What Is Philosophy?: A First-Person Perspective

189 Pages·2023·23.489 MB·English

by  Richard Fumerton

What Is Philosophy?
As philosophy departments attempt to define their unique value amid pro-
gram 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 phi-
losophy 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 phil-
osophical claims from the kind of contingent truths investigated by the
empirical sciences. Along the way, Fumerton briefly discusses the histori-
cal 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
philosophy.
• Shows that philosophy asks fundamental questions, unanswerable by
the sciences, that are critical to thinking clearly and rationally about
the world.
• Highlights the distinct character of philosophical questions in specific
subject areas: philosophy of language, epistemology, ethics, philoso-
phy of mind, and philosophy of science.
• Concludes by making a unique case for philosophy’s contribution
to cross-disciplinary work in ethics, politics, mathematics, and the
empirical sciences.
• Written in a way to be engaging and accessible for advanced under-
graduate readers.
Richard Fumerton is the F. Wendell Miller Professor of Philosophy
at the University of Iowa. He is the author of, among other books, Real-
ism and the Correspondence Theory of Truth (2002), Epistemology (2006), Mill
(co-authored with Wendy Donner) (2009), Knowledge, Thought and the Case
for Dualism (2013), and A Consequentialist Defense of Libertarianism (2021).
With Diane Jeske, he has also edited Philosophy Through Film (2009), and
An Introduction to Political Philosophy (2012).
What Is Philosophy?
A First-Person Perspective
Richard Fumerton
First published 2023
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Taylor & Francis
The right of Richard Fumerton to be identified as author of
this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
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invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
ISBN: 978-1-032-12205-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-12203-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-22356-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003223566
Typeset in Bembo
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Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Preface xiii
PART I
How to Approach Metaphilosophy 1
1 Introduction 3
1.1 Philosophy as a Distinct Field 3
1.2 Meta-Questions within Fields of Philosophy 5
1.2.1 Ethics as an Example 5
1.2.2 Epistemology as Another Example 7
1.2.3 Metaphilosophy 8
1.3 Some Examples of Paradigmatic Philosophical Questions 9
1.4 Different Conceptions of Philosophy—A Very Brief Overview 13
1.4.1 Philosophy as a Search for Fundamental Categories of Reality 14
1.4.2 Conceptual Analysis 15
1.4.3 The Linguistic Turn 16
1.4.4 A Second Linguistic Turn—Content Externalism 18
1.5 Doing Metaphilosophy without Begging Questions 20
2 The Paradox of Analysis and Methodological Solipsism 24
2.1 The Paradox of Analysis 24
2.2 Methodological Solipsism and a Master Argument 28
3 What’s Left? 35
3.1 Foundationalism and Phenomenology 35
3.1.1 Phenomenology: The Starting Point of All
Philosophical Reflection 40
3.2 Philosophical Analysis 45
viii Contents
3.2.1 Stipulative Definition 47
3.2.2 Beyond Stipulation 51
3.2.3 More about Thought Experiments 53
3.2.4 Wittgenstein and the Private Language Argument 56
3.3 Beyond Phenomenology and Analysis—“Internal”
Relations among Properties 58
3.4 Summarizing 61
PART II
Illustrating the View—Mapping Clear Borders 67
4 Philosophy of Language 69
4.1 Externalism about Meaning 69
4.2 The Significance of the Content Internalism/Externalism
Controversy for Understanding Philosophy 73
4.3 Rejecting Externalism 75
5 Epistemology and Metaepistemology 80
5.1 Knowledge 80
5.2 Epistemic Justification/Rationality 84
5.2.1 Non-epistemic Reasons to Believe 84
5.2.2 Propositional vs Doxastic Justification 84
5.2.3 The Internalism/Externalism Controversy in Epistemology 85
5.3 The Implications of the Internalism/Externalism
Controversy for What Else Should Be Included in
Philosophical Epistemology 89
6 Ethics and Rationality/Metaethics and Meta-rationality 97
6.1 Rational Action 98
6.1.1 Regress 102
6.2 Morality 102
6.2.1 Intrinsic Value 103
6.2.2 R ight Action, Duties, Obligations, Virtues, and
Supererogation 105
6.3 Summary 111
7 Philosophy of Mind 114
7.1 Meta-Questions in the Philosophy of Mind 115
7.1.1 Phenomenology Again 115
7.1.2 Substance vs Property Dualism 116
Contents ix
7.1.3 A pplying Our Conception of Philosophy to the
Philosophy of Mind 118
7.2 Inappropriate Philosophical Intrusion into Empirical Matters 124
7.3 Summary 129
8 Philosophy of Science and Metaphysics 131
8.1 Philosophy of Science—An Older Paradigm 131
8.2 Causation and Explanation 132
8.3 Space and Time 136
8.4 Epistemology and the Philosophy of Science 138
8.4.1 Is There a Distinction between the Observable and
the Theoretical? 139
8.4.2 How to Understand the Theoretical 141
8.5 From Philosophy of Science to Traditional Metaphysics 142
8.6 Summary 146
9 The Relevance of Philosophy Proper 150
9.1 Intellectual Curiosity 151
9.2 Positioning Oneself Better to Answer Applied Questions 152
9.3 For Whom Is This Book Written 156
References 159
Index 167