Philosophical Method: A Very Short Introduction

by Timothy Williamson

Overview

What are philosophers trying to achieve? How can they succeed? Does philosophy make progress? Is it in competition with science, or doing something completely different, or neither?

Timothy Williamson tackles some of the key questions surrounding philosophy in new and provocative ways, showing how philosophy begins in common sense curiosity, and develops through our capacity to dispute rationally with each other. Discussing philosophy's ability to clarify our thoughts, he explains why such clarification depends on the development of philosophical theories, and how those theories can be tested by imaginative thought experiments, and compared against each other by standards similar to those used in the natural and social sciences. He also shows how logical rigour can be understood as a way of enhancing the explanatory power of philosophical theories. Drawing on the history of philosophy to provide a track record of philosophical thinking's successes and failures, Williams overturns widely held dogmas about the distinctive nature of philosophy in comparison to the sciences, demystifies its methods, and considers the future of the discipline.

From thought experiments, to deduction, to theories, this Very Short Introduction will cause you to totally rethink what philosophy is.

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Previously published in hardback as Doing Philosophy

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198810001
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/01/2020
Series:	Very Short Introductions
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.80(w) x 4.30(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Timothy Williamson is the Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford, and A. Whitney Griswold Visiting Professor at Yale University. Previously he was the Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Edinburgh University. He has published books and articles on many branches of philosophy, some of which have been translated into German, Spanish, French, Italian, Hungarian, Serbian, Turkish, Chinese, Korean, and other languages. He frequently writes on philosophy in the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Times blog The Stone, and newspapers in various countries.

Table of Contents

Preface xv

List of illustrations xvii

1 Introduction 1

2 Starting from common sense 6

3 Disputing 18

4 Clarifying terms 32

5 Doing thought experiments 45

6 Comparing theories 59

7 Deducing 74

8 Using the history of philosophy 89

9 Using other fields 100

10 Model-building 114

11 Conclusion: the future of philosophy 127

References and further reading 129

Index 137