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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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 everything in philosophy and rhetoric just about where you draw the line? [closed]
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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Can a question be bullshit?
In his essay On Bullshit Frankfurt writes:
The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the
other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are
of no ...
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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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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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Why do philosophical questions arise?
I've been reading questions and answers in this site for a while, and I've come to the idea that philosophical questions arise mainly in a response to a psychological need, like having a cognitive ...
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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 is the goal and toolset of philosophy?
I'm beginning to realize that I might have misconseptions about philosophy in general.
Is it to question and contend indefinitely or is there a goal?
I thought the goal was truth.
While I'm at it, ...
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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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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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Can you list other Collingwood's Absolute Presuppositions?
Robin G. Collingwood's posited the existence of absolute presuppositions (AS). As a reminder, presuppositions are for Collingwood assumptions and guiding precepts that are closed to further analysis ...
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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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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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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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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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Would philosophy be useless if there were a box of answers?
All of the ideas are mine, I don't know a lot about philosophy's terms, I'll be clear and I'll speak in human's terms.
Imagine someday everything is normal, kids going to schools, doctors going to ...
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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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Of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, who is generally considered the better philosopher?
Of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, who is generally considered the better philosopher? My apologies if too up for debate for any philosopher to have ever answered, as I can only find the answers of ...
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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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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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What is the distinction between mysticism and metaphysics?
Mysticism and Metaphysics seem to share immediate similarity: both amount to sort of speculations pertaining to capture universal truth that cannot be confirmed nor refuted by the senses. What is 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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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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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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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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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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What is the most unique type of philosophy someone can naturally develop?
A couple of days ago I read about metaphysics. Because I recognised this type of philosophical activity in someone and searched it up. This person has developed it's philosophy without studying ...
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Do academic philosophers have a special duty to challenge their government?
This is a question about source materials: I'm hoping someone can point me to a modern treatment of obligations to the state incurred by the act of philosophizing, or even an argument against the ...
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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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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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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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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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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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What is the argument for Heidegger's claim that philosophy can only be done in Greek and German?
Here it is said that Heidegger viewed German and Greek as the only languages in which doing philosophy is possible at all.
The article references several sources [I won't list them to save space] I ...
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Can mathematics and physics be thought of as branches of philosophy?
I think that they can be viewed like that, with some suitable definition of philosophy.
Then mathematics could be defined as one of the branches of philosophy in which theories are built on ...
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How do I know the philosophy I'm going to read is something new for me and not just a waste of time?
I know it may sound like I'm thinking of myself as I already know everything within philosophy, every problem and every response. When I was 15 reading it could be interesting. However now, most ...
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Does philosophy help us to find the truth? Or science? Or both? [closed]
Which field is closer to the truth? Philosophy or science?
What is the position of philosophy in human civilization now? Is it something like classical music now — we never invent, we just play the ...
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What are the practical ramifications of philosophy? How can we make it relevant to ordinary people? [duplicate]
Because philosophy is seen by many as a useless subject and a mere waste of resources, universities the world over has retired countless degree programs in philosophy.
So my questions are
How is ...
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