Metaphilosophy
Encyclopedia
Metaphilosophy, also called philosophy of philosophy, is the study of the nature, aims, and methods of philosophy
. The term is derived from Greek word meta
μετά ("after", "beyond", "with") and philosophía
φιλοσοφία ("love of wisdom").
The term has gained currency since the mid-twentieth century but currently there is no accepted opinion, nor a notable debate if a 'second order philosophy' is, or could be, something different from 'plain philosophy'. In the analytical tradition
it is mostly used to tag commenting and research on previous works as opposed to original contributions towards solving philosophical problems.
Morris Lazerowitz claims to have launched the term around 1940 and apparently has used it in print in 1942. Earlier uses have been found in translations from the French. During the 1960 it became more or less current, being used by Richard Rorty
or in the title of Lazerowitz' book of essays. Since 1970 a journal Metaphilosophy is published.
from philosophy itself. Contrasting with many other cultural practice
s, for philosophy the distinction is rather questionable, but a similar case is presented by language: when speaking in English about the English language one might assume a split between English-as-object and English-as-metalanguage
. Philosophers using the term metaphilosophy being still a minority, it might be surmised that the majority does not consider the idea worth exploring. As far as it is a reflexive practice philosophy always already incorporates its own considering e.g. by appealing to its own tradition, to its opponents or to its history; thus historicist philosophies, such as Hegel's, are metaphilosophies without mention of the term. A synchronic or systemic
approach is a more obviously 'metaphilosophical' than a historic or a diachronic one.
Wittgenstein
famously rejected the analogy between metalanguage and a metaphilosophy:
"One might think: if philosophy speaks of the use of the word "philosophy" there must be a second-order philosophy. But it is not so: it is, rather, like the case of orthography, which deals with the word "orthography" among others without then being second-order."
Recently Timothy Williamson
has refrained from using the word and expressed concern that it might be misleading:
"I also rejected the word “metaphilosophy.” The philosophy of philosophy is automatically part of philosophy, just as the philosophy of anything else is, whereas metaphilosophy sounds as though it might try to look down on philosophy from above, or beyond."
Other philosophers such as Nicholas Rescher
or Richard Double have adopted the term, putting it to good use. Presenting research on general philosophical principles Rescher's book begins with his view on metaphilosophy:
"Metaphilosophy is the philosophical examination of the practice of philosophizing itself. Its definitive aim is to study the methods of the field in an endeavor to illuminate its promise and prospects."
origin: φιλοσοφία (philosophía), meaning "love of wisdom." However, few sources give "love of wisdom" as a possible meaning of the term, and others say the etymology is "not much help".
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; and contemporary analytic philosophy likes to define itself roughly as inquiry into concepts.
Many definitions of philosophy begin by stating the difficulty of defining the subject, calling it "notoriously difficult", saying that there is "no straightforward definition" and that most interesting definitions of philosophy are controversial.
However, a review of standard reference works
suggests that there is a broad agreement among such sources that philosophy involves the study of fundamental or general topics; e.g. "the most fundamental and general concepts and principles involved in thought, action and reality", "the most general questions about our universe and our place in it", the "absolutely fundamental reason of everything it investigates", or "the fundamental reasons or causes of all things". The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy says it is the investigation of the most general and abstract features of the world and the categories with which we think, in order to "lay bare their foundations and presuppositions".
Some authors say that philosophy is fundamentally about critical thinking, examining the beliefs we take for granted. Wilfrid Hodges
wrote:
Most authors agree that philosophy is distinct from both empirical science
and religion
. It differs from science in that its questions cannot be answered empirically, i.e. by observation or experiment; and it differs from religion in that it allows no place for faith or revelation
. Philosophy does not try to answer questions by appeal to revelation, myth or religious knowledge of any kind, but uses reason, "without reference to sensible observation and experiments".
Some analytical philosophers argue that all meaningful empirical questions are to be answered by science, not philosophy. However, some schools of contemporary philosophy
such as the pragmatists
and naturalistic epistemologists
argue that philosophy should be linked to science and should be scientific in the broad sense of that term, "preferring to see philosophical reflection as continuous with the best practice of any field of intellectual enquiry".
spoke about a 'first philosophy' which was the most general science and a 'second philosophy' which dealt with nature (or 'physis'). However in later antiquity the first philosophy, as a more demanding discipline, was considering to come after physics and the works where it was exposed were called metaphysics. Aristotle's metaphysics
traditionally was seen to consist of three parts: ontology, natural theology and universal science. In later times, as Christianity became dominant, the whole of philosophy came to be considered as an auxiliary science, the formula being philosophia ancilla theologiae. At the end of the Renaissance the special doctrine considering being as such was named ontology
and a corresponding doctrine about knowledge came under the name of epistemology or gnoseology. In the 18th century Alexander Baumgarten considered the special case of sensitive knowledge and called it 'gnoseologia inferior' (as opposed to a superior rational one) and with Kant
it became aesthetics
. The Greek had always had a special concern about ethics
which remained a major philosophical concern in Roman times and later was established as separate discipline. Thus the standard disciplinary structure of philosophy was established as
They have been listed as metaphysics
(including ontology
, causation
, and cosmology
),
ethics
,
epistemology,
logic
,
and later aesthetics
.
Applied philosophy is the philosophical critique of various social activities (such as religion
) and intellectual pursuits (such as science
and sociology
). Philosopher and encyclopedist Mortimer Adler
includes all such second-order questions about various fields of study, which are often found under various branches of philosophy beginning with the phrase "philosophy of....", in his taxonomy. Adler divides these second-order philosophical problems into two branches: one addressing the objects of thought, such as Being
, Cause, Change
, Infinity
, Destiny
, and Love
; the other addressing 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 such second-order problems with the aid of the other major branches, e.g. metaphysical knowledge in religion, epistemology in religion, axiology
in religion, etc.
, 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 entirely theoretical discipline, with goals such as "the disinterested pursuit of knowledge for its own sake". Other proposed goals of philosophy include "discover[ing] the absolutely fundamental reason of everything it investigates", "making explicit the nature and significance of ordinary and scientific beliefs", and unifying and transcending the insights given by science and religion.
philosophers refer similarly to the "natural light of reason".
Stephen Toulmin
defines three basic approaches to philosophy:
, epistemic, and linguistic
approaches.
The Ancient Greek phronetic
approach to philosophy was prioneered by such philosophers as 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 general method of such philosophers was elenkhos, more widely known today as the Socratic method
.
The epistemic approach centers upon the foundations of knowledge, in particular the debate between Rationalism
and Empiricism
. The distinction is mostly applied to modern philosophy
with philosophers such John Locke
, David Hume
and George Berkeley
on the empiricist side, and René Descartes
, Baruch Spinoza
and Gottfried Leibniz
on the other. However, the distinction can be just as meaningfully applied to current philosophy.
The more recent linguistic approach to philosophy 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 Language, Truth and Logic, A.J. Ayer set two criteria for a (contentious) 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". Thus to Ayer, philosophy is defined as a wholly analytic task, and as a compilation of "in-use" definitions. It is commonly suggested by this analytic school of thought that questions such as "What is Truth?", or more generally "What is x?", are requests for definitions rather than facts about the world.
Experimental philosophy
is a form of philosophical inquiry that makes at least partial use of empirical research
—especially opinion polling—in order to address persistent philosophical questions. This is in contrast with the methods found in analytic philosophy
, whereby some say a philosopher will sometimes begin by appealing to his or her intuitions
on an issue and then form an argument
with those intuitions as premise
s. However, disagreement about what experimental philosophy can accomplish is widespread and several philosophers have offered criticisms. One claim is that the empirical data gathered by experimental philosophers can have an indirect effect on philosophical questions by allowing for a better understanding of the underlying psychological processes which lead to philosophical intuitions.
Another field of philosophy which makes use of quantitative reasoning is called computational philosophy. In this field, philosophers construct several simplified artificial worlds with different ontologies and ethical systems, experiment with them, and confront them with the real world observations. This emergent research and scientific activity requires numerous meta-philosophical and meta-theoretical assumptions.
, whether genuine philosophical problems actually exist. The opposite has also been claimed, most notably by Karl Popper
, who held that such problems do exist, that they are solvable, and that he had actually found definite solutions to some of them.
raised questions concerning
Immanuel Kant
's approach to philosophy, his 'criticism
', is thoroughly selfconscious and reflexive. Writing Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science, he presented an example of a work that is seen today as indisputably metaphilosophical.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
wrote about the nature of philosophical puzzles and philosophical understanding. He suggested philosophical errors arose from confusions about the nature of philosophical inquiry. In the Philosophical Investigations
, Wittgenstein wrote that there is not a metaphilosophy.
C. D. Broad distinguished Critical from Speculative philosophy in 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. Ducasse's view has been among the first to be described as 'metaphilosophy'.
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).
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
. The term is derived from Greek word meta
Meta
Meta- , is a prefix used in English to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter....
μετά ("after", "beyond", "with") and philosophía
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
φιλοσοφία ("love of wisdom").
The term has gained currency since the mid-twentieth century but currently there is no accepted opinion, nor a notable debate if a 'second order philosophy' is, or could be, something different from 'plain philosophy'. In the analytical tradition
Analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...
it is mostly used to tag commenting and research on previous works as opposed to original contributions towards solving philosophical problems.
Morris Lazerowitz claims to have launched the term around 1940 and apparently has used it in print in 1942. Earlier uses have been found in translations from the French. During the 1960 it became more or less current, being used by Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
Richard McKay Rorty was an American philosopher. He had a long and diverse academic career, including positions as Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University...
or in the title of Lazerowitz' book of essays. Since 1970 a journal Metaphilosophy is published.
The rationale for metaphilosophy
Metaphilosophy relies on the idea that it might be productive to distinguish some general pronouncements about philosophyPhilosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
from philosophy itself. Contrasting with many other cultural practice
Cultural Practice
Cultural practice generally refers to the manifestation of a culture or sub-culture, especially in regard to the traditional and customary practices of a particular ethnic or other cultural group. In the broadest sense, this term can apply to any person manifesting any aspect of any culture at any...
s, for philosophy the distinction is rather questionable, but a similar case is presented by language: when speaking in English about the English language one might assume a split between English-as-object and English-as-metalanguage
Metalanguage
Broadly, any metalanguage is language or symbols used when language itself is being discussed or examined. In logic and linguistics, a metalanguage is a language used to make statements about statements in another language...
. Philosophers using the term metaphilosophy being still a minority, it might be surmised that the majority does not consider the idea worth exploring. As far as it is a reflexive practice philosophy always already incorporates its own considering e.g. by appealing to its own tradition, to its opponents or to its history; thus historicist philosophies, such as Hegel's, are metaphilosophies without mention of the term. A synchronic or systemic
Systematics
Biological systematics is the study of the diversification of terrestrial life, both past and present, and the relationships among living things through time. Relationships are visualized as evolutionary trees...
approach is a more obviously 'metaphilosophical' than a historic or a diachronic one.
Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
famously rejected the analogy between metalanguage and a metaphilosophy:
"One might think: if philosophy speaks of the use of the word "philosophy" there must be a second-order philosophy. But it is not so: it is, rather, like the case of orthography, which deals with the word "orthography" among others without then being second-order."
Recently Timothy Williamson
Timothy Williamson
Timothy Williamson is a British philosopher whose main research interests are in philosophical logic, philosophy of language, epistemology and metaphysics....
has refrained from using the word and expressed concern that it might be misleading:
"I also rejected the word “metaphilosophy.” The philosophy of philosophy is automatically part of philosophy, just as the philosophy of anything else is, whereas metaphilosophy sounds as though it might try to look down on philosophy from above, or beyond."
Other philosophers such as Nicholas Rescher
Nicholas Rescher
Nicholas Rescher is an American philosopher at the University of Pittsburgh. In a productive research career extending over six decades, Rescher has established himself as a systematic philosopher of the old style and author of a system of pragmatic idealism which weaves together threads of...
or Richard Double have adopted the term, putting it to good use. Presenting research on general philosophical principles Rescher's book begins with his view on metaphilosophy:
"Metaphilosophy is the philosophical examination of the practice of philosophizing itself. Its definitive aim is to study the methods of the field in an endeavor to illuminate its promise and prospects."
Definition
The word philosophy is of Ancient GreekAncient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
origin: φιλοσοφία (philosophía), meaning "love of wisdom." However, few sources give "love of wisdom" as a possible meaning of the term, and others say the etymology is "not much help".
The use and meaning of the word "philosophy" has changed throughout history: in Antiquity
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
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; and contemporary analytic philosophy likes to define itself roughly as inquiry into concepts.
Many definitions of philosophy begin by stating the difficulty of defining the subject, calling it "notoriously difficult", saying that there is "no straightforward definition" and that most interesting definitions of philosophy are controversial.
However, a review of standard reference works
suggests that there is a broad agreement among such sources that philosophy involves the study of fundamental or general topics; e.g. "the most fundamental and general concepts and principles involved in thought, action and reality", "the most general questions about our universe and our place in it", the "absolutely fundamental reason of everything it investigates", or "the fundamental reasons or causes of all things". The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy says it is the investigation of the most general and abstract features of the world and the categories with which we think, in order to "lay bare their foundations and presuppositions".
Some authors say that philosophy is fundamentally about critical thinking, examining the beliefs we take for granted. Wilfrid Hodges
Wilfrid Hodges
Wilfrid Augustine Hodges is a British mathematician, known for his work in model theory. He was Professor of Mathematics at Queen Mary, University of London from 1987 to 2006, and is the author of numerous books on logic....
wrote:
Demarcation
Some authors say that that philosophical enquiry is second-order, having concepts, theories and presupposition as its subject matter. It is "thinking about thinking", of a "generally second-order character". Philosophers study, rather than use, the concepts that structure our thinking. However, the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy warns that "the borderline between such 'second-order' reflection, and ways of practising the first-order discipline itself, is not always clear: philosophical problems may be tamed by the advance of a discipline, and the conduct of a discipline may be swayed by philosophical reflection".Most authors agree that philosophy is distinct from both empirical science
Empiricism
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...
and religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
. It differs from science in that its questions cannot be answered empirically, i.e. by observation or experiment; and it differs from religion in that it allows no place for faith or revelation
Revelation
In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing, through active or passive communication with a supernatural or a divine entity...
. Philosophy does not try to answer questions by appeal to revelation, myth or religious knowledge of any kind, but uses reason, "without reference to sensible observation and experiments".
Some analytical philosophers argue that all meaningful empirical questions are to be answered by science, not philosophy. However, some schools of contemporary philosophy
Contemporary philosophy
Contemporary philosophy is the present period in the history of Western philosophy beginning at the end of the 19th century with the professionalization of the discipline and the rise of analytic and continental philosophy....
such as the pragmatists
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice...
and naturalistic epistemologists
Naturalized epistemology
Naturalized epistemology is a collection of philosophic views concerned with the theory of knowledge that emphasize the role of natural scientific methods. This shared emphasis on scientific methods of studying knowledge shifts focus to the empirical processes of knowledge acquisition and away from...
argue that philosophy should be linked to science and should be scientific in the broad sense of that term, "preferring to see philosophical reflection as continuous with the best practice of any field of intellectual enquiry".
Taxonomy
A typical metaphilosophical task is to provide a taxonomy of philosophical (sub)disciplines. AristotleAristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
spoke about a 'first philosophy' which was the most general science and a 'second philosophy' which dealt with nature (or 'physis'). However in later antiquity the first philosophy, as a more demanding discipline, was considering to come after physics and the works where it was exposed were called metaphysics. Aristotle's metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
traditionally was seen to consist of three parts: ontology, natural theology and universal science. In later times, as Christianity became dominant, the whole of philosophy came to be considered as an auxiliary science, the formula being philosophia ancilla theologiae. At the end of the Renaissance the special doctrine considering being as such was named ontology
Ontology
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
and a corresponding doctrine about knowledge came under the name of epistemology or gnoseology. In the 18th century Alexander Baumgarten considered the special case of sensitive knowledge and called it 'gnoseologia inferior' (as opposed to a superior rational one) and with Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
it became aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
. The Greek had always had a special concern about ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
which remained a major philosophical concern in Roman times and later was established as separate discipline. Thus the standard disciplinary structure of philosophy was established as
- ontology,
- epistemology,
- ethics and
- aesthetics.
They have been listed as metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
(including ontology
Ontology
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
, causation
Causation
Causation may refer to:* Causation , a key component to establish liability in both criminal and civil law* Causation in English law defines the requirement for liability in negligence...
, and cosmology
Cosmology
Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...
),
ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
,
epistemology,
logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
,
and later aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
.
Applied philosophy is the philosophical critique of various social activities (such as religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
) and intellectual pursuits (such as science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
and sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
). Philosopher and encyclopedist Mortimer Adler
Mortimer Adler
Mortimer Jerome Adler was an American philosopher, educator, and popular author. As a philosopher he worked within the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. He lived for the longest stretches in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and San Mateo, California...
includes all such second-order questions about various fields of study, which are often found under various branches of philosophy beginning with the phrase "philosophy of....", in his taxonomy. Adler divides these second-order philosophical problems into two branches: one addressing the objects of thought, such as Being
Being
Being , is an English word used for conceptualizing subjective and objective aspects of reality, including those fundamental to the self —related to and somewhat interchangeable with terms like "existence" and "living".In its objective usage —as in "a being," or "[a] human being" —it...
, Cause, Change
Change
Change may refer to:- The process of becoming different:* Social change* Biological metamorphosis* Change , the mathematical study of change* Percentage change, in statistics* Fold change, in statistics...
, Infinity
Infinity
Infinity is a concept in many fields, most predominantly mathematics and physics, that refers to a quantity without bound or end. People have developed various ideas throughout history about the nature of infinity...
, Destiny
Destiny
Destiny or fate refers to a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual...
, and Love
Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
; the other addressing the subjects, or procedural domains, of thought, e.g. philosophy of religion
Philosophy of religion
Philosophy of religion is a branch of philosophy concerned with questions regarding religion, including the nature and existence of God, the examination of religious experience, analysis of religious language and texts, and the relationship of religion and science...
, philosophy of history
Philosophy of history
The term philosophy of history refers to the theoretical aspect of history, in two senses. It is customary to distinguish critical philosophy of history from speculative philosophy of history...
, philosophy of language
Philosophy of language
Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. As a topic, the philosophy of language for analytic philosophers is concerned with four central problems: the nature of meaning, language use, language cognition, and the relationship between language...
, philosophy of science
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
. Metaphilosophy also attempts to understand such second-order problems with the aid of the other major branches, e.g. metaphysical knowledge in religion, epistemology in religion, axiology
Axiology
Axiology is the philosophical study of value. It is either the collective term for ethics and aesthetics—philosophical fields that depend crucially on notions of value—or the foundation for these fields, and thus similar to value theory and meta-ethics...
in religion, etc.
The aims of philosophy
Some philosophers (e.g. existentialistsExistentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
, pragmatists
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice...
) 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 entirely theoretical discipline, with goals such as "the disinterested pursuit of knowledge for its own sake". Other proposed goals of philosophy include "discover[ing] the absolutely fundamental reason of everything it investigates", "making explicit the nature and significance of ordinary and scientific beliefs", and unifying and transcending the insights given by science and religion.
The methods of philosophy
Most sources agree that the chief method of philosophy is logical, rational, critical enquiry and argument "of a more or less systematic kind." ThomisticThomism
Thomism is the philosophical school that arose as a legacy of the work and thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, philosopher, theologian, and Doctor of the Church. In philosophy, his commentaries on Aristotle are his most lasting contribution...
philosophers refer similarly to the "natural light of reason".
Stephen Toulmin
Stephen Toulmin
Stephen Edelston Toulmin was a British philosopher, author, and educator. Influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Toulmin devoted his works to the analysis of moral reasoning. Throughout his writings, he sought to develop practical arguments which can be used effectively in evaluating the ethics behind...
defines 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.
Historical methods
Three historical methods of philosophy have been the Ancient GreekAncient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
, epistemic, and linguistic
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
approaches.
The Ancient Greek phronetic
Phronesis
Phronēsis is an Ancient Greek word for wisdom or intelligence which is a common topic of discussion in philosophy. In Aristotelian Ethics, for example in the Nicomachean Ethics it is distinguished from other words for wisdom as the virtue of practical thought, and is usually translated "practical...
approach to philosophy was prioneered by such philosophers as Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
and Epicurus
Epicurus
Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism.Only a few fragments and letters remain of Epicurus's 300 written works...
. 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
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
and religious
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
philosophy is featured in recorded thinking. The general method of such philosophers was elenkhos, more widely known today as the Socratic method
Socratic method
The Socratic method , named after the classical Greek philosopher Socrates, is a form of inquiry and debate between individuals with opposing viewpoints based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to illuminate ideas...
.
The epistemic approach centers upon the foundations of knowledge, in particular the debate between Rationalism
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
and Empiricism
Empiricism
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...
. The distinction is mostly applied to modern philosophy
Modern philosophy
Modern philosophy is a type of philosophy that originated in Western Europe in the 17th century, and is now common worldwide. It is not a specific doctrine or school , although there are certain assumptions common to much of it, which helps to distinguish it from earlier philosophy.The 17th and...
with philosophers such John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
, David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
and George Berkeley
George Berkeley
George Berkeley , also known as Bishop Berkeley , was an Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism"...
on the empiricist side, and René Descartes
René Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
, Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...
and Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician. He wrote in different languages, primarily in Latin , French and German ....
on the other. However, the distinction can be just as meaningfully applied to current philosophy.
The more recent linguistic approach to philosophy 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 Language, Truth and Logic, A.J. Ayer set two criteria for a (contentious) 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". Thus to Ayer, philosophy is defined as a wholly analytic task, and as a compilation of "in-use" definitions. It is commonly suggested by this analytic school of thought that questions such as "What is Truth?", or more generally "What is x?", are requests for definitions rather than facts about the world.
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 various thinkers discard intuition as a valid source of knowledge and thereby call into question 'a priori' philosophy.Experimental philosophy
Experimental philosophy
Experimental philosophy is an emerging field of philosophical inquiry that makes use of empirical data—often gathered through surveys which probe the intuitions of ordinary people—in order to inform research on philosophical questions This use of empirical data is widely seen as opposed to a...
is a form of philosophical inquiry that makes at least partial use of empirical research
Empirical
The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation or experimentation. Empirical data are data produced by an experiment or observation....
—especially opinion polling—in order to address persistent philosophical questions. This is in contrast with the methods found in analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...
, whereby some say a philosopher will sometimes begin by appealing to his or her intuitions
Intuition (philosophy)
Intuition is a priori knowledge or experiential belief characterized by its immediacy. Beyond this, the nature of intuition is debated. Roughly speaking, there are two main views. They are:...
on an issue and then form an argument
Argument
In philosophy and logic, an argument is an attempt to persuade someone of something, or give evidence or reasons for accepting a particular conclusion.Argument may also refer to:-Mathematics and computer science:...
with those intuitions as premise
Premise
Premise can refer to:* Premise, a claim that is a reason for, or an objection against, some other claim as part of an argument...
s. However, disagreement about what experimental philosophy can accomplish is widespread and several philosophers have offered criticisms. One claim is that the empirical data gathered by experimental philosophers can have an indirect effect on philosophical questions by allowing for a better understanding of the underlying psychological processes which lead to philosophical intuitions.
Another field of philosophy which makes use of quantitative reasoning is called computational philosophy. In this field, philosophers construct several simplified artificial worlds with different ontologies and ethical systems, experiment with them, and confront them with the real world observations. This emergent research and scientific activity requires numerous meta-philosophical and meta-theoretical assumptions.
Philosophical progress
A prominent question in metaphilosophy is that of whether or not philosophical progress occurs, and more so, whether such progress in philosophy is even possible. It has even been disputed, most notably by Ludwig WittgensteinLudwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
, whether genuine philosophical problems actually exist. The opposite has also been claimed, most notably by Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
, who held that such problems do exist, that they are solvable, and that he had actually found definite solutions to some of them.
Metaphilosophical writings
PlatoPlato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
raised 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)
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
's approach to philosophy, his 'criticism
Criticism
Criticism is the judgement of the merits and faults of the work or actions of an individual or group by another . To criticize does not necessarily imply to find fault, but the word is often taken to mean the simple expression of an objection against prejudice, or a disapproval.Another meaning of...
', is thoroughly selfconscious and reflexive. Writing Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science, he presented an example of a work that is seen today as indisputably metaphilosophical.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
wrote about the nature of philosophical puzzles and philosophical understanding. He suggested philosophical errors arose from confusions about the nature of philosophical inquiry. In the Philosophical Investigations
Philosophical Investigations
Philosophical Investigations is, along with the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, one of the most influential works by the 20th-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein...
, Wittgenstein wrote that there is not a metaphilosophy.
C. D. Broad distinguished Critical from Speculative philosophy in 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. Ducasse's view has been among the first to be described as 'metaphilosophy'.
Henri Lefebvre
Henri Lefebvre
Henri Lefebvre was a French sociologist, Marxist intellectual, and philosopher, best known for his work on dialectics, Marxism, everyday life, cities, and space.-Biography:...
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
Louis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy....
's "epistemological break" with subjective marxism, which represented a fundamental theoretical tool for the school of marxist structuralism).
See also
- MetatheoryMetatheoryA metatheory or meta-theory is a theory whose subject matter is some other theory. In other words it is a theory about a theory. Statements made in the metatheory about the theory are called metatheorems....
- Meta-knowledge
- Meta-epistemologyMeta-epistemologyMeta-epistemology is a metaphilosophical study of the subject, matter, methods and aims of epistemology and of approaches to understanding and structuring our knowledge of knowledge itself....
- Philosophical progress
- Unsolved problems in philosophyUnsolved problems in philosophyThis is a list of some of the major unsolved problems in philosophy. Clearly, unsolved philosophical problems exist in the lay sense . However, philosophers generally accord serious philosophical problems specific names or questions, which indicate a particular method of attack or line of reasoning...
Texts
- Wittgenstein L., Tractatus Logico-PhilosophicusTractatus Logico-PhilosophicusThe Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is the only book-length philosophical work published by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his lifetime. It was an ambitious project: to identify the relationship between language and reality and to define the limits of science...
, trans. David Pears and Brian McGuinness (1961), Routledge, hardcover: ISBN 0-7100-3004-5, 1974 paperback: ISBN 0-415-02825-6, 2001 hardcover: ISBN 0-415-25562-7, 2001 paperback: ISBN 0-415-25408-6; ** Philosophische Untersuchungen (1953) or Philosophical InvestigationsPhilosophical InvestigationsPhilosophical Investigations is, along with the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, one of the most influential works by the 20th-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein...
, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe (1953)
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- Lazerowitz M., (1964) Studies in Metaphilosphy, London:Routledge
- Double R., (1996) Metaphilosophy and Free Will, Oxford University Press, USA, ISBN 0195107624, ISBN 978-0195107623
- Rescher N., (2006), Philosophical Dialectics, an Essay on Metaphilosophy, Albany:U of New York
- Williams T., (2007) The Philosophy of Philosophy, London: Blackwell
External links
- Computational Philosophy of Science - Paul R. Thagard, 1993
- Metaphilosophy, Journal published by Blackwell
- Metaphilosophy Journal- Southern Connecticut State University
- Lvov-Warsaw School, Kazimierz TwardowskiKazimierz TwardowskiKazimierz Jerzy Skrzypna-Twardowski was a Polish philosopher and logician.-Life:Twardowski's family belonged to the Ogończyk coat-of-arms.Twardowski studied philosophy in Vienna with Franz Brentano and Robert Zimmermann...
, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Peter Suber: Metaphilosophy Themes and Questions - A Personal List
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