The Philosophy of Philosophy: (The Blackwell / Brown Lectures in Philosophy)

The Philosophy of Philosophy The Blackwell / Brown Lectures in Philosophy The Philosophy of Philosophy presents an original, unified concept of philosophy as a non-natural science. In this provocative work, distinguished philosopher Timothy Williamson challenges widely-held assumptions and clarifies long-standing misconceptions about the methodology and nature of philosophical inquiry. The author rejects the standard narratives of contemporary philosophy developed from naturalism, the linguistic turn, postmodern irony, and other prominent trends of the twentieth century. Viewing the method of philosophy as evolving from non-philosophical pursuits, Williamson provides readers with fresh insight into the “self-image” of philosophy and offers new ways of understanding what philosophy is and how it actually works. Now in its second edition, this landmark volume comprises the original book and the author’s subsequent work. New topics include the recent history of analytic philosophy, assessments of experimental philosophy, theories of concepts and understanding, Wittgensteinian approaches, popular philosophy, naturalism, morally-loaded examples in philosophy, philosophical applications of scientific methods, and many more. This edition features the author’s latest thoughts on a variety of issues, autobiographical reflections, and replies to critics. The Philosophy of Philosophy, Second Edition remains essential reading for philosophers, scholars, graduate and advanced undergraduate students in philosophy, and other readers with a sustained interest in the method and rationale of the doing of philosophy.

Table of Contents:
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

About the Author :
Timothy Williamson is the Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford University and Whitney Griswold Visiting Professor at Yale University. He was previously Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Edinburgh University, and has been Visiting Professor at MIT, Princeton University, University of Michigan, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His books include Identity and Discrimination, Vagueness, Doing Philosophy, Knowledge and its Limits, Modal Logic as Metaphysics, and Suppose and Tell.