I have two observations. One, Winter, despite its charms, can bring a certain melancholy—there is even a psychological disorder associated with the season. Moreover, the end of the Winter term comes with its own kinds of stress for student and professor alike. Thus, once Summer arrives, the season is usually met with gusto. A good number of philosophical blog entries this time of year are merely possible, deal with gossip (between McGinn, the new APA website, and Ergo—the new open access online journal—there is plenty to talk about), or, in some cases, the posts are poetry.
The second observation is that philosophers do not often discuss metaphilosophy—nor do many people in general. We live in a world where ‘bootylicious’ is in the OED and ‘metaphilosophy’ is not. Moreover, while the IEP and Wikipedia have entries in metaphilosophy, the Stanford, alas, does not (although, there is a good entry on intuition).
I offer these two observations as at least partial explanation for the brevity of this issue of the Philosophers’ Carnival.
Welcome to the one hundred and fifty-third edition of the Philosophers’ Carnival. In this issue I have chosen to focus on more metaphilosophical topics. Not many philosophers are interested in metaphilosophy, and some dismiss its prospects or even its possibilities. That is, an off-the-cuff reaction to the idea of metaphilosophy is that one must engage in the object of study while studying it. This does not seem to be possible with respect to other fields. For example, one does not engage in historical investigation to question historical investigation, i.e., one does not look to the evidence left by previous cultures to answer questions like, “Will looking at the evidence left by previous cultures give us insight to these cultures and to what extent?” Given the limits of what historical investigation (or mathematical, scientific, and so on) can give you, one must look to a more general form of inquiry to begin questioning historical investigation. Usually, it is left to philosophy to question these other fields. However, the complaint continues, there is no further “general” field to study philosophy other than philosophy. Moreover (and, at this point, the complaint usually switches tactics), one of the reasons for questioning a field is to determine whether its methods and conclusions are justifiable. To attempt to justify a field of inquiry by using that same field of inquiry seems suspiciously like question-begging. Thus, one might conclude, metaphilosophy is a doomed effort.
These are good issues to raise, and they require a response. I will not provide a direct response to them here. However, as an indirect response to these complaints, I can only point out that the complaints are metaphilosophical in nature. That is to say, these issues use philosophical methods and tactics in order to reach conclusions about philosophy. Thus, if we are to take the conclusion seriously, we would have to disregard it. Personally I have been interested in metaphilosophy since, lately, I want know what I can do with a field of inquiry before I attempt to delve into it.
Enough with preliminary comments about metaphilosophy. I offer these posts in the hopes that they will showcase at least some of what is discussed in the field. Here are some interesting posts this month in the field.
BLS Nelson has a post on The Philosopher’s Magazine titled “Philosophical Viscousness”. He discusses the virtues of “being philosophical” or “being a philosopher” as opposed to “doing philosophy”. The distinction might escape you at first glance, but his purpose is to discuss the right intentions in doing philosophy. After all, it is conceivable that one engages in philosophical methods for the “wrong reasons”, say, to push a certain ideology as opposed to finding the truth.
Jonathan Ichikawa has given a series of three posts (here, here, and here) about his upcoming book titled The Rules of Thought. Judging by the posts, Ichikawa and Benjamin Jarvis have written about philosophical justification by the a priori. Crudely (and perhaps inaccurately put), we are justified in our philosophical beliefs in virtue of how the concepts are encoded (presumably in the brain). The posts do not go into detail; they are meant to merely whet the appetite.
Wesley Buckwalter at Experimental Philosophy has given notice about a response from David Chalmers to Herman Cappelen’s Philosophy Without Intuitions. Cappelen argues that philosophers do not rely on intuitions; Chalmers disagrees by providing a “minimalist account” of intuition.
Over at Philosopher’s Cocoon, Marcus Arvan has brought up the question of philosophical fads and how one knows whether one is caught up in a fad. I think it is a further interesting question whether being in a “fad” is a bad thing.
This may be the briefest issue of the Carnival. As mentioned, metaphilosophy is not the most popular of topics. I do hope that by highlighting some of the discussion you have more of an interest. Nick Byrd will host the August 10th edition of the Carnival. I am guessing he will go with a more general theme, but that is up to him. As an addendum, I offer the following suggested posts which were more general in nature.
Enigmania has offered a post on the Liar’s Paradox—but I don’t know whether to believe him. Tomkow has provided a post on The Simple Theory of Counterfactuals. I you would take a look, I would appreciate it. Arvan has provided an interesting post on compatibilism. I can’t take my eyes off it even if I wanted to. Finally, there is a final post on mercy given by the Hopeless Generalist. Perhaps it will inspire you to forgive me for these parting puns.
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