Abstract
This article discusses what kind of thing a philosophical methodology (good or not) is or would be, and what kind of questions would count as methodological. The primary focus is on a “higher-order” reading, on which admissible answers are the epistemological methods that distinguish philosophy from the natural sciences and the humanities, or the pursuit of a description of reality at the most fundamental level. The article uses the term “Philosophical Methodology” to pick out questions of the higher order, and “philosophical methodology” for questions of the lower order. To provide a robust data pool, it takes all occurrences of the word “methodological” in entries of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophynford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and considers what plausible theories of Philosophical Methodology can be fitted into that range of usage. It also discusses seven hypotheses that account for the nature of Philosophical Methodology: Eliminativism, Working-Hypothesism, Epistemologism, Theory Selectionism, Necessary Preconditionalism, Hierarchicalism, and Eliminatedivism.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology |
Editors | Herman Cappelen, Tamar Szabó Gendler, John Hawthorne |
Place of Publication | Oxford |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9780191749667 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780199668779 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 3 Aug 2016 |