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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Questions on non-ontology
Ontology is one of the best known and most important branches of metaphysics - the study of "things", of "beings", or of "what there is" (in oppose to what "there isn't").
I have a few questions ...
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Can a philosophical question be ultimately rendered "non-question"?
I sometimes hear claims about philosophical questions and debates that claim to render such questions as "non-question" (a related example, while not exactly a question, will be Steven Novella calling ...
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How is Philosophy related to Science? [closed]
I asked this question about Scientism and the answers there quite brilliantly explained to me why Scientism is philosophically inconsistent.
But I just want to know: What is the relationship between ...
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Can we do anything we want in philosophy?
This is maybe kind of an odd question, and it's related to my metaphysics controversies question.
In philosophy (to be honest mostly in metaphysics, but also in philosophy as a whole), it seems like ...
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Can a philosophy based only on "how" questions?
There's a popular distinction between the "why" and "how" questions (especially popular nowadays in popular science) - the main argument is that while "how" questions can give us not only meaningful, ...
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What do philosophers make of intractable metaphysical controversies?
In philosophy metaphysical debates are quite popular - all the "-ism"s are fighting one another. And many give good insights for every side of every debate. This seems like it can't be stopped, ever, ...
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Contemporary philosophy of nature?
In the history of philosophy it's a well-known fact that philosophy of nature has separated from philosophy and moved to science as "natural science" in the late 19th century. My question is, are ...
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Can postmodernism conclude we should use philosophy/science only as tools to help us live better, rather than search for the nature of the universe?
A long title.
Postmodernism is known for its post-truth ideas, that there's no objective truth that we can even wish to discover, or that it even matter. An idea came to me - if we do take a ...
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The line between science and philosophy - current status
(I know some will reject the idea of having a "line" between science and philosophy, but I don't want these answers, let's assume there is.)
We often draw a line between science and philosophy that ...
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Why do we seek to "limit" our scope for the search after truth?
In philosophy and science, we quite often make systematic approaches that limits our thoughts to be as accurate as possible.
Examples are endless - basically every logical system, every ...
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What is postanalytic philosophy?
I came across a reference to the postanalytic philosophy today, and I'm wondering what exactly that is. Is it related (if not it itself) to postmodern philosophy? What are the main ideas behind it? ...
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Does computer science have an impact on Philosophy?
Recently I found some books in the domain "Philosophy of Computer Science." However, the majority of these books described how the logic and analytical philosophy can develop and understand computer ...
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What is "what is"?
A lot of questions we ask have the form: "What is ..."
Some examples would be :
What is love?
What is the square root of 34?
What is this object?
But what is the answer to the ...
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When is something necessary, according to Hume?
Something is necessary when it is fundamentally true in all contexts, this is what I've understood from what I've read regarding Hume's problem of induction. However, uniformities are not true in ...
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Who is a philosopher: as in what attributes does it take to become an academic philosopher?
Who is a philosopher: as in what attributes (not necessarily innate) does it take to be an academic philosopher?
I think the question is a good and legitimate for this site variant on "who is a ...
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The difference between poetry and philosophy, and whether a quote can describe a philosophy
What is the key difference between philosophy and poetry? Can a quote be identified as poetic with a philosophical idea hidden within it? For example Albert Einstein once said:
Imagination is more ...
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Philosophical Writing at a Graduate level
I need some book recommendations or other source recommendations on where to find a good book on the actual act of writing philosophy. I won't be able to attend graduate school for philosophy ...
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Implication of Rorty's concession to Ramberg that true statements "get things right"?
Richard Rorty (1932-2008) was the paradigmatic deflationist re the concept “truth.” He was an epistemic naturalist and historicist, an instrumental pragmatist, anti-realist/essentialist, and ...
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Does moral intelligence help in philosophy class?
I was looking at stoic fury's quite famous answer, on stages of moral reasoning. Basically, the psychology of moral intelligence.
Made me wonder (despite disliking the post as an answer to that ...
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Is it ethical to have a "personal philosophy"?
I'm not sure what having a "personal philosophy" means, but it seems like that's the only way non academics can relate to philosophy. I suppose it means taking some philosophical idea seriously enough ...
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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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how do you prove the existence super natural [duplicate]
How can you prove the existence of super-natural being ?
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Does one ought to be ethical?
Are there any "objective" arguments for that one ought or ought not to be ethical?
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To what extent is literary deconstructionism applied to philosophical texts?
A colleague and I were discussing literary deconsructionism, to which he was very much opposed on the grounds that the author had not freely given their work to the public and so what they intended it ...
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What good is philosophy that is not clearly reasoned? [closed]
What good is philosophy that is not clearly reasoned? Questions like this have already come up, but I specifically would like to know what the more obscure philosophy can, on account of its lack of ...
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What skeptical arguments do not use induction?
What skeptical arguments do not use induction? I haven't yet found anything which says these do not exist, so doubt that they don't. But I'm still intrigued, as SEP says that
[a] way to motivate ...
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Is the bar lower for literary theory?
Is the bar lower for literary theory? Is argumentation a lot less demanding, i.e. it needn't be as convincing?
I mean literary criticism as it is informed by its underlying principles (formalism, ...
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Is arguing pro choice because "a woman has the right to control her body" invalid?
Is arguing pro choice because "a woman has the right to control her body" (very obviously) invalid?
Says so here, that
the argument already assumes that the conclusion of the whole debate, namely ...
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Foundations of logic and reasoning in natural languages
My intuition tells me that any theory, whether expressed using mathematics(and therefore more precise and structured) or argued for using natural languages have to involve blind faith in certain ...
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What analogies are there for thinking about the flow of time?
What analogies are there for thinking about the flow of time? Assuming that time has the following characteristics:
Only the present exists (not the past and future)
The present is a fiction
The ...
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How do philosophers / philosophy professors respond to criticisms? [closed]
I came across an article claiming that 82 percent of peer-reviewed publications in Humanities are not even cited once, let alone read by the general public. What's more interesting is that the ...
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How much mathematics and formal logic is needed to pursue graduate studies in Philosophy?
On other online philosophy forums, this question got mixed responses. Some said that you could not get far in philosophy without a good background in mathematics. Others said that unless you venture ...
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What exactly is "Anti-Formalism" in philosophy?
According to the article written by Sven Ove Hansson, which was published in The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic:
Some philosophers consider texts that make use of logical or mathematical
notation as ...
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Do (any) philosophers worry if there can be a priori truths about a changing world?
Do (any) philosophers question how there can be a priori truths about a changing world -- has anyone worried whether this is possible, or if those different modes, of timeless truth and contingent ...
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Which system of formal logic does the human mind use for the actual world?
Given that there are different formal logic systems, both classical and non classical (Non classical logic), which one do you think is the valid one? Which system does our mind use to draw inferences ...
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Does being a philosopher require being a historian?
I see a lot of comments and debates related to things other philosophers said. I see value in reading and learning what others have written and think. I am not suggesting that such an exercise does ...
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If little philosophical consensus could be reached, could philosophy be defined as a negative study?
This is just a very random idea that came across my mind. I wish to have this unlearned opinion judged by a more academically rigorous community.
I was thinking the other day that, since very little ...
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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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To what extent are the concerns of philosophy divorced from those of real life? [closed]
There's a thread that asks whether the slogan "guns don't kill people, people kill people" is a valid argument. I'd like to have answered it, but couldn't because I don't have enough mojo here.
Yet ...
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Usefulness of 'Knowledge'
I am typically interested in finding out the interrelationships as regards knowledge per se and its applications. Typically, I see this interesting phenomenon of the difficulty of proving theorems in ...
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Is Constant Growth of the former Hegelian Dewey not the new Hegelian Absolute?
John Dewey, the former Hegelian, having got rid of the Hegelian religion and fearing to adopt a different one said that the guarantee of not doing that wound be constant growth as the absolute value ...
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Attitudes of modern philosophers about Aristotle
On the one hand, Aristotle is held in high regard by modern philosophers. For example, in the PhilPapers survey, Aristotle comes second after Hume in the list of "Non-living philosophers most ...
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Is philosophy about organizing our ignorance?
I am interested in B. Russell's quote:
Science is what we know; philosophy is what we don't know.
What is he saying here in terms of a definition of philosophy? In his sense, is that correct to ...
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The scope of Analytic discussion about sentences
Kripke and Quine argue both for 2 different ideas (about which I will write shortly) but their objectives are common - to say something about the nature of sentences. Yet, It seems to me like they don'...
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What standards exist for developing a philosophical model?
Coming from the natural sciences, I typically see a scientific model as follows: A scientific model takes all available evidence and attempts to ascribe a relating structure to all this information ...
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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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Philosophical responses to possible biases in the philosophical canon?
Philosophy is supposedly universal, but nearly all of the accepted western philosophical canon has been created by affluent white European men. Are there (canonical) philosophers who have directly ...
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Are we studying philosophy or philosophers?
In science, if one asks the question "What is the structure of DNA?", rarely will one get the answer "According to Watson and Crick, it's twin-helical". Similarly, a chemistry course does not begin by ...
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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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View that problems in philosophy are caused by language?
What is the name of the philosophical view that most (if not the vast majority, or even all) problems in philosophy are caused by language in some sort of way?
The question was partly inspired by a ...
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