Abstract
This commentary on Philip Kitcher’s book What’s the Use of Philosophy? addresses two questions. First, must philosophers be methodologically self-conscious to do good work? Second, is there value in the questions pursued in the traditional areas of analytic philosophy?
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25 March 2024
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-024-00728-2
Notes
Kuhn (2012), p. 36.
As in Strevens (2019, § 10.2), drawing on many previous thinkers.
Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, quoted in What’s the Use? on several occasions (pp. 27, 103, 111).
The demand does not rule out the possibility that “water” is vague, as the necessary and sufficient conditions may themselves contain vague terms or terms put together in ways that engender vagueness. Many philosophical analyses (rightly, I think) take advantage of this affordance. But still it is assumed that the criterion for waterhood will give a definite answer to the “Is it water?” question, with the allowance that “borderline” is an acceptable answer.
These morbidities are surely not so much exploits of any particular paradigm as of certain more general rules governing scientific research across paradigms, such as those described by Strevens (2020).
In my own work on the topic, I argue that this is a false dichotomy, as concepts such as that of knowledge operate like natural kind concepts, homing in on objectively significant aspects of the subject matter in spite of the erroneous or parochial nature of our present beliefs (Strevens, 2019). I do not have the space to make that case here, however, and so I thought I would try a different line of argument.
References
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Acknowledgements
Dedicated to Philip Kitcher, who has been an inspiration in so many ways. Although I’m not 100% sympathetic to analytic philosophy myself, to better serve the dialectic I wrote this as a straight riposte. For the most part.
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The original online version of this article was revised: In the article title, the question mark symbol has been removed so the article title appeared as "Philosophy as a Science and as a Humanity". The section headings "I" and "II" has been updated into "As a Science" and "As a Humanity" respectively.
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Strevens, M. Philosophy as a Science and as a Humanity. Philosophia (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-024-00720-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-024-00720-w