What Is Philosophy?: A First-Person Perspective

Description

As philosophy departments attempt to define their unique value amid program closures in the humanities and the rise of interdisciplinary research, metaphilosophy has become an increasingly important area of inquiry. Richard Fumerton here lays out a cogent answer to the question asked in the book’s title, What Is Philosophy?. Against those who argue that philosophy is not sharply distinguishable from the sciences, Fumerton makes a case for philosophy as an autonomous discipline with its own distinct methodology. Over the course of nine engaging and accessible chapters, he shows that answering fundamental philosophical questions requires one to take a radical first-person perspective that divorces the truth conditions of philosophical claims from the kind of contingent truths investigated by the empirical sciences. Along the way, Fumerton briefly discusses the historical controversies that have surrounded the nature of philosophy, situating his own argument within the larger conversation. Key Features Illuminates the unique role of thought experiments and especially the "paradox of analysis" in understanding the purpose and value of philosophyShows that philosophy asks fundamental questions, unanswerable by the sciences, that are critical to thinking clearly and rationally about the worldHighlights the distinct character of philosophical questions in specific subject areas: philosophy of language, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of scienceConcludes by making a unique case for philosophy’s contribution to cross-disciplinary work in ethics, politics, mathematics, and the empirical sciencesWritten in a way to be engaging and accessible for advanced undergraduate readers Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents Acknowledgments Preface Part I: How to Approach Metaphilosophy 1 Introduction 1.1 Philosophy as a Distinct Field 1.2 Meta-Questions within Fields of Philosophy 1.2.1 Ethics as an Example 1.2.2 Epistemology as Another Example 1.2.3 Metaphilosophy 1.3 Some Examples of Paradigmatic Philosophical Questions 1.4 Different Conceptions of Philosophy—A Very Brief Overview 1.4.1 Philosophy as a Search for Fundamental Categories of Reality 1.4.2 Conceptual Analysis 1.4.3 The Linguistic Turn 1.4.4 A Second Linguistic Turn—Content Externalism 1.5 Doing Metaphilosophy Without Begging Questions 2 The Paradox of Analysis and Methodological Solipsism 2.1 The Paradox of Analysis 2.2 Methodological Solipsism and a Master Argument 3 What's Left? 3.1 Foundationalism and Phenomenology 3.1.1 Phenomenology: The Starting Point of All Philosophical Reflection 3.2 Philosophical Analysis 3.2.1 Stipulative Definition 3.2.2 Beyond Stipulation 3.2.3 More About Thought Experiments 3.2.4 Wittgenstein and the Private Language Argument 3.3 Beyond Phenomenology and Analysis—"Internal" Relations Among Properties 3.4 Summarizing Part II: Illustrating the View—Mapping Clear Borders 4 Philosophy of Language 4.1 Externalism About Meaning 4.2 The Significance of the Content Internalism/Externalism Controversy for Understanding Philosophy 4.3 Rejecting Externalism 5 Epistemology and Metaepistemology 5.1 Knowledge 5.2 Epistemic Justification/Rationality 5.2.1 Non-Epistemic Reasons to Believe 5.2.2 Propositional vs Doxastic Justification 5.2.3 The Internalism/Externalism Controversy in Epistemology 5.3 The Implications of the Internalism/Externalism Controversy for What Else Should Be Included in Philosophical Epistemology 6 Ethics and Rationality/Metaethics and Meta-Rationality 6.1 Rational Action 6.1.1 Regress 6.2 Morality 6.2.1 Intrinsic Value 6.2.2 Right Action, Duties, Obligations, Virtues, and Supererogation 6.3 Summary 7 Philosophy of Mind 7.1 Meta-Questions in the Philosophy of Mind 7.1.1 Phenomenology Again 7.1.2 Substance vs Property Dualism 7.1.3 Applying Our Conception of Philosophy to the Philosophy of Mind 7.2 Inappropriate Philosophical Intrusion Into Empirical Matters 7.3 Summary 8 Philosophy of Science and Metaphysics 8.1 Philosophy of Science—An Older Paradigm 8.2 Causation and Explanation 8.3 Space and Time 8.4 Epistemology and the Philosophy of Science 8.4.1 Is There a Distinction Between the Observable and the Theoretical? 8.4.2 How to Understand the Theoretical 8.5 From Philosophy of Science to Traditional Metaphysics 8.6 Summary 9 The Relevance of Philosophy Proper 9.1 Intellectual Curiosity 9.2 Positioning Oneself Better to Answer Applied Questions 9.3 For Whom Is This Book Written References Index