On Evidence in Philosophy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
William G. Lycan
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Deductive Argument ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Restricted Sense

This book offers an epistemology of philosophy itself, a partial method for philosophical inquiry. The epistemology features three ultimate sources of justified philosophical belief. First, common sense, in a carefully restricted sense of the term—the sorts of contingent propositions Moore defended against idealists and skeptics. Second, the deliverances of well confirmed science. Third, and more fundamentally, intuitions about cases, in a carefully specified sense of that term. Chapters 1–4 expound a version of Moore’s method and apply it to each of several issues. The version is shown to resist all the standard objections to Moore; most of them do not even apply. Chapters 5 and 6 argue that philosophical method is far less powerful than most have taken it to be. In particular, deductive argument can accomplish very little, and hardly ever is an opposing position refuted except by common sense or by science. Chapters 7 and 8 defend the evidential status of intuitions and the Goodmanian method of reflective equilibrium; it is argued that philosophy always and everywhere depends on them. The method is then set within a more general explanatory-coherentist epistemology, which is shown to resist standard forms of skepticism. In sum, this book advocates a picture of philosophy as a very wide explanatory reflective equilibrium incorporating common sense, science, and our firmest intuitions on any topic—and nothing more, not ever.

Experimental philosophy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ron Mallon ◽  
Shaun Nichols
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Sensory Perception ◽  
Experimental Techniques ◽  
Folk Theory ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Philosophical View ◽  
The Right

Experimental philosophy is not a philosophy, it is a method that is supposed to contribute to philosophical inquiry. Characteristically, experimental philosophers use empirical techniques to investigate philosophically significant intuitions about cases. An intuition, in this context, is a spontaneous judgement a person makes about a case with little or no conscious reason for their judgement. Intuitions play a key role in much philosophical theorizing. The attempt to provide a conceptual analysis or definition for important philosophical concepts, e.g. knowledge, meaning, responsibility, has long been a major theoretical concern in philosophy. One prominent philosophical view holds that the meaning of our concepts is given by the folk theory (or set of common-sense beliefs) in which the concepts are embedded. Intuitions about cases are thought to reveal the contours of the folk theory and the meaning of the concept. As a result, in pursuing conceptual analyses, many philosophers rely on intuitions about cases to descry the folk theories in which those concepts are embedded. In addition to their role in conceptual analysis, philosophers invoke intuitions as evidence for substantive philosophical claims, perhaps in much the same way as empirical scientists invoke observation as evidence. For instance, the intuition that it is wrong to push one man in front of a speeding trolley to save five others is invoked as evidence that utilitarianism does not give the right theory of how we ought to act. Similarly, intuitions are used to support substantive claims about knowledge, meaning and responsibility. When philosophers use intuitions - whether in the service of conceptual analysis or in the effort to establish a more substantive philosophical claim - the traditional methodology looks a priori. That is, one arrives at one’s judgements without relying on evidence from sensory perception. For instance, to analyse the concept intentional a philosopher might consult their intuitions about whether the concept applies in various actual and possible circumstances, and a condition of adequacy upon the definition is that it best conforms to these intuitions. In contrast, experimental philosophers use experimental techniques to study intuitions about philosophically important concepts.

Reflective Equilibrium

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuri Cath
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Standard Assumption ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
The Relationship

This article examines the method of reflective equilibrium (RE), most closely associated with John Rawls, and its role in philosophical inquiry. It begins with an overview of RE before discussing some of the subtleties involved in its interpretation, including challenges to the standard assumption that RE is committed to a coherentist rather than foundationalist view of justification. It then evaluates some of the main objections to RE, including objections that this method is too conservative, objections that appeal to the possibility of disagreements between people that employ this method, and objections that this method generates unreasonable beliefs. It concludes by considering how RE relates to recent debates about the role of intuitions in philosophy, suggesting the relationship is more complex and interesting than it is usually assumed to be.

scholarly journals Two Conceptions of Common-Sense Morality

Philosophy ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 91 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nakul Krishna
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Historical Contingency ◽  
Henry Sidgwick ◽  
Common Sense Morality ◽  
Wrong Action ◽  
Moral Philosophers

AbstractMany moral philosophers tend to construe the aims of ethics as the interpretation and critique of ‘common-sense morality’. This approach is defended by Henry Sidgwick in his influential The Methods of Ethics and presented as a development of a basically Socratic idea of philosophical method. However, Sidgwick's focus on our general beliefs about right and wrong action drew attention away from the Socratic insistence on treating beliefs as one expression of our wider dispositions.Understanding the historical contingency of Sidgwick's approach to ethics can help us reflect on whether there are other ways in which modern ethics can be Socratic.

scholarly journals CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS AS A PHILOSOPHICAL METHOD: THEOLOGICAL AND EVOLUTIONARY ARGUMENTS

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (3) ◽  
pp. 61-64
Author(s):  
Михаил Мосиенко ◽  
Mikhail Mosienko
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Weak Version ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Physical Systems ◽  
The World ◽  
Previous Solution ◽  
Theological Argument ◽  
Scholastic Philosophy

The author poses a question of applicability of conceptual analysis as a tool of philosophical inquiry compared to conceptual analysis as a linguistic research tool. The article contains a critical analysis of the previous solution of this problem. This solution was to prove that the world of physical systems and the world of mental states are isomorphic. This was a solution used by Descartes and by a significant number of post-Cartesian philosophers who borrowed it from scholastic philosophy. The author analyses a strong and a weak version of the theological argument to show that both of these versions are inapplicable for proving the value of conceptual analysis as a philosophical method. The article focuses on an alternative way to prove that philosophers can safely use conceptual analysis to benefit their studies. The alternative argument is the following: human language is an evolutionary adaptation, it implicitly contains ideas that adequately reflect non-verbal reality. Conceptual analysis allows one to explicate and structure these initially implicit ideas, which makes conceptual analysis a potent tool of philosophical studies.

Analytical philosophy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Baldwin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Foreseeable Future ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Language And Thought ◽  
Deep Significance ◽  
Analytical Philosopher

Philosophical analysis is a method of inquiry in which one seeks to assess complex systems of thought by ‘analysing’ them into simpler elements whose relationships are thereby brought into focus. This method has a long history, but became especially prominent at the start of the twentieth century and, by becoming integrated into Russell’s development of logical theory, acquired a greater degree of sophistication than before. The logical positivists developed the method further during the 1930s and, in the context of their anti-metaphysical programme, held that analysis was the only legitimate philosophical inquiry. Thus for them philosophy could only be ‘analytical philosophy’. After 1945 those philosophers who wanted to expand philosophical inquiries beyond the limits prescribed by the positivists extended the understanding of analysis to include accounts of the general structures of language and thought without the earlier commitment to the identification of ‘simple’ elements of thought. Hence there developed a more relaxed conception of ‘linguistic analysis’ and the understanding of ‘analytical philosophy’ was modified in such a way that a critical concern with language and meaning was taken to be central to it, leading, indeed, to a retrospective re-evaluation of the role of Frege as a founder of analytical philosophy. At the same time, however, Quine propounded influential arguments which suggest that methods of analysis can have no deep significance because there is no determinate structure to systems of thought or language for the analytical philosopher to analyse and assess. Hence some contemporary philosophers proclaim that we have now reached ‘the end of analytical philosophy’. But others, who find Quine’s arguments unpersuasive, hold that analytical philosophy has virtues quite sufficient to ensure it a role as a central philosophical method for the foreseeable future.

The Taming of Philosophy

2020 ◽  
pp. 260-290
Author(s):  
Michael Della Rocca
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
Method Of Intuition

The biggest source of resistance to the Parmenidean Ascent is the implausibility of its radically monistic conclusions. Philosophers have been taught to avoid at almost any cost any such implausible or counterintuitive results. Thus, to complete the defense of the Parmenidean Ascent, it is necessary to weaken the hold of the method of intuition and the related reliance on common sense. This chapter outlines various forms of the method of intuition to be found in thinkers as diverse as Bealer, Lewis, Sider, and also Rawls with his method of reflective equilibrium. The method of intuition is shown to be both unduly conservative and also arbitrary with regard to which opinions are favored. The chapter then explores the historical factors behind the rise of the method of intuition. Here the focus is on the reaction against Bradley by the early analytical philosophers, Moore and Russell, who question-beggingly reject Bradley’s commitment to the PSR.

What Children Did Not Learn in School: The Intellectual Quickening of Young Americans in the Nineteenth Century

1999 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-61
Author(s):  
R. Laurence Moore
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
The United States ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Religious Tolerance ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry

Thomas Jefferson belonged to a generation of common-sense rationalists who hoped that religious tolerance in the United States would put an end to religious quarreling. Once freed to practice religion as they pleased, adult citizens, Jefferson thought, would recognize the moral advantages of nondogmatic creeds and treat religion as a philosophical inquiry based not on Scripture but on what was selfevidently true. Religion, a subject for mature minds who could weigh evidence, was not for infants. Young children, he said, were “at an age when their judgments are not sufficiently matured for religious enquiries.” Children had to learn to think about religion gradually and to study it with a questioning mind only after they had attained adulthood.

Ferrier, Common Sense and Consciousness

2007 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Keefe
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Interesting Aspect ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Distinctive Aspect ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy ◽  
British Idealism ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
The Relationship

James Frederick Ferrier developed his philosophy from a common sense background. However, his rejection of common sense philosophy in particular and Enlightenment philosophy in general results in the development of a system of idealism. In his series of lectures ‘An Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness - Parts I to VII’, which appeared in Blackwoods Magazine (1838–39), he outlines the problem with modern philosophy and argues that philosophy should follow a new direction. In his view, the most peculiar and interesting aspect of humanity is consciousness. He contends that the attempt to develop a ‘science of man’ is impossible because it transforms a person into an object of study and thereby fails to capture the most distinctive aspect of humanity, namely, consciousness. According to Ferrier, philosophy should be an extension of consciousness itself; it is: ‘consciousness sublimed’. This paper will outline the central arguments in ‘An Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness’ and show that an early example of British idealism was not only developed out of the common sense tradition but shares with common sense philosophy a focus on the immediate evidence of consciousness, placing the relationship between thought and world at the centre of philosophical inquiry.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 132-132
Author(s):  
William G. Lycan
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Community ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Wide Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Scientific Results

In this book I have presented and defended a coherent philosophical method. It rests ultimately on intuitions. It draws on scientific results so far as the scientific community considers them established or at least well supported. It entitles itself to prefer Moorean facts to a priori philosophical assumptions. And it tries to bring all these into a (very) wide reflective equilibrium....

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