Intuitions and Conceptual Analysis in Wittgensteinian Pragmatism

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-91
Author(s):  
David Hommen ◽  
Frauke Albersmeier
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Tasks ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Immediate Reactions ◽  
Doxastic States

The nature of intuitions remains a contested issue in (meta-)philosophy. Yet, intuitions are frequently cited in philosophical work, featuring most prominently in conceptual analysis, the philosophical method par excellence. In this paper, we approach the question about the nature of intuitions based on a pragmatist, namely, Wittgensteinian account of concepts. To Wittgenstein, intuitions are just immediate ‘reactions’ to certain cognitive tasks. His view provides a distinct alternative to identifying intuitions with either doxastic states or quasi-perceptual experiences. We discuss its implications for intuitions’ role in conceptual analysis and show that a Wittgensteinian account of intuitions is compatible even with ambitious metaphysical projects traditionally associated with this method.

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.

scholarly journals Mendelssohn and Kant on Mathematics and Metaphysics

Kant Yearbook ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Callanan
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Critical Periods ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
The Difference ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Prize Essay

AbstractThe difference between the method of metaphysics and the method of mathematics was an issue of central concern for Kant in both the Pre-Critical and Critical periods. I will argue that when Kant speaks of the ‘philosophical method’ in the Doctrine of Method in the Critique of Pure Reason (CPR), he frequently has in mind not his own methodology but rather the method of conceptual analysis associated with rationalism. The particular target is Moses Mendelssohn’s picture of analysis contained in his submission for the 1763 Prize Essay competition. By the time of the first Critique, I argue, Kant wants to maintain his own longstanding commitment to the distinctness of the methods of metaphysics and mathematics. However, Kant wants to use this same analysis of the source of the distinction to diagnose the origins of the dogmatism that is engendered by the method of the rationalists.

Rethinking Discussions of Justice in Educational Research: Formative Justice, Educational Liberalism, and Beyond

2016 ◽  
Vol 118 (10) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Winston C. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Educational Research ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Educational Justice ◽  
General Shape ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Fields Of Study ◽  
Background Context

Background/Context Educational research tends to borrow accounts of justice from scholarship embedded within the structures and commitments of other disciplines or fields of study. This has created a body of educational research that largely responds to the “justice” goals of those disciplines rather than education qua education. Purpose/Focus of Study Responding to the context, this article questions whether educational research might be able to forward its own account of justice. This educational form of justice (formative justice) would allow educational researchers to pose questions that are primarily concerned with education on its own terms. Research Design This philosophical work provides a conceptual analysis of an account of justice within educational research. Conclusions/Recommendations This article finds that educational researchers can indeed pursue an educational account of justice. By detailing the benefits and general shape of a theory of educational justice (“justice as preservation”) embedded within educational liberalism, this article suggests that educational researchers can utilize their unique insights and expertise to pose educational questions within previously under-explored areas.

Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edouard Machery
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Free Time ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Epistemic Access ◽  
Modal Skepticism ◽  
Work Done ◽  
Method Of Cases

In Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds, Edouard Machery argues that resolving many traditional and contemporary philosophical issues is beyond our epistemic reach and that philosophy should reorient itself toward more humble, but ultimately more important intellectual endeavors. Attempts to resolve such issues are modally immodest: Any resolution would require an epistemic access to metaphysical possibilities and necessities, which, Edouard Machery argues, we do not have. In effect, then, Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds defends a form of modal skepticism. The book assesses the main philosophical method for acquiring the modal knowledge that the resolution of modally immodest philosophical issues turns on: the method of cases, that is, the consideration of actual or hypothetical situations (which cases or thought experiments describe) in order to determine what facts hold in these situations. Canvassing the extensive work done by experimental philosophers over the last fifteen years, Edouard Machery shows that the method of cases is unreliable and should be rejected. Importantly, the dismissal of modally immodest philosophical issues is no cause for despair: Many important philosophical issues remain within our epistemic reach. In particular, reorienting the course of philosophy would free time and resources for bringing back to prominence a once-central intellectual endeavor: conceptual analysis.

Le Theme de l’Unite et de l’Harmonie de l’Homme chez Friedrich Schiller

1998 ◽  
pp. 41-48
Author(s):  
Petre Dumitrescu
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Schiller ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Artistic Creation ◽  
Great Time ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Artistic Genius ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Way

This study demonstrates that Schiller's philosophical work is not limited only to the explanation of the artistic phenomenon as such, and that, for him, art represents the premise of philosophizing, of elaborating an original conception of the world and of humanity. I emphasize the way in which the poet and playwright uses art as a philosophical method with a view to penetrating meaning in the world and in life and to identifying a solution to the crisis confronted by modernity. In this context, based on the conviction that the historical and rationalistic methods are the only ones valid for human understanding and achievement, Schiller, due to his artistic genius and his beginning from Kant's ideas concerning the compatibility of the theoretical and the ethical by means of the aesthetic, advances a way of raising nature (the sensible) to the level of morality with the help of the artistic creation interpreted as a game. What radically distinguishes and confers originality on Schiller's versus Kant's conception is the modality of solving the problems of the relation between necessity and liberty, sensibility and intelligibility, and individuality and liberty, thus offering the image of a person able to aspire to resonance with the exactingness of the Great Time, when evolution may become self-evolution, and history transhistory.

scholarly journals Filosofiia kak usilie mysli v situatsiiakh neopredelennosti

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-25
Author(s):  
V M Litvinskiy
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Linguistic Competence ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Initial Information ◽  
Philosophical Education ◽  
Psychological Activity

The monograph discusses philosophical education in connection with situations of uncertainty. Efforts to read the philosophical work allow to consider philosophy as a way of intellectual and psychological activity on reconstruction of the lost, or searching for a new meaning in situations of uncertainty, when the need to make a decision is connected with the fundamental inadequacy of the initial information. As a tool for adapting to situations of uncertainty, philosophy uses conceptual analysis, developing a person’s linguistic competence.

scholarly journals Pseudoexpertise: A Conceptual and Theoretical Analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joffrey Fuhrer ◽  
Florian Cova ◽  
Nicolas Gauvrit ◽  
Sebastian Dieguez
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Analysis ◽  
Real World ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Cultural Cognition ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Long Run

Some people publicly pretend to be experts while not being ones. They are pseudoexperts, and their presence seems to be ubiquitous in the current cultural landscape. This manuscript explores the nature and mechanisms of pseudoexpertise. We first provide a conceptual analysis of pseudoexperts based on prototypical cases of pseudoexpertise and recent philosophical work on the concept of expertise. This allows us to propose a definition that captures real-world cases of pseudoexpertise, distinguishes it from related but different concepts such as pseudoscience, and highlights what is wrong with pseudoexpertise. Next, based on this conceptual analysis, we propose a framework for further research on pseudoexpertise, built on relevant empirical and theoretical approaches to cultural cognition. We provide exploratory answers to three questions: why is there pseudoexpertise at all; how can pseudoexperts be successful despite not being experts; and what becomes of pseudoexperts in the long run. Together, these conceptual and theoretical approaches to pseudoexpertise draw a preliminary framework from which to approach the very troubling problem posed by persons usurping the capacities and reputations of genuine experts.

Kantian Hesitations around the Proper Philosophical Method

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 339-348
Author(s):  
Ivaylo Dimitrov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Synthetic Method ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Proper Method ◽  
Synthetic Construction ◽  
Critical Project

According to leading Kant scholars, in mid-1760s Kant realizes that his program for the reform of metaphysics cannot be developed by the method of conceptual analysis which he had previously considered to be more adequate than the synthetic method of the Wolffians that imitates the mathematical one. In this paper, I put into question the claim of a pre-Critical project of ‘analytical metaphysics’ by trying to show that even for the ‘pre-Critical’ Kant the proper method of metaphysics is genuinely synthetic, but the synthetic construction in question should have been prepared by a Critical and subsequent exhaustive analysis of key material-instrumental concepts of the peculiar philosophical science under question.

A Philosopher of singular style and multiple modes

2020 ◽  
Vol 87 ◽  
pp. 31-60
Author(s):  
John Haldane
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
World War ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Multiple Modes ◽  
Second World

AbstractElizabeth Anscombe was one of the most gifted and productive philosophers of the decades following the Second World War. Her writings present challenges to readers: some of them are very difficult to comprehend while others seem philosophically-minded yet situated outside of philosophy as such. There are also the issues of whether she had a philosophical method and of the influence of Wittgenstein on the manner of her approach. A summary and estimate of Anscombe’s enduring contributions is presented before exploring the style and aims of her philosophical work. Then two of her writings on religion are examined and their implications for her attitude to philosophy considered.

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