Questions tagged [metaphilosophy]
Metaphilosophy is the philosophical study of philosophy itself — its goals, methods, scope, and relationship to other intellectual disciplines or human projects.
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Is everything in philosophy and rhetoric just about where you draw the line?
Is everything in philosophy and rhetoric just about where you draw the line? So e.g. some things are real, some things are prohibted, some things make sense, etc..
Maybe not everything, in which case ...
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What is metaphilosophy? Who is qualified to practice it?
As I understand it, this is the philosophical study of philosophy itself. Who is qualified to practice this? Philosophers? If not, who else?
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How to see a subject within an object?
One can explore a thing (and its sense) only forcing it to suffer (i.e. to interact with a human's consciousness) and bounding it in ideal and material worlds: its will, freedom, ability to gnosis and ...
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How is Hegel's dialectic a logic?
There are several features of this account that Hegel thinks raise his
dialectical method above the arbitrariness of Plato’s dialectics to
the level of a genuine science. First, because the ...
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What does (the justification of) metaphilosophical pluralism consist in?
Logical pluralism means some sort of openness to, or even going between, multiple theories/systems of logic. Like a fluid logical eclecticism, perhaps (I am not tracking the inclusivism/pluralism ...
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What terminology distinguishes questions that define goals from those that accomplish them?
I will soon give a technical talk in which I want to stress the importance of asking the right questions. I propose to use a philosophical analogy; comparing the questions "How do I live a good ...
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Does philosophy involve long inferential chains?
An inferential chain is a series of inferences where each depends on the previous in sequence. "From A we conclude B, from B we conclude C, and from C we conclude D." That would be a chain ...
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Is the principle of charity just confirmation bias?
The principle of charity seems absolutely integral to studying philosophy in any way at all.
How does an overlap of charity and confirmation bias work out, either in the class room or in philosophical ...
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Philosophy presupposes that language is understood in the same way by everyone [closed]
Philosophy presupposes that language is understood in the same way by everyone.
If it is true, there would be thus a problem with the very essence of philosophy.
What do you think ? Is it logic ?
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Philosophy presupposes the individuality of the Whole?
I thought of a flaw in the very essence of philosophy
Philosophy presuppose that the individualisation of the Whole, which is created by language, corresponds with the Whole as it is, and that it is ...
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Why is it so hard to give a good definition of philosophy?
I have never seen an adequate definition of philosophy. It seems like a "family-resemblance" concept to me, to borrow Wittgenstein's famous phrase. It is easy to give definitions of, say, ...
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Which philosophers have defended both the claim that any attitude can ground meaning and moral error theory?
Which philosophers have defended both the claim that any attitude (a pro attitude to anything) can ground meaning and moral error theory? It may even be the the received view among the population in ...
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Can we conclude from Wittgenstein that all philosophy shows just as well that all philosophy is nonsense?
There's been a lot of skeptical questions recently, about knowledge, god, probability, other minds, all sorts of crazy stuff (I'm still waiting for "nothing is true")
Can we conclude from ...
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Is religious authority justified?
Is religious authority justified?
I mean religious broadly thought, as something that may be a mystic non-inferential claim (and I'm especially interesting in these).
An inference is the process of ...
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Where does philosophy fear to tread?
This question isn't well researched. It's difficult to investigate those realms which have been neglected, as opposed to those rigorously attended.
One of philosophy's great attractions is arguably ...
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Is philosophy bad for you (if taken too literally)?
Hume seemed to prove that we are not justified in believing our inductions. Popper, who is very popular among scientists, thought that statements are only ever falsified. Moral error theorists say ...
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The purpose of philosophers is to believe in the thing that seems most reasonable to them?
I have been wondering about the role and goal of philosophy as a discipline and as a practice. Some people might say that philosophy is about finding the truth, or at least getting closer to it. But ...
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Does philosophy consist in defining the being of each thing?
I have been pondering the question of what philosophy is and what it aims to achieve. One idea that came to mind is that philosophy might consist in defining the being of each thing. In other words, ...
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About the world as representation
In "The World as Will and Representation", how can Schopenhauer say that the world is a representation if he himself EXISTS in his representation of the world? Isn't there a contradiction in ...
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Are arguments that Reason is circular themselves circular and/or self refuting?
Are arguments that Reason is circular themselves circular and/or self refuting?. I am basically open to the idea of using Reason to show Reason doesn't work, but really only for specific cases - case ...
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Is "Why do we live?" a philosophical question?
After posting a question akin to "Why do we live?" in the r/AskPhilosophy subreddit its moderators got it removed, providing as motivation "All questions must be about philosophy".
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Do philosophers talk about "philosophical judgment"
Does 'philosophical judgment' exist? I studied philosophy at undergrad, and I think I learnt how to judge an argument, not simply as sound or cogent, but "interesting", which arguments are ...
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Where is the line between semantics and ontology?
To be more specific, for a long time, it's seemed to me that a lot of open questions in philosophy, such as "What is consciousness?" or "What is truth?" come down, in large part, ...
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Should I trust my own thoughts when studying philosophy?
I sometimes find myself disagreeing with Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or other seasoned philosophers. However, I am scared to trust my own thoughts lest my ideas are erroneous. I do not know ...
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Am I a materialist?
I believe that there is nothing even close to non-trivial certainty in philosophy, at least outside of ethics and psychology. For this reason, I believe in monism at about 60%. Furthermore, I believe ...
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Why can't we have a tighter definition of what makes something necessary?
Why can’t we define 'necessary' tighter, by making it include empirical evidence of such a statement?
Everything that is agreed to be necessarily can be empirically verified. For example, if we put ...
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Why are our emotions considered a huge part of psychology but not philosophy?
Often times when some people seem to reason things about the world that are true moreso than others, the faulty reasoning is rooted in psychology. To think of one example: emotional reasoning.
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Information surplus as a limit upon knowledge: do we 'know' too much to know enough?
I'm not quite sure how to begin looking for information about this question, which may have something to say about the question itself, but it essentially comes down to:
Has the availability of ...
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Is philosophy any different from emotional reasoning? [closed]
Emotional reasoning is considered a flawed form of reasoning because you essentially believe in something because you feel it to be true. But isn’t this the case for any question in philosophy?
For ...
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Is all of philosophy unfalsifiable?
How do you know you’re wrong about anything? Without having to use underlying philosophical theories that themselves involve axioms that can’t be proved, how is someone proven wrong about quite ...
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When to axiomatize an informal theory?
We axiomatize a theory when there are evident truths from which we can derive other truths by a previously defined set of rules of inference. Since Frege, though, a lot have changed and mathematics is ...
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To what extent can philosophical discipline permeate into normal life, e.g. the abortion debate?
As just one example of public debate where emotions run high: The abortion debate in the USA seems to be hopelessly polarised.
My rational approach would include:
Consider the safety health of the ...
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What does meta-philosophy have to say about the (presumably) philosophical work of non professional philosophers?
This question is prompted by an interesting comment discussion in a question I previously asked. Whereas nobody without proper mathematical training would attempt nowadays to do mathematics, it seems ...
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Has any contemporary philosopher argued that philosophy is dead?
Today a friend told me that Stephen Hawking claimed in 2010 that philosophy was dead. I've searched about this and indeed: he wrote that philosophy is ‘dead’ since it hasn’t kept up with the latest ...
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What is there to philosophy these days, other than intellectual self-gratification?
Preliminary notes
I understand that the title of my question has a provocative note. However it also stems from a genuine question.
I come from the standpoint of being a radical agnostic and ...
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Does philosophy rely on intuitions? If so, does this mean all of philosophy is nothing more than hunches?
Does philosophy rely on intuitions? If so, and all of philosophy comes down to intuition, how can one person be deemed to be more rational than other? In this world, most would agree that you cannot ...
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How To Distinguish Between Philosophy And Non-Philosophy?
Surely not all thinking or intellectual effort is philosophy, right?
Where to draw line between philosophy and all other thinking?
What, if any, feature is present only in philosophy?
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Are the psychological and sociological dimensions of philosophy philosophical matters?
Much to the horror of certain philosophers of science particularly those who clung to the logical positivists' notion that science was universally objective, Thomas Kuhn proposed that the politics of ...
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How should non-philosophers approach learning about philosophical things?
I believe that the 'proper' method for a nonscientist to learn about scientific things is to basically refer to the level of scientific consensus on a subject, yet there seems to be considerably less ...
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Has anyone described etc. Ataraxia from not asking needless questions?
Has anyone described etc. Ataraxia from not asking needless questions? I am most familiar with the idea of ataraxy from Epicurus
if one is frightened by the empty name of death, the fear will persist
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Is there a computer program that we could create which would, with 10-minute daily use, accelerate our ability to master the skill of philosophizing?
This summer I built this study aid for myself and STEM students to generate math problems so I can drill the art of problem solving with pen and paper. I don't see why there couldn't be a ...
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Is a philosophical position necessarily falsified when it cannot be maintained?
So someone supports some well defined (in how it applies consistently to this world) philosophical position P including the present time, not only the future (ethics might be an obvious example, but ...
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Is there a line between philosophy which problems are solvable by "pure thought" and which aren't?
It seems to me like a lot of arguments in philosophy are aided by insights of science, math, etc. For example, the relation between evolution and morals or Kant and geometry (and later non-Euclidian ...
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What does philosophy say about the nature of philosophy itself?
We can philosophize about life, the universe, gods, or society, about physics, religion, art, literature, or war, about politics, economy, or paradoxes, about moral, ethics, aesthetics, consciousness, ...
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Do metametaphysics help in elucidating the problems in metaphysics?
I have found a couple of books relating to metametaphysics, and it surprises me that this branch of philosophy exists.
Before I plunge myself down a new rabbit hole, I would appreciate help in putting ...
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Is Socrates' wisdom intrinsically valuable?
I don't mean specifically felicity etc. at philosophy, but whether a state of ambivalence toward death, while alive, can be intrinsically valuable because of some knowledge or wisdom that ambivalence ...
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Reference for precise definitions of notations in philosophical theories & books
As a math learner, when I want to read important philosophical theories like Descartes, Kant, etc. I face a big problem that bothers me. Why does no one define things and concepts precisely then ...
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Is the claim that Time doesn't exist defended among professionals today?
I think in philosophy of time Eternalism is the main option, Presentism the minority view, and there are some other theories I know almost nothing about like Growing block, or Moving spotlight.
But in ...
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What makes philosophers statements different from anyone elses statements?
I answered a question recently. I had backed it up with logic and reasoning as well. But someone had told me that my answer was just a comment of opinion, and that I needed to add some insight from a ...
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Which philosophers and philosophies discuss "worldview epistemologies"?
A lot of theologians and religious thinkers advance the idea that in order for any position to have meaning in epistemology or ethics or metaphysics it is necessary to interpret reality through some ...
