The Philosophy of Philosophy, Second Edition / Timothy Williamson.

Preface to the Second Edition xi Preface to the First Edition xxx Acknowledgments xxxiii Part I 1 Introduction 3 1 The Linguistic Turn and the Conceptual Turn 12 2 Taking Philosophical Questions at Face Value 25 3 Metaphysical Conceptions of Analyticity 50 4 Epistemological Conceptions of Analyticity 75 5 Knowledge of Metaphysical Modality 136 6 Thought Experiments 181 7 Evidence in Philosophy 210 8 Knowledge Maximization 249 Afterword Must Do Better 280 Appendix 1 Modal Logic within Counterfactual Logic 295 Appendix 2 Counterfactual Donkeys 307 Part II 311 9 Widening the Picture 313 9.1 How Did We Get Here from There? The Transformation of Analytic Philosophy 313 9.2 Abductive Philosophy 351 9.3 Model-Building in Philosophy 372 9.4 Morally Loaded Cases in Philosophy 386 9.5 Reply to Dennett and Kuznetsov on Abductive Philosophy 401 9.6 Reply to Kuznetsov and Stoljar on Model-Building in Philosophy 404 10 Experimental Philosophy 406 10.1 Reply to Weinberg 406 10.2 Philosophical Expertise and the Burden of Proof 413 10.3 On Joshua Alexander’s Experimental Philosophy: An Introduction 431 10.4 Philosophical Criticisms of Experimental Philosophy 440 10.5 Reply to Dennett, Knobe, and Kuznetsov on “Philosophical Intuitions” 464 11 Naturalism 467 11.1 Reply to Kornblith 467 11.2 Reply to Stalnaker 471 11.3 Reply to Bianchi 481 11.4 What is Naturalism? 484 11.5 The Unclarity of Naturalism 488 11.6 On Penelope Maddy’s What Do Philosophers Do? Skepticism and the Practice of Philosophy 491 12 Concepts, Understanding, Analyticity 497 12.1 Reply to Jackson 497 12.2 Reply to Boghossian 502 12.3 Reply to Peacocke 512 12.4 Reply to Mišc¡evic´ 520 12.5 Reply to Smokrovic´ 529 12.6 Reply to Trobok 533 13 Wittgensteinian Approaches 538 13.1 Reply to Moore 538 13.2 Reply to Horwich 543 13.3 Reply to Frascolla 553 13.4 Reply to Marconi 556 13.5 Reply to Tripodi 560 13.6 On Paul Horwich’s Wittgenstein’s Metaphilosophy 563 14 Miscellany 569 14.1 Reply to Ichikawa 569 14.2 Reply to Martin 575 14.3 On Robert Brandom’s Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas 579 14.4 On Peter Unger’s Empty Ideas: A Critique of Analytic Philosophy 586 14.5 Plato Goes Pop 591 14.6 Popular Philosophy and Populist Philosophy 595 Bibliography 598 Index 619

"What can be pursued in an armchair? Every armchair pursuit raises the question whether its methods are adequate to its aims. The traditional methods of philosophy are armchair ones: they consist of thinking, without any special interaction with the world beyond the chair, such as measurement, observation or experiment would typically involve. To do justice to the social and not solely individual nature of philosophy, as a dialectic between several parties, we should add speaking and listening to thinking, and allow several armchairs, within earshot of each other, but methodologically that brings philosophy little closer to the natural sciences. For good or ill, few philosophers show much appetite for the risky business of making predictions and testing them against observation, whether or not their theories in fact have consequences that could be so tested. Without attempting to defi ne the terms precisely, we may put the difference to a fi rst approximation thus: the current methodology of the natural sciences is a posteriori; the current methodology of philosophy is a priori. What should we make of this difference? Opposite reactions are possible. Crude rationalists regard philosophy's a priori methodology as a virtue. According to them, it makes philosophical results especially reliable, because immune from perceptual error. Crude empiricists regard philosophy's a priori methodology as a vice. According to them, it makes philosophical results especially unreliable, because immune from perceptual correction"-- Provided by publisher.