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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Defining terms in philosophy?
I always enjoyed philosophy, but I never thought to ask this question when I was still taking philosophy classes. So, I thought this was a good way to see what "philosophy" people think of this.
When ...
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Is 'immortality' outside the scope of philosophy?
Obviously religion offers hope or order through the promise or threat of an after life, etc.. As far as I can tell there's no scientific evidence for immortality, if only because it would be difficult ...
user6917
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Why should one philosophize instead of acting?
I was recently discussing the idea of beauty with one of my colleagues and how beauty should be defined. He brought up the fact that nowadays many beauty standards are set by the media, which ...
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When does a study / way of life / idea become a philosophy?
Wikipedia : Philosophy (from Greek φιλοσοφία, philosophia, literally "love of wisdom" is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, ...
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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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Where can I go to find one-on-one verbal Philosophical discussion?
I don't know if method questions are as allowable as content questions, but I am seeking conversational partners to riff on and analyze ideas with as I wend through philosophical inquiries. Because I ...
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How do psychoanalysts like Freud and Lacan interpret the concept of "proof"?
How do psychoanalysts interpret the epistemological concept of "proof" in their theoretical work? Not necessarily of psychoanalysis.
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Which problem is Russell focusing on while providing a solution, in his introduction to the Tractatus?
In the final part of his introduction to the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, Russell provides a possible solution to the problem of the impossibility of self-reference of logic:
There is one ...
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How to implement the so called 'principle of charity'?
The 'principle of charity' has been considered of great importance especially in scholarly communication. It is not very clear, nonetheless, how the principle can be implemented, even in simple ...
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What is(are) the importance(s) of formal reasoning
In Mathematics, we as an undergraduate are exposed for the first time (at least for me it was the case) to 'rigor'. For example, in Real Analysis classes we often use logical quantifiers in our ...
user13627
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Is it thought that analytic philosophy is in decline after the linguistic turn?
I would like to know from someone who has closely followed contemporary analytic philosophy if this idea has any currency. So by "is it thought" I mean is it a general trend or mood. The reason for ...
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Can any signature be counterfeit?
Derrida in Signature Event Context" (1972) asks:
"Are there signatures?", responds, "Yes, of course, every day. Effects
of signature are the most common thing in the world" (SEC 20). And he
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Can philosophy justify itself?
There are some scientists who claim that philosophy is useless: Lawrence Krauss, Lewis Wolpert, Stephen Hawking and so on. Science is a better method for our quest for knowledge, they said. Some ...
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Where one should draw a line between X and Philosophy of X?
It seems clear to many scholars which issues belong to philosophy-of-X and which rather belong to X. And sometimes it is indeed obvious when some given issue is for example mathematical or physical ...
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Truth and factness of reality [closed]
In relation to my earlier question,
Apart from Fact being a component of reality, what other factors comprise of reality which are sufficient for anything to be Fact?
And by saying Truth: a ...
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Physicalist platonism?
Two results of the PhilPapers Survey:
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?
Accept or lean toward: Platonism 366 / 931 (39.3%)
Accept or lean toward: nominalism 351 / 931 (37.7%)
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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 is an assumption?
I am unable to come up with an answer to the question -
"what is an assumption?"
Given a statement X, how do i know how many assumptions are there in it.
It often happens that one statement is said ...
user12196
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Do philosophical theories stay independent of scientific discoveries?
I asked a question earlier about how the Genealogy of Morals by Nietzsche had held out in terms how accurate his philosophy was, now that we know more about the emergence of the human animal. The ...
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Was Socrates a critic or a cynic? [closed]
What is the difference between a 'critic' and a 'cynic' from pragmatic point of view? Can they be used interchangeably? In particular, was Socrates a critic or a cynic? What role each has in ...
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Does doing comparative philosophy presuposse adopting cultural-relativism?
Assuming that there are several distinct philosophical traditions - say - Western, Chinese and Indian and that philosophers can actually compare the manner certain philosophical problems were handled ...
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What are the criteria by which we could determine whether some field is philosophy rather than wisdom?
There is a sub-field of philosophy called 'comparative philosophy' - it deals with philosophical themes by comparing how those themes were accounted for throughout history by Western and non-Western (...
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What are some good introductions to analytic ontology?
What is/are the best introduction(s) of analytic ontology? I know about a book written by Edmund Runggaldier and Christian Kanzian but still I don't have it.
I would like to read clear, simple ...
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Is 'meaning of life' a recent topic in philosophy?
Thaddeus Metz states in 'Meaning in Life' (2014) that:
And a thorough search by professional philosophers has not been
undertaken long at all, having begun in earnest only in the 1980s or
so.
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Does definition of Fact in philosophy have any relation with time and place?
Does definition of Fact in philosophy have any relation with time and place? If yes, then is it justified to say that "Fact is a Fact irrespective of one's awareness of it being true"?
For example:
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What is the basis for answering philosophical questions?
This may come off weird, but I'm new to the subject of philosophy. In many aspects it seems to be fully theoretical and based on subjective perceptions of truth. So what can be a basis for answering ...
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Are there philosophical theories that are either confirmed or refuted by the majority of experts?
Do there exist any philosophical theories that have been either confirmed or refuted by the majority of experts? That is, confirmed or refuted such that a consensus has been established about the ...
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What is the objective of philosophy according to the late Wittgenstein?
Wittgenstein early metaphilosophy in the TLP basically gives philosophy the role of "riddler solver", that is, a discipline whose main task is to study language in order to clarify the meaning of ...
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Is there any connection between mental illness and philosophical thought?
Philosophical position like solipsism are well thought out and definitely rational. Nevertheless it's unusual from practical commoner's point of view. Is it possible that mental condition like de-...
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What makes something mathematics?
Dictionary.com definition of math:
(used with a singular verb) the systematic treatment of magnitude, relationships between figures and forms, and relations between quantities expressed symbolically.
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Philosophy is the mother of all science [closed]
Prologue
Running google search: "philosophy is the mother of all science" at the time of this post yields about 114,000 results, and while this Quora post: Is philosophy the "queen of ...
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Is philosophy the quest of the answer, or the thrive of the process? [closed]
I thought about "the medium is the message", and kind of transposed the similar thought-pattern to philosophy.
Finding answers often seems to be at the very core of the subject: people fight with ...
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Tomatoes, Wisdom and Intelligence?
A lighthearted topic after I came across this funny quote:
Intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is knowing not to put tomatoes in a fruit salad.
This had me wondering what ...
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Is formal education required to fully grasp (academic/analytic) philosophy?
If a person has access to all the readings but lack (peer/mentor)-interaction under formal setting (e.g: university, cutting-edge seminar...), is this auto-didactic study likely to fail (e.g: lead to ...
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Is it defensible to offend a group of people when they cling to horrendous ideas?
Several organized or semi-organized groups of people in the world have really horrendous ideas, and react disproportionally strongly to any critique. I think most readers can agree with that statement,...
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Should philosophy focus more on 'ought' questions?
I'll preface the question with the fact that I don't mean to sound accusatory. I'm not widely studied in philosophy so for all I know this could be an area where philosophy is already having a ...
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Modern Sophists? [closed]
I was wondering if in professional philosophy there are modern sophists. That is, people who have no qualms publishing on both sides of an issue, perhaps not being able to themselves come to ...
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What happens to a philosophical question when it is solved for good?
I was reading the introduction to a general philosophy text book, and it mentioned at some point that philosophy was like science in that concrete results are established and philosophers are able to ...
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The dissonance between our logic, and the origin of everything
Many broad arguments, listed below, hold for the entirety of our existence, but they overwhelmingly fail to explain the edge cases - that is, the beginning and the end.
For example:
Energy cannot ...
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Is the question: why there is something rather than nothing?, the root of all philosophy?
I'm new to philosophy so bear with me. I've been reading Martin Heidegger (An introduction to metaphysics). In the book he claims that the question of why there is something rather than nothing is ...
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What is the purpose of answers to metaphysical questions?
Generally speaking, metaphysics seems to deal with questions that cannot be verified empirically, which are thus beyond the understanding of science. Because of this I'm wondering whether the answers ...
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"→" is the symbol for material implication. Is there such a thing as "immaterial implication"?
Why do we qualify "implication" with "material"? This seems to imply that there are other kinds of implication.
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What is the role of philosophy according to the Tractatus
IIRC it's to show what questions are pseudo questions.
But he also says this:
Philosophy limits the disputable sphere of natural science.
Is this in reference to the demarcation of science and ...
user6917
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Which questions have philosophers answered more satisfyingly than mere common sense? [closed]
Philosophy can be seen as a huge domain: studying everything that exists and questioning its inner mechanic, purpose, moral (non exhaustive list). For instance stuyding the laws of nature, logic, ...
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What kind of philospher believes many philospical issues can be reduced to defining words?
I will take Fatalism vs Compatibilism as an example. I hold that the only difference between them is the definition of free will. Namely, I prefer the Compatibilistic definition, that free will is ...
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Could philosophy still work as well or better as multiple isolated, clearly delineated deduction systems?
I presume that philosophy could not work as well or better as such, or it would be going on already. But why couldn't it? I'm sure there are good reasons I can't think of. But those not in the ...
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How to stop thinking philosophically? [closed]
My dilemma is that somehow I always get stuck thinking philosophically about things.
One example is mathematics. For some reason, I always start thinking philosophically.
Like word problems; I start ...
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Are we spending too much time asking hard to answer questions while we'd be better off asking more productive ones?
I've heard this on several occasions and I think it is true if we're spending too much of our time on them. It might not be true for some people, but then, how do they decide it isn't true for them?
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What would be the relation between logic and philosophy?
Lately in my philosophical discussions it has occured to our group that one unexpected and seemingly unlogical thing has started happening.
It would seem to me that using logic is unavoidable in a ...
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Is avoiding hypocrisy an impulse for philosophy?
Following on from this thead, and somewhat related to this question that I recently asked:
Could the job of philosophy be creating a system of belief in which I [or the thinker in general] can accept ...
user6917