Method

Philosophical methodology

Overview

Philosophical methodology encompasses the methods used to philosophize and the study of these methods. Methods of philosophy are procedures for conducting research, creating new theories, and selecting between competing theories. In addition to the description of methods, philosophical methodology also compares and evaluates them.

Philosophers have employed a great variety of methods. Methodological skepticism tries to find principles that cannot be doubted. The geometrical method deduces theorems from self-evident axioms. The phenomenological method describes first-person experience. Verificationists study the conditions of empirical verification of sentences to determine their meaning. Conceptual analysis decomposes concepts into fundamental constituents. Common-sense philosophers use widely held beliefs as their starting point of inquiry, whereas ordinary language philosophers extract philosophical insights from ordinary language. Intuition-based methods, like thought experiments, rely on non-inferential impressions. The method of reflective equilibrium seeks coherence among beliefs, while the pragmatist method assesses theories by their practical consequences. The transcendental method studies the conditions without which an entity could not exist. Experimental philosophers use empirical methods.

The choice of method can significantly impact how theories are constructed and the arguments used to support them. As a result, methodological disagreements can lead to philosophical disagreements.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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1. But all philosophy is either cognition on the basis of pure reason, or the cognition of reason on the basis of empirical principles. The former is termed pure, the latter empirical philosophy. The philosophy of pure reason is either propædeutic, that is, an inquiry into the powers of reason in regard to pure à priori cognition, and is termed critical philosophy; or it is, secondly, the system of pure reason—a…

   Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason

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2. Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered I am now to make the pragmatic method more familiar by giving you some illustrations of its application to particular problems. I will begin with what is driest, and the first thing I shall take will be the problem of Substance.

   William James, Pragmatism

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3. Similarly, the study of the human mind, which was a part of philosophy, has now been separated from philosophy and has become the science of psychology. Thus, to a great extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the…

   Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy

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Philosophers who discussed Philosophical methodology

• Wilhelm Dilthey

Related ideas

• Belief
• Ethnicity
• Bracketing (phenomenology)
• Falsifiability
• Foundationalism
• Self-evidence
• G. E. Moore
• Argument
• Philosophy
• Immanuel Kant
• Power (social and political)
• The Unreality of Time
• Intuition
• Cartesian doubt
• Underdetermination
• Necessity and sufficiency
• Happiness
• Ancient Greek philosophy
• Counterfactual thinking
• Mind–body dualism
• Philosophical theory
• Experimental philosophy
• Reflective equilibrium
• Metaphilosophy

Place in the tradition

Part of Aesthetics.

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