Metaphilosophy (Wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphilosophy

Metaphilosophy (from Greek meta + philosophy) is the study of the subject and matter, methods
and aims of philosophy. It is the "philosophy of philosophy". The recursive study of philosophy is
an integral part of the philosophical enterprise because it is intertwined with all branches of
philosophy as is logic or epistemology. Most metaphilosophy is part of either the formation or the
criticism of a philosophical school, but some philosophers devote their time almost exclusively to
metaphilosophy such as Stephen Toulmin, Richard Rorty and some continental philosophers.

Contents
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 1 Taxonomy of philosophical problems

 2 Aims and nature of philosophy
o 2.1 Empiricism or rationalism
o 2.2 Theoretical or practical
 3 Philosophical method
o 3.1 General methods
o 3.2 Rethinking Intuition
o 3.3 Computational philosophy
 4 Various problems
o 4.1 Progress in philosophy
 5 Metaphilosophical writings
 6 References
 7 See also
 8 External links

[edit] Taxonomy of philosophical problems

There are many kinds of philosophy, dependent on the numerous human cultures. What is not
controversial are the general types of problems included in philosophy. The traditional branches of
philosophy are: metaphysics (including ontology), epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of
language, philosophical logic, political philosophy, ethics and aesthetics. Applied philosophy, the
philosophical critique of various social activities (such as religion) and intellectual pursuits (such as
science, sociology), is a more recent addition to Philosophy. Philosopher and encyclopedist
Mortimer Adler, however, excludes logic and includes all second-order problems (i.e. questions
about various fields of study). Second-order problems are often found arranged under various
branches of philosophy which start with the phrase "philosophy of...." Adler (1994) divides these
second-order philosophical problems into two branches. The first branch addresses the objects of
thought, such as Being, Cause, Change, Infinity, Fate, Love. The second branch addresses the
subjects, or procedural domains, of thought, e.g. philosophy of religion, philosophy of history,
philosophy of language, philosophy of science. Metaphilosophy also attempts to understand both
branches of second-order thought aided by the other major branches, e.g. metaphysical knowledge
in religion, epistemology in religion, axiology in religion. In any case, one problem in
metaphilosophy is to provide such a taxonomy.
[edit] Aims and nature of philosophy
An important question for metaphilosophy is "What is philosophy?", and because different
philosophers have offered different answers - often implicitly, it is the task of meta-philosophy to
adjudicate. Prior to adjudication, however, the metaphilosopher must identify, clarify, and
understand the alternative conceptions of the nature of philosophy, as well as his available
reasoning tools and their limits.

The task is made more difficult by the fact that the use and meaning of the word "philosophy" has
changed throughout history: in Antiquity it encompassed almost any inquiry, for Descartes it was
supposed to be the Queen of the Sciences (a sort of ultimate justification), in the time of David
Hume "metaphysics" and "morals" could be roughly translated as the human sciences, while
analytic philosophy likes to define itself roughly as inquiry into concepts.

Apart, perhaps, from the vague idea of philosophy as a 'general' discipline that has something to do
with 'life' and especially with 'reasoning', few genuine properties shared by all philosophers can be
found. But the ways in which different thinkers characterize philosophy can be important as a
normative statement about how philosophy should be done.

[edit] Empiricism or rationalism

One important distinction is between those philosophers that conceive philosophy as an empirical
discipline (if not necessarily a science) and those who believe it is rather an a priori discipline not
really concerned with facts and not related to the sciences.

The distinction is mostly applied to modern, not current, philosophy with people like John Locke,
David Hume and Immanuel Kant on the empiricist side and mainly idealist philosophers such as
Georg Hegel on the other. However, the distinction can be just as meaningfully applied to current
philosophy. Analytical philosophers believe that all meaningful empirical questions are to be
answered by science, not philosophy. Pragmatists and naturalistic epistemologists on the other hand
think that philosophy should be linked to science and should be scientific in the broad sense of that
term.

[edit] Theoretical or practical

Some philosophers (e.g. existentialists, pragmatists) think philosophy is ultimately a practical

discipline that should help us lead meaningful lives by showing us who we are, how we relate to the
world around us and what we should do. Others (e.g. analytic philosophers) see philosophy as a
technical, formal and theoretical discipline. Note that both parties can be and are just as theoretical
and abstract - they differ rather in their views on the function and subjects of that theory.

[edit] Philosophical method

[edit] General methods

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Stephen Toulmin (Knowing and Acting, 1976) defined three basic approaches to philosophy:
  the philosopher as geometer: centers on formal inquiry; thinkers from Plato to Frege.
 the philosopher as anthropologist: tries to find the basics of human nature; thinkers such as
David Hume and Adam Smith.
 the philosopher as critic: investigates the a priori conditions on which e.g. knowledge can
exist; Immanuel Kant and the phenomenological tradition.

Three main methods of philosophy have been the Ancient Greek, epistemic and linguistic
approaches. The order written represents the historical progression of the conceptions of
Philosophy.

Typical of the phronesis-approach to philosophy were the thinkers Socrates and Epicurus. The
questions of this form of Philosophy consist mainly of those relevant to the search for a happy life
and the cultivation of the virtues, although political and religious philosophy is featured in recorded
thinking.

The epistemic approach centers upon the foundations of knowledge, in particular the debate
between Rationalism and Empiricism. Typical of this era of speculation were Locke, Hume,
Descartes, Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant. Ethical philosophy developed from speculative
psychology into a logical study of meta-ethics, while normative ethics showed signs of practical
development towards social reform, notably under the prodigious lawyer and philosopher Jeremy
Bentham.

Linguistic philosophy is the most recent development. It is practised both as a form of epistemology
(the relation between language and world, the "meaning of meaning") and as the study of concepts
and ideas. In its pure form, the logical study of meaningful language (conceived as the prime
philosophical endeavor) is in decline in many universities but it lives on as part of the analytic
tradition. A.J. Ayer in his book Language, Truth and Logic sets two criteria for a definition of
Philosophy. Firstly, the science must be a genuine branch of knowledge, and secondly it must bear
relation to the realm of ideas and impressions commonly known as "Philosophy". In the
aforementioned publication, Philosophy is (contentiously) defined as a wholly analytic task and as a
compilation of "in-use" definitions. It is commonly suggested by this school that questions such as
"What is Truth?" or more generally "What is x?" are requests for definitions rather than empirical
facts.

[edit] Rethinking Intuition

Recently, some philosophers have cast doubt about intuition as a basic tool in philosophical inquiry
from Socrates up to contemporary philosophy of language. In Rethinking Intuition (ed. Michael R.
Ramsey, William DePaul) various thinkers discard intuition as a valid source of knowledge and
thereby the whole idea of an 'a priori' philosophy.

[edit] Computational philosophy

Computational means possible to implement and realize on computers. In the above context, we
may construct several simplified artificial worlds with different ontologies and ethical systems, we
can experiment with them and confront with the real world observations. This emergent research
and scientific activity requires numerous meta-philosophical and meta-theoretical
assumptions/propositions/axioms (see External links 2,3). This is also the domain of new
computational philosophy and modern experimental philosophy
[edit] Various problems
[edit] Progress in philosophy

Whether or not there is progress in philosophy depends on one's assumptions about the nature of
philosophy and the criteria of progress.

[edit] Metaphilosophical writings

Many philosophers have written on metaphilosophy. The tradition goes back to Plato, whose
dialogues are directly concerned with ethics, but constantly raise questions concerning

 the nature of philosophy and its methods (most explicitly addressed in the Meno)
 the value and proper aims of philosophy (in the Apology, Gorgias, Protagoras, etc.)
 the proper relationship between philosophical criticism and everyday life (a pervasive theme
explored most famously in the Republic)

Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations directly

address logic, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind, but the nature of
philosophical puzzles and philosophical understanding is central to all of the discussions.
Wittgenstein frequently diagnoses philosophical errors as involving confusions about the nature of
philosophical inquiry.

C. D. Broad is known for distinguishing Critical from Speculative philosophy. See his "The
Subject-matter of Philosophy, and its Relations to the special Sciences," in Introduction to Scientific
Thought, 1923. Curt Ducasse, in Philosophy as a Science, examines several views of the nature of
philosophy, and concludes that philosophy has a distinct subject matter: appraisals.

Richard Rorty could be called a meta-philosopher, considering his many ideas about the nature of
philosophy and the role of philosopher.

One of the precursors of the cybernetic meta-philosophical relativisation of philosophical systems

was the Polish science-fiction writer Stanislaw Lem.

Henri Lefebvre in Metaphilosophie (1965) argued, from a marxian standpoint, in favor of an

"ontological break", as a necessary methodological approach for critical social theory (whilst
criticizing Louis Althusser's "epistemological break" with subjective marxism, which represented a
fundamental theoretical tool for the school of marxist structuralism).

[edit] References
 Adler, Mortimer (1994). The Four Dimensions of Philosophy. New York: MacMillan.
 Rescher, Nicholas (2001). Philosophical Reasoning. A Study in the Methodology of
Philosophizing. Blackwell.