to the idea of education being an integrally moral enterprise. (shrink)

An Introduction to Philosophical Methods is the first book to survey the various methods that philosophers use to support their views. Rigorous yet accessible, the book introduces and illustrates the methodological considerations that are involved in current philosophical debates. Where there is controversy, the book presents the case for each side, but highlights where the key difficulties with them lie. While eminently student-friendly, the book makes an important contribution to the debate regarding the acceptability of the (...) various philosophical methods, and so it will also be of interest to more experienced philosophers. (shrink)

Here are crucial data for any theory of the self, self-consciousness or the structure of experience. We discuss the fundamental structure of both indexical reference, especially first-term reference, and quasi-indexical reference, used in attributing first-person reference to others. Chisholm's ingenious account of direct awareness of self is tested against the two sets of data. It satisfies neither. Chisholm's definitions raise serious questions both about philosophical methodology and about the underlying ontology of individuation, identity, and predication. Chisholm's adverbial account of (...) non-physical contents of consciousness is also examined; several questions are raised about the possible success of the linguistic technique of ontological reduction by hyphenation and creation of grammatical devices. (shrink)

This is a study focusing on the philosophical method of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. My approach begins with his style of writing, which furnishes some clues that concretely reveal his way of thinking. This makes perceptible an active process working in the texts. Working from here, the right approach seems to be a certain methodus negativa, opening a vast field of investigations, not only in existentialism, phenomenology, and ontology, but also, metaphysics. That is why, finally, such investigations cannot avoid a confrontation (...) with Cartesianism. (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)

"This book provides new interpretations of Heidegger's philosophical method in light of 20th-century postmodernism and 21st-century speculative realism. In doing so, it raises important questions about philosophical method in the age of global warming and climate change. Vincent Blok addresses topics that have yet to be extensively discussed in Heidegger scholarship, including Heidegger's method of questioning, the religious character of Heidegger's philosophical method and Heidegger's conceptualization of philosophical method as explorative confrontation. He is also critical of (...) Heidegger's conceptuality and develops a post-Heideggerian concept of philosophical method, which provides a new perspective on the role of willing, poetry and earth-interest in contemporary philosophy. This earth-interest turns out to be particularly important to consider and leads to critical reflections on Heidegger's concept of Earth, the necessity of Earth-interest in contemporary philosophy and a post-Heideggerian concept of the Earth. Heidegger's Concept of Philosophical Method will be of interest primarily to Heidegger scholars and graduate students, but its discussion of philosophical method and environmental philosophy will also appeal to scholars in other disciplines and areas of philosophy"--. (shrink)

The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophical Methods contains twenty-six original and substantive papers examining a wide selection of philosophical methods. Drawing upon an international range of leading contributors, this Handbook will help shape future debates about how philosophy should be done. Topics explored include philosophical disagreement, thought experiments, intuitions, rational reflection, conceptual analysis, explanation, parsimony, and experimental philosophy. Written in a clear and accessible form, and drawing upon the most recent thinking in the field, the papers (...) will be of particular interest to researchers and high-level undergraduates. (shrink)

I argue that we can arrive at a better understanding of the Ethics and why Spinoza wrote it by viewing it through certain ideas expressed in his Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. These ideas are: 1) personal remarks, 2) the method and most perfect method, 3) true ideas, 4) false ideas, 5) definitions.

It is commonly thought that Dioscorides’s view on medicine is purely pragmatic, focused entirely on the effectiveness of medicines, and derived from trial and error. One reason for this interpretation is that Dioscorides himself wrote little about his theory of medicine. In this article, however, we argue that he would have arranged De Materia Medica in a way that would have been useful only to a skilled practitioner. This argument implies that Dioscorides had a medical theory, as the arrangement of (...) the content could not have followed a trial-and-error approach. It is only in the sense of having a theory that he is able to claim that his text is more “complete” than others. This article provides a historical overview of the text from its genesis to its reception and, ultimately, to its falling out of use. This article concludes with a series of hypotheses on the correspondence between theory and arrangement of the treatise, with the aim of narrowing scholarly conjectures about both. In the final analysis, we argue that an arrangement by family resemblance most closely corresponds to the theory that animates Dioscorides’s text. (shrink)

這是研究梅洛胤茶哲學方法的第一部分。進入此哲學方法的途径是什磨 党？首先， 梅洛胤 器的寓作風格提 供了我 1門一些線 索来具骨豊的祷別他思考的 方式。 如 此可譲 我1門感知 到在 文本裡運作的進展過程。再者，這個正確的途径在此似乎是一種否定的方法(methodus negativa) , 開敗了一個廣大領域的研究，不僅涵蓋存在主義、現象學、存有學，而且還有形上學。這也是為何，這様的研究到最後無法避免輿笛ヤ兒主義的遭遇。 .

There have recently appeared claims that the influence Heinrich Hertz exerted over Wittgenstein's later work was far more abiding than previously recognised. I critically evaluate such claims by Gordon Baker and Allan Janik. I first show that Hertz was indeed concerned with the same feature, clarity, which often exercised Wittgenstein. But I then argue that Wittgenstein should not be seen as having adopted the conception of philosophical method, which Hertz deployed in The Principles of Mechanics. I show that Hertz (...) ‘clarifies’ the concept of force only in the sense that he alters that concept, and that he is not using the sort of ‘contrastive’ methods characteristic of Wittgenstein's later works. (shrink)

The main objective of this paper is to address the problem of the philosophical method, which consists of the lack of consensus among philosophers regarding the proper procedure to carry out this human activity. In this sense, it examines a few methodological proposals put forward by some representatives of contemporary philosophy, emphasizing the impact that the development of modern science has had on such views. In addition, the plausibility of such proposals is assessed.

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)

A problem is posed: Is pleasure choiceworthy, or not? The answerer claims that yes, it is. The questioner must refute him by asking questions—by offering him premises to accept or reject. The questioner succeeds if he forces the answerer to accept a proposition contrary to the one he undertook to defend, and fails if the answerer always accepts or rejects premises in a way consistent with that proposition. To a first approximation, dialectic is the distinctive method of Aristotelian philosophy. At (...) the heart of dialectic is the dialectical deduction. This article discusses Aristotle's philosophical method, focusing on dialectical premises, endoxa, and aporiai. It also examines the uses of dialectic in intellectual training, ordinary discussion, and the philosophical sciences, as well as in regard to scientific starting points or first principles. The article concludes by returning to dialectic and philosophy and an important difference between them. (shrink)

We have all been very much influenced by philosophers whose revolutionary works have, in one way or another, contributed to our understanding of philosophical method; namely, G. E. Moore, who emphasized the effectiveness of ordinary language and common sense; Bertrand Russell, who has shown that logic can be a creative as well as an analytic instrument; Ludwig Wittgenstein, who dreamed of showing the structure of the world through the exhibition of logical form, and who then destroyed his own dream (...) through a grand exhibition of the multiplicity of uses—defying summation—to which language can be put; John Wisdom, who with an illuminating wit, has ironically written of the ironic power of philosophical discourse; A. J. Ayer, whose insistence on relating philosophical claims to sense experience has perpetuated the tough-minded pragmatism which Americans know through C. S. Peirce—these men, and many others. (shrink)

Here, I examine the epistemic relation between beliefs about the nature of sexual orientation (e.g., beliefs concerning whether orientation is dispositional) and beliefs about the taxonomy of orientation categories (e.g., beliefs concerning whether polyamorous is an orientation category). Current philosophical research gives epistemic priority to the former class of beliefs, such that beliefs about the taxonomy of orientation categories tend to be jettisoned or revised in cases of conflict with beliefs about the nature of sexual orientation. Yet, considering the (...) influence of ideology on beliefs about socially significant phenomena, I argue for an epistemic reversal. (shrink)

A philosophy of shared creative experience.--What metaphysics is.--Present prospects for metaphysics.--Abstraction: the question of nominalism.--Some principles of method.--A logic of ultimate contrasts.--Wittgenstein and Tillich: reflections on metaphysics and language.--Non-restrictive existential statements.--Events, individuals and predication: a defence of event pluralism--The prejudice in favor of symmetry.--The principle of dual transcendence and its basis in ordinary language.--Can there be a priori knowledge of what exists?--Ideas of God: an exhaustive division.--Six theistic proofs.--Sensory qualities and ordinary language.--The aesthetic matrix of value.

This essay focuses on the extent to which the methods of analytic philosophy can be useful to feminist philosophers. I pose nine general questions feminist philosophers might ask to determine the suitability of a philosophical method. Examples include: Do its typical ways of formulating problems or issues encourage the inclusion of a wide variety of women's points of view? Are its central concepts gender-biased, not merely in their origin, but in very deep, continuing ways? Does it facilitate uncovering (...) roles that gender, politics, power, and social context play in philosophy as well as in other facets of life? (shrink)

James Connelly and Giuseppina D'Oro present a new edition of R. G. Collingwood's classic work of 1933, supplementing the original text with important related writings from Collingwood's manuscripts which appear here for the first time. The editors also contribute a substantial new introduction. The volume will be welcomed by all historians of twentieth-century philosophy.

Lewis is famous as a contemporary philosophical system-builder. The most obvious way his philosophy exhibited a system was in its content: Lewis’s metaphysics, for example, provided answers to many metaphysical puzzles in an integrated way, and there are illuminating connections to be drawn between his general metaphysical views and, for example, his various views about the mind and its place in nature.